Morning Report — Harris leaps into 105-day sprint

Vice President Harris demonstrated she can fill campaign coffers, attract a boisterous Milwaukee campaign crowd of 3,000 people and lash former President Trump as an extremist and convicted lawbreaker — themes that unite a party that was in disarray just days ago. 

“In this campaign, I promise you, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week,” Harris said as a Wisconsin audience energetically chanted their support Tuesday.

What Democrats want to see next are Harris’s presidential running mate (drawn from a reported list of white men), the official party nomination, and importantly, polls that might suggest she’s more competitive than President Biden against Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

The New York Times: The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday described a timeline and process that may swiftly lock in Harris’s nomination. 

Biden will speak to the nation at 8 p.m. ET to explain his historic decision to withdraw from the contest. And he’ll repeat his Sunday endorsement of Harris for president, which has been echoed by House and Senate Democratic leaders.

The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) endorsed Harris for president.

Harris’s challenges, despite the evident enthusiasm within her party and her focus on the future, remain steep: Her political roots are in liberal California, an instant GOP target. Americans have never elected a female president, let alone a woman of color. Her 2019 presidential bid fell apart quickly. And her first two years as vice president were notably rocky. Republicans want to cast Harris as the “czar” of the Biden administration’s border and immigration mistakes and plaster her name on economic policies conservatives tell voters are to blame for high inflation.   

Trump, who benefited from Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month in Atlanta, said Tuesday he’s willing to debate Harris more than once before Election Day. He will campaign today in North Carolina with Vance, who calls Harris “a million times worse” than Biden.

GOP STRATEGY: The Trump campaign script, envisioned to take aim at Biden, is under renovation. Thus far, the former president and his running mate are trying to wrap Biden’s policies and governing around Harris as one and the same. 

Can Trump and his vice-presidential choice attack a female candidate without forfeiting the votes of women? Hillary Clinton captured the popular vote in 2016, but Trump narrowly defeated her in three key states in the Electoral College. Trump has criticized Harris, 59, on personal terms, calling her “Dumb as a Rock” on social media, a brand of confrontation that his base applauds and emulates.

Nonetheless, House GOP leaders warned colleagues in a Tuesday meeting to holster the personal barbs when talking about Harris. 

“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) added, saying Harris will be held to account for Biden’s record. “This has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the competence of the person running for president, the relative strength of the two candidates and what ideas they have on how to solve America’s problems. And I think in that comparison, we’ll win in a landslide,” Johnson told Politico.

The Associated Press: A 2021 clip of Vance on Fox News criticizing Harris as “childless” tests Republicans’ new running mate.

Trump’s campaign is eager to slow Harris’s momentum and challenge the Democratic Party’s rapid resuscitation in the course of a week. It filed a complaint Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission accusing Biden and Harris of violating campaign finance laws by rolling the president’s campaign funds over to Harris. The Trump campaign accused the Biden-Harris campaign of “attempted fraud” by using FEC forms to “rename and repurpose” its campaign committee. The commission may not resolve the matter before Election Day and Trump’s legal team seeks a Justice Department referral.

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LEADING THE DAY

MORE IN POLITICS

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D), 70, convicted of federal bribery and corruption, will resign his seat in late August. His decision to quit months before the end of his third term will likely allow Democrats to avoid a potentially ugly intraparty fight. Once Menendez leaves office on Aug. 20, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is expected to appoint a replacement who would serve until January.

Menendez maintained his innocence during a trial that featured tales of gold bars, stacks of cash and a car, capped by felony charges that he worked as a foreign agent on behalf of Egypt. His resignation almost certainly ends a five-decade political career that began as mayor of his hometown, Union City, N.J., his election and reelection to the Senate and his chairmanship of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

REPUBLICANS REVAMPING their campaign messages in wake of Harris’s ascent to the nomination are facing risks. Some members are invoking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) politics to argue she is unqualified — taking an inherent swipe at her race and gender. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called Harris a “DEI hire.” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) similarly told local media that Democrats “feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.” Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, would mark a number of historic firsts if she won the presidency (The Hill). 

But Republican leaders are urging members to stick to policy arguments, not personal or demographic ones. “This election … is going to be about policies, not personalities. This isn’t personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” Speaker Johnson said in a press conference Tuesday. “Her ethnicity, her gender, has nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

K STREET QUESTIONS: Vance’s meteoric rise from first-term senator to vice-presidential candidate in just two short years leaves few clues for lobbyists looking to decode the junior senator’s policy positions, and little footing for those trying to make inroads with a potential second Trump White House. The Hill’s Taylor Giorno writes that a former senior White House official said the decision to tap Vance “is likely a shocking pick to the D.C. establishment who were rooting for a more conventional VP pick.” 

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ZOOM IN

ADMINISTRATION

It seemed inevitable. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday following searing questions from House lawmakers this week and the announced formation of a bipartisan task force in the House to probe the service’s performance and the assassination attempt onTrump during a Pennsylvania rally last week. Trump said the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. One rallygoer was killed, and two others were critically wounded. The gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas thanked Cheatle for her “lifelong devotion to our country” in a Tuesday statement and named Secret Service Deputy Director Ronald Rowe, a 24-year veteran of the agency, as acting director. 

“I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” Cheatle said in a Tuesday email to staff reported by The Associated Press. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”

She was director for less than two years.

The Hill: A bill from Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) would require Senate confirmation for the director of the Secret Service, paving the way for the upper chamber to weigh in on who should lead the agency.

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ELSEWHERE

CONGRESS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress today, nine months into Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The address has laid bare deep divisions among Democrats over the war in Gaza. The list of lawmakers not attending Netanyahu’s speech has grown steadily in the last few weeks. Notably, Harris will not preside over his speech; that job falls to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Harris, who will be traveling during the speech, is expected to meet with Netanyahu separately. The Israeli prime minister is slated to meet with Biden on Thursday in Washington, and then head to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump on Friday.

Frustration with Netanyahu’s leadership has been boiling for months, writes The Hill’s Brad Dress, with both Schumer and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calling for his resignation. Those concerns have only been compounded by Netanyahu’s failure to secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas, including a plan from Biden in May that Democrats want to see implemented. 

Netanyahu’s visit comes after the U.S., Israel and the United Arab Emirates held a meeting in Abu Dhabi last week to discuss plans for Gaza after the war ends, Axios reports, suggesting Netanyahu is beginning to recognize the need for a realistic plan for how the enclave might be governed after the war.

REPUBLICANS’ AMBITIONS to finish annual government funding bills by next week are crumbling as a tight schedule and intraparty rifts threaten efforts to approve their spending blueprints for most of 2025. Anticipating failure, GOP leaders decided to skip a final passage vote Tuesday night of their measure to fund the Department of Energy and federal water infrastructure programs (The Hill and Politico).

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THE CLOSER

And finally … A broiling planet and hot summer have forced homeowners with swimming pools, as well as hotels and community centers with pools, to look for ways to cool the temperature of water that’s no longer refreshing. 

Attempted solutions? Tossing huge blocks of ice into the water, covering pools with canopies, adding fountains, draining pools and refilling with cooler water that lasts a few days and investing in expensive water chillers, according to The Wall Street Journal.  

“The pool becomes unusable when it gets over 100 degree temperatures” outside, said Jake Doring, operations manager for Glacier Pool Coolers, a company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that makes pool chillers for residential and commercial customers. 

Water reminder: Close to 21 percent of the lower 48 states are experiencing drought this week. 

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