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      The Harris Campaign Bets on Prairie Progressives

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      The Minnesota governor was not just in Wisconsin to sound folksy and talk about hunting.Sandee Kosmo was in her car today, inching along a backed-up county road on the way to Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Eau Claire, Wis., grinning about the prospect of seeing Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.“He’s so Midwest,” she gushed, after I asked to interview her as she crawled along. She praised his wry sense of humor. His hunting background. Even his ever-so-Midwestern faith.“I’m a Lutheran pastor,” Kosmo, 78, said. “And Walz is a Lutheran!”The Harris campaign chose Walz partly in the hope that he would connect with voters in critical states like Wisconsin. And the crowd that gathered in Eau Claire today — at least 10,000 people on event grounds surrounded by cornfields — was eager to claim him as its own.“Kamala made a good pick,” Wisconsin’s secretary of state, Sarah Godlewski, told the cheering crowd, “not just because Tim understands our love for a good Friday fish fry, but he also embodies our shared beliefs.”Eau Claire is a deep blue college town, and it’s far from clear that the appeal of the governor from the other side of the St. Croix will translate beyond liberal bastions like this one and expand his ticket’s competitive terrain. But as I wound my way through the crowd today, it occurred to me that the Eau Claires of the world might be the main point.In recent years, Wisconsin Democrats have notched major victories by running up their numbers in strongholds like Madison, La Crosse and Milwaukee. That means Walz was here not simply to sound folksy, talk about hunting and reach out to rural voters. His purpose, electorally speaking, is to fire up Wisconsin progressives who wish their state was a just little more like his.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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      Tech Investors Are the Latest to Zoom for Harris

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      There was a Zoom call for cat ladies. Ones for Deadheads, Black women, white women, and then, of course, for the white dudes.And now, at long last, there was one for the venture capitalists.The latest affinity group to organize behind Kamala Harris on Wednesday represented the lowly millionaire and billionaire investors of Silicon Valley. Relative to the massive Zoom telethons that other groups had been hosting for Ms. Harris over the last two weeks, the “VCs for Kamala” call was a small group of around 600 people. But they represented some of the country’s most notable donors who have outsize influence in technology and Democratic politics.A week after publishing an open letter in support of Kamala Harris signed by more than 700 influential tech investors, a group of key backers took to Zoom to rally their peers in a way only they could: with PowerPoint presentations, startup aphorisms and a desire to make the Harris funding round “oversubscribed.” Their logo? Designed by AI, naturally.Ms. Harris, who grew up in Bay Area politics and has stronger personal relationships with tech executives and investors than did President Biden, has ushered in an enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket not seen in years. She is set to return to San Francisco for a fund-raiser this weekend, and the event is already sold out at all but the most expensive price points..On the call, Reid Hoffman, a major donor to President Biden and Ms. Harris, made the business case for supporting Ms. Harris over former President Donald J. Trump. “No chaos” was far better for business, he said. Other chief executives of major companies he has spoken to agreed, he added.Ron Conway, a billionaire investor and Silicon Valley Democratic leader, pledged on the call to match $50,000 in donations to the Harris effort. In total, the group received pledges of roughly $135,000 for the Harris campaign.John Corrigan, an organizer of the call, encouraged listeners to call their relatives in swing states and talk about politicsMr. Corrigan promised the group would reconvene in September: “After Burning Man.” More

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      Trump Criticizes Harris and Walz in Fox News Appearance and Suggests a Debate Will Happen

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      In an appearance on Fox News early Wednesday morning, former President Donald J. Trump called the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “communist” and suggested he was willing to debate Ms. Harris anywhere, despite having pulled out of a scheduled debate.He also hit at Mr. Walz over an interaction they had in April 2020, one which at the time led to the then president tweeting: “Received a very nice call from @GovTimWalz of Minnesota. We are working closely on getting him all he needs, and fast. Good things happening!”He described Mr. Walz as calling him for help because he was scared of protesters outside his home, though reporting at the time described Mr. Walz asking Mr. Trump to help Minnesota get more personal protective equipment and increase its Covid testing capacity so that he could let businesses reopen in the early days of the pandemic.Representatives for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Claire Lancaster, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walz, said the subject of that call was P.P.E. and testing capacity, not the protests.Beyond his claims about the 2020 interaction with Mr. Walz, Mr. Trump stuck mainly to the arguments that other Republicans have advanced since Ms. Harris announced her running mate on Tuesday: that Mr. Walz is too liberal and that Ms. Harris rejected Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania because he is Jewish.In the interview, on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump repeated an attack that he has made many times before and that has been criticized as antisemitic, saying any Jewish person who voted for Democrats “should have their head examined.”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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      Bob Woodward to Publish ‘War’ This Fall

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      Woodward, an author and journalist, has written more than 20 best selling books. His latest will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East, and the battle for the U.S. presidency.The author and journalist Bob Woodward will publish a new book this fall called “War,” his publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced on Wednesday. The book, which will be released on Oct. 15, will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East and the “raw cage-fight of politics” of the 2024 election.“For more than 50 years, Woodward has done groundbreaking reporting on every president, starting with Richard Nixon,” Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster and Woodward’s editor, said in a statement. “His work on the power of the presidency is unrivaled. With ‘War,’ Woodward illustrates the dramatic contrast he sees between Donald Trump and his opponents for the presidency — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, making this a must-read before heading to the polls.”Simon & Schuster said Woodward’s new book would offer a behind the scenes look at President Biden’s efforts to manage the war in Ukraine and contain the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, trying to deter the use of nuclear weapons and avoid “a rapid slide into World War III.”Woodward, an associate editor at The Washington Post, has been part of that newsroom for more than 50 years. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first for his coverage of Watergate and the second for coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Woodward has written more than 20 best selling books, according to the publisher; 15 of them have been No. 1 New York Times best sellers. More

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      In Prisoner Swap, Echoes of Putin’s K.G.B. Past

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      A sprawling exchange with the West underscored the Russian president’s loyalty to his intelligence services. It also showed his continued interest in making deals.As he sat in a Russian jail for five months, the human rights champion Oleg Orlov sometimes grew wistful: What if he walked free someday as part of a deal between Russia and the West?The chances that President Vladimir V. Putin would make a prisoner swap like that seemed as remote as a “star twinkling far, far, far away on the horizon,” Mr. Orlov, 71, said this week. The dire state of the relationship between Moscow and the West, and their diverging interests, appeared to rule out the kind of detailed negotiation necessary for such a complicated deal.But last week, it happened, in the most far-reaching prisoner swap with Moscow since the Cold War: Mr. Putin and his ally Belarus freed Mr. Orlov and 15 other Russians, Germans and Americans in exchange for a convicted assassin and seven other Russians released by the West. It was a moment when Mr. Orlov saw anew how core Mr. Putin’s past with the K.G.B., the Soviet spy agency, was to the Russian president’s identity — and to the sort of country he’s trying to shape Russia into.The swap happened because “Putin is a K.G.B. man, an F.S.B. man,” Mr. Orlov said in a phone interview four days after two private jets carrying him and other released prisoners landed in Cologne, Germany. Espionage is a subject Mr. Orlov knows well, having spent decades studying the crimes of the Soviet secret police as a co-founder of the Memorial human rights group, which was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.The Russian human rights champion Oleg Orlov, shown in court in Moscow in February, was freed in the exchange last week.Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Putin served as a K.G.B. agent in Dresden, East Germany, in the 1980s and ran the F.S.B., its domestic intelligence successor agency, in the 1990s. To the Russian leader, Mr. Orlov said, showing loyalty to the F.S.B. and other Russian intelligence services by winning their agents’ freedom trumped the political risk of releasing opposition figures whom the Kremlin had branded as traitors.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 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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      Kamala Harris and ‘Coach Walz’ Ease Into Their New Partnership

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      A chemistry seems to be developing between Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who looks as if he cannot believe his luck.“Wow,” Tim Walz kept saying, his face spread in amazement. “Wow.”On Tuesday night, Mr. Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota — a scarcely known political figure just two weeks ago — made his giddy, fiery, fidgety, folksy national debut as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate.He waved, with big flapping hands, at the ecstatic crowd. He bowed. He bowed again. He stood behind Ms. Harris as she launched into her fledgling presidential stump speech. He bobbed and grinned. He played with his ear and twiddled his thumbs. And when she ceded the podium to him, 30 minutes later, he played the role of a forceful surrogate.Ms. Harris, more accustomed to the political choreography of waiting for someone else to finish talking, smiled, her hands clasped. “That’s right,” she said repeatedly. “That’s right.”The running-mate dynamic can be complicated, even just in terms of staging — how to stand, where to look, what to do with one’s hands. On Tuesday, though, both Mr. Walz and Ms. Harris seemed comfortable in their new roles. He gushed over her “joy.” The whole night, he looked like a guy who had won the political lottery and could not believe his luck.She seemed very excited about football.“Coach Walz,” as Mr. Walz was once known — back when he was a high school social studies teacher and football coach — had helped lead his team to a state championship. He was also the faculty adviser for the student gay-straight alliance.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