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    In Chicago, Biden and Harris Enact a Cast Change Onstage

    The first night of the convention introduced the party’s new protagonist, and gave the old one a curtain call.Notice anything different?The organizers of the Democratic National Convention hope you did. Less than a month ago, the party upended the election when President Biden withdrew from the campaign, and Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee. Suddenly, the previously scheduled rerun of the 2020 election, tuned out by many weary voters, was new programming, with a new cast.The first night of the convention wasted little time unveiling its new star — even as it also had to finish off the last one’s story arc.Early in the evening, Ms. Harris made a surprise appearance onstage in Chicago to her campaign anthem, Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” The crowd of delegates exploded with cheers.This was an energy that the party had been missing for a while, and the prime-time production was designed to flaunt it. Ms. Harris’s kickoff remarks were brief —“We are moving forward!” — but there was a showmanship to the moment that suggested that the candidate plans to take the fight to Donald Trump where he lives, in the TV lights.If Ms. Harris’s unexpected cameo had a measure of Mr. Trump’s theatricality, however, it had a different energy: expansive and effusive rather than brassy and bold. Beaming and waving to the crowd in a camel-colored suit, she reflected the room’s energy back to it rather than basking in it and soaking it up.This was a big change from the convention Democrats anticipated having just weeks ago, under the tentative, 81-year-old Mr. Biden. The slogans onstage — “For the People, For the Future” — emphasized the message of newness.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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    Steve Kerr Cheers on Harris and Walz, a Fellow Coach

    Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, praised Vice President Kamala Harris onstage on Monday night and urged Americans to come together to reject former President Donald J. Trump as if they were one united basketball team.“Think about what our team achieved with 12 Americans in Paris, putting aside rivalries to represent our country,” Mr. Kerr said at the Democratic convention in Chicago, referring to the Olympic gold medal he won this month as the coach for the U.S. team. “Now imagine what we could do with all 330 million of us playing on the same team.”Mr. Kerr, one of the most outspoken liberal voices in American sports, employed the high-minded language that Bay Area sports fans have come to expect from him when he opines on pressing issues of the day, especially gun violence.“Leadership, real leadership,” Mr. Kerr said, is “not the kind that seeks to divide us, but the kind that recognizes and celebrates our common purpose.”But he also wove in plenty of sports references, speaking in an arena where he won three N.B.A. championships as a member of the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls.“Coach to coach, that guy’s awesome,” Mr. Kerr said of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate and a former high school football coach. But, he joked, Mr. Walz’s defensive coaching left a little to be desired. “Way too much reliance on the blitz, in 1999, against Mankato East,” Mr. Kerr said.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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    AOC, Once an Outsider, Takes Center Stage at DNC

    Four years ago, Democrats allotted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York a scant 90 seconds to speak at their convention. She used it to symbolically nominate Senator Bernie Sanders for president and never mentioned Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s name.So when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took the convention stage on Monday night in Chicago shortly before Hillary Clinton, her prime-time speaking slot offered a vivid display of how far the Democratic Party and the leader of its progressive wing have moved to embrace each other since 2020.Greeted with chants of “A-O-C,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who made her name by taking on the Democratic establishment, delivered an affectionate tribute to Mr. Biden, laced into Donald J. Trump and forcefully endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as a champion of working Americans.“We know Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing palms of his Wall Street friends,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life.”She added: “The truth is, Don, you cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business.”The thunderous applause that followed would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. At their last convention, Democrats seemed more comfortable spotlighting Republicans supporting Mr. Biden than a young leftist like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, whose policies and rhetoric they feared would alienate moderate swing voters.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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    Iran Is to Blame for Hacking Into Trump’s Campaign, Intelligence Officials Say

    American intelligence agencies also confirmed that the effort extended to the Biden-Harris campaign, though that bid was unsuccessful.American intelligence agencies said on Monday that Iran was responsible for hacking into former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign and trying to breach the Biden-Harris campaign.The finding, which was widely expected, came days after a longtime Trump adviser, Roger J. Stone, revealed that his Hotmail and Gmail accounts had been compromised. That intrusion evidently allowed Iranian hackers to impersonate him and gain access to the emails of campaign aides.The announcement was the starkest indication to date that foreign intelligence organizations have mobilized to interfere in the 2024 election at a moment of heightened partisan polarization at home and escalating tensions abroad between Iran and Israel, along with its international allies, including the United States.“Iran seeks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions,” intelligence officials wrote in a joint statement from the F.B.I., the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.The Islamic Republic has “demonstrated a longstanding interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means,” the officials added.The joint statement provided no new details about the attacks, nor did it specify how the agencies knew Iran was responsible.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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    Trump promueve imágenes falsas de IA para sugerir que Taylor Swift lo apoyó

    El expresidente ha estado preocupado por la popularidad de la megaestrella de la música pop, quien apoyó a Joe Biden durante las elecciones de 2020.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El expresidente Donald Trump, quien le ha guardado un notorio rencor a la megaestrella de la música pop Taylor Swift, incendió internet el domingo cuando compartió mensajes en las redes sociales sugiriendo que Swift lo había apoyado y que sus fans podrían ayudarlo a ganar las elecciones de noviembre.En una publicación en su red social Truth Social, Trump llamó la atención sobre un grupo de imágenes creadas mediante inteligencia artificial. Una de ellas mostraba a Swift disfrazada del Tío Sam con el siguiente titular: “Taylor quiere que votes por Donald Trump”. Las otras mostraban a una multitud de mujeres jóvenes con camisetas a juego de “swifties for Trump”.Al menos una de las imágenes, que fueron compartidas por un influente de las redes sociales que simpatiza con Trump, fue etiquetada como “sátira”.“Acepto”, escribió Trump en una publicación, dando a entender que había recibido el apoyo de Swift.Un representante de la cantante, quien no ha hecho un respaldo este ciclo electoral después de apoyar a Joe Biden en 2020, no respondió inmediatamente a una solicitud de comentarios el lunes.Las burlas de los demócratas no se hicieron esperar.El representante por California, Eric Swalwell , quien apareció en CNN el lunes, dijo que la medida sería contraproducente para 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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    At DNC, Hochul Says Trump Lacks ‘New York Values’

    Two years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York took outsize blame for a lackluster election night in her state that helped cost Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives.This week, she arrived at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago determined to prove her political acumen and demonstrate that she could help the party win back the House and the presidency in November.Over breakfast with fellow New Yorkers, she highlighted her efforts to rebuild the state’s Democratic Party. In a meeting with a women’s group, she emphasized the impact of policies enacted by the Biden administration. And in a capstone speech on the convention floor, Ms. Hochul made a forceful case that Vice President Kamala Harris was best positioned to lead the Democratic Party and the nation into the future.“We have kids to feed. Roads to build. Jobs to create. Real problems to solve,” Ms. Hochul said. “And we need leaders who can get it done.”She continued: “Trump talked big about bringing back manufacturing jobs. But you know who actually did it? President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”The roughly five-minute speech was one of the most high-profile moments of Ms. Hochul’s career. A political journeywoman, she assumed the governorship three years ago after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, and won a full term in 2022 by a narrower-than-expected margin.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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    Democrats Say Hi and Bye to President Biden

    A man who spent a lifetime seeking the presidency faces his party after it forced him to step aside.When he was campaigning for the presidency in 2020, President Biden said he would be a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders.When he speaks tonight in Chicago after his tumultuous summer, he might feel a little more like a drawbridge about to be pulled up.Biden, who secured nearly all of his party’s delegates before he withdrew from the presidential race late last month, is set to take the stage at the Democratic National Convention late tonight, when he will make the case for Vice President Kamala Harris — and then swiftly leave town as his party prepares to face former President Donald Trump without him.It will be an unusual moment, since the last president to withdraw from his re-election campaign, Lyndon Johnson, did not attend his party’s convention.And it means that, for all the fanfare and excitement that alighted on Chicago as Democrats poured into the city over the weekend, this convention is starting off with a touch of awkwardness.A man who spent a lifetime trying to become president will tonight face a party that made it impossible for him to remain so, forcing him to keep his promise about passing the torch well before he really wanted to.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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    Prosecutors in Trump Hush-Money Trial Leave Decision on Sentencing to Judge

    Lawyers for Donald J. Trump had asked to move the sentencing in his Manhattan criminal case to after the election. In a letter, prosecutors disputed many of their arguments.Manhattan prosecutors took no clear position on Donald J. Trump’s latest request to delay his sentencing in his criminal hush-money case, deferring to a judge alone to decide whether to postpone until after Election Day.In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, Justice Juan M. Merchan, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to endorse either the existing schedule or a delay — but also disputed many of Mr. Trump’s arguments for needing additional time. The former president had asked to postpone the sentencing until after the election partly so he had more time to challenge his conviction.The sentencing is currently set for Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump, now a felon, will square off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency. The prosecutors, the letter said, are “prepared to appear for sentencing” at any date the judge chooses.“The people defer to the court on the appropriate post-trial schedule that allows for adequate time” for Mr. Trump to challenge his conviction, “while also pronouncing sentence without unreasonable delay,” the prosecutors wrote in the letter, dated Aug. 16 and released on Monday.The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, appeared to strike a middle ground in hopes of navigating around a partisan backlash so close to Election Day.If Mr. Bragg had opposed a postponement, Mr. Trump would have accused him of meddling in the election. But explicitly consenting to Mr. Trump’s delay tactics might have alienated Mr. Bragg’s liberal Manhattan base as it demands accountability for the former president, who was convicted in May of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal.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