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      Kamala Harris Visits Parkland and Urges States to Adopt Red-Flag Gun Laws

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      At the site of the 2018 school shooting in Florida, the vice president announced federal help for states to limit weapon access for people deemed to be threats.Vice President Kamala Harris stood beside the parents of children killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and announced a new federal resource center to help states implement their red-flag laws.Drew Angerer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesVice President Kamala Harris on Saturday toured the still-bloody and bullet-pocked classroom building in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman killed 14 students and three staff members in 2018, using the grim backdrop to announce a new federal resource center and to call for stricter enforcement of gun laws.The freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had been preserved as evidence for criminal trials and is set to be demolished this summer. For now, it remains a memorial to one of the most shocking mass shootings in the history of the United States.In remarks after taking her tour and meeting for more than an hour with family members of victims of the attack, Ms. Harris said the experience had been a compelling one.“Let us, through the courage and the call to action of these families, find it in ourselves to consider what they’ve been through as some level of motivation and inspiration for all of us,” she said.“This school is soon going to be torn down,” the vice president added. “But the memory of it will never be erased.”Ms. Harris said the attack, carried out by a former student with a history of mental health and behavior problems, should prompt officials around the country to embrace local red-flag laws. These allow courts to temporarily seize firearms and other dangerous weapons when they believe a person may be a threat to themselves or others. The Parkland shooter had purchased his gun legally.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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      Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First

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      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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      Kamala Harris Calls for ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza, saying that Hamas should agree to the six-week pause currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid into the besieged enclave amid a humanitarian crisis.Ms. Harris’s remarks, delivered in Selma, Ala., bolstered a recent push by the Biden administration for an agreement and came a day before she was to meet with a top Israeli cabinet official involved in war planning, Benny Gantz. Her tone, sharper and more urgent than President Biden’s in recent days, showed the White House’s building frustration with Israel. Last month the president called Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack “over the top.”Ms. Harris also assailed what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and pressed Israel to allow for the increase of aid into the besieged enclave.Ms. Harris was in Selma on Sunday for the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Her comments on Israel were her most forceful to date on the Middle East conflict, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, and put the enclave on the brink of famine.“People in Gaza are starving,” Ms. Harris said. “The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”She added: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire.” That line drew loud applause from the crowd that had gathered to mark the civil rights event.Ms. Harris reiterated the Biden administration’s support for a six-week cease-fire, which would allow for a pause in fighting and the release of Israeli hostages taken during the attack in Israel. U.S. officials said this weekend that Israel had all but signed on to the deal, but Hamas has yet to agree to it.Ms. Harris restated the United States’ support for Israel’s right to defend itself against the ongoing threat by Hamas, which she said had no regard for innocent life in Israel or in Gaza.She also said that Israel must do more to allow for the flow of aid into Gaza, including opening borders, lifting any unnecessary restrictions on aid deliveries and restoring services to Gaza.“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid,” she said. “No excuses.”The remarks came as Ms. Harris was scheduled to meet with Mr. Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, at the White House on Monday, and as the Biden administration faces immense pressure to limit the carnage in Gaza. More

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      Kamala Harris to Meet With Top Israeli Official as Cease-Fire Talks Continue

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      Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, in Washington on Monday, according to a White House official and a spokesman for Mr. Gantz.During the meeting with Mr. Gantz, Ms. Harris is expected to discuss the urgency of securing a hostage deal, which would allow for a temporary cease-fire, and the need to significantly increase aid into Gaza, according to the White House official, who provided details on the condition of anonymity.The meeting, which is scheduled to take place at the White House, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure to help secure a temporary cease-fire and hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas war and to more forcefully address the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.On Saturday, another senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts, told reporters that negotiations were continuing, and that Israel had “more or less accepted” a framework for the deal and that the ball was now in Hamas’s court.The proposal could lead to a six-week pause in the fighting, as well as the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. President Biden had expressed hope that a deal could be reached by Monday as U.S. officials said they were working to secure a deal by the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that will start this year around March 10.The United States also delivered its first airdrop of food into Gaza on Saturday amid warnings that the besieged enclave was on the brink of famine. Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid, even as international relief organizations have suspended some convoys because of rising anarchy and the looting of some aid trucks inside Gaza.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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      ‘Dictators Do Not Go on Vacation,’ Zelensky Warns Washington and Europe

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back against skepticism of a Ukraine victory, calling on world leaders not to ask when the war would end, but why Russia was still able to wage it.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called on world leaders not to abandon his country, citing the recent death of a Russian dissident as a reminder that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of would continue to test the international order, and pushing back against the idea of a negotiated resolution to the war.Mr. Zelensky, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that if Ukraine lost the war to Russia, it would be “catastrophic” not only for Kyiv, but for other nations as well.“Please do not ask Ukraine when the war will end,” he said. “Ask yourself why is Putin still able to continue it.”The two topics that have loomed over nearly every discussion at the yearly meeting of world leaders have been Russia and the potential weakening of trans-Atlantic relations, amid an increasingly pessimistic assessment of Kyiv’s ability to beat Moscow.Mr. Zelensky’s speech on Saturday came as Ukrainian forces retreated from a longtime stronghold, Avdiivka, giving Russian troops their first significant victory in almost a year.And it came a day after attendees of the conference were shaken by the news that the prominent dissident Aleksei A. Navalny had died in a Russian Arctic penal colony. It was a stark reminder, Mr. Zelensky warned, of how Moscow would continue to test the Western-backed international rules-based order.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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      The Question Is Not If Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.

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      Joe Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst. And Democrats who are furious at the prosecutor have to sense that it will become only more obvious as we move deeper into an actual campaign.What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it.Note that I did not say that Biden should not be the president. You can make a case that as obvious as his decline has been, whatever equilibrium his White House has worked out has thus far delivered results largely indistinguishable from (and sometimes better than) what one would expect from a replacement-level Democratic president.If there has been a really big age effect in his presidency so far, I suspect it lies in the emboldenment of America’s rivals, a sense that a decrepit American chief executive is less to be feared than a more vigorous one. But suspicion isn’t proof, and when I look at how the Biden administration has actually handled its various foreign crises, I can imagine more disastrous outcomes from a more swaggering sort of president.Saying that things have worked OK throughout this stage of Biden’s decline, though, is very different from betting that they can continue working out OK for almost five long further years. And saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he’s capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again.The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer. But to strain the simile a bit, the entire issue in a re-election campaign is not whether your filaments shed light; it’s whether voters should take this one opportunity to change out the bulb. Every flicker is evidence that a change is necessary, and if you force Biden into a normal campaign-season role, frequent flickering (if not a burning-out) is what you’re going to get.Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Biden senses this, that he isn’t just entombed in egomania, but he feels trapped by his own terrible vice-presidential choice. If he drops out and anoints Kamala Harris, she’s even more likely to lose to Donald Trump. But if he drops out and doesn’t endorse his own number two, he’d be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal — aging white president knifes first woman-of-color veep — and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.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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      Kamala Harris Rallies Democrats, Pumps Up Biden and Warns of Trump

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      On the final day before South Carolina’s primary election officially kicks off the Democratic presidential nominating contest, Vice President Kamala Harris urged supporters not to ignore a contest that is widely expected to be uncompetitive but where she and President Biden are hoping for a morale-lifting rout.“South Carolina, you are the first primary in the nation, and President Biden and I are counting on you,” Ms. Harris told a crowd on Friday at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. “Are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in democracy? Do we believe in opportunity for all, and are we ready to fight for it?”The rally was Ms. Harris’s ninth trip to South Carolina as vice president and was already her third of the year, an indication of the importance she and Mr. Biden’s campaign have placed on a dominant performance to begin their party’s presidential nominating season.Standing before two banners bearing the slogan “First in the Nation” — with the word “First” underlined — Ms. Harris highlighted the Biden administration’s achievements, including expanding high-speed internet access, increasing federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities, and reducing prescription drug costs.She also warned supporters about what former President Donald J. Trump could do with another White House term.“For years, the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain,” she said. “The former president has told us who he is, and it is on us, then, to recognize the profound threat he poses to our democracy and to our freedoms.”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 a Reproductive Rights Tour on 51st Anniversary of Roe

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      The administration’s task force on reproductive rights also announced what officials said were new steps to help Americans get contraceptives and abortions under an emergency care law.Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Wisconsin on Monday morning to host an event in support of abortion rights while President Biden brings together a task force on reproductive health care in Washington.Both events are designed to call attention to the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, and to announce new steps that Mr. Biden’s administration has taken to support abortion access since the court struck it down in 2022.“Even as Americans — from Ohio to Kentucky to Michigan to Kansas to California — have resoundingly rejected attempts to limit reproductive freedom, Republican elected officials continue to push for a national ban and devastating new restrictions across the country,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “On this day and every day, Vice President Harris and I are fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom.”Ms. Harris, who has become the administration’s most vocal defender of abortion rights, chose Wisconsin as the backdrop for the first in a series of abortion rights events her office has planned around the country through the spring. Kirsten Allen, the vice president’s press secretary, said that Ms. Harris’s office had planned several more stops, over the next two to three months, in “states that have enshrined protections, restricted access and states that continue to threaten access, causing chaos and confusion.”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?  More