Good morning, Early Birds. We have big news here. Theo’s wife gave birth to a beautiful baby last week. He’s going to be taking well-deserved parental leave for the next several weeks. A name you should know well, Marianna Sotomayor, will be filling in for Theo while he’s gone. Congrats, Theo! Send tips to earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today’s edition … the Secret Service director will appear before House Oversight to answer questions about the assassination attempt on Trump … Republicans prepare legal challenges over handing campaign cash to Harris … but first …
It’s already hard to imagine any nominee other than Harris
It might not be too early to call Vice President Harris the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Support for Harris snowballed rapidly in the hours after President Biden announced yesterday he would bow out of the 2024 race amid intense pressure within his party. Some have called for an “open process” to choose the next nominee, but the party is quickly coalescing around Harris.
Advertisem*nt
- Biden endorsed her to be the party’s nominee in a post on X, writing: “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made.”
- The Biden-Harris campaign officially filed with the Federal Election Commission to become the Harris for President campaign. She has inherited the campaign’s roughly $100 million in cash on hand and the entire campaign infrastructure.
- On an all-staff campaign call yesterday, Biden’s top campaign aide, Jen O’Malley Dillon, told the staff that they all still have jobs and that Biden’s 81-million vote coalition is “there for Kamala Harris.”
- The party is rallying around her. More than 170 House and Senate Democrats have backed Harris as the presidential nominee, according to The Washington Post’s endorsem*nt tracker.
- State delegations are quickly coming out in support of Harris, including from New Hampshire, South Carolina and Louisiana.
- Fundraisers say donors are responding enthusiastically. Donors are “all in and … ready to go,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of the anti-Trump super PAC American Bridge.
Most critical to Harris’s path to winning the nomination next month at the Democratic convention in Chicago: No viable candidate has stepped forward to challenge her. Starting up a presidential campaign to challenge Harris in mere weeks would be a nearly impossible feat.
Potential challengers including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper have endorsed Harris. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she won’t challenge Harris.
Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) is the only one so far who has opened that door, saying he’s considering becoming a Democrat again to run, our colleagues Liz Goodwin and Amy Wang report. But we are extremely skeptical he would actually run for president this year.
Harris is working to reconnect with her former colleagues on Capitol Hill. She spent most of Sunday asking for their support and pledging that she will do her best to “earn” and “win” the nomination next month.
Advertisem*nt
Harris called Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). She also called nearly all the chairs of House Democratic caucuses — the Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific American and Progressive caucuses as well as the New Democrat Coalition — to ask for their support. Members of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition didn’t receive a call as of late last night.
Harris, as well as her current and former staffers, also called rank-and-file members to either thank them for their support or ask them to publicly get behind her.
But key leaders in the party haven’t yet endorsed her, including House and Senate Democratic leaders, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama.
The leaders of the party are waiting to see where the chips fall. They are reluctant to make it look like a coronation by party elites, especially as the base expresses fury that donors and elected officials were pushing Biden out. Pelosi told colleagues in the California delegation this month that Harris should win by popular approval, fearing that crowning her the nominee could anger Democratic voters. (But she also told members that if the time came, the delegation should promptly defend and whip support for Harris.)
Advertisem*nt
Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) said Democratic members of Congress aren’t ignoring the will of primary voters.
“They voted for Biden-Harris,” Kuster told us.
What about vice president?
The bigger question, aides we speak to say, is who will be the vice-presidential nominee.
Leigh Ann and our colleagues reported over the weekend that Democratic donors had started a vetting process independent of the campaign. They had already contacted Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. And they are interested in Cooper, Whitmer and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
In recent weeks, Harris has appeared with many of the Democrats who are being viewed as potential running mates should she take over the top of the ticket. A day after the debate, Harris was in Nevada with Kelly. She has twice appeared at campaign events in North Carolina with Cooper, and she campaigned with Shapiro last weekend in Pennsylvania.
Republican response
Former president Donald Trump has to recalibrate his attacks, and he has already started. In a rally over the weekend, before Biden announced he was stepping aside, Trump devoted some of his stump speech to attacking Harris, mixing in gender stereotypes.
Advertisem*nt
“I call her Laughing Kamala. Have you watched her laugh? She is crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh. No, she’s crazy. She’s nuts,” Trump said.
Republican attacks against Harris are quickly coming into focus, none more than “Border Czar Kamala.” Biden put Harris in charge of diplomatic efforts with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, known as the Northern Triangle countries, to try to alleviate migration to the U.S. southern border. But Republicans are misconstruing her role and attacking her as being in charge of the border, hoping to make it a key weakness in her candidacy.
House Republicans may take a vote this week on GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik’s resolution that would condemn Harris’s role as “border czar” and show that she “owns this border crisis.”
As for Biden, House Republicans labeled the president’s decision to step aside as proof he is unfit to serve and quickly began calling for him to resign, we report with our colleague Mariana Alfaro.
What else to read on the shake-up in the Democratic nomination:
Kamala Harris has a career of comebacks. She has 107 days to do it again. By Peter Jamison and Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
Advertisem*nt
The Democrats who have endorsed Kamala Harris to replace Biden as nominee. By Hayden Godfrey, Adrian Blanco, Kati Perry, Hannah Dormido and Eric Lau.
Manchin weighs options after Biden exits presidential race. By Liz Goodwin and Amy B Wang.
Biden dropped out. This is how it happened. By Michael Scherer, Tyler Pager, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Yasmeen Abutaleb.
Biden’s historic move sets Democrats and the country on an uncertain path. By Dan Balz.
World leaders hail Biden’s ‘brave’ decision to end his 2024 campaign. By Jennifer Hassan and Anika Arora Seth.
As Biden ends campaign, focus shifts to health for remainder of his term. By Dan Diamond.
What we’re watching
At the White House
Harris will make her first public appearance this morning since Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. She’ll speak on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate NCAA championship teams.
In Congress
This morning, the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, will appear before the House Oversight Committee, where she’ll face questions over her agency’s failure to prevent the assassination attempt against Trump. Some House lawmakers — a majority of Republicans — have called on her to resign. We’ll be watching for whether she shares any new details about the agency’s response to the attack.
Advertisem*nt
Cheatle is expected to say this, according to prepared remarks: “I take full responsibility for any security lapse. As an agency, we are fully cooperating with the FBI’s investigation, the oversight you have initiated here, and conducting our own internal mission assurance review at my direction. Likewise, we will cooperate with the pending external review and the DHS Office of the Inspector General.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is also expected to officially announce members to a bipartisan task force established to investigate the assassination attempt on Monday, which should be formalized with a House vote later this week.
On the trail
At 8 p.m., Fox News will air the first joint interview with Trump and his newly minted running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. The interview took place before Biden announced he was leaving the race. We’ll see whether host Jesse Watters asks any challenging questions — such as probing Vance about his prior criticisms of Trump.
The campaign
Republicans prep legal challenges
As Biden tries to hand over the committee’s millions in remaining cash to Harris, Republican lawyers and operatives are saying “not so fast,” our colleague Maeve Reston reports.
Advertisem*nt
“Several campaign finance lawyers aligned with Republicans argue that the campaign does not have legal authority to hand off the campaign to Harris — and that the maneuver is all but certain to be challenged before the FEC or in a court of law.”
“Charlie Spies, a prominent GOP campaign finance lawyer, said both Biden and Harris would have to have been officially nominated by the Democratic Party at its convention next month before any kind of handoff could occur,” Maeve reports.
- “Biden can’t transfer his money to Harris because it was raised under his own name, and there is no legal mechanism for it to have been raised jointly with Harris before they were their party’s nominees,” said Spies, who advised the Republican National Committee before stepping down from that role this year.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a key backer of Biden during the past tumultuous weeks, warned about Republican legal challenges resulting in Democrats losing access to state ballots. But Democratic campaign finance experts dismiss the legal challenges, Maeve reports.
Dara Lindenbaum, an FEC commissioner appointed by Biden, offered the opposite view: “The Biden for President Committee is the campaign committee for President Biden and Vice President Harris,” she said. “The funds stay with her so long as she remains on the ticket.”
The prosecutor vs. the felon
The last time Harris ran for president, she drew on her cred as a former prosecutor to attack Trump. Now she may get a second chance — and this time, she’ll get to lob her attacks against an actual felon, our colleague Ashley Parker notes.
Advertisem*nt
“Harris’s team spent Sunday reacting to the news from Biden — who put out a statement supporting her as the Democratic nominee to replace him — and preparing her own bid,” Ashley writes.
“But in the weeks following the stumbling June 27 presidential debate that sparked Biden’s eventual downfall, former advisers and people close to Harris — a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general — said that embracing the role of prosecutor in chief against Trump would certainly be a key part of her message and appeal.”
- “This is someone who can clearly and forcefully articulate the case against Trump,” said Jim Margolis, a senior adviser to Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign. “That’s the prosecutor in her. And she’s someone who in a debate can move with the conversation and strike back hard — no notecards, just brainpower.”
When Harris was running for president in 2020, her slogan was “Kamala Harris, for the people” — the line she used to introduce herself in California court, Ashley notes. And one of her key ads then explicitly drew a contrast between herself and Trump, with the narrator intoning: “She prosecuted sex predators; he is one. She shut down for-profit colleges that swindled Americans; he was a for-profit college — literally.”
Poll Watch
How Harris performs against Trump in election polls
Our colleages Hannah Recht and Emily Guskin took a look at 11 post-debate polls pitting Harris against Trump. They found little difference between how she and Biden stack up against him.
- In a Washington Post average of 11 post-debate polls, Trump edged out Harris by 1.5 percentage points, only slightly less than his 1.9-point lead over Biden in the same polls.
- A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll this month found 70 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they would be “satisfied” if Biden stepped aside and Harris became the Democratic nominee.
- In that same poll, 29 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents volunteered Harris as their choice for the party’s nomination if Biden stepped aside in an open-ended question, while 7 percent mentioned California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), 4 percent named former first lady Michelle Obama and 3 percent each named Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
From The Post Live stage
Mark these programs on your calendar:
- Monday 3 p.m. Eastern: Yasmeen Abutaleb interviews Democratic strategist David Axelrod. Sign up here.
- Tuesday 3 p.m.: Leigh Ann interviews Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.). Sign up here.
- Friday 9 a.m.: Jonathan Capehart hosts an expanded special edition of Post Live’s weekly show “First Look.” Sign up here.
Viral
Democrats are Team Coconuts.
Madam Vice President, we are ready to help. pic.twitter.com/y8baSx44FL
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) July 22, 2024
Thanks for reading. You can follow Leigh Ann and Marianna on X: @LACaldwellDC and @MariannaReports.