The Latest: Harris, facing a crucial week, closes in on running mate pick

By The Associated Press

Vice President Kamala Harris, grappling with how to keep early 2024 Presidential election momentum alive, has begun a crucial week that includes her most critical decision yet: choosing a running mate.

While Harris had quickly secured enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee, delegates still had to participate in a “virtual roll call” to solidify her nomination.

Harris was the only candidate eligible to receive votes after no other candidate qualified by a deadline last week. She officially claimed the nomination Monday night when the DNC released final results.

Follow the AP’s Election-2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the Latest:

Harris formally secures the Democratic presidential nomination

Vice President Kamala Harris formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination late Monday — becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.

Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday night, with the party saying in a statement released just before midnight that 99% of delegates casting ballots had done so for Harris. It said it would next formally certify the vote before holding a celebratory roll call at the party’s convention later this month in Chicago.

Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance.

As soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.

Democratic strategist says Walz is ‘fired up’

A Minnesota Democratic strategist who attended a fundraiser in Minneapolis Monday described both Gov. Tim Walz and the audience of more than 300 as “fired up.”

“He had an energy, a vigor, an intensity in some of his remarks that really signaled, whether he’s on the ticket or not, he’s going to be deployed as an instrumental asset,” Abu Amara said by phone after the event.

“And it was an energetic room,” Amara said, noting some attending wore shirts emblazoned with “Walz for VP.”

Walz is on Vice President Kamala Harris’ shortlist of potential running mates.

“People connect on an instinctive level with him. That’s part of why he’s been so effective,” he said.

Gov. Tim Walz extols ‘politics of joy’ at Harris campaign event

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke before an energetic crowd Monday at a fundraiser in downtown Minneapolis. He didn’t drop any hints about Vice President Kamala Harris’ shortlist of potential running mates, but the governor touted a “politics of joy” that he hopes to spread on the campaign trail in support of her.

“We’ve got to run this campaign against the serious threat that’s there, but we have to do it every single day with a sense of joy,” Walz said. He also criticized Trump and Republicans who want to regulate what books children read and undermine abortion rights. “It wasn’t a slur to call these guys weird,” Walz said. “It was an observation.”

Walz was joined at the fundraiser by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, who praised his “humble beginnings” as a geography teacher and his background representing a rural district in Congress. “Tim has been in the news because the country and the world is seeing the guy we love so much,” Klobuchar said.

Ken Martin, Chairman of the Minnesota-Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said young people he’s spoken to on the campaign trail are “Walz pilled.”

And he’s cashed in on political domain names before

In 2011, five years before former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton selected Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to be her running mate, then Jeremy Peter Green — he took his wife’s last name — purchased ClintonKaine.com. He later offered the domain to the campaign for a hefty return, but they declined, so he sold it for $15,000 to a digital marketing company that turned out to be the Trump campaign. The website pushed anti-Clinton news with “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc” emblazoned at the bottom.

Eche says that he has not connected with the Harris campaign, but notes that Walz is his favorite of Harris’ potential VP picks.

Eche’s Walz website is now simply a blank chartreuse with the governor’s name in lower-case black letters (his wife’s idea), a callback to the artist Charlie XCX labeling Harris “brat” in a tweet.

Despite being a supporter and what happened to his Clinton site, Eche has no pause in selling his latest site back to the Harris campaign.

“The Harris campaign has hundreds of millions of dollars, so if they don’t buy their own domain, that is kind of on them,” he says. “I’ve got to sell it to somebody. I know I could just donate it, but that is not really how this works. People with billboards aren’t donating their billboards to the campaign. It is just a property basically.”

The cyber squatter who owns the HarrisWalz.com website

In 2020, Jeremy Green Eche took a chance and purchased the website HarrisWalz.com for $8.99 when the would-be vice president was in the midst of a primary campaign for president.

“I just tried to grab her name and all the heartland governors I could think of,” he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. Four years later, if Harris selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Eche would be willing to sell it — and a slate of over a dozen other Harris website domains — for $15,000.

Eche is a 36-year-old trademark lawyer in Brooklyn, New York, and a cyber squatter, someone who buys a domain with someone else’s name or brand in it for very little money, hoping to sell it back to that person or brand for a large profit down the line. It is also called domain investing.

Eche owns at least 15 websites tied to Harris and her selection of a possible running mate. In addition to Walz, he also owns harrispritzker.com, a nod to Illinois governor JB Pritzker; harrisevers.com, for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers; harrisfetterman.com, for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman; harriswarnock.com, for Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock; and several others.

Secretaries of state urge Elon Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading election misinformation on X

Five secretaries of state are urging Elon Musk to fix an AI chatbot on the social media platform X, saying in a letter sent Monday that it has spread election misinformation.

The top election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington told Musk that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.

While Grok is only available to subscribers to the premium versions of X, the misinformation was shared across multiple social media platforms and reached millions of people, according to the letter. The bogus ballot deadline information from the chatbot also referenced Alabama, Indiana, Ohio and Texas, although their secretaries of state did not sign the letter. Grok continued to repeat the false information for 10 days before it was corrected, the secretaries said.

The letter urged X to immediately fix the chatbot “to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.” That would include directing Grok to send users to CanIVote.org, a voting information website run by the National Association of Secretaries of State, when asked about U.S. elections.

Who heads up Project 2025?

A chief architect of Project 2025 — the controversial conservative blueprint to remake the federal government — Russell Vought is likely to be appointed to a high-ranking post in a second Donald Trump administration. And he’s been drafting a so-far secret “180-Day Transition Playbook” to speed the plan’s implementation to avoid a repeat of the chaotic start that dogged Trump’s first term.

Among the small cadre of Trump advisers who has a mechanic’s understanding of how Washington operates, Vought has advised influential conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, held a top post in the Trump White House and later established his own pro-Trump think tank. Now, he’s being mentioned as a candidate to be Trump’s White House chief of staff, one of the most powerful positions in government.

Led by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a detailed 920-page handbook for governing under the next Republican administration. A whirlwind of hard-right ambitions, its proposals range from ousting thousands of civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists to reversing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medications used in abortions.

Trump revives false claim about Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s parentage

In a conversation with streamer and influencer Adin Ross, former President Trump brought up an old, false theory that former Cuban President Fidel Castro is the father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“They say he’s the son of Fidel Castro and could be. Anything is possible in this world,” he said, before saying that Trudeau has become more progressive and that a conservative candidate would be able to defeat him.

The Canadian government has denied this story in the past. Trudeau’s parents never visited Cuba until several years after Trudeau was born.

The comment may come across as an insult of a critical national ally. Relations between the U.S. and Canada faced moments of tension during the Trump administration after the former president suggested new tariffs against Canada and he and top aides assailed Trudeau as a “weak” and “dishonest.”

Former Republican governor of New Jersey endorses Harris

Former Republican governor of New Jersey and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman was among a handful of Republicans who backed Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House.

Whitman, who was the first woman elected governor of New Jersey, has been a prominent critic of Donald Trump.

“I was a proud Republican, but Donald Trump is unfit to lead our nation,” she said in a statement. “It’s time to move forward by electing Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Whitman has roots in the same county in New Jersey where Trump’s Bedminster golf club is located. Whitman endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020 over Trump as well.

Harris postponing Georgia trip as Tropical Storm Debby moves across the region

Vice President Kamala Harris is postponing a scheduled trip to Georgia amid the ongoing effects of Tropical Storm Debby.

Harris’ campaign said her stop planned in Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday, was being put off due to the storm.

Harris is choosing her running mate and will introduce the choice during a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. The pair will then travel together starting Wednesday to a series of key battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. But the Georgia leg of the original journey has been pulled down, for now.

Debby made landfall in Florida on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane and was expected to bring potentially record-setting rainfall to South Carolina and Georgia as it heads east.

Harris’ nomination to become official after online balloting ends Monday night

Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination will become official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ends Monday night and the party announces the results. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure President Joe Biden would appear on the ballot in every state.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share has an unfavorable view of her.

But more Democrats say they’re satisfied with her candidacy compared with that of Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.

Usha Vance defense husbands ‘childless cat ladies’ comment

Usha Vance says her husband’s “childless cat ladies comment” was “a quip made in service” of a bigger point the GOP vice presidential contender was trying to make about American political society, not a slight intended at U.S. citizens without children.

Sen. JD Vance’s wife made the comment Monday during an interview that aired on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends.”

Usha Vance also noted that she helped her husband with his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, while she wrote hers without his assistance.

Asked about her husband on a personal level, Usha Vance also noted that he “has a lot of really dorky interests” without going into specifics.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in court to fight lawsuit saying he falsely claimed to live in NY

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at a New York court Monday to fight a lawsuit alleging he falsely claimed to live in New York as he sought to get on the ballot in the state.

Kennedy appeared and sat at his attorneys’ table during legal arguments Monday morning, ahead of a civil trial expected to start later in the day in the state capital of Albany. Under state election law, a judge is set to decide the case without a jury.

The lawsuit alleges Kennedy’s nominating petition falsely said his residence was in New York’s northern suburbs while he actually has lived in Los Angeles since 2014, when he married “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines.

The suit seeks to invalidate his petition. The case was brought by Clear Choice PAC, a super PAC led by supporters of Democratic President Joe Biden.

Gov. Josh Shapiro on status of Harris running mate selection: ‘I got nothing for you, man’

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro didn’t say anything about the status of the vice presidential candidate selection Monday morning as he arrived at the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

“I got nothing for you, man,” the first-term Democrat said and told an Associated Press reporter “have a great day” as he headed into the governor’s offices, flanked by an aide and several state troopers.

The officers and press secretary Manuel Bonder were waiting for Shapiro when he arrived just after 11 a.m. in a black SUV.

Trump blames Harris and Biden for drop in markets

Former President Donald Trump is blaming Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for the tumbling of markets in Wall Street and around the world.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, made a series of posts on his network Truth Social, attacking his opponent Harris.

“Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that DESTROYED San Francisco and California, as a whole,” he wrote, and is labeling the plunging market the “Kamala Crash.”

In another post, Trump called it a “preview of the world markets without Donald J. Trump in the White House.”

The S&P 500 was down 3.1% in early trading with rising fears about a slowing U.S. economy. Japan’s Nikkei 225 helped start Monday by plunging 12.4% for its worst day since the Black Monday crash of 1987.

JD Vance: Harris’ running mate pick doesn’t matter to him

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, told Fox News on Sunday that Harris’ pick doesn’t matter to him.

“Whoever she chooses, the problem is going to be Kamala Harris’ record and Kamala Harris’ policies,” he said, adding “it’s not going to be good for the country.”

Harris will begin a tour of 7 battleground states

Harris and her running mate — whoever that is — will launch into an aggressive, seven-state battleground tour that begins in Philadelphia on Tuesday and winds through Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Her early rallies have attracted enthusiastic thousands. Campaign officials say each stop will be loaded with local election officials, religious leaders, union members and more in an effort to show the diversity of her coalition.

Campaign officials are aware that momentum can be fleeting and are working to capitalize on the energy now, while managing expectations by continuing to emphasize that the race with Republican nominee Donald Trump is tight.

VP’s campaign launches ‘Republicans for Harris’

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launched “Republicans for Harris” as she looks to win over Republican voters put off by Donald Trump’s candidacy.

The program will be a “campaign within a campaign,” according to Harris’ team, using well-known Republicans to activate their networks, with a particular emphasis on primary voters who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Hospitality workers’ union endorses Harris

The hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a rejoinder to Republican Donald Trump’s effort to woo restaurant and hotel workers by promising to make their tips tax-free.

The endorsement includes a commitment by the union to have its members knock on more than 3.3 million doors for Harris in swing states.