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Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First
The vice president plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members in Minneapolis, a striking political move that shows how assertive Democrats have grown on the issue.Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members on Thursday in the Twin Cities, a visit that is believed to be the first stop by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.The appearance at a health center will be the latest leg in a nationwide tour by Ms. Harris, who has emerged as the most outspoken defender of abortion rights in the administration. While White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights, the issue has emerged as a linchpin of their re-election strategy.Ms. Harris plans on Thursday to tour the center with an abortion provider and highlight what the administration has done to try to preserve access to the procedure as conservative states enact growing restrictions.Minnesota has become a haven for abortion seekers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ushering in restrictive laws and bans in neighboring states. The Society of Family Planning, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court decision.Last year, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation enshrining abortion rights into state law, an effort to ensure the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state. Ms. Harris will be joined on Thursday by Minnesota Democrats including Mr. Walz and Representative Betty McCollum. The tour is part of a White House initiative led by Ms. Harris to highlight abortion rights.The mere sight of a top Democratic official walking into an abortion clinic will offer the clearest illustration yet of how the politics of abortion rights have shifted for the party — and the nation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Trailing Trump in Polls, Biden Can Be More Bullish in One Battleground
The president faces lagging energy in many key states. But in Wisconsin, which he will visit on Wednesday, rolling clashes over abortion rights and democracy have kept Democratic voters fired up.Across most of the battleground states, President Biden’s re-election campaign is trailed by worrisome polling, gripes about a slow ramp-up and Democratic calls to show more urgency to the threat posed by former President Donald J. Trump.Then there is Wisconsin.Mr. Biden — who is scheduled to travel to Milwaukee on Wednesday to visit his state campaign headquarters — did not have to rev up a re-election apparatus in Wisconsin. Local Democrats never shut down a vaunted organizing network they built for the 2020 presidential campaign and maintained through the 2022 midterm elections and a 2023 State Supreme Court contest that was the most expensive judicial race in American history.While in other presidential battlegrounds, Democrats are still trying to explain the stakes of the 2024 election and what a second Trump term would mean, Wisconsin Democrats say their voters don’t need to be told the difference between winning and losing.Democrats in Wisconsin spent eight years boxed out of power by Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans who held an iron grip on the state government, then four more with a gerrymandered Republican-led Legislature. Then they watched abortion become illegal overnight when a prohibition written in 1849 suddenly became law with the fall of Roe v. Wade. Party leaders in the state say there is a widespread understanding that the stakes are not theoretical.“We organize year-round in Wisconsin,” said Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez. “We already have the infrastructure in place. We know how to do this, and we’ve been able to activate the folks who know what’s on the line.”Mr. Biden has come to Wisconsin so many times — eight visits since he became president, and six for Vice President Kamala Harris — that for many Wisconsin Democrats, his visit on Wednesday comes almost as an afterthought.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Donald Trump and Joe Biden Clinch Their Party Nominations
President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday secured the delegates necessary to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations, according to The Associated Press, cementing a general election rematch in November months in the making.Both men and their campaigns have long anticipated this moment. Mr. Biden faced only token opposition in the Democratic primary, as is typical for a sitting president, while Mr. Trump had been his party’s dominant front-runner for months.Their November collision began to look even more likely after Mr. Trump scored a decisive win in Iowa in January. His victory cleared the field of all but one of his major Republican rivals and put him on a glide path to his party’s nomination. His last remaining primary challenger, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign last week, further clearing a path that had already been remarkably free of obstacles.The Associated Press named Mr. Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee after projecting his victory in Georgia, while Mr. Trump was designated the presumptive Republican nominee after he swept the G.O.P. contests in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington State.Tuesday’s results cleared the way for a 2024 general election campaign that, at just under eight months, is set to be one of the longest in modern American history and will be the country’s first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.Already, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden had shifted their focus away from the primaries. With the president facing no significant challengers, Mr. Biden’s campaign speeches emphasized not just his record but the danger he believes is posed by Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Poised and Precise, Hur Enters Fray Over Special Counsel’s Report on Biden
Robert K. Hur defended himself in the unhurried, forceful cadence of a veteran prosecutor, delivering his responses in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.The former special counsel Robert K. Hur, denounced by Democrats for his unsparing description of President Biden’s memory lapses, had one of his own during his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee.Representative James R. Comer, a Kentucky Republican, made passing reference to Dana A. Remus, a Democratic lawyer who had served as White House counsel under Mr. Biden from January 2021 to July 2022.Mr. Hur crinkled an eyebrow and corrected him: No, he said, she occupied that post under President Obama.The misstep was an isolated moment in an otherwise poised and precise appearance by Mr. Hur, 51, who was testifying about his report on the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.Mr. Hur, a Trump-era Justice Department official known among former colleagues for keeping a cool head in high-stress, high-stakes situations, incited a furor after describing the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” A transcript of his five-hour interview with Mr. Biden, released just before his appearance, raised questions about that characterization.Before his work as special counsel, Mr. Hur, a graduate of Stanford Law School who clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, was best known for his 11-month stint as the top aide to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, in 2017 and 2018. It was a time of extraordinary upheaval, when Mr. Rosenstein oversaw the installment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to investigate President Donald J. Trump’s dealings with Russia. Both men lived under the constant threat of being fired by Mr. Trump, who saw the appointment as a personal betrayal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Biden Clinches Democratic Nomination as Trump Awaits
President Biden clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, securing enough delegates to send him into a looming rematch against former President Donald J. Trump after a mostly uncontested primary campaign that was nevertheless marked by doubts — even from supporters — over his age, foreign policy and enduring strength as a candidate.Mr. Biden faced little opposition in his march to the nomination. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and environmental lawyer, dropped out of the Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and the self-help guru Marianne Williamson never attracted more than a fraction of the vote.In fact, Mr. Biden’s most serious rival was not a candidate but a protest movement over his support for Israel in its war in Gaza. The movement — organized by Muslim American activists and progressives — urged voters to cast their ballot for the “uncommitted” option rather than Mr. Biden.It received significant support in Michigan, winning more than 101,000 votes, as well as in Minnesota and Hawaii. Organizers also targeted Washington State, which held its primary on Tuesday, although the full results there will not be known for several days.Still, with his victory in Georgia, Mr. Biden on Tuesday crossed the necessary threshold of 1,968 delegates to become his party’s standard-bearer this year.In a statement, Mr. Biden said he was honored that Democratic voters “have put their faith in me once again to lead our party — and our country — in a moment when the threat Trump poses is greater than ever.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Washington State and ‘Uncommitted’ Will Test Biden Again Over Gaza War
Washington State’s primary voters will offer the next glimpse of how many Democratic voters oppose President Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza, though it may be days before a full picture of the results is clear.The state’s primary on Tuesday comes after noteworthy numbers of Democratic voters in other states chose “uncommitted” in apparent protest of Mr. Biden’s position, including 13 percent in Michigan, 19 percent in Minnesota and 29 percent in the little-watched Democratic caucuses in Hawaii, where the antiwar advocacy groups that organized elsewhere did not have a presence.Washington’s brand of anti-establishment Pacific Northwest liberalism has the potential to be a good fit for the “uncommitted” vote that has won increasing slices of the Democratic electorate in recent weeks.And it is unlikely Mr. Biden’s forceful performance in his State of the Union address last week would have a strong impact on the results in Washington, which votes entirely by mail. More than 512,000 Democratic primary ballots had already been received by Thursday, when he delivered the speech, according to data from the Washington secretary of state’s office.Stuart Holmes, the director of elections for the secretary of state, said to expect about half the state’s ballots to be counted and reported when polls close on Tuesday night. The rest of the ballots will be tabulated and reported once a day until all votes are counted, with the vast majority of the counting expected to be complete by the end of this week, Mr. Holmes said.Shasti Conrad, the chairwoman of the Washington State Democrats, said the party would support Mr. Biden.“We know President Biden and Vice President Harris are working tirelessly toward an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East,” Ms. Conrad said. “Voters in Washington understand the tremendous progress Democrats have made.”“Uncommitted” backers have offered a low bar for success in each of the preceding states where they have been active.Larry Cohen, the chairman of Our Revolution, the political organization begun by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders that is backing “uncommitted,” put the goal for success in Washington State at 10 percent — far less than previous states but more than “uncommitted” received in 2020, when 6,450 people, about 0.4 percent of Democratic primary voters, chose “uncommitted.”The state canceled its presidential primaries in 2012, the last time an incumbent Democratic president was seeking re-election. The parties held nominating caucuses instead. More
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Fine, Call It a Comeback
If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election. Here’s hoping he does.But that’s not the only thing from Thursday night that I hope Biden holds onto. So far, the Biden team has been more sure-footed attacking Donald Trump’s threat to democracy than it has been defending Biden’s incumbency. That reflects a strange problem they face. By virtually any measure save food prices, Biden is presiding over a strong economy — stronger, by far, than most peer countries. As Noah Smith has noted, the Biden economy looks far better than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”: Unemployment is lower, inflation is lower, interest rates are lower, stock market returns are better.But Americans feel otherwise. The most recent Times/Siena poll found that 74 percent of registered voters rated the economy either “poor” or “fair.” By a 15-point margin, voters said Trump’s policies helped them personally. By a 25-point margin, they said Biden’s policies hurt them personally.Voters seem to remember the tail end of Trump’s third year, when the economy was strong, and not the utter calamity of his fourth year, when his Covid response was chaos and the economy was frozen. In November of 2020, unemployment was 6.7 percent and Trump had just turned a White House celebration into a superspreader event. Republicans who say Americans should ask whether they’re better off than they were four years ago should be careful what they wish for.But Biden is in a tough spot. You don’t want to run for re-election telling voters they’re wrong and the economy is actually great. Nor can you run for re-election telling voters that they’re right and the economy is bad. Biden has often seemed a little unsure what to say about his own record. Thursday night, he figured it out.“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history,” Biden said. “We have. It doesn’t make news, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
