Harris has support from enough Democratic delegates

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi made the motion to endorse Harris for president at a virtual meeting of California’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, her spokesman said.

Harris has secured the support of enough delegates to be the party’s nominee, according to an AP survey.

The GOP made no secret that it preferred to run against Biden, but it’s pivoting to attack Harris in similar ways. Republicans are already criticizing Harris for defending Biden’s ability to do his job over the past several years.

They’re tying her to the least popular aspects of Biden’s presidency, like border policy and immigration. During last week’s GOP convention, speaker after speaker called Harris the “border czar” — which has never been her title but was shorthand for how Biden tasked her with handling immigration early in his term.

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey taken in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.

Harris, who was endorsed by Biden minutes after he announced he would not accept the Democratic nomination, worked to quickly lock up the support of her party’s donors, elected officials and other leaders, and has so far received support from at least 2,214.

However, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats hold a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.

Fresh off victories in other legal cases, Donald Trump on Monday pressed a New York appeals court to overturn the nearly $500 million New York civil fraud judgment that threatens to drain his personal cash reserves as he campaigns to retake the White House.

In paperwork filed with the state’s mid-level appeals court, the former president’s lawyers said Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 finding that Trump lied to banks, insurers and others about his wealth was “erroneous” and “egregious.”

Trump’s appeal arguments echoed many of his gripes about the case. His lawyers argued that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit should have been promptly dismissed, the statute of limitations barred some claims, and that no one was harmed by Trump’s alleged fraud.

Tatum Watkins, a 19-year-old college student from southwest Iowa and a delegate to the DNC, said she appreciates as a young woman that Harris is speaking out on issues like reproductive rights and is “far closer” in age to a whole new generation of voters.

“She is very much leaning into what’s popular right now,” Watkins said.
“I’ve seen already her branding is what I can best describe as brat summer.”

Watkins said that has energized and excited her and other young Iowans, making what will be her first experience voting in a presidential election “even better.”

The mood among many House Democrats lifted quickly as lawmakers returned to Washington with Biden having handed off the election to Harris.

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America because of his leadership, his selflessness, his putting country first,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania.

“And then Kamala — woo! — I am excited,” she said. “I’m hearing from my constituents and folks they are so fired up.”

She said one way Harris could approach campaigning in a swing state like hers would be to pick Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate for the vice presidential spot.

President Biden is set to return to the White House tomorrow after spending six days at his beach home in Delaware convalescing from COVID-19. Biden became ill while campaigning in Las Vegas last week and headed to his vacation home to isolate.

Vice President Harris, meanwhile, will head to the battleground state of Wisconsin as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear.

The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy on Sunday.

Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, the first lawmaker to call for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, said he’s been “greatly encouraged” by the country’s reaction to Vice President Kamala Harris entering the race.

Doggett called for a more open and prolonged process to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, but he said there doesn’t appear to be any other candidates willing to take her on and many of those seen a possible nominees have endorsed Harris.

“I think we were on a path to lose this election and now we have a fighting chance to win it,” Doggett said.

He said the prospects of a Democratic House and at least a tied Senate are “now much more likely” if Harris is at the top of the ticket.

“We need to see more of the country’s reaction to our nominee, but from everything I’ve seen in this short 24-hour period, I’m greatly encouraged, and I think we have an opportunity that we didn’t have on Saturday.”

Kansas delegates met virtually Monday evening and agreed to give all 44 of the state’s votes on the presidential nomination to Vice President Harris.

“We are united in our endorsement,” the delegation’s leader, state party Chair Jeanna Repass, said after the meeting. “Time is not our friend. We have got to be united.”

Repass rejected suggestions — some from Republicans — that the Democratic Party is ignoring the will of its primary voters. She said primary voters who backed Biden understood that Harris would be president if something happened to Biden.

She said there is still time for other candidates to come forward if they can get enough delegates to sign onto their efforts.

“This has already been adjudicated through the primary process,” Repass said. “That’s why you’re seeing us come together so quickly. She has been our choice since 2020, and she is still our choice today.”

A Democratic group is targeting Trump and trumpeting Harris’ past as a prosecutor with new ads in the swing states expected to be key to the general election.

American Bridge 21st Century says it is launching a $20 million ad buy in the northern swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin later this week.

The group says the spots feature voters from the trio of states with the goal of contrasting Harris — a former prosecutor — with Trump, recently convicted on 34 felony charges.

The $20 million ad buy is part of a $200 million campaign American Bridge launched in May and is aimed at swing voters in smaller media markets that are less saturated with political advertising. The group hopes to reach people who may be on the fence.

The first round of ads focuses on abortion rights and health care access. One of the new ads shared by American Bridge features a Pennsylvania veteran who says he felt “violated” by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and called it an “example of Trump spitting on all of us who served.”

The Democratic Party plans to push forward with a virtual roll call in which delegates to its convention can choose a presidential nominee before they meet in person next month in Chicago, with Vice President Kamala Harris heavily favored now that President Joe Biden has abandoned his reelection bid.

The convention rules committee will meet Wednesday to approve how the virtual roll call will work, but a draft of what they are set to approve was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

It does not list a date for when the roll call will take place, but Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said the process will be completed by Aug. 7. It could contain multiple rounds of voting, but to qualify, candidates will need 300 electronic signatures of support from convention delegates.

The Democratic National Convention opens Aug. 19. State delegations to the gathering began pledging their near-unanimous support for Harris in the hours after President Joe Biden announced he was abandoning his reelection bid on Sunday.

Trump’s campaign senior advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles have released a memo after Harris’ visit and remarks at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, calling her “dangerously liberal” and saying she “is as bad, if not worse, than Joe Biden.”

“It’s a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to defeat not just one Democrat nominee for president, but two — in the same year!”

The advisors have called this “a ploy to try and shake up the race” and said Harris is just as responsible for Biden’s policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, which saw illegal crossing arrests reach record highs at the end of 2023.

The AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, locking in a major Democratic constituency for her day-old campaign.

“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on.”

The AFL-CIO is composed of 60 unions and 12.5 million workers, making them a key source of manpower for turning out the vote and a major player in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The umbrella union organization had previously backed President Biden and had affirmed its support just last week, but it did so while backing the combined Biden-Harris ticket.

Vice President Harris is honing the political message she plans to use to seek the White House in November.

Rallying staffers at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, now hers to inherit, Harris emphasized her professional background as a prosecutor. She contrasted that with Trump, who has been convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in New York.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said, adding, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

She also announced that Jen O’Malley Dillon, who had chaired Biden’s reelection campaign, will run her bid.

President Biden called into a campaign staff meeting while Vice President Harris was visiting, pledging, “If I didn’t have COVID, I’d be standing there with you.”

Harris traveled to Wilmington, Delaware, today to rally campaign staffers a day after Biden withdrew his presidential candidacy and endorsed Harris to replace him atop the Democratic ticket.

The crowd at first gasped, then cheered as Biden promised, “I’m going to be on the road” and campaigning for Harris.

“I want people to remember, what we have done has been incredible,” Biden said. He added, “I want to say to the team, embrace her, she’s the best.”

Harris devoted much of her brief remarks to praising Biden, saying, “I love Joe Biden. I know we all do.

More than 28,000 new volunteers have registered to join Harris’ campaign since Biden chose to withdraw his candidacy and bestow his campaign infrastructure to his VP. It’s a rate more than 100 times an average day from the previous Biden reelection campaign, underscoring the enthusiasm behind Harris.

If you’re trying to get up to speed on Vice President Harris’ swift emergence as Democrats’ possible nominee this fall, you really need to know your memes.

From “brat summer” to “coconut tree,” it’s been a timeline full of Harris-related memes for many people since President Biden exited the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.

Taking to the internet to pledge their support for her candidacy, Harris’ backers are crafting new spins on previous online organisms that at one time had been used by Harris’ detractors to throw shade.

There are also celebrities getting in the mix, with some of the association seen as a tidal wave of attention on Harris’ candidacy that could help turn back American apathy for what had been a largely binary general election between Biden and Trump.

▶ How many Kamala memes do you recognize?

A Republican state senator from Ohio who spoke at Vance’s first solo rally has apologized for saying on stage that it would “take a civil war” to save the country if Trump loses.

The apology from George Lang, the state lawmaker, came after Harris’ team highlighted his remarks in a post on X.

“I regret the divisive remarks in the excitement of the moment on stage,” he said on the same social network. “Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included.”

Less than two hours after Biden announced his withdrawal, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party said in a statement, “Grassroots donors began flooding the Minnesota DFL with small dollar donations, well before the DFL had sent a single fundraising email or text message regarding the news.”

The state party said just after 4 p.m. CT today that in the following 24 hours, it had raised “over $100,000 … through digital fundraising alone.”

“Our party and our base are fired up and ready to elect Kamala Harris and to defeat Donald Trump in November,” the party statement said.

Trump supporter Christina Chrisley, who lives in Virginia’s New River Valley, said she knew very little about JD Vance before he was announced as the Republican vice presidential nominee. She had hoped Glenn Youngkin would be selected.

But after doing more research, she said she’s excited by Vance. She has respect for Vance’s background and service as a marine and thinks he’ll do everything he can to “help Donald Trump win the election and do everything he possibly can for blue-collar workers.”

She also said she was impressed by Vance’s speech at the RNC, calling him “eloquent and very well-spoken.”

CLAIM: Harris is not an American citizen and therefore cannot serve as commander in chief.

THE FACTS: Completely false. Harris is a natural-born U.S. citizen. She was born on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by The Associated Press.

CLAIM: Harris promised to inflict the “vengeance of a nation” on Trump supporters.

THE FACTS: A fabricated quote attributed to Harris is spreading online five years after it first surfaced. The remarks didn’t come from Harris, but from a satirical article published online in August 2019. Shortly after, Trump supporters like musician Ted Nugent reposted the comments without noting they were fake.

CLAIM: Harris got her start by having an affair with a married man, California politician Willie Brown.

THE FACTS: This is missing some important context. Brown is a former mayor of San Francisco who was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982. Brown was separated from his wife during the relationship, which was not a secret.

▶ Read more fact-checks about Vice President Harris

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a top contender to be the vice presidential running mate for Kamala Harris, batted away questions about whether he would accept an offer to join the ticket.

“I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals,” Shapiro told a news conference in Pittsburgh. Noting that “this is a deeply personal decision the vice president will make,” Shapiro said Harris should be able to make the decision “free of any sort of political pressure.”

Still, Shapiro — who has years of experience making Trump the center of his attacks, first as attorney general and now as governor — pointed out that he defended Pennsylvania’s 2020 election from repeated attempts by Trump in court to overturn it and drew on his connection with Harris as a fellow former state attorney general.

“We have both been prosecutors, we have both stood up for the rule of law and we have always both been for the people,” Shapiro said. “That is diametrically opposed to everything Donald Trump has stood for.

Ron Meehan, who works at an Anchorage food bank and, at 25, is the youngest member of Alaska’s Democratic delegates, said Harris is creating a buzz in the party.

“I think that there is incredible excitement among Democrats right now, and particularly the young Democrats that had maybe been tuned out of the process,” he said Monday. “We’re on the verge of making history, the first woman president.”

Meehan is the western regional advisor to the Democratic National Committee’s Climate and Environmental Crisis Council.

“Climate issues in particular are ones that I think young people across the country, including myself, are watching very closely,” he said. Meehan credited the Biden-Harris administration for protecting southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, both the nation’s largest national forest and the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging there.
“I think that she has the policy and track record, the temperament and the skill set to run a very strong campaign and to be a strong president,” he said.

Vice President Harris’ team has raised more than $81 million in the 24-hour period since President Biden announced his decision to step aside.

The massive fundraising haul represents the largest 24-hour fundraising sum by either party in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump reported raising more than $50 million in the 24-hour period after his felony conviction in the New York hush money trial. Biden reported $38 million in the four days after his disastrous debate performance.

Harris’ new total features donations from hundreds of thousands of first-time donors, the campaign said.

The head of the California Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, is urging delegates to quickly line up behind Harris and has circulated an online form to submit endorsements.

“I am asking delegates from our great state of California and home to our vice president, Kamala Harris, to officially endorse her nomination,” wrote Hicks, who also heads the nation’s largest delegation to the August convention.

“The future of our country is at stake in this election,” Hicks added in an email to delegates, who were expected to hold a virtual meeting on Harris’ nomination later Monday.

Sen. Vance also sought to deflect the criticism that Trump, who has refused to accept the 2020 election results and tried to overthrow his loss, is a threat to democracy by instead claiming that the Democrats were the threat.

“The idea of selecting the Democrat party’s nominee because George Soros and Barack Obama and a couple of elite Democrats got in a smoke-filled room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard, that is now how it works,” Vance said. “That is a threat to democracy. Not the Republican Party.”

With Biden stepping aside, Democrats technically start with an open convention. But realistically, his endorsement of Harris pushes Democrats into murky territory. Harris has solidified support among more than half of the almost 4,000 party delegates and 700 more  

Vance, in his first solo speech as a vice presidential nominee, criticized Harris and said he was told he was going to get to debate her, but with Democratic support solidifying behind her as the presidential candidate, it seemed Trump would get to meet her on the debate stage instead.

“I’m kind of pissed off about that, if I’m being honest with you,” Vance joked.

• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said, “She’s tough, she’s smart and she’s ready to unite the country.”
• Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said, “Americans are looking for a new generation of leadership that will move past the divisiveness and unite us around our shared American values.”
• Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said, “Harris has always done what’s best for American families,” citing her record on abortion rights and helping to “safeguard democracy.”
• Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy called Harris “a proven leader who has delivered for the American people again and again.

An AP survey finds that Vice President Harris has the support of more than half of the delegates she’ll need to take President Biden’s place at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Over 1,000 pledged delegates told The Associated Press or announced that they plan to support Harris in a forthcoming vote to pick a new White House nominee.

Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1,976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the nomination. Of the about 1,070 delegates who have spoken to the AP or announced their plans, fewer than 60 either declined to answer or said they were undecided. And Harris is the only Democrat to receive support from delegates so far.

Pat Chesbro, an Alaska delegate and former U.S. Senate candidate, said she could think of no better option than Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket. “People are doing their best to find the best candidate in this situation, which is pretty unusual,” she said. “I look forward to the convention and to seeing whatever the next phase is,” said Chesbro, a lifelong educator.

Bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee have ended a contentious, nearly five-hour hearing with the Secret Service director by calling for her to resign after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

In a rare moment of unity for an often divided committee, Reps. James Comer and Jamie Raskin issued a letter to Director Kimberly Cheatle, asking for her to step down as director given her own description of the “most significant operation failure” in the agency’s history.

Cheatle, a 29-year veteran of the Secret Service, spent the majority of the hearing fielding attacks from both sides of the aisle and deflecting questions about the details of the ongoing criminal investigation into the July 13 shooting. But she remained defiant, saying that she believes she is the “right person” to lead the agency at this time and that she will move “heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong.

The Associated Press is surveying the nearly 4,000 pledged delegates for the Democratic National Convention to determine which candidate they plan to support to be the party’s presidential nominee in light of President Biden’s exit from the race. Results will be updated regularly.

Unlike AP’s count of delegates won during the party’s primaries and nominating contests, the survey is an unofficial tally and is only an indication of who the party will pick to replace Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

The latest results show Vice President Harris with overwhelming support among those delegates contacted so far.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is planning to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Jeffries stopped short of endorsing Harris but praised her “partnership” in President Biden’s accomplishments.

Jeffries and Schumer — the top two leaders for Democrats in Congress — have not endorsed the vice president, but almost all the other Democrats in leadership have. Jeffries hinted that his endorsement could happen after the meeting.

“She’s excited the House Democratic Caucus and she’s exciting the country,” Jeffries said.

Vance kicked off the rally at his former high school by playing up his local ties, shouting out his favorite restaurants in town and local teachers.

“A lot of you know the story of my family. Hell, a lot of you are my family, actually,” he said, drawing laughs.

Kamala Harris is launching her first campaign fundraising email with a nod to the campaign theme she adopted as far back as her campaign for California attorney general 14 years ago.

“My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” the email begins, referencing her abbreviated 2020 presidential campaign theme, “Kamala: For the people.”

It’s a riff on a prosecutor’s role and the customary introduction in criminal proceedings.

“That was true when I was a prosecutor in California, when I served in the Senate and throughout my time as your Vice President,” Harris’ email states.

“And it’s true as I make this announcement to the world. My name is Kamala Harris, and I’m running for President of the United States.”

While Republicans touted a unifying message last week and decried inflammatory language in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump, one of the first speakers to introduce Vance on Monday in his hometown took a sharp departure from that message and suggested the country may need to come to civil war if Trump loses in November.

“I believe wholeheartedly, Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country,” said George Lang, a Republican state senator. “Politically, I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country and it will be saved. It’s the greatest experiment in the history of mankind.”

Speaking during a congressional hearing, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the rally in Pennsylvania.