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      Tim Walz to join Kamala Harris for the first time on the campaign trial in Philadelphia – live

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      The rally will mark Walz’s first official campaign appearance since Harris selected him as her running mate earlier today, and for Walz will serve as an introduction to the country.“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket, and to help make Kamala Harris the next president of the United States,” he is expected to say, according to the campaign, which shared excerpts from his prepared remarks.The Minnesota governor will share about his upbringing in Butte, Nebraska – a small town of 400 – as well as his experiences as a teacher and an elected official.“I am more optimistic than ever before,” Shapiro said – capturing a truly dizzying vibe shift among Democrats over the past two weeks.In Philadelphia, Shapiro also referenced the city’s history as the birthplace of American independence.“In Independence Hall, just a couple miles from here, nearly two and a half centuries ago,” Shapiro said, the founders declared independence from the British crown. “They came together to declare our independence from a king and we’re not going back to a king,” he said.An riled-up crowd is now chanting “He’s a weirdo” – referencing Tim Walz’s now iconic characterizations of Donald Trump and JD Vance.“Tim Walz, in his beautiful midwestern plainspoken way, he summed up JD Vance the best. He’s a weirdo,” Shapiro said, encouraging the crowd.Earlier, Senator John Fetterman had referenced the same, effectively pithy insult.“This election is about moving our country forward with Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz. Or a couple of really, really, really, really weird dudes,” Fetterman said.” “And look, I gotta tell you, I work with JD Vance … and I’m here to confirm that he is a seriously weird dude.”“Let me tell you about my friend Kamala Harris, someone I’ve been friends with for two decades,” Shapiro said. “She is courtroom tough. She has a big heart and she is battle tested and ready to go.”Shapiro is speaking to a riled-up crowd. “Not going back! Not going back!” the crowd chanted, as he brought up Donald Trump’s record.“It was more chaos, fewer jobs and less freedom,” Shapiro said.“I love you Philly!” Shapiro began. ““I love being your governor. You all fill my heart and I love you so much.”Shapiro was considered a frontrunner for Harris’s running mate, along with Walz.The rally will mark Walz’s first official campaign appearance since Harris selected him as her running mate earlier today, and for Walz will serve as an introduction to the country.“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket, and to help make Kamala Harris the next president of the United States,” he is expected to say, according to the campaign, which shared excerpts from his prepared remarks.The Minnesota governor will share about his upbringing in Butte, Nebraska – a small town of 400 – as well as his experiences as a teacher and an elected official.At the Liacouras Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, crowds are filing in for a packed rally.Sisters Stephanie Ford, 54, and Diane Harris, 59, said they wouldn’t have believed it if someone told them one month ago they’d be at a rally to support the first Black woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket.Harris – no relation to the vice-president – danced excitedly. She hadn’t seen people this excited to vote since Barack Obama in 2008. “It’s hope and change and newness,” she said. Ford, who runs a coffee shop, said she saw some of her customers in line on the way in.Both said they were hoping Harris picked their governor, Josh Shapiro, to be her running mate. “I was hoping it was him,” Ford said, as her sister nodded. “But now we get to keep him for ourselves.”Neither had heard much about the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, who Harris announced on Tuesday would be her running mate. But they both said they liked what they were learning about him, especially what he’s done to help children in the state.“I trust her judgement,” said Harris. “It was a win-win for us.”Soon, Harris and Walz will appear together at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, which thousands of people are lining up to attend.On Instagram Live, progressive representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez said that Walz has helped unify Democrats.“It’s really kind of nuts,” she said. “I am trying to think about the last time Senator Manchin and I, respectfully, were on the same side of an issue.”Walz is hardly a leftist. But in Minnesota, progressives who’ve clashed with him on policy issues are nonetheless rooting for him, my colleague Rachel Leingang reported:
      Elianne Farhat, the executive director of TakeAction MN, said she and her organization had disagreed deeply with Walz over the years, but that he was a person who will move and change his position based on feedback. He evolves.
      She and others pointed to his position on guns. Walz is a gun owner and a hunter who previously received endorsements and donations from the National Rifle Association and had an A rating from the group. But he shifted: he gave donations from the group to charity after the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, and he supported an assault weapons ban after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. While governor, he has signed bills into law that restrict guns. He now has an F rating from the NRA.
      ‘We’re not electing our saviors. We’re not electing perfect people. We’re electing people who we can make hard decisions with, we can negotiate with, and who are serious about getting things done for people. And Governor Walz has shown that pretty strongly the last couple years as governor of Minnesota,’ Farhat said.
      The Harris campaign said it has raised more than $10m from grassroots supporters since announcing Tim Walz as the vice-president’s running mate.The campaign released a video of Harris calling Walz to ask him to be her running mate.Here is where this eventful day in US politics stands so far:

      The Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, has selected Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, were reportedly the two finalists in Harris’s search for a running mate.

      Harris and Walz will soon appear at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, marking their first joint event since the running mate announcement. After the Philadelphia rally, Harris and Walz are scheduled to appear at a series of events in battleground states across the country in the coming days.

      Harris said she chose Walz because of his “convictions on fighting for middle-class families”. “We are going to build a great partnership,” Harris said on Instagram. “We are going to build a great team. We are going to win this election.”

      Walz thanked Harris for “the honor of a lifetime” by choosing him. “I’m all in,” Walz said on X. “Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks!”

      Republicans attacked Walz as extreme, while Democrats praised him as a down-to-earth leader who can achieve change. “Tim Walz is a dangerously liberal extremist, and the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. But Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, rejected that characterization. “He’s right down the middle,” Pelosi told MSNBC. “He’s a heartland-of-America Democrat.”

      Meanwhile, Donald Trump will participate in a “major interview” with billionaire and X owner Elon Musk on Monday, the former president announced in a social media post. The announcement comes one week after Trump’s calamitous interview at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he questioned Kamala Harris’s race.
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.Hello from the Liacouras Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, where Kamala Harris will debut the freshly formed Democratic ticket later this afternoon.The line to enter wrapped around the university for blocks, and supporters braved a downpour and some sticky summer weather to get inside.There was plenty of excitement among the crowd. Spotted on my way in: several students wearing chartreuse-colored “Kamala is Brat” shirts. Another woman wore a shirt with the play on words “About Madam time” to celebrate the possibility of sending the first woman to the White House.Donald Trump will participate in a “major interview” with billionaire and X owner Elon Musk on Monday, the former president announced in a social media post.“ON MONDAY NIGHT I’LL BE DOING A MAJOR INTERVIEW WITH ELON MUSK — Details to follow!” Trump wrote in a post shared to Truth Social.The announcement comes one week after Trump’s calamitous interview at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he questioned Kamala Harris’ race.The NABJ interview was initially supposed to be an hour long, but it ended after just 34 minutes, as the audience jeered many of Trump’s responses. He will likely face an easier audience with Musk.Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, was having some fun at Republicans’ expense this afternoon, after Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate.Some Republicans have accused Harris of passing over Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, for the running mate spot because of his Jewish faith. If chosen, Shapiro could have become the first Jewish American to serve as vice president.The rightwing commentator Erick Erickson said on X, “No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party.”Schumer, who is the first Jewish American to lead the Senate as majority leader, responded to Erickson by saying: “News to me.”Democrats also note that Harris is married to a Jewish man, Doug Emhoff, who could become the first Jewish spouse of a US president if the party wins the White House in November.Kamala Harris’s campaign has released a new video introducing Tim Walz to the country, as most Americans are not yet familiar with the Minnesota governor.The video, which is narrated by Walz, recounts his upbringing in Nebraska and his decision to join the national guard before he became a teacher and eventually a lawmaker.The video, as well as Walz’s scheduled campaign appearances in battleground states over the coming days, will provide many Americans with their first impression of Harris’s new running mate. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that only 13% of Americans knew enough about Walz to register an opinion of him.Here is the full transcript of the video:
      Sometimes life is as much about the lessons you learn as the lessons you teach.
      Where I grew up, community was a way of life.
      My high school class was 24 people.
      I was related to half of them.
      I learned to be generous toward my neighbors, compromise without compromising my values, and to work for the common good.
      My dad was in the army, and with his encouragement, I joined the army national guard when I was 17. I served for 24 years.
      I used my GI benefits to go to college and become a public school teacher.
      I coached football and taught social studies for 20 years.
      And I tried to teach my students what small-town Nebraska taught me: respect, compromise and service to country.
      And so when I went into government, that’s what I carried with me. I worked with Republicans to pass an infrastructure bill. Cut taxes for working families. Signed paid leave into law. I codified abortion rights after Roe got overturned.
      Because I go to work for the common good.
      But enough about me.
      Let’s talk about you. Because that’s what this election is about.
      It’s about your future. It’s about your family.
      And Vice-President Harris knows that. She too grew up in a middle-class family. She too goes to work every day, making sure families can not just get by but get ahead.
      We believe in the promise of America. In those values I learned in Nebraska. And we’re ready to fight for them.
      Because as Kamala Harris says: when we fight we win.
      Outside Tim Walz’s residence in St Paul, TV cameras lined the street, with reporters doing live shots to explain how their governor had been tapped as Kamala Harris’s running mate.Earlier in the morning, some supporters gathered to send off Walz with cheers as a black SUV whisked him off to the vice-presidential campaign trail, the local CBS outlet reported.Midday, people on their morning walks and bike rides slowed down, trying to figure out what was happening that required so many cameras. Some took photos of the house, with grins on their faces. A car drove by, honking excitedly at the people gathered.Terryann Nash, who lives across the street from the residence, said she saw security details increasing in recent weeks and wondered what was going on. The residence Walz is staying at is not the state’s governor’s mansion, which is under construction, but a mansion that once housed the University of Minnesota’s president.Nash, a teacher, was excited to see a fellow teacher on the ticket. “Even as a governor, he’s always come back to the schools. He’s always been in touch with the teachers. I feel like we’ve got a well-represented voice and a very good heart to send us off,” she said.Tim Walz won plaudits from fellow Democrats for championing a new and surprisingly effective attack line against Republicans: they’re “just weird”.“There’s something wrong with people when they talk about freedom: freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read,” Walz said recently on MSNBC. “That stuff is weird. They come across weird. They seem obsessed with this.”Speaking at a Harris campaign event before he was named as her running mate, Walz told supporters, “The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”Other prominent Democrats, including Harris, have now embraced the attack line. Watch this video showing the many examples of Walz’s “weird” strategy: More

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      Tim Walz: charismatic running mate to help Harris make case against Trump

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      As Democrats weathered the upheaval caused by Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign and hand the reins to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, a party stalwart piped up with a suggestion: start calling Donald Trump “weird”.The pioneer of the attack, which was also deployed by Harris’s campaign, was Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who insisted to CNN that “it’s not a name-calling or tagging him with it. It’s an observation.”“And I didn’t come up with it,” he added, noting that he had heard “relatives and Republicans” use the adjective to describe the former president.Walz is now expected to spend the next three months telling the country all about the weirdness of Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, after Harris named the Minnesota governor as her pick for vice-president on Tuesday. Although the 60-year-old is one of the least nationally known of the options Harris was considering, and does not hail from a state viewed as crucial to deciding the election, he is expected to assist Harris in making the case for her policies, and convincing voters to reject the extreme remaking of the US government that Trump says is required.Now in his second term as governor, the former congressman and high school teacher brings to the ticket a record of progressive policymaking, a somewhat sympathetic view towards pro-Palestine protesters, and a distinctly Minnesotan style of communication the campaign could use in its efforts to win the nearby swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.“If Donald Trump and JD Vance are irritated that Kamala Harris smiles and laughs, they’re really going to be irritated by Tim Walz,” Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of Minnesota’s house of representatives, told the Guardian.“He is a cheerful person, he’s a positive, upbeat person, he’s charismatic. He can get a crowd going.”Walz emerged as Harris’s pick after a search lasting two weeks that saw the vice-president also consider a group that included Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona senator Mark Kelly. The choice of Walz drew praise from across the Democratic party’s ideological spectrum.Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Harris made an “excellent decision”, while Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who recently left the party and is best known for hamstringing Biden’s proposals to fight child poverty and more aggressively combat climate change, said: “I can think of no one better than governor Walz to help bring our country closer together and bring balance back to the Democratic party.”Republicans responded to Walz’s selection by posting on social media images of the protests the rocked Minneapolis four years ago after George Floyd’s murder, reminders of the governor’s support for a law allowing undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licenses, plus a massive Covid relief scandal that took place during his administration.With Trump making fears of crime and unrest a centerpiece of his platform, Amy Koch, a Minnesota Republican strategist and former state senate majority leader, said the unrest that followed Floyd’s killing will likely form a plank of the party’s counter-attack to Walz’s candidacy.“There’s a lot of video of five days of chaos in Minneapolis,” Koch told the Guardian. “There’s a lot of video of, like, literally, reporters covering it, saying: where is governor Walz?” The governor did deploy the national guard, but Republicans say he did not do so soon enough.Walz’s main competitor for the spot of running mate was Shapiro, who may have reignited tensions among Democrats over his policy positions on issues such as education, fracking and Israel-Gaza.Biden’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu and the invasion of Gaza sparked a backlash that some of his allies feared could have cost him victory in swing states such as Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population. Some pro-Palestine activists have signaled a willingness to give Harris a chance to win back their votes, but were wary of Shapiro, who took a hardline stance against pro-Palestinian protests.The backlash to his potential candidacy, which included the formation of a group called “No Genocide Josh”, itself attracted claims of antisemitism, with many pointing out that Shapiro, who is Jewish, has condemned Netanyahu and that Walz has a similar record of support for Israel and campus protests.Walz took a different rhetorical tack on other protests. When tens of thousands of Minnesotans voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest against the Biden administration’s policies towards Gaza, his response was warm, with the governor calling them “civically engaged”.“They are asking to be heard and that’s what they should be doing,” Walz said at the time. “Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more. And I think the president is hearing that.”After his selection, the pro-Palestine group IfNotNow said it remained “concerned” by Walz’s past association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and votes in Congress to approve military aid to the Israel.Supporters of Shapiro had argued that putting him on the ticket would help Harris win Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial swing state this election. But Christopher J Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton, said his research showed there was no guarantee of that happening.The choice of running mate was the last major piece of unfinished business before Harris, who quickly consolidated the support necessary to become the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew last month.As hotly anticipated as Harris’s decision was, Devine said it was unlikely to prove decisive in beating Trump and Vance.“VPs can have an effect on the election. It’s not always in the way we expect, and the magnitude of that effect tends not to be very large,” said Devine, the author of Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections.If elected, Harris would be the first female president and the first south Asian president, and only the second African American, after Barack Obama. Her shortlist of running mates was composed entirely of white men after the Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said she was not interested in the job.While Devine said that may have been a calculation on Harris’s part – besides Obama, every US president has been a white man – he said it did not mean she had no choice but to select a running mate from that demographic.“Kamala Harris could have chosen Gretchen Whitmer if she believed that there was strength in that identity of being a woman running for the presidency,” he said. “But I suspect her calculation, or a lot of her team, they might have weighed on her to … say that it just can’t be done. It’s too much for people to handle.”Trump has made dissatisfaction with both the Biden administration and the country’s entire direction a theme of his campaign, going so far as to say that the country is being “destroyed”. William G Howell, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government, said Walz will be put in a position to articulate the case against that worldview.“His is the language of us coming together and … setting to work on hard problems,” Howell said. “And so, both in tone and in substance, he’s going to be able to clearly distinguish himself from from the kind of rhetoric emanating from Trump.” More

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      Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran charged in foiled plot to kill US leaders

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      A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran has been charged over a foiled conspiracy to carry out political assassinations on US soil, the justice department said on Tuesday as it disclosed what officials say is the latest murder-for-hire plot to target US public figures.Asif Merchant, 46, sought to recruit people in the United States to carry out the plot in retaliation for the US killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, according to a criminal complaint.Merchant, who prosecutors allege spent time in Iran before traveling to the US from Pakistan, was charged with murder for hire in federal court in New York’s Brooklyn borough. A federal judge ordered him detained on 17 July, according to court records.“For years, the justice department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” attorney general Merrick Garland said in a statement.FBI investigators believe that Donald Trump, who approved the drone strike on Soleimani, and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot, CNN reported, citing a US official.Court documents do not name the alleged targets of the plot. Merchant told a law enforcement informant that there would be “security all around” one target, according to the criminal complaint.A justice department spokesperson declined to comment further. Avraham Moskowitz, a lawyer for Merchant, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump’s presidential campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.Trump, the Republican candidate in the 5 November presidential election, was wounded in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last month. Garland said on Tuesday that investigators have found no evidence that Merchant had any connection to the shooting, which officials have said was carried out by a lone 20-year-old gunman.Law enforcement officials thwarted Merchant’s plan before any attack was carried out. An individual Merchant contacted in April to help assist with the plot reported his activities to law enforcement and became a confidential informant, according to the complaint.Merchant told the informant his plans also included stealing documents from one target and organizing protests in the US, prosecutors allege.After the failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, US officials said that a threat from Iran had prompted the US Secret Service to boost protection around Trump.At the time, Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed the allegations as “unsubstantiated and malicious”. More

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      JD Vance pleads sarcasm in latest effort to clean up ‘childless cat ladies’ remark

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      The Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, claimed that calling leading Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies” was merely a “sarcastic remark”, as he attempted to deflect charges of misogyny and redirect fire at Harris’s own running mate, Tim Walz, on Tuesday.“The media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate,” the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee told reporters in Philadelphia.In response, a spokesperson for Harris said Vance and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, were “not pro-family, they are anti-women”, adding: “Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls.”Vance was in Philadelphia in direct opposition to Harris and Walz, as the vice-president and the Minnesota governor prepared to host their first joint rally in the Pennsylvania city.Calling Walz “a joke” and “one of the most far-left radicals in the entire United States government at any level”, Vance accused the governor of “wanting to ship more manufacturing jobs to China” and of being weak in the face of protests for racial justice in Minneapolis in summer 2020.Nonetheless, Vance continued to face questions about his “childless cat ladies” comment, in which he named Harris.Speaking in 2021 to the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vance called senior Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.“It’s just a basic fact – you look at Kamala Harris, [transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”Harris is stepmother to two children. In 2021, Buttigieg adopted two children with his husband, Chasten. Ocasio-Cortez does not have children.Vance’s remarks – and other controversial statements – resurfaced after Trump picked him as his running mate last month.Democrats, and outside voices including the actor Jennifer Aniston, have branded the “childless cat ladies” comments as offensive. Polling shows the public agrees. On Tuesday a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll showed 64% of respondents saying they disapproved of the statement that not having biological children hindered Harris’s ability to be president. Only 15% of Republicans approved.Vance addressed the “childless cat ladies” controversy a day after his wife, Usha Vance, the mother of his three children, claimed the comment was merely a “quip”.Usha Vance told Fox News her husband “was really saying … that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country and sometimes our policies … make it even harder”.She did not mention that JD Vance recently helped block a bill to establish the right to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), treatment that helps millions who might otherwise not have children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Philadelphia, the “childless cat ladies” comment was brought up towards the end of an event in which Vance repeatedly disparaged the media.He told a reporter: “Now, you asked about the remarks that I made that you said were offensive to millions of women. Well, here’s what I’d say – ”A woman in the audience shouted: “This cat lady loves you.”“Thank you, ma’am,” Vance said, amid cheers, adding: “We love you too.”He continued: “What I said is very simple. I think American families are good and government policy should be more pro-family. Now if the media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate, then the media is entitled to get offended.”He then reeled off reasons he said he was offended by Harris, from her role in immigration and border policy to her not having given any interviews since becoming the Democratic nominee.Contacted for comment, Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told the Guardian: “This might come as a surprise to Vance and Trump, but women don’t appreciate their personal choices and freedoms being attacked by politicians butting into their bedrooms and doctor’s offices, trying to tell them if and when to have kids.“It’s particularly weird from the same man who voted against protections for IVF and called universal daycare ‘class war against normal people’.“Vance’s comments make it clear: he and Donald Trump are not pro-family, they are anti-women. Women are paying attention – and will use their power at the polls to elect Vice-President Harris this November.” More

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      Chinese American man convicted in US of spying on dissidents for China

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      A Chinese American scholar was convicted on Tuesday in the US on charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on dissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government.A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city.Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the ministry of state security, Wang lived a double life for more than a decade.“The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” assistant US attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.”Wang was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. Faced with up to 10 years in prison, he pleaded not guilty.Wang’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.Wang came to New York in 1994 to teach after doing so at a Chinese university. He later became a US citizen.He helped found the Queens-based Hu Yaobang Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist party in the 1980s.According to prosecutors, Wang composed emails – styled as “diaries” – that recounted conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.One message was about events commemorating the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, prosecutors said. Other emails talked about people planning demonstrations during various visits that Xi Jinping, Chinese president, made to the US.Instead of sending the emails and creating a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officers could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.In other, encrypted messages, Wang relayed details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans to meet with a prominent Hong Kong dissident while the latter was in the US, according to an indictment.During a series of FBI interviews between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the ministry of state security, but he later acknowledged on videotape that the intelligence agency asked him to gather information on democracy advocates and that he sometimes did, FBI agents testified.But, they said, he claimed he did not provide anything really valuable, just information already in the public domain.Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” the defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry.“He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym. He recorded his conversation with Wang at the latter’s house in Connecticut.“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a bit later. The agent said he did not recall.Wang told agents his “diaries” were advertisements for the foundation’s meetings or write-ups that he was publishing in newspapers, according to testimony. He also suggested to the undercover agent that publishing them would be a way to deflect any suspicion from US authorities.Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that when Wang found out in 2019 that investigators would search his phone for any contacts in the Chinese government, he paused for a minute.“And then he said: ‘Do anything. I don’t care,’” Igo recalled. More

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      Kamala Harris’ VP pick may signal a shift away from pivoting to the center | Moira Donegan

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      “Historically, the vice-president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Donald Trump told the National Association of Black Journalists last week. “I mean, virtually no impact … virtually never has it mattered.” The former US president may have been engaged in a bit of wishful thinking. If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that vice-presidential running mates do, in fact, matter. His, the Ohio senator JD Vance, has quickly become a centerpiece of the race, which has shifted to become in part a referendum on Vance’s regressive and hateful views of women.The VP choice is not a superficial one, not merely an ornament to the presidential nominee or a bit of tactical cosmetic maneuvering to balance his or her weaknesses. A decision that is ultimately left entirely in the hands of the presidential nominee, it is a signal of that person’s perspectives and priorities, and one of the most influential choices he or she can make to shape the future of their party.What sort of future for the Democratic party does Kamala Harris see in her choice of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz? The move may reflect a shift away from the strategy of pivoting to the center that the Democrats have been pursuing for decades and towards a new policy and messaging strategy that seeks to attack the sadism and bigotry of Republicans and make an affirmative case for progressive values. Because frankly, if they were doing things the old way, they would have picked Josh Shapiro.Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, was the early favorite for the VP slot. There are few paths to victory for the Harris campaign that do not require her to win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, and Shapiro was thought to be the safest bet to secure them. But Shapiro is a relatively untested politician. He only ascended to national notice in 2022, when he ran for governor against an election-denying quack who barely mounted a campaign. In the quick but comparatively much more thorough vetting process of Harris’s vice-presidential search, an array of liabilities emerged. Shapiro, who volunteered with the Israeli army as a young man, wrote a piece when he was in college that suggested that Palestinians were racially incapable of peace. More recently, he has spoken with uncommon contempt about anti-genocide protestors on college campuses. His appointment would have reinvigorated divisions within the Democratic base over Israel’s war on Palestinians just as college semesters are set to begin.Shapiro, too, seems to have some problems with gender issues, a unique liability in a campaign that is set to be defined by them: he is alleged to have tolerated and helped cover up harassment and sexual harassment of women by one of his closest aides, has antagonized the woman-dominated teachers’ union with his support of private school vouchers, and came under scrutiny while attorney general for his office’s classification of a woman’s death – in which she was stabbed multiple times, including in the head, neck and chest – as a suicide.Shapiro is what other versions of the Democratic party would have been considered the safe choice: a moderate, seen as antagonizing the party’s left, who could appeal to white male conservative voters in a swing state. That’s what Hillary Clinton chose when she selected Tim Kaine as her running mate in 2016; that was the political theory of change that had been advocated by Bill Clinton and his Democratic party successors in every election since 1992. But cumulatively, Shapiro’s liabilities threatened to divide the base, alienate the left and weaken the Democratic party’s claim to be advocates of gender equality. Placed against Vance, his contrast would have been minimal: the VP contenders would have been two elite lawyers from fancy schools, slick and ambitious and weird about women. The Democratic party has changed. What might have seemed safe in 2016 ultimately appeared too risky in 2024.Walz, by contrast, offers a long record of policy accomplishments, experience both in Congress and as an executive, an amazing absence of scandal, and an almost relentless midwestern cheerfulness. A former history teacher and champion high school football coach, Walz volunteered to serve as the first faculty advisor to his public school’s gay-straight alliance – back in the 90s, when gay acceptance was still years away and Minnesota still had criminal bans on gay sex on the books.He later served 12 years in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, representing Minnesota’s first district – a vast rural expanse, spanning the whole southern width of the state along the Iowa border – becoming the first Democrat elected to that seat in years. A veteran, Walz was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer to ever serve in Congress; in a body made up overwhelmingly of the rich, where other veterans often entered the military as officers from elite service academies, Walz was a public college graduate who had joined the Minnesota national guard as an enlisted soldier.While in Congress, Walz was a consistent advocate for labor unions and abortion rights, while still earning a reputation for bipartisanship. But it is in his role as Minnesota’s governor, an office he was first elected to in 2018, that Walz has distinguished himself. His administration has racked up multiple wins for progressive policy priorities in the state, even as Democrats have held only an extremely slim majority in the state house. As governor, he has signed laws providing free school lunches for all children, decriminalizing marijuana, assuring paid family and medical leave for workers, advancing common-sense gun control like universal background checks and red flag protections, codifying abortion rights in the Minnesota state constitution and protecting those who travel to the state for reproductive or gender-affirming care, and advancing labor and union protections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese progressive policy wins have been coupled in Walz’s persona, a cheerful, folksy wholesomeness that contrasts nicely with Harris’s public posture of competent self-assurance. Walz is aggressively normal; his public persona is the human embodiment of a dad joke. This non-threatening masculinity allows him to posit his own progressive values as normative American values – and to contrast the Republicans’ maximalist social conservative agenda as a creepy intrusion on the American way of life. It was Walz, in a television appearance he made while auditioning for the VP job, who famously first described the Trump-Vance ticket as “weird”, a playful pejorative that the Harris campaign quickly seized on.For decades, Democrats have feared seeming “weird”, feared that too robust a commitment to their policy positions would alienate an America that they imagined as fundamentally conservative. But times have changed. It is the Democrats, now under the banner of Harris and Walz, who can argue that their progressive vision represents the American mainstream.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The Guardian view on Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick: Tim Walz is a smart choice for Democrats | Editorial

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      Kamala Harris’s own ascension to the top of the ticket has shone a brighter spotlight than usual on the Democrats’ choice of vice-presidential nominee, underlining why the second slot on the ticket matters. The impact of the running mate is usually limited unless they prove extraordinarily popular or unpopular. Growing concerns about the state of the US economy are likely to be far more consequential. But Ms Harris’s selection of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, on Tuesday, and the enthusiasm it is engendering, contribute to the sense of a rejuvenated campaign. Democrats are not taking poll improvements for granted, but now believe that it is possible to beat Donald Trump.Ms Harris stressed Mr Walz’s record of “fighting for middle-class families”. Originally from rural Nebraska, he is a former teacher and high school football coach who served in the army national guard for 24 years. As governor he has overseen – with Minnesota’s Democratic legislature – progressive policies including free school meals, abortion protections, pro-worker policies and gun restrictions. He has a better record on facing the climate crisis than rivals.He has been adept at winning over moderate Republicans, but also at attacking Donald Trump; Ms Harris’s description of the former president as “weird” was borrowed from him. The right has already argued that he should have been swifter to call in the national guard when protests following George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis turned violent. But the Trump campaign will surely find that the tag of “dangerously liberal extremist” is harder to pin on a folksy white Midwestern man who loves hunting than on a black woman from California. Critically, Mr Walz also has significant political experience and ties, having first been elected to Congress in 2006; friends there rallied behind him.Vice-presidential nominees tend to be important primarily in how they reflect on their boss and balance the ticket. JD Vance was meant to bring a shot of youthful energy when Mr Trump was running against Mr Biden; with Ms Harris as the de facto Democratic nominee, it is his extreme stance on abortion and remarks on “childless cat ladies” that grab attention. The disastrous bet on Sarah Palin threw doubt on John McCain’s judgment, experience and leadership. People need to believe that, in a crisis, the running mate would be capable of running the show: around one in five US vice-presidents have taken over under such circumstances.While some suggested that other candidates – notably Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor and reportedly the other finalist for the role – would bring a swing state with them, political scientists suggest that is a myth. Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko, who analysed election data going back to the late 19th century, suggested that “the vice presidential home state advantage is, essentially, zero”.What vice-presidential picks can do is enthuse the party and help to establish a sense of unity and direction. Mr Walz was the most progressive of the Democratic politicians seriously considered for the role. While activists lobbied against other candidates, there appears to be real enthusiasm about both what he stands for and his ability to communicate that straightforwardly. Ms Harris’s pick contributes to a renewed sense of purpose, and is another welcome step in a campaign that still has a long way to run. More