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    JD Vance Stumbles in His Debut as Democrats Go on Offense

    In the 12 days since Ohio’s junior senator was tapped as the future of Donald J. Trump’s movement, old comments and a chorus of derision have blunted any sense of invulnerability.The choice of Senator JD Vance as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate reflected the confidence of a campaign so sure of victory in November that it could look beyond a second Trump term to the legacy of his movement.But in less than two weeks, Mr. Vance has found himself on the defensive, and his struggles have dented the sense of invulnerability that only a week ago seemed to be the overriding image of the Trump campaign.A stream of years-old quotes, videos and audio comments unearthed by Democrats and the news media in recent days has threatened to undermine the Trump campaign’s outreach to women, voters of color and the very blue-collar voters to whom Mr. Vance, a first-term Ohio senator, was supposed to appeal.His past comments deriding “childless cat ladies,” supporting a “federal response” to stop abortion in Democratic states and promoting a higher tax burden for childless Americans have yielded a chorus of criticism from Democrats. Mr. Vance’s fresh efforts to explain them have provided Democrats more material, with the Harris campaign promoting one short clip in which he seems to suggest that when he spoke of childless cat ladies, he meant no insult to cats — “I’ve got nothing against cats,” he said.And his first handful of appearances on the stump have drawn unflattering attention. During an appearance in his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, he tried to explain how his critics would call his drinking Diet Mountain Dew racist, with an awkward aside assuring the audience that Diet Mountain Dew was good.Mr. Vance’s stumbles have come after a remarkable two weeks when Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt, and then rallied the party — and even some skeptics — behind him. The Republican National Convention began with calls for national unity, and though those calls were at times undercut by the Republican presidential nominee, the ticket vaulted out of Milwaukee with a head of steam and an expanded lead in the polls.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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    Minnesota’s Governor, a Harris V.P. Contender, Calls Trump and Vance ‘Weird People’

    In a potential audition to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Saturday cast former President Donald J. Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as a dangerous combination before their campaign visit to the state later in the day.“The fascists depend on us going back, but we’re not afraid of weird people,” Mr. Walz said during an event organized by the Harris campaign. “We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.”Speaking to a crowd of about 200 people packed into the Saint Paul Labor Center, an energetic Mr. Walz mocked Mr. Trump’s selection of Mr. Vance as his running mate.“They went out, you know — because he’s a TV guy — they go out and try to do this central casting: ‘Oh, we’ll get this guy who wrote a book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” you know,’” he said, referring to Mr. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “because all my hillbilly relatives went to Yale and became, you know, venture capitalists.”The rally, which also featured Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Betty McCollum, both Democrats of Minnesota, took place just hours before Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance were scheduled to headline their own rally in St. Cloud, a city of about 70,000 that narrowly went for Mr. Trump in 2016 but that President Biden won by a comfortable margin in 2020.“The nation found out what we’ve all known in Minnesota: These guys are just weird,” Mr. Walz said of the Republican ticket, echoing a message he debuted on MSNBC this week and that the Harris campaign itself has begun to test drive.Polling before Mr. Biden’s exit from the race six days ago had given Republican organizers hope that Minnesota, which has not supported a Republican nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972, could be in play in November. Mr. Walz and the other speakers sought to tamp down that notion on Saturday by focusing on two polls released on Friday that showed Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump in the state.“He’s here today, in the state of hockey, to complete his trifecta,” Mr. Walz said of Mr. Trump. “He lost in ’16. He lost in ’20. He loses in ’24.”Asked about a report from Bloomberg News suggesting that he was among three finalists being considered to be Ms. Harris’s running mate, Mr. Walz told reporters that he was “honored to be in this conversation” and that he was excited by the energy that Ms. Harris’s choice was bringing to the Democratic Party.“I love them all,” he said of the other vice-presidential contenders. “But this is the vice president’s pick. And I tell you what, I trust her judgment.” More

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    Silent No More, Harris Seeks Her Own Voice Without Breaking With Biden

    The vice president’s expressions of concern for Palestinian suffering marked a shift in emphasis from the president’s statements as she moved to establish herself as the leader of her party.After meeting with Israel’s prime minister this week, Vice President Kamala Harris said she “will not be silent.” She was referring to her concerns about Palestinian suffering in the Gaza war, but in a way it was a larger declaration of independence.For nearly four years, she has been the quiet understudy, relegated to the role of the supportive deputy while President Biden made pronouncements. Now she has suddenly been thrust to the fore as the new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and neither silence nor agreeable head nods are sufficient any more.The challenge for her over the next 100 days will be to find her own voice without overtly breaking with Mr. Biden, a delicate political high-wire act without a reliable net. Every statement she makes, every sentence she utters, will be scrutinized to determine whether it is consistent with the president she serves. Yet even as she wants to demonstrate loyalty to Mr. Biden, she also hopes to show the public who she is.She is fortunate in that she and Mr. Biden do not diverge all that much, according to people who have worked with them. While friction between presidents and their vice presidents is common, there have been few notable instances where Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have been reported to be at odds. So for her, it may not be as difficult to suppress contrary instincts in the truncated election campaign she faces as it has been for other vice presidents eager to differentiate themselves.But this is a balancing act being figured out on the fly. Because Mr. Biden was running himself until less than a week ago, neither he nor Ms. Harris has had much time to figure out how to coordinate their messages. It was notable that Mr. Biden left it to Ms. Harris on Thursday to be the public voice of the administration during the White House visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, taking the silent role himself.Mr. Biden cares deeply about keeping former President Donald J. Trump out of the White House and therefore has reason to be invested in Ms. Harris’s success. He also knows that because, until he was forced to quit the race, he had insisted on running again despite concerns about his age, many will blame him for not ceding the stage earlier if Mr. Trump wins.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 y su herencia india, más allá de los memes

    Harris ni presume ni oculta sus raíces indias. Hace una que otra referencia a ellas. También las utiliza estratégicamente.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Para la mayoría de las personas que vieron la cita que circuló esta semana como meme, solo se trataba de algo gracioso que Kamala Harris dijo en un discurso en 2023: “¿Creen que acaban de caerse de un cocotero?”.Sin embargo, para muchos indios e indios estadounidenses, la frase, que Harris atribuyó a su madre, tiene un significado más profundo. Tamil Nadu, el estado del sur de India del que es originaria la familia de su madre, es uno de los mayores productores de cocoteros del país. También es el tipo de cosa que diría un padre o una madre en India.Harris, vicepresidenta y candidata demócrata a la presidencia, ni presume ni oculta su herencia india. De vez en cuando hace alguna referencia. Y también la utiliza estratégicamente.El año pasado, Harris habló de su profunda conexión personal con India en una comida ofrecida en Washington para Narendra Modi, el primer ministro indio, a quien Estados Unidos ha estado cortejando. Su introducción a los conceptos de igualdad, libertad y democracia vino de su abuelo indio, con quien daba largos paseos durante sus visitas a Chennai, explicó Harris.“Fueron estas lecciones que aprendí a una edad muy temprana las que inspiraron mi interés por el servicio público”, afirmó.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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    What’s Next for the Harris Campaign

    Vice President Kamala Harris faces many questions, from the management of her campaign to the selection of her running mate, should she be the Democratic Party’s nominee.President Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the presidential ticket after ending his re-election campaign on Sunday, raising the chance that she could be the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be president of the United States.Ms. Harris in many ways has been preparing for this moment for the past year as she emerged as one of the Biden campaign’s more aggressive voices on abortion rights and attacks on former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Biden spoke to Ms. Harris on Sunday morning before he posted a letter online informing the world that he would be stepping down as the Democratic nominee.In another post less than a half-hour later, he endorsed Ms. Harris, who quickly issued a statement saying she intended to “earn and win this nomination.”But as the details of the nominating process remain unclear, there are many questions Ms. Harris and her team will face in the days ahead.What About Her Campaign?Ms. Harris will now need to take over the vast infrastructure of Mr. Biden’s campaign, which has roughly 1,300 staff members and dozens of offices around the nation. There are signs that is already happening.On a call with the Biden campaign staff on Sunday, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chairwoman, and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the Biden campaign manager, informed the staff members that they were all now working for Harris for President, according to two people who listened to the call. “We’re all going to do it the same,” Ms. Chavez Rodriguez 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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    J.D. Vance Becomes Trump’s New Apprentice

    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?

    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

    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