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    Abortion Rights Advocates Hit the D.N.C.: Free Vasectomies and an Inflatable IUD

    This convention is likely to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.While delegates are in Chicago for next week’s Democratic National Convention, they will engage in the typical pageantry and traditions: They’ll vote for their nominee, pose for photos with elected officials, and show off their state with cool buttons or themed hats.They will also have the option of getting a free vasectomy or a medication abortion just blocks away.A mobile health center run by Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, which serves much of Missouri and part of southern Illinois, plans to park itself near the convention and offer those services early next week to anybody who makes an appointment, delegate or not. (There is so much interest in the vasectomy appointments, I’m told, there is already a waiting list.)It’s a way of showcasing how reproductive health care providers have had to get creative when operating in or near states like Missouri, which borders Illinois and has a near-total abortion ban.But it also underscores the way this convention, more than any other, is going to be a head-on display of a new, unbridled abortion politics.For years, many Democrats believed too much talk about abortion rights might drive away moderate or religious voters. Four years ago, at the Covid-dampened convention of 2020, President Biden did not utter the word abortion in his speech. Neither did Vice President Kamala Harris (although she did refer briefly to racial injustice in “reproductive and maternal health care.”)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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    Saving Conservatism From Trumpism

    More from our inbox:The Candidates’ Foreign ExperienceA Loss of Diversity in Network NewsProtecting School LibrariesIndependent Voters Thalassa Raasch for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “How to Save Conservatism From Itself,” by David French (column, Aug. 12):I commend Mr. French for declaring his intention to vote for Kamala Harris despite his pro-life convictions. And although I do not share his anti-abortion stance, I respect his beliefs.However, in my view Mr. French is mistaken to think that if Donald Trump is defeated in November, there is hope for a conservatism that demonstrates real compassion.Mr. Trump has not become the standard-bearer of the Republican Party against its will; on the contrary, he has articulated (in his most inarticulate way) the fanaticism of today’s conservative movement in America.Absolutism in regard to abortion, gun ownership, immigration, tax cuts for the wealthy, the slashing of benefits for the impoverished — these are the bedrock beliefs of today’s conservative movement, with or without Donald Trump. Who are the compassionate, compromise-seeking Republican leaders waiting in the wings to command a majority of voters once Mr. Trump somehow exits the stage?Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of where the Republican Party finds itself today. Until honorable, conservative-minded people like Mr. French recognize this, it seems impossible to me that the Republican Party can rise from its ashes.Barth LandorChicagoTo the Editor:I don’t think one man’s vote will “save conservatism from itself,” but every vote counts, so I’m sure Kamala Harris will appreciate David French’s.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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    Tim Walz y JD Vance debatirán el 1 de octubre en CBS

    Esta será la primera vez que los compañeros de fórmula de Kamala Harris y Donald Trump se enfrentarán.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El gobernador Tim Walz de Minnesota y el senador por Ohio JD Vance han acordado participar en al menos un debate vicepresidencial este otoño. Ambos candidatos han aceptado la invitación de CBS News para enfrentarse el 1 de octubre.La cadena anunció el miércoles en la plataforma de medios sociales X que le había ofrecido a Walz y Vance, compañeros de fórmula de la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y del expresidente Donald Trump, cuatro posibles fechas: 17 de septiembre, 24 de septiembre, 1 de octubre y 8 de octubre.“Nos vemos el 1 de octubre, JD”, escribió Walz en respuesta. La campaña de Harris confirmó que había aceptado la invitación de la cadena para ese día.El jueves, Vance dijo que también había aceptado la invitación del 1 de octubre.El senador también dijo que estaba dispuesto a celebrar un segundo debate antes, el 18 de septiembre, fecha ofrecida por la CNN. “El pueblo estadounidense merece tantos debates como sea posible”, dijo Vance en un mensaje publicado en X.La campaña de Harris-Walz indicó en un comunicado que no aceptaría una fecha adicional para la vicepresidencia. “El debate sobre los debates ha terminado”, dijo en un comunicado Michael Tyler, portavoz de la campaña. “La campaña de Donald Trump aceptó nuestra propuesta de tres debates: dos presidenciales y uno vicepresidencial”.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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    Gwen Walz, la esposa calmada y ultracompetente de Tim Walz

    [Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]En 2006, durante su primera campaña para el Congreso, Tim Walz tenía previsto hablar en una cena de recaudación de fondos en Mankato, su ciudad natal en Minnesota. En ese momento, era un político desconocido que participaba en una campaña muy reñida contra un candidato titular que había ocupado el cargo durante seis mandatos. La cena le brindaba la oportunidad de hacer campaña en su distrito local del Partido Demócrata-Agrario-Laborista de Minnesota y aumentar los fondos de su campaña.Solo había un problema: Walz tenía laringitis.Mientras los invitados se servían la comida, se sorprendieron al ver que otra persona subía al escenario: Gwen Walz, la esposa de Walz.Estaba acostumbrada a hablar ante grandes grupos: al igual que su marido, Gwen Walz había sido profesora de una escuela pública durante más de una década. Los asistentes quedaron impresionados por su seguridad y claridad.“Hubo otros candidatos que hablaron, y ella fue la más elocuente del grupo”, dijo John Klaber, un residente de North Mankato que asistió a la recaudación de fondos hace casi dos décadas. “Todos miramos a nuestro alrededor y dijimos: ‘¿Por qué ella no se postula?”.La mayor parte del público estadounidense pudo ver por primera vez al gobernador Tim Walz la semana pasada en un mitin en Filadelfia junto a la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris, quien ese mismo día había anunciado que era su compañero de fórmula. Al final de su discurso, el país también pudo ver por primera vez a la mujer con la que ha estado casado durante 30 años.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 Falsely Claims Harris’s Rally Crowds Are A.I.-Generated

    Former President Donald J. Trump has taken his new obsession with the large crowds that Vice President Kamala Harris is drawing at her rallies to new heights, falsely declaring in a series of social media posts on Sunday that she had used artificial intelligence to create images and videos of fake crowds.The crowds at Ms. Harris’s events, including one in Detroit outside an airplane hangar, were witnessed by thousands of people and news outlets, including The New York Times, and the number of attendees claimed by her campaign is in line with what was visible on the ground. Mr. Trump falsely wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, that “there was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it.”A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump has struggled to find his political footing in the weeks since President Biden decided to step aside and Ms. Harris replaced him atop the Democratic ticket: Mr. Trump questioned Ms. Harris’s racial identity at a conference for Black journalists, he later attacked Brian Kemp, the popular Republican governor in the key swing state of Georgia, and he has seen new polling that puts him behind Ms. Harris in several key states.The Harris campaign has begun to mock Mr. Trump for his frustration over her crowds, one of which, it said, topped 15,000 people at an event in the Phoenix area on Friday.“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, said to the crowd, receiving a loud cheer.In his posts on Sunday, Mr. Trump drew parallels between his false claims of fake crowds and his false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.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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    How Kamala Harris Is Already Changing the Face of Presidential Power

    I have not been the biggest fan of Kamala Harris, but to my surprise, the candidate who underwhelmed in 2020 is gone. I have watched all of candidate Harris’s public appearances since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for a sense of how she intends to run and possibly govern. The audiences have been vastly different, among them: the annual conclave of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, a National Federation of Teachers convention and the Philadelphia rally where the Harris-Walz ticket made its first official appearance.What I took away: Kamala Harris is a different candidate than we saw four years ago. She is even a different rhetorician than we saw six months ago.Nominee Harris lands her applause lines. The former prosecutor is comfortable going on the attack. Her most consistent message is that Donald Trump wants to send America back to the Dark Ages. Unlike her predecessor, she relishes calling Trump out by name. Even her wacky humor, which has been mocked on social media, suddenly works. She sounds authentic. That’s the holy grail of electoral politics. Every wide-jawed cackle she offers the audience, every twinkle in her eye as she pokes at Trump — it all comes off as someone who is in on the joke. That is hard for any candidate but it is an almost impossible tightrope for a Black female candidate to walk.Authenticity is a mirage. Americans crave the performance of authenticity as a sign that our values are in safe hands — hands just like ours. Of course, people who study this stuff for a living don’t quite agree on what authenticity is. It’s a “you know it when you see it” situation. Political candidates have to negotiate ideas about identity with an audience’s expectations of who should be in power. A tall white guy with a healthy head of hair simply looks presidential.That’s where gender tripped up Hillary Clinton, the first, most viable female candidate for president. Americans were used to looking at her — as first lady, as a congresswoman, as secretary of state and as a national obsession. But for many reasons, a lot of voters (although not a majority of voters) did not think she was authentic enough to be president. She never figured out how to communicate presidential power during her campaign. She couldn’t make the idea of a president look like a woman.Kamala Harris has an even more difficult task: She has to make the presidency look like a Black woman.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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    Biden Made Trump Bigger. Harris Makes Him Smaller.

    Kamala Harris has a very different theory of this election than Joe Biden did.In 2020, and then again in 2024, Biden ceded the battle for attention to Donald Trump. Whether as a matter of strategy or as a result of Biden’s own limitations, Biden adopted a low-key campaigning style, letting Trump dominate news cycle after news cycle. Trump wanted the election to be about Donald Trump, and Joe Biden wanted the election to be about Donald Trump. On that much, they agreed.In 2020, when Trump was the unpopular incumbent, that strategy worked for Biden. In 2024, when Biden was the unpopular incumbent, it was failing him. It was failing in part because Biden no longer had the communication skills to foreground Trump’s sins and malignancies. It was failing in part because some voters had grown nostalgic for the Trump-era economy. It was failing in part because Biden’s age and stumbles kept turning attention back to Biden and his fitness for office, rather than keeping it on Trump and Trump’s fitness for office.Then came the debate, and Biden’s decision to step aside, and Harris’s ascent as the Democratic nominee. Harris has been able to do what Biden could or would not: fight — and win — the battle for attention. She had help, to be sure. Online meme-makers who found viral gold in an anecdote about coconuts. Charli XCX’s “kamala IS brat.”But much of it is strategy and talent. Harris holds the camera like no politician since Barack Obama. And while Harris’s campaign is largely composed of Biden’s staffers, the tenor has changed. Gone is the grave, stentorian tone of Biden’s news releases. Harris’s communications are playful, mocking, confident, even mean. Trump is “old” and “feeble”; JD Vance is “creepy.” Her campaign wants to be talked about and knows how to get people talking. It is trying to do something Democrats have treated as beneath them for years: win news cycles.Biden’s communications strategy was designed to make Trump bigger. Harris’s strategy is to make him smaller. “These guys are just weird,” Tim Walz said on “Morning Joe,” and it stuck. Walz inverted the way Democrats talked about Trump. Don’t make a strongman look stronger. Make him look weaker. Biden’s argument was that Trump might end American democracy. Walz’s argument is that Trump might ruin Thanksgiving.There are many reasons Walz was chosen as Harris’s running mate, not least the chemistry between the candidates. But he was on the shortlist in the first place because he proved himself able to do what Harris wanted done: Get people talking about the thing he wanted them talking about.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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    Walz in the National Guard: A Steady Rise Ending With a Hard Decision

    In a military career that spanned three decades, Tim Walz achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. Some peers took issue with the timing of his retirement.In the 1980s, the U.S. military was in the middle of a transformation. The Vietnam War was over, and a force once staffed with drafted troops who had fought and died in the jungles of Southeast Asia was transitioning to ranks filled solely with volunteers.In Nebraska, Tim Walz was one of those volunteers.Mr. Walz, now Minnesota governor and the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president, raised his hand to join the Army National Guard just two days past his 17th birthday on April 8, 1981. In a career in the military that spanned three decades, he battled floods, managed an artillery unit and achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. He also navigated a full-time job teaching social studies alongside his part-time military occupation as an enlisted combat arms soldier, a role that trained him for war.Mr. Walz never went to war. Most of his service covered a period when America was bruised from foreign entanglements and wary of sending troops into combat overseas for long stretches. And it ended when Mr. Walz was 41, as the military ramped up for war after Sept. 11.Since being picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate this week, he has found himself facing allegations previously aired by Minnesota Republicans and newly amplified by JD Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate.Those criticisms center on Mr. Walz’s decision to retire from the Army in 2005, the year before his artillery battalion deployed to Iraq. He was thinking seriously about a run for Congress and spoke with other soldiers about being torn between his loyalty to his fellow troops and his desire to move on with his life. At the time, there were vague expectations that the unit might deploy, but actual orders came several months later.The unit deployed to Iraq for more than one year beginning in 2006. During that time, soldiers in the unit provided security for transportation convoys and other tasks common in a combat zone. 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