Madam Vice President, who’s it gonna be?
Kamala Harris is set to announce her running mate at any moment. The person she chooses could tell more about her values and reveal the campaign’s strategy to win in November.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. Election Day is in 92 days. The Democratic National Convention starts in 14 days. And we’re likely just hours away from Vice President Kamala Harris announcing her running mate.
To be honest, her decision couldn’t come any sooner, if for no other reason than to end the breathless speculation among the chattering classes about which middle-aged white man she will likely tap to complete the ticket.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s a significant choice. The Harris camp and former President Donald Trump’s team are looking to define the vice president. And many Americans are still discovering who she is beyond the internet memes and President Joe Biden’s shadow. The person she selects as a potential governing partner could help in both areas.
There won’t be time for much celebration for the pick once it’s announced.
Harris and her running mate will immediately hit the campaign trail tomorrow evening in Philadelphia for a five-day tour across several battleground states—including Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. (The vice president has already traveled to each of the states at least three times this year.)
The vice president’s shortlist consists of at least six finalists: Govs. Josh Shapiro (Pa.), Tim Walz (Minn.), J.B. Pritzker (Ill.), Andy Beshear (Ky.), Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
While there could be a dark horse candidate who’s slipped under the media’s radar, each of these men brings a specific advantage to her.
Pennsylvania is among the “blue wall” of swing states critical to Biden’s 2020 election and Harris’s path to victory in November. As the chief executive of the Keystone State, Shapiro is believed to help the electoral map.
Walz has become a media darling with his relatable dad vibes and natural ability to sharply take down Trump and Vance without coming off as a bully.
Then there’s Beshear, who is viewed as a guy who could shore up support in rural areas and equalize Harris’s reputation as a San Francisco liberal.
Buttigieg has been a loyal member of Biden’s cabinet overseeing the federal response to awful catastrophes like the East Palestine train derailment last year, the Francis Key Scott Bridge collapse this year and all sorts of airline snafus in between. He’s a prolific messenger and unafraid to take the party’s message to hostile territory like Fox News.
And since Republicans will hit Harris hard on the Biden administration’s immigration record, Kelly could lend some credibility as an elected official from a critical border state. He’s also a gun safety advocate as the spouse of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2012. (Harris oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.)
Meanwhile, Pritzker is a reproductive freedom champion and businessman who could appeal to the wealthy fat cats who are otherwise mesmerized by Trump and the Republican Party’s one-note economic policy of cutting taxes for big corporations and wealthy people.
The vice presidential selection process usually takes months. But this election has been anything but usual. Harris was under the impression she would accept the nomination in Chicago later this month. But that was before President Biden ended his reelection bid under pressure from powerful national Democrats and tapped Harris as his successor.
Harris immediately consolidated the party’s support and hit the road for a few high-powered events, including an Atlanta rally last week featuring a performance from Megan the Stallion.
The vice president then got down to the nitty gritty of the veepstakes.
Harris and Buttigieg met for around 90 minutes on Friday. Then she met with her vetting team—led by former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm—on Saturday for in-depth briefings on each finalist. (Buttigieg headlined a fundraiser for her in New Hampshire that night, FWIW.)
Holder was also spotted pulling up to the Naval Observatory on Sunday, which makes sense since the vice president spent the day conducting in-person interviews with Walz, Shapiro and Kelly. Walz canceled a previously scheduled trip to New Hampshire to meet with Harris. He’s scheduled to host a fundraiser in Minneapolis tonight, while Beshear is slated to raise cash for the campaign in Chicago.
Once Harris’s pick is official, the campaign hopes she and her running mate can extend the honeymoon she’s enjoyed during her first two weeks at the top of the ticket. The groundswell of goodwill at the outset of her candidacy has fueled what the campaign describes as the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history—a $310-million haul in July that pushed the campaign over the $1 billion mark in fundraising faster than any campaign ever.
The campaign launched a multifaceted grassroots program on Sunday to organize anti-Trump Republicans ahead of the November election. The announcement included endorsements from former Trump White House officials, former cabinet secretaries, former governors and a lieutenant governor former members of Congress and more. Republicans for Harris will hold kickoff events in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Republican surrogates will also appear at events led by Vice President Harris and her chosen running mate on their battleground state tour this week.
New polling showed her up on Trump by a point nationally and close in each of the swing states, a dramatic shift since Biden stepped down that could explain why Trump is lashing out about her identity.
Harris will kick off the battleground states tour having officially won enough delegates in a virtual roll call last Friday to secure the Democratic nomination. (Voting for delegates will remain open through today at 6 p.m., and the DNC said it would announce final results, including state-by-state results, following the close of the voting window.)
“We are going to win this election,” Harris said in a call to supporters during the roll call. “And it is going to take all of us, whether it is making calls, connecting with our communities, engaging online, or even talking with people where we go every day, whether it be to the grocery store or our church. We are going to talk with people about the fact that we are all in this together, and we stand together.”
While Harris was occupied with the veepstakes, President Biden spent a lowkey weekend in Wilmington, Delaware after he successfully secured the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans and a US green-card holder in a multilateral hostage exchange with Russia.
The president picked up a bouquet of flowers after mass on Saturday and attended a family dinner with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to celebrate one of his granddaughters' birthdays.
He told reporters on Friday that he had spoken to Harris about her vice presidential pick.
But if you think he was willing to publicly disclose the key qualities she should be looking for when she makes the decision, guess again.
“I’ll let her work that out,” he said before boarding Marine One to depart the White House.
Here’s a few news and notes to start your week:
— President Biden will speak to King Abdullah II of Jordan before returning to the White House to meet with his national security team about the developments in the Middle East. Vice President Harris will attend.
— Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) announced the special election to fill the late Sheila Jackson Lee’s now-vacant seat in Texas’s 18th congressional district will be on November 5, the date of the general election. The deadline for candidates to qualify for the ballot is August 22. Early voting begins on October 21.
The Houston-area district was first represented by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South. It was then represented by Jackson Lee from 1995 until her death last month. President Biden won the deep-blue district by more than 50 points in 2020.
Former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards announced she would run for the seat. Edwards lost to Jackson Lee, for whom she once worked, in a primary challenge this year.
— Congressional Democrats plan to keep Supreme Court reform front and center as they fight to win back the House and keep the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced the No Kings Act, a bill that would reaffirm that presidents and vice presidents do not have immunity for actions that violate federal criminal law and clarify that Congress, not the Supreme Court, determines to whom federal criminal laws may be applied. It would also remove the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to hear appeals related to presidential immunity.
And Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would empower Congress with new authorities to overturn judicial decisions that explicitly undermine the legislative intent of laws. The Restoring Congressional Authority Act would also reestablish the ability of public agencies to implement laws passed by Congress without fear of unreasonable interference by conservative judges.
The Schumer bill is a legislative alternative to a reform President Biden backed last week to ban immunity for crimes a former president committed in office following a controversial Supreme Court decision in favor of former President Trump earlier this summer, which would require a two-thirds vote of the House and the Senate is required to propose an amendment and ratification from three-fourths of states. (Biden also endorsed 18-year term limits for justices and a binding code of ethics for the court.)
The Wyden bill is a direct response to the recent Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Supreme Court decision, which overruled the Chevron doctrine—a 1984 precedent that required federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an unambiguous or unclear statute.
— Related: The Senate last week unanimously approved the JUDGES Act, which will create 66 new federal district courtships to keep up with the immense workload.
— Sen. Wyden and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the Health Workforce Innovation Act to address the persistent shortage of health professionals by providing federal support for innovative, community-led partnerships to educate and train more health care workers, especially in rural and underserved communities.
— Wyden and Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) introduced a bill to eliminate the Selective Service, which runs an annual budget of more than $31 million per year, preparing for a draft that has not occurred since 1973.
— Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) last week introduced the Bivens Act, legislation that allows citizens to recover damages for constitutional violations committed against them by federal officials, including at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, FBI, Department of Justice and federal prison officials. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the Senate companion of the bill last week as well.
— The House Republican-proposed farm bill would increase the federal deficit by $33 million over the next decade, according to a new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. Hill Democrats, to no surprise, seized on the CBO analysis:
“The CBO score is the latest evidence that Republicans have problems with their farm bill and will need Democrats to pass it,” Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement. “Only by working together can we make progress. Republicans must return to the negotiating table and work with Democrats to craft a truly bipartisan farm bill.”
Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the retiring chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, added that the CBO score shows that the House GOP proposal is not paid for and relies on magic math and wishful thinking.
“My door is open, and I have demonstrated a willingness to think creatively and bring in new investments outside of the farm bill,” she said in a statement. “If we work together, I know we can finish our work, but we are running out of time. I urge my colleagues to join me.”
ICYMI: “Dems brace for fierce farm bill battle”
— Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill that would update the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, a 1978 law former President Jimmy Carter signed into law that established your rights and liabilities and the responsibilities of all participants in the electronic funds transfer process.
The bill—entitled the Protecting Consumers from Payment Scams Act—would protect consumers from being defrauded into initiating a payment sent to a bad actor, losing funds through fraudulent bank wire transfers, and having their accounts frozen or closed without explanation.
The Federal Trade Commission received 2.6 million fraud complaints in 2023, resulting in an estimated $10 billion in reported losses. The lawmakers say their legislation would make it harder for scammers who exploit various payment systems such as mobile wallets, payment apps, and wire transfers to steal money from unsuspecting consumers.
— The Justice Department and FTC announced they filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance in a California federal court for violating children’s online safety law in connection with the popular social app.
The complaint alleges that from 2019 to date TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts and to create, view, and share content with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. It also claims TikTok collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents—even for accounts that were created in the app’s “Kids Mode.”
And when parents found their children’s accounts and requested TikTok delete the accounts and associated information, TikTok often did not comply. The government also alleges TikTok had inadequate internal policies and processes for identifying and deleting accounts created by children.
The allegations, if proven true in court, would breach the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits website operators from knowingly collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under the age of 13 unless they provide notice to and obtain consent from those children’s parents. The Senate passed a bill to update COPPA last week and Congress approved legislation in April that would remove TikTok from US app stores if its China-based owner refuses to fully divest of the app within nine months.
— Ahead of former President Trump’s rally in Atlanta on Saturday, the DNC launched a digital homepage takeover to taunt him for backing out of a debate with Vice President Harris. The DNC says it will activate the takeovers in the local newspapers of the states he visits going forward.
The DNC also ran a mobile billboard on Trump’s history of racism in Atlanta following his racist remarks at the National Association of Black Journalists conference last week. The committee says the former president’s disrespect toward the Black community makes him unfit to lead the US.
Do you have questions about the election? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll find the answers.