US Vice President Kamala Harris interviewed three top candidates — Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, US Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro — at her Washington residence on Sunday ahead of a final decision on her running mate.
Harris was expected to announce her choice as early as yesterday, ahead of her first public appearance with the vice presidential nominee today in Philadelphia.
The Harris campaign is also planning a social media announcement featuring the duo, officials familiar with the arrangements said.
Photo: Reuters
Harris met with her vetting team on Saturday, including former US attorney general Eric Holder, whose law firm Covington & Burling scrutinized the finances and background of potential running mates. Holder and his office made in-depth presentations on each of the finalists, sources familiar with the process said.
Harris met US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for 90 minutes on Friday and was also meeting candidates online, the sources said.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker are the other candidates in contention for the job.
The candidates were to be informed last night or this morning whether they were picked, the sources said.
The choice of a running mate is one of the most consequential decisions of Harris’ political career, as she hastily pulls together a campaign to challenge former US president Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election after US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.
Her shortlist includes all white men with a record of winning over rural, white or independent voters.
Harris’ decision also influences the future direction of the Democratic Party, elevating the chosen candidate to the front of the line for future presidential contests.
Shapiro, one of the top contenders, has faced sharp criticism from the left of the party, especially progressive groups and pro-Palestinian activists, over his support for Israel and his handling of college protests sparked by the war in Gaza.
“There must be a policy correction on Gaza and there must be a pro-working class policy agenda, including a black agenda,” said Nina Turner, cochair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign and a fellow at The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, a progressive research group. “Picking Governor Shapiro as a running mate risks closing that door.”
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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