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      Harris Nears Her Big V.P. Reveal After Fierce Lobbying From Democrats

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      The vice president is expected to announce her choice on Tuesday morning. One prominent Democrat recounted being asked by a contender, “Will you please make sure you put in a good word for me?”Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to reveal her running mate on Tuesday morning, a decision that will end a 16-day sprint to vet, interview and choose a person who could potentially become the future leader of the Democratic Party.Ms. Harris’s announcement, coupled with a major rally she plans to hold with her running mate on Tuesday evening in Philadelphia, will also cap a frenzied period that had, in recent days, exposed some of the party’s internal fissures on matters ranging from labor rights to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.With only days to consider a range of contenders, Ms. Harris and her team were inundated with unsolicited advice — much of it public — about whom she should pick. In the final hours, her allies, fellow Democrats, progressive activists and even some of the potential nominees themselves tried to find ways to sway her decision.At the center of the maelstrom is Ms. Harris, who has fielded input from a small group of formal and informal advisers, including former President Barack Obama, whom she has consulted on policy, personnel decisions and her vice-presidential pick during her whirlwind ascent to the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a person familiar with their conversations.Some of the candidates even tried to cozy up to influential friends of Ms. Harris’s, hoping that it might make their way back to the vice president — or at least to one of the people in the tight group of confidants advising her. Two presumed favorites, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, have been checking in with Democratic members of Congress by phone in recent days.Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said she had recently fielded calls from more than one of Ms. Harris’s potential running mates.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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      JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman

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      In a normal political environment, there would be little need to pay attention to a new book by the far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec, who is probably best known for promoting the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria. But “Unhumans,” an anti-democratic screed that Posobiec co-wrote with the professional ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, comes with endorsements from some of the most influential people in Republican politics, including, most significantly, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec.As they tell it, modern progressivism is just the latest incarnation of an ancient evil dating back to the late Roman Republic and continuing through the French Revolution and Communism to today. Often, they write, “great men of means” are required to crush this scourge. The contempt for democracy in “Unhumans” is not subtle. “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” write Posobiec and Lisec.One of their book’s heroes is the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who overthrew the democratic Second Spanish Republic in the country’s 1930s civil war. The authors call him a “great man of history” and compare him to George Washington. They quote him on what doesn’t work against the unhuman threat: “We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.”Nakedly authoritarian ideas like this one are not uncommon in the dank corners of the reactionary internet, or among the sort of groups that led the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Unhumans” lauds Augusto Pinochet, leader of the Chilean military junta who led a coup against Salvador Allende’s elected government in 1973, ushering in a reign of torture and repression that involved tossing political enemies from helicopters.Pinochet-inspired helicopter memes have been common in the MAGA movement for years. And as the historian David Austin Walsh wrote last year, there’s long been a cult of Franco on the right. Nevertheless, it’s extremely unusual for a candidate for vice president of the United States to openly align himself with autocratic terror.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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      Pelosi Says She Pushed Biden to Step Aside Because of Need to Defeat Trump

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      A new book by the former speaker details her clashes with the former president, but it was written before her most recent exercise of political might: helping persuade President Biden to end his re-election bid.To hear Representative Nancy Pelosi tell it, her quiet but firm push to get President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race was a simple matter of the ruthless political math that she has spent decades honing a talent for on Capitol Hill.“My goal is defeat Donald Trump,” Ms. Pelosi, the former speaker, said in a recent interview before the release this week of a book on her years in Congress. “And when you make a decision to defeat somebody, you make every decision in favor of that. You don’t mess around with it, OK? What is in furtherance of reaching that goal? I thought we had to have a better campaign.”The book, titled “The Art of Power,” is Ms. Pelosi’s retelling of major moments of critical decision-making during the Iraq War, a catastrophic financial meltdown, the passage of the Affordable Care Act and multiple clashes with former President Donald J. Trump, among other events.But it may be her most recent deft exercise of political finesse and muscle — one that took place well after the book was written — that will stand as a final testament to Ms. Pelosi’s stature as the Democratic Party’s premiere powerhouse of recent decades. In a formidable display of her enduring clout, she helped persuade the incumbent president to abandon his re-election bid to give her party a better chance of holding the White House in November.Ms. Pelosi plays down her role in nudging Mr. Biden aside and insists the decision was his alone to make. In her focus on polls and fund-raising and in private conversations with the president and rattled Democratic colleagues, she said, she was driven by the single imperative of beating Mr. Trump.The former speaker said she did not initiate calls with colleagues, trying to dispel claims that she had orchestrated the ouster of Mr. Biden, a longtime ally. But if Democrats triumph this fall after staring down the prospect of a resounding defeat, the maneuvering by Ms. Pelosi — along with personal appeals to Mr. Biden from the Democratic congressional leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York — may turn out to be among her most significant acts.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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      Harris Faces Party Divisions as She Chooses a Running Mate

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      The competitive, divisive primary that many Democrats long wanted to avoid has arrived anyway — playing out largely behind closed doors in a fight over the bottom of the ticket.The final stage of the campaign to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate reached something of an ugly phase in recent days as donors, interest groups and political rivals from the party’s moderate and progressive wings lobbied for their preferred candidates and passed around memos debating the contenders’ political weaknesses with key demographics. They turned most sharply on one of the favorites to join the ticket, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who has drawn opposition from progressives and even a senator in his home state. The fissures among Democrats emerged as three leading contenders — Mr. Shapiro, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota — met with Ms. Harris at her residence in Washington on Sunday, ahead of a decision her campaign said would be announced by Tuesday.Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, declined to comment on the meetings.Ms. Harris is set to hit the campaign trail with her running mate this week, kicking off a five-day, seven-state tour with a rally on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, where Mr. Shapiro is expected to be in attendance, whether he is her pick or not.Progressive groups have trained their criticisms on Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Kelly, who they accuse of being too conservative on key issues. Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said during a Sunday interview on CBS that Mr. Kelly had “not really” assuaged the union’s concerns about his commitment to pro-labor legislation and that the organization had “bigger issues” with Mr. Shapiro’s support for school vouchers.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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      Jimmy Carter Said to Have Plans to Vote for Kamala Harris

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      Former President Jimmy Carter, who has been in hospice care for more than 17 months, has said that he has every intention of voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall, according to his family.Mr. Carter, 99, who served as the nation’s 39th president from 1977 to 1981, would turn 100 on Oct. 1. No American president has lived longer than him.Mr. Carter’s son Chip asked his father on Wednesday if he was trying to make it to his 100th birthday, according to the former president’s grandson Jason.“I’m trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Mr. Carter replied, according to the grandson.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported on the conversation.Ms. Harris did not immediately comment.Mr. Carter appeared gaunt and frail at the funeral ceremony in Atlanta for his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, in November. He has remained at home in Plains, Ga., in hospice care far longer than many would have imagined; most people receive hospice care for less than a month.The early-voting period in Georgia begins on Oct. 15, and Georgia counties are expected to start to mail out absentee ballots about a month before Election Day. Mr. Carter intends to vote by mail, his grandson said.Georgia is one of a handful of battleground states expected to be crucial in the contest between Ms. Harris and Donald J. Trump, who won the state in 2016 but lost it, and the White House, in 2020 to Joseph R. Biden Jr.A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday showed Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by three percentage points in the state. But there has been limited public opinion data illuminating the state of the campaign in Georgia since Mr. Biden withdrew and endorsed Ms. Harris last month. More

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      Shapiro’s College-Era Criticism of Palestinians Draws Fresh Scrutiny

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      Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote in his college newspaper three decades ago that Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to achieve a two-state solution in the Middle East, prompting criticism as Vice President Kamala Harris considers him to be her running mate.Mr. Shapiro, 51, has embraced his Jewish identity and been one of the Democratic Party’s staunchest defenders of Israel at a moment when the party is splintered over the war in Gaza.But he says his views have evolved since publishing an opinion essay as a college student at the University of Rochester in New York, when he wrote that Palestinians were incapable of establishing their own homeland and making it successful, even with help from Israel and the United States.“They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” he wrote in the essay, published in the Sept. 23, 1993, edition of The Campus Times, the student newspaper. “They will grow tired of fighting amongst themselves and will turn outside against Israel.”Mr. Shapiro, who was 20 at the time, noted in his essay that he had spent five months studying in Israel and had volunteered in the Israeli Army.“The only way the ‘peace plan’ will be successful is if the Palestinians do not ruin it,” Mr. Shapiro wrote, adding, “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully.”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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      Harris Begins Final Phase of Accelerated V.P. Search

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      The law firm hired by the Harris campaign to investigate potential vice-presidential candidates has completed its work, leaving the final decision — the most important yet of the still-new campaign — squarely in Vice President Kamala Harris’s hands.Covington & Burling, the Washington law firm tasked with the vetting, completed the job on Thursday afternoon and turned over its findings to Ms. Harris, according to two people briefed on the process.Ms. Harris has blocked off several hours on her calendar this weekend to meet with the men being considered to join the ticket, according to two people who had viewed her schedule and who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private process. The Harris campaign has suggested it will announce the decision by Tuesday evening, when the vice president and her to-be-named running mate begin a five-day tour of presidential battleground states, starting in Philadelphia.Several of the contenders, including Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, canceled events this weekend, reflecting both a desire to be available for those conversations and to avoid drawing additional speculation from the news media about their chances. The choice of a running mate is one of the most consequential decisions of Ms. Harris’s political career, one that can pay dividends in votes and years of counsel or backfire disastrously. In some ways, Ms. Harris is setting a direction for the future of the party, a reality she intimately understands given her own head-spinning ascension to the top of the ticket.But unlike previous nominees, who spent months considering candidates, she must make her decision on a compressed timeline. The shortened process clashes with what some former aides described as her typically deliberative decision-making approach.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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      Harris Responds to Trump’s Comments About Her Identity: ‘Divisiveness and Disrespect’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris carefully hit back at former President Donald J. Trump after he questioned the legitimacy of her identity as a Black woman, saying on Wednesday that he had put on the “same old show” of “divisiveness and disrespect.”“The American people deserve better,” Ms. Harris said at a convention of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities. “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength.”But she did not directly quote or refer to Mr. Trump’s comments earlier on Wednesday in Chicago, where he had asked of Ms. Harris: “Is she Indian or is she Black?” He had also falsely claimed that Ms. Harris used to identify as Indian and then “all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”The vice president is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, and attended Howard University, a historically Black university.Ms. Harris’s precisely calibrated rebuttal was perhaps an early indication of how she will respond to crude and racist attacks from Mr. Trump. Former President Barack Obama largely ignored Republicans, led by Mr. Trump, who falsely accused him of being born in Kenya.Her remarks on Wednesday came after she has sought to place her campaign on the continuum of racial progress in America, referring to it in the same breath as abolitionists and civil rights activists.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