There were hip gyrations from the stage. The playlist included “Girls in the Hood,” “Mamushi,” “Savage,” and “Body.” The candidate quoted Quavo.

A Joe Biden rally this was not.

If there was ever any indication of the head-snapping transition that Democrats have gone through, it was the one that occurred on Tuesday night in Atlanta when 10,000 people danced and cheered to Megan Thee Stallion before Vice President Harris took the stage for a campaign rally to the strains of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” Biden forecast this kind of a change four years ago when he talked about a bridge to a new generation, but that transformation didn’t take place until the past two weeks when he officially relinquished his grip on the party.

In Atlanta, the baton was fully passed to Kamala Harris. This was now her party. Her campaign. Her playlist.

In fact, Joe Biden never came up.

From the music to the outfits — and, most tellingly, the crowd size — it was clearer than ever that the shift to a new Democratic generation was complete.

By and large, it is the same campaign aides who were putting on Biden events that are now in charge of Harris ones. But the types of crowds interested in attending Harris events — and the musicians willing to perform at them — are very different. The new playlist, even if controlled by the same staffers who curated Biden’s soundtrack (a mix including Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom”), has a certain Harris flair, and is put together based on her personal input.

Campaign aides say they are still thinking about how Harris events will be different, and they are determined to not only do large-scale rallies but want to put her in smaller settings as well. The coming days will provide more of a test case as Harris picks a running mate and launches a seven-state tour that will probably include a range of venues.

Harris is attempting to harness the surge in organic enthusiasm to display a show of force around her campaign launch. Aides want to do so in ways that are not only helpful to the vice president’s case but also work to get under Trump’s skin (The Trump campaign has scheduled a rally on Saturday in the same Atlanta arena that Harris filled on Tuesday).

The crowds to date in the Harris for president campaign are simply more energized. They’re bigger and louder. And it is a different tapestry than the Democratic Party has presented to a general electorate since at least 2016.

Biden is the candidate who works rope lines and owns small rooms, but has never been known as the one who can fill large arenas. Filling a middle school gymnasium, as he did last month, was reason for boasting, and success for him is the amount of time he spends on a rope line after the event rather than the number of total supporters who attend it. And four years ago, during the height of a global pandemic, the closest the president came to having large rallies was events where cars gathered, at a social distance, and honked their horns.

Harris, at least in the opening weeks of her candidacy, is drawing the kind of energy and excitement that Barack Obama drew in 2008 or that Donald Trump brought in 2016.

While Democrats have long had strong ties to the entertainment industry — attracting actors as donors and musicians as opening acts — the octogenarian who spent half a century as a politician and rarely dips into pop culture was not a source for inspiration. Biden’s prized possession is a car built in 1967 (a Corvette Stingray) and his favorite movie was made in 1981 (“Chariots of Fire”)

Biden often quotes Abraham Lincoln or Irish poets in his speeches. On Tuesday night, Harris was quoting hip-hop artists in hers.

“Trump … Does not walk the walk,” she said. “Or as my friend Quavo would say: He does not walk it like he talks it.”

The crowd ate it up.

Biden often says the Black community was among those that “brung me to the dance.” But he most definitely did not have the playlist, or energy — or the dance — that came from Atlanta.

The rally marked a debut of sorts for Megan on C-SPAN, which streamed the event live. She took the stage amid flashing strobe lights, and was dressed in a blue pantsuit, a white shirt with exposed midriff, and a blue tie. She riffed on one of Harris’s strongest campaign planks: abortion rights.

“Our future president — let’s get this done, Atlanta,” she told the cheering crowd. “We’re about to make history with the first female president. The first Black female president. Let’s get this done, honey.”

As she sang her song “Body” she told the crowd: “Now, I know my ladies in the crowd love their bodies — and if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.”

Harris’s remarks were stylistically different from Biden’s, with her own cadence and without verbal digressions and the storytelling that Biden often relishes. But at the core, many of her policy aims did not significantly diverge from the ones that Biden promotes.

“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”

She talked about the need to tame inflation, and she spoke in sharp tones about immigration.

“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said. “Which goes to show, Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself. I will bring back the border security bill, and I will sign it into law and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”

She mocked Trump’s policy positions — called some of the things from him and his running mate “just plain weird” — and poked fun at her GOP rival for not fully committing to a debate. While Biden also often mentions Trump, she seemed to take more glee in poking at her new rival.

“Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider, to meet me on the debate stage,” she said, looking into the cameras. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you got something to say, say it to my face.’”

Harris also echoed what has been a signature line in her brief time as a candidate, as she recalled her time as a prosecutor taking on “predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”

“So hear me when I say,” she added, pausing for effect. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

In Atlanta and elsewhere, there are calls-and-response. There is a rollicking feeling that often doesn’t exist amid polite applause at Biden’s events. When Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) on Tuesday night chided Trump for being “too scared to debate Vice President Harris,” the crowd began chanting, “Too scared! Too scared!”

When Harris referenced Trump’s legal problems and guilty verdicts, the crowd yelled, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”

Biden has acknowledged his milquetoast taste.

“Isn’t it really dull when you have a president known for two things: Ray-Ban sunglasses and chocolate chip ice cream?” he said last month during a gathering in Harrisburg, Pa., as he sought to inject life into his reelection campaign.

Two weeks later, he was out of the race. And now he’s hoping to propel to victory a president known for things far less dull.

JD Vance, Donald Trump’s newly minted running mate, has posted his life on the internet for nearly two decades.

In 2005, while serving as a combat correspondent in Iraq, he started a blog. In 2012, he created his first public Spotify playlist, “Making Dinner,” which featured Backstreet Boys, Justin Bieber and Florence + The Machine. His Venmo account was public too, according to a report by Wired (his “friends” on the payment app included Tucker Carlson). He tweeted (and deleted). He Yelped. He started a second blog.

As the first major-party vice-presidential nominee from the millennial generation, Vance, who turns 40 on Friday, is also the first who grew up with the option of posting his every thought and feeling — his favorite music, his reviews of random businesses (“one of the best restaurants in Cincinnati or anywhere”), even his reflections on Game of Thrones (“I’m no Sun Tzu but color me skeptical of going after the supplies instead of the army”) — on the internet for all to see.

And like other millennials, Vance was a sort of internet pioneer, embracing new platforms (Financial transactions can be shared with friends? Cool!) without much apparent trepidation.

Younger Americans — members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha — were born into a world shaped by social media. But Vance and his contemporaries were born before social media existed, joined it as teens or young adults, and became the first generation to discover how what they posted could affect their lives and careers decades later.

Now Vance is becoming the first millennial to discover what it’s like to run for the vice presidency after a life lived online. Like many nominees before him, Vance made controversial comments on television and in public before joining the ticket that are now being reported in the press. But his pre-politics online presence is novel.

“Millennials have been moving through the professional world with this long digital trail. People have managed to make careers for themselves despite all the weird stuff they did when they were younger,” said Whitney Phillips, assistant professor of digital platforms and ethics at the University of Oregon. “But having this be a vice-presidential nominee is a very different kind of job than your average job. It raises the stakes, it raises the visibility.”

Many internet users — including some of the more “tech savvy and smart” millennials — began making more of their online content private around 2016, according to marketing generalist consultant Carissa Estreller.

Vance didn’t seem to catch that wave, although he did delete some tweets — his reactions to “Game of Thrones,” for example. His campaign declined to comment for this story but did not dispute the accounts were his.

The Republican vice-presidential nominee has faced criticism in recent weeks for his past comments on childless Americans and his transformation from a Trump critic to the former president’s running mate. Vance has moved to the right over the course of his political career and expressed shifting positions on gender, sexuality and race. These thoughts, too, were caught online, including in posts (“I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children”) and text messages that have been released by onetime friends.

“Part of the reason that people are scouring his online data trail is because of some of the more political positions he’s taken. It basically creates a target sign of what people would be looking for,” Phillips said. “Totally, there’s stuff from his past that’s getting kicked up to the surface, but the reason there’s interest is because of what he’s saying as an adult, and that sort of makes everything else retrospectively relevant to the conversation.”

Perhaps the most notable examples of Vance’s unrestrained millennial embrace of internet un-privacy — still public as of this writing — are canine in nature: In 2012, his dog, Casper, “created” a Facebook account.

Vance and his wife, Usha, adopted the puppy during their time at Yale Law School, said Dan Driscoll, a friend who overlapped with the couple for several years at Yale and now serves as a senior adviser to Vance’s campaign.

“I’m not sure who to vote for,” “Casper” posted in 2012. “I dislike Mitt Romney’s policies on dogs riding in cars, but I recently discovered that Obamacare doesn’t cover preexisting conditions for dogs. Is Ralph Nader running?”

Driscoll recalled the pair as extraordinarily devoted to the dog, heading home in the middle of every day to walk him and stepping in without complaint to clean up the pup’s frequent messes. Vance even carried the dog around on his chest in a carrier. Casper had some sort of esophageal problem, Driscoll said, leading the dog to vomit almost constantly.

“Casper … would just throw everything up on the floor, it made their house stink and it was constant,” Driscoll said. “I just remember [JD] constantly on his hands and knees cleaning that up.”

According to Vance’s Yelp profile, the couple’s canine struggles continued into 2022, nearly a decade after the couple graduated from Yale.

Vance rated a veterinary clinic in Cincinnati one star for its handling of a “sudden, serious” issue, calling it “one of the worst customer service experiences in the city.” (Vance didn’t love his experience with a babysitting service in the city, either.)

Casper is also, apparently, well read. A Goodreads account connected to Vance is named for the German shepherd. Among Casper’s top-rated books are Clarence Thomas’s memoir “My Grandfather’s Son,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “God and Man at Yale” and, of course, Vance’s own “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The abundance of online material available from Vance’s past can give voters “the illusion” of increased transparency and a sense that they know him better than other candidates, said Alex Turvy, who studies internet culture.

But in reality, “we might actually know less, because we’re distracted by the things we’re seeing there,” Turvy added. “With so much information available, it’s really easy to folks to cherry pick stuff. The ability to selectively pay attention to stuff could decrease folks’ willingness to consider a comprehensive view of him.”

Meryl Kornfield, Hannah Natanson, Aaron Schaffer and Chris Dehghanpoor contributed to this report.

PARIS — Fresh off her second gold medal win at the Paris Olympics, U.S. gymnast Simone Biles seemed to take a dig at Donald Trump with a social media post declaring: “I love my black job.”

The former president and Republican candidate has prompted criticism — and internet memes — for asserting without evidence during the June 27 debate that immigrants coming into the United States illegally are “taking Black jobs.”

Asked this week to explain what counts as a Black job, Trump said: “A Black job is anybody that has a job.”

In the same interview, at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump accused Vice President Harris of once hiding the Black heritage she has routinely highlighted in her career, escalating his attacks on the woman he is expected to face in November’s election.

Biles’s apparent dig Friday came in response to a post by Ricky Davila, a singer and songwriter, who had written: “Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job.”

Biles, the most decorated American gymnast in history, won her ninth Olympic medal in the women’s gymnastics all-around final Thursday.

Biles withdrew from competitions in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 for mental health reasons. While her withdrawal was widely applauded as courageous at the time, the public support prompted criticism from JD Vance (R-Ohio), now Trump’s running mate.

“I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society,” Vance said in comments that resurfaced this week.

Amy Wang contributed to this report.

Vice President Harris has narrowed her search for a running mate to six finalists and is planning to conduct interviews with them this weekend, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.

Those finalists are Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), the people said. Representatives for Beshear, Buttigieg and Shapiro confirmed that those officials had canceled previously scheduled plans for this weekend.

The vetting of Harris’s potential running mates — an arduous process that typically takes several months — has been condensed to two weeks, after President Biden made the extraordinary announcement July 21 that he would not seek reelection and that he would instead endorse Harris. Since then, Harris’s campaign has embarked on an unprecedented sprint, raising $310 million in July and quickly consolidating support from across the Democratic Party.

Harris is also closing in on the official nomination: Delegates to the Democratic National Convention began online voting for their party’s nominee on Thursday, a process that is scheduled to wrap up by Monday evening. Harris’s campaign has already announced that she and her vice-presidential pick will go on a tour of battleground states starting Tuesday.

Those close to Harris’s campaign had said last week that she was considering roughly a dozen potential running mates. One reported candidate, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, withdrew from consideration this week, saying it “just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket.”

“As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins,” Cooper said in a statement Monday.

The running-mate decision is an early and major test for Harris’s young presidential campaign. Biden picked her as his running mate in 2020 because he wanted someone who shared his values and could immediately be effective on the job — and Harris is said to be approaching the search similarly. Her reported finalists also are all White men, reflecting assumptions that voters would prefer gender and racial balance with the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent leading the ticket.

As he was leaving the White House on Friday, Biden confirmed that he had spoken to Harris about her running mate choice but did not go into much detail. Asked what qualities Harris should prioritize as she makes her decision, Biden told reporters: “I’ll let her work that out.”

Vice President Harris secured a majority of the pledged delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party officials announced Friday, officially making her the party’s presidential nominee and concluding an unprecedented process after the former Democratic standard-bearer dropped out less than two weeks ago.

The more than 4,000 convention delegates had until Monday to submit their ballots, but no other candidate qualified to challenge Harris, making her selection all but certain. Still, the formal nomination ascent of the first woman of color to lead a presidential ticket marks a milestone for a nation long riven by racial and gender issues.

“I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Harris said on a call with supporters. “And I will tell you the tireless work of our delegates, our state leaders and staff has been pivotal in making this moment possible.”

The announcement was made moments before by Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, who noted that Harris crossed the threshold just a day after online balloting began. The vote is being held open through Monday.

“The fact that we can say today — just one day after we opened voting — that the vice president has crossed the majority threshold and will officially be our nominee next week, folks, that is simply outstanding,” Harrison said.

After President Biden abruptly bowed out of the race on July 21 and endorsed Harris, Democratic leaders scrambled to create a nomination process that did not rely on state primary contests, all of which Biden had already won. The new nomination contest allowed anyone to run if they obtained 300 signatures of delegates supporting their bid, including no more than 50 from any single delegation, while meeting other basic qualifications.

With top party officials seeking to rally the party to confront the candidacy of Donald Trump, no elected Democratic politician besides Harris announced their intention to seek those signatures. The candidates who did signal their intent to seek the nomination failed to obtain the required signatures.

On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee said that 3,923 delegates had petitioned to put Harris on the ballot for the nomination, a large majority of the total delegate pool.

Party leaders decided months ago, when Biden was still expected to be the nominee, to use a virtual vote to finalize the nomination, rather than waiting for the party convention in Chicago on Aug. 19-22. They said the early nomination was needed because legal ambiguities in Ohio’s early deadlines meant that Biden could be kept off the ballot in that state.

Ohio ultimately amended its timeline for ballot qualification, but the Democrats stuck to their plans for a virtual nomination. Under the party’s rules, delegates do not need to vote on Harris’s vice-presidential selection.

Democratic convention planners are preparing a symbolic roll call for prime-time television coverage in Chicago, with representatives of each state offering their votes for Harris in a customized fashion.

Harris becomes just the second person of color in America’s nearly 250-year history to head a major presidential ticket, after Barack Obama in 2008. Harris is Black and Indian American, and Trump has recently attacked her identity and suggested that she formerly downplayed her Black heritage, an assertion for which there is no evidence.

Harris will also be the second female major-party nominee, after Hillary Clinton in 2016, when Clinton lost to Trump in a contest that stunned Democrats and upended the political landscape.

Amy B Wang and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts.

David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection who has been working in recent months with Harris, is the new senior adviser for strategy messaging. Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist behind both Obama wins, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.

All of the new hires will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, another veteran of Obama’s two campaigns. She managed Biden’s 2020 campaign and built his 2024 operation from the White House before moving to Wilmington, Del., this year. Harris took control of Biden’s campaign as soon as Biden announced he would not seek reelection, an operation consisting of more than 1,300 employees and more than 130 offices. She asked O’Malley Dillon to remain in charge.

“This team is a reflection of the vice president. It brings in people who have worked for her a long time, people who have been with her for the last few years of the administration,” O’Malley Dillon said Friday. “This team represents the vice president and how she looks at building consensus and also driving toward one united front to defeat Trump.”

The specifics of the new hires were described by campaign officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal decisions. People involved said none of the current department heads would be pushed aside. Politico was the first to report Plouffe’s new role.

Harris comes to the campaign with her own brain trust who will take on more senior roles in the campaign. Sheila Nix, her campaign chief of staff, will remain in her role, as will Sergio Gonzales, her campaign strategist, and Jalisa Washington-Price and Megan Jones, her political advisers. Brian Fallon, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign who has been working as Harris’s communications director, will be a senior communications adviser, traveling with the candidate. Shelby Cole, Harris’s 2020 digital strategist now at the Democratic National Committee, will also play an increased role.

“With 95 days to go, Vice President Harris is building on its powerhouse team that has already delivered historic grassroots support and record-breaking fundraising,” Nix said in a statement. “These seasoned and respected leaders are a part of Vice President Harris’ steadfast commitment to grow a team that will ensure we do everything possible to win this November.”

The new structure around Harris is expected to address the bifurcated nature of the Biden campaign leadership — with a campaign team in Wilmington that effectively answered to Biden’s inner circle in Washington, which advisers said sometimes slowed decision-making. The team operating out of Delaware will now be significantly larger at the top as it make the final push to Election Day, less than 100 days away.

Biden began planning his reelection bid in September 2022, with a clutch of senior White House advisers who have taken on reduced roles in Biden’s orbit. Anita Dunn, a senior White House aide, recently announced she would leave to advise a super PAC supporting Harris. Top Biden advisers Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon and Bruce Reed will all have smaller roles, as will Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, top advisers to Biden and his wife, Jill.

One of the biggest holes to fill is the one left by Donilon, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign who oversaw message development, advertising and polling. Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager for Harris, will take over leadership of the campaign’s advertising program with the current paid media team. The campaign is finalizing plans to bring on additional ad-makers.

In addition to increasing Binder’s role, the Harris campaign is also bringing on Terrance Woodbury of HIT Strategies, a specialist in Black voter opinion research. Other pollsters who were working for Biden will continue in their roles. Michael Tyler will continue as campaign communications director, and deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty will continue to oversee digital advertising, social media and grass-roots fundraising.

Former Housing and Urban Development secretary Marcia L. Fudge, who recently came on board as a campaign co-chair, will expand her portfolio to include outreach and strategy. Former congressman Cedric L. Richmond will continue to be a co-chair and Harris adviser. Brian Nelson, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, is coming over to advise Harris on policy.

Jennifer Palmieri, a communications director in the Obama White House who played the same role for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, will be a senior adviser to Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman. Palmieri worked more recently as a co-host of the Showtime documentary series, “The Circus.”

Liz Allen, who serves as undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, will become the chief of staff to Harris’s running mate once that person is chosen in the coming days. Allen worked as Harris’s communications director when she was Biden’s running mate on the 2020 ticket. She worked for Biden when he was vice president and then served as deputy White House communications director at the end of Obama’s second term.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, will remain in her role for Harris, with an expanded portfolio focused on Arizona and Nevada, where Democrats now say they have renewed hope of defeating Trump.

Cutter, who founded political consulting firm Precision Strategies with O’Malley Dillon, has been working with the vice president for months, helping her to prepare for interviews and do media training. White House visitor records show that Cutter was cleared into the White House by the Harris team five times in the first three months of this year. She has also been overseeing the planning for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month, reprising a role she played in 2020.

Cutter was previously a deputy campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, a deputy White House senior adviser to Obama, a former chief of staff to then-first lady Michelle Obama, and the communications director for John F. Kerry’s 2004 campaign, along with other roles, including a period as a host of the now-defunct CNN show “Crossfire.”

Plouffe also has a long relationship with the campaign. He advised the Biden campaign informally in 2022 when the campaign was first being put together. More recently, he has hosted a podcast about the 2024 race with Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Donald Trump who served as his 2016 campaign manager.

Plouffe is expected to end his consulting arrangement with the social media platform TikTok before joining the campaign.

The U.S. military is repositioning assets and moving additional defensive capabilities into the Middle East to defend against a potential attack on Israel by Iran, U.S. officials said.

The moves come after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah vowed to retaliate after the killing this week of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr.

Haniyeh was assassinated in a brazen attack at a residence in Tehran secured by the country’s vaunted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Israel has not claimed responsibility, but U.S. officials privately acknowledge it was behind the killing. Washington was not apprised of the operation beforehand and had no role in it, officials have said.

Shukr was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb in retaliation for an attack last weekend in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed several children while they played on a soccer field.

The events have brought the region closer to full-blown conflict than perhaps at any point since the Gaza war began 10 months ago with a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas.

Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and a group of militias in Iraq and Syria all receive weapons and training from Iran, part of a vast anti-Israel, anti-U.S. network Tehran has supported for years.

U.S. officials have revealed little about how they are preparing for the possibility of an attack, but the White House said Thursday night that President Biden had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and affirmed his commitment to Israeli security “against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.”

“The President discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive U.S. military deployments,” said a brief statement summarizing the two leaders’ call.

U.S. officials at both the Pentagon and White House declined to elaborate on what those defensive deployments entail, but the U.S. military has a broad array of aircraft, ballistic missile defenses and warships in the region.

On Friday, a U.S. official familiar with the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss military movements, said that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and at least five other warships had relocated in the past two days from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, leaving them off Iran’s shores but moving in the direction of Israel if they sail west around Yemen toward the Red Sea.

Houthi militants in Yemen in recent months have launched numerous attacks on commercial vessels that use the vital shipping route, and on Israel itself, including a deadly drone attack that sneaked past Israeli air defenses and struck a building in Tel Aviv last month. Israel responded with airstrikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

The recent bloodshed follows a sprawling drone and missile attack by Iran on Israel in April in which the U.S. military intervened, taking down numerous drones and missiles as Israeli forces intercepted others. Iran launched that attack after an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria killed two Iranian generals and other Iranian military personnel.

The rising tensions raise the prospect that the Pentagon could respond again in similar fashion.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Biden after the president’s commitment to Netanyahu and will be ordering several moves in coming days, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Friday. Austin said the same to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Friday morning, she said.

Among the options available are fighter jets aboard the Theodore Roosevelt, and the naval destroyers nearby, including the USS Daniel Inouye, USS Russell, USS Cole, USS Laboon and USS Michael Murphy. The destroyer USS John S. McCain is also in the region, remaining in the Persian Gulf as the other American warships have moved, said the U.S. official familiar with the repositioning.

Five other U.S. warships are in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and could assist Israel if called upon. They include the USS Wasp, USS Oak Hill, USS New York, USS Bulkeley and USS Roosevelt.

The Bulkeley and the Roosevelt are destroyers with offensive and defensive ballistic missile capabilities, while the other three form the Wasp Amphibious Ready Group, a three-ship team of more than 4,000 U.S. Marines and sailors that includes Marine Corps fighter jets, an infantry battalion and other combat forces from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The Pentagon also could reposition Air Force fighter jets closer to Israel to assist. In April, two F-15 fighter squadrons deployed nearby from the United States and Britain, shooting down numerous drones. Those movements were not disclosed in advance.

The U.S. Secret Service did not see warnings from local police about the gunman at former president Donald Trump’s campaign rally last month in part because they were stationed in separate command centers that hurt communication, the agency’s acting director said Friday.

Ronald Rowe Jr. said the agency takes full responsibility for the security failure at the rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, and he pledged to make changes that could require new investments in personnel and equipment.

He vowed to hold officers accountable if an internal investigation concludes that they violated agency policies. The Secret Service’s probe is separate from the criminal investigation being led by the FBI.

“This was a mission failure. … I am working to make sure this failure never happens again,” Rowe said at a news conference Friday afternoon at the agency’s Washington headquarters. He called the assassination attempt — in which Trump was injured, one rallygoer was killed and two others were injured — a “dark day for our country.”

Rowe offered some new details about the security arrangements for the outdoor rally, saying there were no Secret Service personnel stationed in a unified command center set up by local law enforcement partners who were responsible for security outside the perimeter of the rally grounds.

Rather, the federal agency had established its own communications operation and did not access a message, moments before the shooting, from a local police officer warning of a man carrying a gun. That man was later identified as the shooter, Thomas M. Crooks, who fired multiple shots before being killed by a Secret Service countersniper.

Rowe said that the Secret Service relies on local law enforcement agencies to secure large events and that it was unusual for there to be two command centers.

There are multiple investigations seeking answers to questions about how a 20-year-old gunman managed to use an HVAC system to clamber atop an unsecured roof, traverse across multiple rooftops and then fire shots during a campaign rally.

Rowe became the agency’s acting director after Kimberly Cheatle, a veteran former agent, resigned as director last month — days after lawmakers from both parties lambasted her for not answering urgent questions about the security lapses at the rally.

Rowe testified at a joint Senate committee hearing Tuesday that he could not explain why local law enforcement had failed to spot the shooter on the roof.

He said the Butler rally was the first time the former president’s detail included a Secret Service countersniper. Local law enforcement has provided countersnipers at other rallies. He said Friday that the roof should have been secured and watched.

The FBI is leading the investigation into the shooting and has said it has not yet determined a possible motive.

The assassination attempt, the first on a U.S. leader in decades, has shaken public faith in the elite protective agency whose mission is “zero fail.” Lawmakers said Rowe provided more details, but some remained frustrated that he had not dismissed any of the agents who were directly involved.

The Secret Service said the Friday news conference was part of an effort to increase public transparency from an agency that is designed to keep a low profile.

Trump has said that he would hold more outdoor rallies and that the Secret Service has promised to expand his security.

Rowe told reporters Friday that law enforcement often flag suspicious people they spot at campaign events. At the July 13 rally, law enforcement received more than 100 calls for support, many of them about incidents related to the extreme hot weather that day. He said there were also calls about suspicious people other than Crooks.

The acting secret service director said law enforcement involved in protecting the Trump rally feel “down right now.”

“Every single person in the Secret Service,” Rowe said, “feels the weight of what happened.”

He said: “We will earn back your trust.”

Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

A federal judge in New York on Friday finalized the dismissal of Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, opening the door for creditors to pursue and potentially seize his assets. That includes two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation claim against him.

The decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane in the Southern District of New York comes two days after Giuliani and his creditors reached an agreement to resolve an estimated $350,000 in administrative fees in the case that were required to be paid before it could be closed.

A proposed order filed Wednesday stated that upon the judge’s approval and case dismissal, Giuliani agreed to transfer $100,000 to an escrow account controlled by his attorneys and satisfy the remainder of the fees with proceeds from the sale of one of his two properties — his New York apartment or his condo in Palm Beach, Fla.

In his order finalizing the dismissal, Lane approved terms of that settlement and formally closed the case. The order prohibits Giuliani from seeking bankruptcy protection again for “a period of one year from the dismissal effective date.”

A spokesman for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The formal dismissal paves the way for the former election workers and other creditors to now pursue legal remedies to collect money owed to them by Giuliani, the former New York mayor. It also allows other pending lawsuits against him that had been frozen by the bankruptcy proceeding to resume, including defamation suits by the voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, and a sexual harassment and wage theft claim by former Giuliani associate Noelle Dunphy.

All are part of a committee of “unsecured creditors” that sought relief in the bankruptcy case.

Lane’s decision comes almost seven months after Giuliani sought bankruptcy protection after he was ordered to immediately pay millions in damages to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia women he falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election while he was serving as former president Donald Trump’s personal attorney. Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona related to his alleged actions after the 2020 election.

Giuliani’s creditors accused him of using the bankruptcy case to stall litigation and collection efforts against him. The former mayor was criticized by the judge for his “uncooperative conduct” after he repeatedly filed inconsistent and incomplete financial statements that did not present a full picture of his cash and assets. Giuliani also failed to turn over financial information about his businesses and other holdings, as required by law.

“Transparency into Mr. Giuliani’s finances has proven to be an elusive goal,” Lane wrote in an order last month.

Citing suspicions that Giuliani’s stonewalling was an attempt to hide money, lawyers for the creditors hired Global Data Risk, a firm that includes former FBI and CIA officials, to look for hidden assets. They also suggested they could sue parties that Giuliani claims owe him money as part of their effort to recover debts — potentially including Trump.

In a February court hearing, Giuliani claimed Trump still owes him “about” $2 million in unpaid legal fees related to his work seeking to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. He has suggested that debt is with the Trump campaign or the Republican National Committee — though in a Feb. 27 court filing, Giuliani noted a possible claim against Trump personally for unpaid legal fees.

It was not immediately clear if the creditors might still pursue that litigation. Attorneys for the creditors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In court filings, Giuliani has listed roughly $153 million in debts to at least 20 people and businesses, including Freeman and Moss. A list of top creditors filed in February said Giuliani owes more than $3.7 million in unpaid legal fees to three law firms — though he is disputing some of those bills — and more than $1 million in state and federal taxes.

The former federal prosecutor has claimed about $11 million in assets — including an estimated $5.6 million New York apartment and his Palm Beach condo, which is valued at $3.5 million. While Giuliani has put his New York property on the market, he had resisted selling his Florida home, with one of his lawyers claiming that a sale could render the 80-year-old “homeless.” The settlement between Giuliani and his creditors suggested the Florida property could soon be for sale — though it was not yet publicly listed.

The settlement said a lien would be placed on both properties “as security” to make sure Giuliani pays fees owed to Global Data Risk and said the firm cannot seek to foreclose on or take other action related to either property for six months after the judge signs off on the agreement.

A financial disclosure report filed in June said Giuliani had less than $100,000 in the bank at the end of May and was funding his living expenses through a rapidly diminishing retirement account. But a lawyer for Freeman and Moss has repeatedly questioned the accuracy of his financial filings, accusing Giuliani of financial “shenanigans” and blowing through money without court authorization.

In recent weeks, Giuliani repeatedly shifted legal strategies in the case. In December, he sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allows an individual to reorganize and file a plan to pay off debts. But on July 1, Giuliani changed course, asking a judge to reclassify his case under Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would hand control of his personal and business finances to an outside trustee to liquidate. The request prompted immediate objections from some creditors who accused Giuliani of more delay tactics. He then abruptly joined with Freeman and Moss who had pressed the court to dismiss the case — which Lane agreed to do on July 12.

But Lane, who had not finalized the dismissal, later threatened to reverse that decision and schedule an evidentiary hearing where he would force Giuliani to testify under oath about his finances after he claimed he couldn’t pay fees in the case. The last-minute settlement averted that testimony.

Lane’s order Friday notes he will retain jurisdiction over the matter, including the approval of final administrative costs and “all matters arising from or related to the implementation, interpretation or enforcement” of its terms.