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      Harris Holds First Fund-Raiser as Democrats Rally: ‘We Are the Underdogs’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris warned a crowd of supporters on Saturday that former President Donald J. Trump held the advantage in their contest for the White House given the short window until Election Day.“We got a fight ahead of us, and we are the underdogs in this race, OK?” Ms. Harris said in Pittsfield, Mass., at her first fund-raiser since President Biden dropped his re-election bid six days ago. “Level set, we’re the underdogs in this race. But this is a people-powered campaign, and we have momentum.”Polls have shown the vice president catching up to Mr. Trump — welcome news for Democrats after Mr. Biden had fallen significantly behind. The Harris campaign has also shown new strength in fund-raising and in the number of new volunteers, with the election roughly three months away.Since announcing her candidacy for the Democratic nomination and receiving Mr. Biden’s endorsement, Ms. Harris has deployed a sharpened message against Mr. Trump. On Saturday, she suggested he would restrict Americans’ “most fundamental rights,” including reproductive freedoms, and called him a “bully.”“What other freedoms could be on the table for the taking?” she said during her remarks, repeating her stark warnings of the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. “It’s serious business.”She also leaned into a new Democratic attack on the former president and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, saying that some of the swipes the men had taken against her were “just plain weird.”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 Evolution of Usha Vance

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      An accomplished Yale-educated lawyer, she has left her job at a top firm as she adjusts to the life of a high-profile political spouse.The night before the biggest assignment of her life, Usha Vance stayed up late with her husband, JD Vance. In their rooms at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, they went over each other’s speeches to the Republican National Convention. She gave notes on his, and he tweaked hers.In keeping with many intellectual and professional endeavors over the course of their relationship, which got its start at Yale Law School more than a decade ago, they approached the task as a couple.Their lives were about to undergo a dramatic change. Two days earlier, former President Donald J. Trump had announced the selection of Mr. Vance as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. Mr. Vance was used to the spotlight, having made his name as the best-selling author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” years before he was elected to the United States Senate in 2022, but his wife had remained largely a private figure.Whatever nerves the self-possessed Mrs. Vance might have been feeling, she had allies bolstering her confidence. In the hours before she stepped onto the stage, a longtime friend texted her a trailer from “Bring It On,” the 2000 movie about highly competitive cheerleaders that was filmed in part at the high school she attended in San Diego.Standing on the stage of Fiserv Forum before an audience of more than 17,000, with millions more watching on television, Mrs. Vance delivered a speech that was direct and conversational, without the theatrical bluster employed by many of her fellow convention speakers.“When I was asked to introduce my husband, JD Vance, to all of you, I was at a loss,” she began. “What could I say that hasn’t already been said before? After all, the man was already the subject of a Ron Howard movie.”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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      Just One Question for Trump and Vance: What Is Wrong With You People?

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      Ever since President Biden’s Sunday announcement that he would not seek re-election, clearly because of age, I keep thinking about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s contemptuous reactions to one of the most difficult personal decisions a president has ever made, and what it says about their character.“The Democrats pick a candidate, Crooked Joe Biden, he loses the Debate badly, then panics, and makes mistake after mistake, is told he can’t win, and decide they will pick another candidate, probably Harris,” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. He later added: “It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!”Not to be out-lowballed by his boss, Vance wrote on social media: “Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way.”All they had to say was: “President Biden served his country for five decades and at this moment we thank him for that service. Tomorrow our campaign begins against his replacement. Bring her on.’’I can guarantee you that is what Biden would have said if the shoe were on the other foot. Because he is not a bully.Biden’s good character shone through on Wednesday night in his dignified, country-before-self address at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As I watched and listened, I remembered a lunch I had with him in May 2022 in the dining room next to the Oval Office. After we were done and he was walking me past the Resolute Desk, I mentioned to him a reading-literacy project that my wife, Ann, was working on that she thought might interest Dr. Jill Biden. The president got totally excited about the idea and said, “Let’s call your wife. What’s her number?’’He then took a cellphone out of his pocket, dialed it and handed it to me.“Honey,” I said, “I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.’’“I’m in a meeting,” Ann replied. “I can’t talk now.’’“No, no, you’re going to want to talk to him. It’s the president.”Then I handed the phone back to Biden, who engaged her in a conversation about reading and how much his wife was passionate about that subject, too.Look, I’ve been to the rodeo — this is what smart politicians do. But there is one difference with Joe Biden that I observed over the years: It’s how much he authentically enjoyed it, how much he enjoyed talking to people outside his bubble and giving them a chance to say, “I got to meet the president. He talked to me!”That sort of kindness came naturally to him. It brought him joy. And I have no doubt that Trump’s and Vance’s venomous first reactions to Biden’s resignation came naturally to them too.I’m sure it brought them joy. But it sure left me wondering: What is wrong with you people? More

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      If Kamala Harris Is a D.E.I. Candidate, So Is JD Vance

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      Ever since speculation began that Vice President Kamala Harris might replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, there has been a steady, ugly chorus on the right. The New York Post published a column that declared that Harris would be a “D.E.I. president,” and quickly the phrase ricocheted across the conservative media ecosystem.The invocation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs meant to bring people from underrepresented backgrounds into institutions of power and influence clearly implied that a Black woman got power because of racial preferences. Black achievement, in this narrative, is always unearned and conferred without regard to merit.Listening to JD Vance’s speech at the Republican convention on Wednesday night, as he laid out his remarkable biography — a young man with roots in an economically devastated backwater who scaled the heights of the American elite — I couldn’t help thinking to myself: If Harris is a D.E.I. candidate, so is Vance. It just depends on what kind of diversity you mean. It depends, indeed, on how you understand the role of identity in shaping the opportunities that define anyone’s life.All politics is, at some level, identity politics — the business of turning identity into power, be it the identity of a candidate or demographic group or political party or region of the country. For modern presidential and vice-presidential candidates, one of their most valuable assets is their life story. Some elements of that story are bequeathed at birth, but what makes politicians successful is their talent at narrating that story in a manner that allows voters to see some version of themselves and their own aspirations in the candidate. This kind of storytelling, embedded in American archetypes and ideals, has shaped our politics.Vance’s entire business and political career has flowed from his life story, which is embedded in identities he did not choose: Born a “hillbilly,” of Scotch-Irish descent, he grew up in poverty, son of a single mother who was addicted to drugs. Overcoming this adversity, these disadvantages, lies at the core of his personal narrative. His ascent would hardly be so remarkable if he started from a life of middle-class comfort. But no one is portraying Vance’s elevation to the Republican ticket as the outcome of some kind of illegitimate identity politics, nor is Vance perceived as having benefited from a political form of affirmative action.And yet he almost certainly did. Race is not the only kind of diversity that gets noticed and embraced. Elite institutions love up-by-your-bootstraps Americans, and that archetype is all over Vance’s life story. A promising white candidate from a county that sends few students to an elite college like Yale would get a strong look, even if that person’s grades and test scores were less impressive than other applicants’. (To be clear, I have no idea what kind of grades or scores Vance had.) Regardless of race, applicants from working-class backgrounds, especially if they were the first in their family to attend college, are deemed to add class diversity.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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      A Week After Shooting, Trump Leaves Unity Behind and Returns to Insults and Election Denial

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      At his first campaign rally since he survived an assassination attempt last week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday launched a litany of attacks that suggested his call for national unity in the wake of the shooting had faded entirely into the background.Over the course of an almost two-hour speech in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Trump insulted President Biden’s intelligence repeatedly, calling him “stupid” more than once. He said Vice President Kamala Harris was “crazy” and gleefully jeered the Democratic Party’s infighting over Mr. Biden’s political future.Even as Mr. Trump made numerous false claims accusing his political opponents of widespread election fraud, he presented the continuing push by some Democrats to replace Mr. Biden on their ticket as an anti-democratic effort.By contrast, Mr. Trump — who falsely insisted he won the 2020 election and whose effort to overturn it spurred a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the peaceful transfer of power — presented himself as an almost martyr trying to protect the United States from its downfall.“They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd of thousands inside the Van Andel Arena. “I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do with democracy’? Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”The line — one of the few additions to a speech that culled from Mr. Trump’s standard rally repertoire — came as Mr. Trump was trying to rebut Democrats’ claims that he was an extremist and distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a potential second term that would overhaul the federal government.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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      J.D. Vance Becomes Trump’s New Apprentice

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      In his prime-time debut, the senator and “Hillbilly Elegy” author showed what he has to offer his running mate.Speaking Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio became the latest, and potentially most consequential, of Donald J. Trump’s apprentices to accept the position in prime time.For years as the host of “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump picked out protégés from boardrooms full of young supplicants. There was a delicate art to getting the nod. Offend him and you might be dismissed; appear too thirsty and you could get the boot as well. The key was to be yourself but also be him, to be a mirror but a flattering one, to be an echo auto-tuned to please the boss’s ear.Mr. Vance spent much of his two years in the Senate auditioning for the promotion to vice-presidential nominee, cultivating a relationship, apologizing for his Never-Trumper apostasy and recently blaming Biden campaign rhetoric for leading “directly” to the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump.Accepting the nomination on Wednesday night, he cast himself as a loyal fighter, an ideological heir and a grateful son of the working class with roots in Appalachia and the Rust Belt.With Merle Haggard’s “America First” as his walk-on music, he began his speech praising Mr. Trump: “He didn’t need politics,” Mr. Vance said, “but the country needed him.” Mr. Trump looked on smiling in split-screen, as if watching a winner at a season finale.When it came to introducing himself, Mr. Vance had a head start and a challenge. He was telling a story he had already told, in the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” and so had Ron Howard, in the 2020 film adaptation.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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      ¿Quién es J. D. Vance, el candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia?

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      En los últimos ocho años, Vance pasó de ser un autor exitoso y un crítico declarado de Trump a convertirse en uno de los defensores más fervientes del exmandatario.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]J. D. Vance, el senador republicano por Ohio que recientemente fue escogido como el compañero de fórmula del expresidente Donald Trump, ha tenido una trayectoria rápida en los últimos ocho años pasando de ser un autor exitoso y un crítico declarado de Trump a convertirse en uno de los defensores más fervientes del exmandatario y, ahora, su segundo al mando.Antes de dedicarse a la política, Vance, de 39 años, era conocido como el autor del libro Hillbilly Elegy (Hillbilly, una elegía rural: Memorias de una familia y una cultura en crisis), un éxito de ventas que relataba su crianza en el seno de una familia pobre y que, a su vez, servía como una especie de análisis sociológico de la clase trabajadora blanca en Estados Unidos. Publicado en el verano previo a la elección de Trump en 2016, y tras su victoria, muchos lectores vieron el libro como un tipo de guía para comprender el apoyo que las comunidades blancas de clase trabajadora le dieron al expresidente.Vance denunció al exmandatario sin piedad durante su campaña de 2016. Pero, para 2022, ya lo había aceptado y gracias a su apoyo ganó unas elecciones primarias republicanas muy concurridas y se convirtió en una voz a favor de Trump en el Congreso.A continuación, presentamos más detalles sobre los antecedentes y las posturas de Vance.Antecedentes personales: Nació en Middletown, Ohio, y pasó parte de su infancia en Jackson, Kentucky, donde fue criado por sus abuelos maternos porque su madre luchaba contra la drogadicción. Luego regresó a Middletown y, cuando terminó el bachillerato, se unió a la infantería de marina. Fue destinado a Irak, donde se dedicó a labores de asuntos públicos. Más tarde, estudió en la Universidad Estatal de Ohio y en la Escuela de Derecho de la Universidad de Yale.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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      Climate and the Republican Convention

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      Here’s where the party stands on global warming, energy and the environment.It’s official: Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for the presidential election this November, and Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio is his running mate.The long-awaited announcement of the vice-presidential candidate came as the Republican National Convention opened in Milwaukee on Monday and Trump made his first public appearance since the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on Saturday.Climate change was not on the agenda. But the convention’s first day, which was focused on the economy, offered fresh signs of what a new Trump presidency might look like in terms of climate policy.Today, I want to share with you some of the reporting my colleague Lisa Friedman has been doing on the Republican ticket and what to expect when it comes to climate and the environment. Lisa has covered environmental policy from Washington for more than a decade.For Republican leaders, it’s all about energyJune was the Earth’s 13th consecutive month to break a global heat record and more than a third of Americans are facing dangerous levels of heat. But climate change is unlikely to be a major theme at the Republican convention, which runs through Thursday. It was not mentioned in any of the main speeches on Monday, which instead focused on inflation and the economy.(The closest thing to a mention of global warming Monday night came from Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who derided what she called the “Green New Scam,” saying it was destroying small business.)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