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      Harris and Walz Hold First Rally in Philadelphia: Takeaways From Their Speeches

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      A glittering night aimed to energize Democrats and banish the doldrums that have gripped the party.The campaign to defeat former President Donald Trump is going to be fun.That was the message from Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as they took the stage together for the first time in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. The glittering rally was intended to introduce a heretofore obscure Midwestern governor — and hype up Americans for the sprint to November.“So, we’ve got 91 days. My God, that’s easy,” Walz said during a zesty debut in which he marveled at the crowd, joyfully clasped his hands and went for the jugular, at least where Trump and his running mate were concerned. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”The night was aimed at electrifying voters and banishing once and for all the doldrums that had gripped the Democratic Party during the doomed re-election effort of President Biden, who was not mentioned by either candidate. But it also highlighted some of the challenges Harris and Walz will face in a race that Trump is still favored to win.Here are five takeaways from a raucous night in Philly.Walz showed why Harris picked himIt was only this morning that the vice president called Walz, 60, and asked him to join her ticket. As he took the stage, it seemed as if he could not quite believe he was there. But after the two shared the spotlight for 50 minutes, their chemistry seemed obvious.“Thank you,” Walz said, directly addressing Harris in the opening moment of his speech, “for bringing back the joy.”Walz, who bowed toward Harris before beginning his speech, came off as delighted to speak on her behalf, with no reservations about playing second fiddle. His oratory never soared, but Harris reacted with obvious delight as he rattled off plain-spoken zingers.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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      Cori Bush, ‘Squad’ Member and Vocal Critic of Israel, Loses Her Primary

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      Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, one of the most outspoken progressives in the House, lost her primary on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, falling to a campaign by powerful pro-Israel political groups intent on ousting a fierce critic of the nation’s war in Gaza.Her opponent, Wesley Bell, a county prosecutor, ran as a progressive and a pragmatist. But he was boosted by more than $8 million in spending from a super PAC affiliated with the country’s largest pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other similar entities. That outside money transformed the race into one of the most expensive House primaries in history.The contentious contest came just weeks after Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, another outspoken progressive and vocal Israel critic, suffered a stinging primary defeat. The same pro-Israel groups that poured $15 million into defeating Mr. Bowman were aiding Mr. Bell, and all eyes were on Ms. Bush to see if she would be the next member of the ultraliberal “squad” to see defeat.Ms. Bush, a former nurse, was first elected in 2020 as part of a wave of progressive victories over establishment figures that elevated forceful Black voices, including Mr. Bowman, during a summer of protests against police brutality. Ms. Bush first made a name for herself in her community in 2014, as a leading Black activist who took to the streets in Ferguson after the killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, by a white police officer.The district is solidly Democratic, and Mr. Bell is expected to easily win the general election.But since Ms. Bush’s first election, the political terrain has shifted, in large part because of Israel’s war against Hamas. The country’s retaliation for the deadly massacre on Oct. 7 carried out by Hamas has divided mainstream Democrats from progressives like Ms. Bush, who has vocally condemned Israel’s government over its military campaign and the rising civilian death toll in Gaza.Ms. Bush made herself vulnerable to a serious primary challenge through a string of controversial votes and positions. She was one of two Democrats who voted in January against a resolution to bar members of Hamas and anyone who participated in the attacks against Israel on Oct. 7 from the United States.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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      Facts About Tim Walz: Teacher, Veteran and Harris’s VP Pick

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      Until recently, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was a virtual unknown outside of the Midwest, even among Democrats. But his stock rose fast in the days after President Biden withdrew from the race, clearing a path for Ms. Harris to replace him and pick Mr. Walz as her No. 2.Here’s a closer look at the Democrats’ new choice for vice president.1. He is a (very recent) social media darling. Mr. Walz has enjoyed a groundswell of support online from users commenting on his Midwestern “dad vibes” and appealing ordinariness.2. He started the whole “weird” thing. It was Mr. Walz who labeled former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, “weird” on cable television just a couple of weeks ago. The description soon became a Democratic talking point.3. He reminds you of your high school history teacher for a reason. Mr. Walz taught high school social studies and geography — first in Alliance, Neb., and then in Mankato, Minn. — before entering politics.4. He is a decorated veteran. Mr. Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard as a teenager and retired 24 years later in 2005, having served primarily in responses to natural disasters. He received honors including the Army Commendation Medal for heroism or meritorious service.5. He was a rare breed in Congress: a Democrat from the rural Midwest. For more than a decade, Mr. Walz represented Minnesota’s First District, in the southern part of the state. He was the top Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, supported funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, voted for the Affordable Care Act and voted against restricting federal funding for abortion.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 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