House speaker emerita, congresswoman and Democratic Party grandée Nancy Pelosi is endorsing Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee for president.
Pelosi had been instrumental in persuading Joe Biden to step aside from his re-election campaign, according to extensive reporting across political media last week.
But after the US president announced yesterday that he would complete his term in the White House but wouldn’t be at the top of the ticket in November, and endorsed Harris, Pelosi did not initially follow suit.
However, less than 24 hours later she has issued a statement.
“Today, it is with immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future that I endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris for president of the United States. My enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris for president is official, personal and political,” Pelosi said.
She added: “Officially, I have seen Kamala Harris’s strength and courage as a champion for working families, notably fighting for a woman’s right to choose. Personally, I have known Kamala Harris for decades as rooted in strong values, faith and a commitment to public service. Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”
A new survey carried out by The Associated Press has found what the news agency deemed “early signsthat Kamala Harris is consolidating support” for her party’s nomination for president.
More than 700 pledged delegates have told AP, or announced, that they plan to support the US vice-president at the Democratic convention next month.
That is over one-third of the pledged delegates she needs in order to clinch the nomination.
Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1,976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the party’s nod to be at the top of the ticket against Donald Trump for the 2024 election.
The Veep’s X account now has “Harris for President” as the banner image, below “Let’s WIN this.”
In her first speech Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election, Kamala Harris said the president’s accomplishments were “unmatched in modern history”, but little else about her just-launched campaign. We may hear more from Harris this afternoon, when she visits her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, to greet staff that will now be working to help her get the Democratic nomination, and beat Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats nationwide are lining up behind the vice-president, including potential presidential contenders Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois.
Here’s what else has happened today:
The Secret Service director acknowledged the agency “failed” to protect Trump at a tense hearing following the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania.
Do not expect to hear from Biden today. The White House says he has no public events planned, as he isolates with Covid-19.
Joe Manchin, a former Democratic senator who is now an independent, ruled out running for president.
Back at the House oversight committee, Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director, is facing a barrage of tough questions from lawmakers of both parties.
Democratic congressman Ro Khanna pressed Cheatle on whether she should not follow in the steps of Stuart Knight, the agency’s director who resigned after an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981:
Kamala Harris says she will greet staff at what is now her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware:
The headquarters was situated in Wilmington because that’s Joe Biden’s hometown. Harris is from northern California.
It’s been less than 24 hours since Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race, and Kamala Harris has racked up a slate of endorsements for her presidential bid.
Among them is Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor who is seen as a rising Democratic star. Since she has ruled out a presidential run and endorsed Harris, some have pondered if she might want to be a running mate to the vice-president.
Lansing, Michigan’s WLNS was among those wondering, and tracked the governor down. Whitmer told them she had no interest in leaving the state:
Meanwhile, it does not seem like we will hear from Joe Biden today.
The pool reporter with him in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, just let the press know that the White House has said not to expect him to have any public events.
Biden said he would speak publicly “later this week” in his letter yesterday announcing the end of his re-election bid. The president is currently recovering from Covid-19.
Harris has wrapped up her remarks.
She’s posing for a picture with a group of athletes as the band plays We Are The Champions by Queen.
Harris then pivoted back to the purpose of the event, which was to honor champion student athletes.
“With that, on behalf of our president and Dr Biden, I am honored to welcome all of you to the White House to celebrate the achievements of these great athletes,” Harris said.
“Every one of them is a national champion, a national champion. In America, tens of millions of people play a sport as a child, and the best of the best grow up to become national champions.”
She continued:
To all of our athletes, I know it was not easy to make it to this moment. Each of you has faced challenges and obstacles, and you have endured. You have fought back and fought through. By doing so, you demonstrated that true greatness requires more than skill, it requires grit and determination.
You all know what it means to commit and to persevere, and you know what it means to count on teammates. During the course of a long season, sports teams become a family. You rely on each other, you develop relationships that will last a lifetime, and you make the people around you better in every way. And when you play you, inspire people across our nation, you remind all of us what can be achieved with hard work and ambition, and of course, none of you made it here alone.
Kamala Harris is now at the podium, and began by reflecting on Joe Biden’s legacy.
“Our president, Joe Biden, wanted to be here today. He is feeling much better and recovering fast, and he looks forward to getting back on the road. And I wanted to say a few words about our president. Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” Harris said, prompting applause from the crowd.
She continued:
In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office. And I first came to know president Biden through his son Beau. We worked together as attorneys general in our states, and back then, Beau would often tell me stories about his dad. He would talk about the kind of father and the kind of man that Joe Biden is.
The qualities that Beau revered in his father are the same qualities that I have seen every day in our president, his honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his love, deep love of our country. And I am first-hand witness that every day our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people, and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.
Kamala Harris has appeared at the White House.
She is being introduced by Lynda Tealer, a senior vice-president at the NCAA, who is talking sports.
“I’d like to thank President Biden and Vice-President Harris for organizing this event today. This is an incredible backdrop to celebrate incredible achievement,” Tealer said.
“I want to start by congratulating all of you on your successful season. There are more than 500 student athletes in more than 1000 NCAA institutions across the country. Many of those teams and student athletes started the season with the goal of achieving a national championship. You all have done that. You’re the best in your sport. You’ve crossed that finish line. You will forever be NCAA champions. Congratulations.”
Joe Biden is not in attendance, because he is recovering from Covid-19 at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
The White House just announced that Kamala Harris will head to Wilmington, Delaware, this afternoon for a campaign event.
Wilmington is the headquarters of the Biden-Harris campaign. The administration did not announce what the vice-president would be doing there, but said the event would take place at 3.10pm ET.
We are still waiting for her to make her speech to NCAA teams at the White House.
It is a drizzly, steamy Monday morning at the White House, where Kamala Harris will make her first public appearance since Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of the race and endorse her as the party’s Democratic nominee.
Biden had been scheduled to host this event on the White House South Lawn, but remains at his beach house in Delaware recovering from Covid-19. The event is to celebrate the NCAA championship teams, but many people here and those tuning in are watching to see what the party’s likely nominee has to say since being thrust into the position less than 24 hours ago.
In about 10 minutes, Kamala Harris will make her first public remarks since launching her presidential campaign, after Joe Biden yesterday announced he would end his bid for re-election.
The vice-president is scheduled to speak at an event scheduled for 11.30am ET on the White House south lawn celebrating NCAA teams that won championships in its just-concluded season.
Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, is being grilled right now by lawmakers on the House oversight committee about their handling of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
The agency, which is tasked with guarding the president and candidates for office, has faced heavy criticism after a gunman was able to open fire from the roof of a building overlooking Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing the former president’s ear, killing a rally goer and wounding others.
In her testimony, Cheatle acknowledged that the agency “failed” on the day of the assassination attempt: “We are fully cooperating with ongoing investigations. We must learn what happened, and I will move heaven and earth to ensure that an incident like July 13 does not happen again.”
However tensions have risen as members of the committee, particularly Republicans, ask for more details. Cheatle has dodged several questions from committee chair James Comer, saying the investigation into the shooting is in its early stages.
A frustrated Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman and top Trump ally, said: “I don’t think you’ve answered one question from the chairman, the ranking member or me.”
Democrats are in a political honeymoon phase, as Kamala Harris wracks up endorsements and pulls in sky-high fundraising numbers after Joe Biden announced yesterday afternoon that he was pulling out of the presidential race.
But all honeymoons come to an end, and this one will too. To that end, the New York Times just published a story taking a good look at what polling has been done of Harris’s popularity, to ascertain how she may fare among voters. It is not particularly positive:
A majority of voters have long had an unfavorable view of her. She has trailed Mr. Trump in nearly every national and battleground state poll conducted so far this year. In the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Pennsylvania, just 42 percent of likely voters said they viewed Ms. Harris favorably — well short of the 51 percent who had a favorable view of Mr. Biden in the state ahead of the 2020 election. It’s even lower than the 46 percent who said the same for Mr. Trump in the recent poll.
With numbers like these, a Harris-Trump matchup doesn’t look much like the 2020 presidential election, when Mr. Biden prevailed as a moderate candidate who was liked by a majority of voters. Instead, it’s more like the Biden-Trump contest of a month ago, before the debate, when Mr. Trump led narrowly and the race seemed poised to be decided by the fickle voters who dislike both candidates — the so-called double haters.
The Times does acknowledge a significant caveat:
At the outset, one enormous caveat is necessary: Ms. Harris became a candidate for president only on Sunday. She will have every opportunity to reintroduce herself to the nation, distinguish herself from Mr. Biden and rally Democratic voters in the weeks ahead. Similarly, her opposition will have every opportunity to criticize her handling of the border or her support for a ban on fracking or for Medicare for All. In the end, her standing could easily change for the better — or worse.
Tony Evers, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, a must-win swing state for whichever candidate takes over for Joe Biden, has also offered his endorsement of Kamala Harris:
Harris is a tenacious leader who has vigorously defended our democracy, fought to protect the freedoms we hold dear, and worked tirelessly to do the right thing and deliver for us.
I’m excited today to endorse Vice-President Harris as our nominee for president of the United States. She can beat Donald Trump, and I’m going to do everything I can between now and November 5th to help make sure she does.
Guests waiting to attend the House oversight committee hearing with the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, told me that they started lining up at 6.30am to get a seat.
The first two people waiting in line, a pair of House staffers, said they were the only people there when they arrived at 6.30am, but the line started getting longer and longer around 8am.
The seats in the room are limited, so only some of the many people waiting will have the chance to witness Cheatle’s testimony.
Michigan’s governor was one of the most closely watched of the potential Democratic replacements for Joe Biden.
But in a just-released statement, Gretchen Whitmer, too, has endorsed Kamala Harris’s candidacy for president: