Even Sen. JD Vance’s allies realize the relative political newcomer has taken a huge leap that was bound to run into some early stumbles.

The Ohio Republican is the most politically inexperienced GOP vice-presidential nominee in almost 90 years. He’s run in just one election for any political office.

“You know, he’s gotten shot out of a cannon. It’s like going from zero to 60 in terms of intensity, publicity, scrutiny, all that stuff,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), an early supporter of Vance in his 2022 Senate campaign.

“Enduring the demonization of the national media is never easy,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who embraced the antiestablishment posture a decade before Vance arrived in the Senate. “I will say this, if the New York Times were praising JD Vance, I would view that as a much, much bigger problem.”

Some of his Senate Republican colleagues think that’s understating the firestorm in which Vance now finds himself.

With Vance thrust onto the national stage less than a month ago, they’ve been forced to defend resurfaced comments from his pre-Senate days. There’s the 2021 clip of him on Fox News’s lashing out at “childless cat ladies” and then a far-right podcast in which he called for a higher tax rate on adults without children. Some of Donald Trump’s allies counseled that Vance wasn’t an ideal choice because he doesn’t expand the GOP coalition.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) lashed out at her colleague’s remarks. “It was offensive to me as a woman. Women make their own determinations as to whether or not they’re going to have children,” she told reporters.

On Tuesday, when asked about her thoughts on Vance’s comments, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) reminded reporters she hasn’t endorsed Trump or Vance. Nor has Murkowski.

At 39, Vance is the second youngest of the 100 senators. His selection as Trump’s running mate has prompted deeper looks at his years spent as a best-selling author who served as provocateur on his many cable TV appearances.

In his early 30s, during his anti-Trump era, Vance compared Trump to “cultural heroin” and found the GOP presidential contender to be “noxious.” By the time he launched his first campaign three years ago, Vance kept up his firebrand routine in his bid to convince the ex-president of his newfound MAGA embrace.

That’s when he uttered comments about women and children. Rather than retracting them, Vance doubled down in an interview last week on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, saying his comments were “true” while arguing he has “nothing against cats.”

Those types of comments help in a low-turnout GOP primary, but Senate Republicans are not surprised they have caused a stir and led to a quick backlash against Vance (according to an ABC/Ipsos poll released last weekend, Vance’s unfavorable ratings spiked eight points to 39 percent in a week). They say that Vance is quickly learning that the national spotlight is far more intense than the Senate one.

“What you learn very quickly here, and you can only learn through time, is that even if your comments were meant in jest or they were hyperbolic — they weren’t really intended [to be offensive] — in this league, you don’t get a bye week. Everything, everything, you say gets parsed,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), from the party’s traditional conservative wing.

“That can only come from having experienced a lot of sunrises and sunsets on the road,” Tillis added, “and that would be the one thing that JD can’t possibly have. Because he’s only been in the public eye as an elected official for two years.”

“When you are going from cable TV to podcasts, it’s part of surfing out there,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who privately campaigned to get Trump to choose another nominee.

Now that President Biden, 81, has withdrawn from the race, Republicans have braced for more scrutiny over the gravitas of their vice-presidential pick given that Trump, 78, faces similar questions about his age and capabilities to serve a four-year term.

Since World War II only one other major party nominee has chosen a running mate with such little experience.

By August 1972, Sargent Shriver had served as the first Peace Corps director and as ambassador to France, and had led a White House anti-poverty program, but had never run for political office when Democrats turned to him. His nomination only came out of dramatic necessity, however, when the original choice — then-Sen. Thomas Eagleton, with 12 years of statewide elective office under his belt in Missouri — withdrew following revelations about his mental health.

Otherwise both parties have tended to use the vice-presidential pick as a balancing act, either for regional or ideological balance or for reassurance of the No. 2 being ready step into the job, according to Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate’s historian emeritus.

Think then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) in 2008, with 36 years of experience, getting tapped by Barack Obama after less than four years in the Senate. Or Richard Cheney (R-Wyo.), with 12 years in Congress and four as defense secretary, getting the nod from a young Texas governor, George W. Bush, in 2000.

“They’ve all had enough experience to claim to be ready to become president if necessary, which is really the only justification for the job,” Ritchie said.

Each party has at times nominated an elder statesman at the top of the ticket, prompting a younger vice-presidential pick, but even those No. 2 selections had more experience than Vance.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush, then the sitting vice president, chose then-Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) as his running mate, leading to tough scrutiny of Quayle’s credentials. Yet Quayle had served almost eight years in the Senate and four years in the House. In 2020 Joe Biden, 77 at the time, chose Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) after less than four years in the Senate — but she also had served six years as state attorney general and eight years as district attorney.

In 2008 John McCain (R-Ariz.), then 72, chose the 44-year-old Sarah Palin and sparked weeks of controversy. Palin had served as Alaska governor for 19 months and served as mayor and city council member for years before that.

Vance’s close allies acknowledge that he provides no political balance for Trump heading into November and view his selection as entirely about being a junior governing partner in the White House.

“There’s risk with anybody. I mean, there’s always risk,” Hawley said. “I think Trump wants somebody who he can count on 100 percent. And who he knows is going to be with him 100 percent of the time. And I think JD will be. And I think that’s why he chose him.”

Cruz said that Vance, through his childhood in Ohio and Kentucky, understands the governing appeal for Republicans no longer resides in country clubs and corporate boardrooms.

“I believe the Republican Party has become a blue-collar party. And I think JD gets that in his gut, and that’s important. I think the ferocity of the left-wing media going after him, demonstrates that JD is touching a nerve,” Cruz said.

Still, Vance has not demonstrated many political skills thus far in his career, aside from becoming close friends with Donald Trump Jr. and some far-right conservative billionaires.

His 2022 Senate campaign was stumbling along until Vance won a late endorsement from former president Trump, and even then he eked out a plurality win with less than 33 percent in a crowded field.

It was a banner year for Ohio Republicans, with Gov. Mike DeWine (R) ringing up a 25-percentage-point blowout. DeWine helped four other Republicans running for statewide offices to easy wins by margins of 17 to 20 points.

Vance’s campaign, however, was a dud.

Slow to mobilize or raise money, Vance won by just six percentage points. His Democratic opponent, Tim Ryan, outspent Vance by a more than 4-to-1 margin in advertising, according to a Democratic estimate.

Outside Republican groups rushed $34 million into the race, publicly admitting it was “an unexpected expense” and money they could have spent in races they narrowly lost, like Nevada.

Graham acknowledged the rumors that he preferred other potential nominees such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for Trump’s pick.

“We tend to want people we know, that we have a close relationship with. I know Marco very well and so I have an affinity for that,” he said.

Graham agreed with Hawley that, as a governing partner to Trump, “the ‘America First’ agenda would be in good hands with JD.”

First, he has a key bar to clear.

“The vice president just needs to be seen as somebody competent and capable,” Graham said.

Has Vance demonstrated competence yet?

“The debate will be his chance to prove to people he’s competent and capable,” Graham said. “And I think he’ll have a good debate because he’s really, really smart.”

Senate Republicans believe Vance’s intelligence — Ivy League education, best-selling author, provocative thinker — is not in question.

“JD is a smart guy. He’s just needs to be a quick study on it,” Tillis said.

Trump fell into an indirect slight of Vance when he was asked Wednesday whether his running mate was ready on “day one” to serve in the White House.

“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion,” Trump said at the National Association of Black Journalists conference.

He said voters would not consider Vance when casting their ballots.

“You’re not voting that way,” he said. “You’re voting for me.”

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE – President Biden was in a wood-paneled conference room with civil rights leaders and elected officials, flying high over the country en route to Texas. About an hour into the flight, he glanced at the television playing in the background, where guests on MSNBC were speculating over who Vice President Harris would pick as her running mate.

“Kamala and I talked,” Biden remarked. “I said she could pick me.”

He waited a beat, then said he was joking, prompting laughter.

That moment last Monday was a telling one after a politically tumultuous few weeks. The president was aboard a plane that symbolized the almost unimaginable power at his fingertips, yet he was watching news coverage blanketed not by him but by his second-in-command, and the questions about who would become her own number two.

To some of those in the plane, who described the encounter afterward, the episode also illustrated a more basic reality — that Biden appears largely reconciled to his tortured decision to bow out of the race, and is now comfortable enough with it to crack jokes.

“I didn’t sense any regret at all,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader who was sitting directly to Biden’s right on the flight. “He’s made his decision. He’s at peace with it. I sensed a man at peace with where he is and trying to move forward.”

Over the past few days, Biden has begun to recalibrate his presidency. His public schedule has become lighter, in what those close to him describe as a conscious attempt to allow Harris to seize the spotlight. He has been soliciting advice over how to spend the last six months of a 48-year career as a federal officeholder, and he has come to see Harris’s potential election as a cornerstone of his legacy.

The anger and bitterness from the lead-up to his decision to withdraw — when he felt cornered by members of his own party — seem to have given way to an attitude that is more accepting of the current moment. Biden is occasionally wistful, and he has engaged in lighter and even playful moments after a weeks-long period of intense stress, for example peeking through American flags and around columns near the Rose Garden to make faces at aides who had gathered to applaud him after his Oval Office address last week.

“He is reflecting. He’s in a reflective mood,” said Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League, who was with Biden all day Monday. “It’s very natural and very human to be in such a reflective mood after such a long and unique career. Try to think of who has had a career of such length and breadth — I have trouble thinking of anyone else, because he got elected so young.”

Biden was elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware in 1970 and catapulted to the U.S. Senate two years later, making him one of the youngest people ever to serve in that body. His career will end in about six months, when a new president takes office on Jan. 20, instead of the four additional years he thought he would have to burnish his legacy and add to his accomplishments.

In one sign that he is not in a score-settling mood, when Air Force One landed in Austin on Monday, the third person who greeted Biden on the tarmac was Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who weeks earlier had been the first congressional Democrat to call on him to end his reelection bid.

The interaction was not combative, and Doggett said that he thanked the president for stepping down.

“Thank you for suggesting it,” Biden replied to him, according to CBS News, in a tone far more conciliatory than the one most of his aides have used to describe the actions of the Texas congressman.

Biden has recently fallen into telling stories from his past. During a 25-minute speech at the LBJ Presidential Library on Monday, he spoke in lofty and sweeping terms about the civil rights movement, Supreme Court reforms and historic presidencies.

Ahead of the speech, Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) had joked with Biden that it was only 2,000 words long, a little short in his estimation. “That might please some people,” Clyburn recalled telling the president. “But is that all you’re going to say?”

It turned out it wasn’t. Upon completing the remarks he had come to give, Biden made an off-script digression — after he had said, “Let me close with this” — about the earliest days of his political career. A group of Democrats asked him to run for state Senate, he said, but he demurred — ultimately agreeing to run for New Castle County Council instead, since it held its meetings across the street from his law office.

“We picked a district that we couldn’t possibly win — no Democrat had ever won,” the president said. “But my problem was, I had my sister doing my campaign. And we won.”

Some two years later, he said, he was in a motel room at the Delaware Democratic convention. “I had my towel around me and the shaving cream on my face, and I heard, ‘Bam, bam, bam,’ on my door,” Biden recounted. “There was the former governor, a former Supreme Court justice — I swear to God — the state chairman, and the former congressman.”

They entered the room and urged Biden — who, after an unsuccessful scramble for clothing, was still in his towel — to run for U.S. Senate. “Next thing you know, I was running,” he said.

Biden narrowly won that race, launching a 36-year Senate career. But he largely skipped over that to focus on more recent accomplishments. “I was the vice president to the first African American president in American history. Now I’m president to our first woman vice president,” he said. “I’ve made clear how I feel about Kamala. And she has been an incredible partner to me.”

Biden has come to see Harris’s election as critical to his legacy, associates say: He could go down in history as providing a crucial springboard for the first woman president.

About an hour before he announced that he was dropping out of the race, Biden called Clyburn, one of his most important political allies, to read him the letter he planned to release. Clyburn said he told him it was a good statement, but that his legacy would be affected by what he said about Harris.

Clyburn told Biden it was vital that he have a role in ensuring that the first Black woman in history secure the nomination of a major party, then helping her win in November. Biden assured him there would be a second statement, one that backed Harris.

Now Harris is the likely nominee and attracting much of the attention that used to flow toward Biden, but Clyburn said Biden is okay with that. “I really think he’s comfortable with the decision,” Clyburn said. “His place, his legacy, is pretty much cemented. And if Kamala were to win this election, I think he will occupy a place in the annals of history unlike any president before him.”

The setting for Biden’s trip this week, his first major event since announcing he was ending his reelection bid, was significant. The president was flying to a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Voting Right Act at the LBJ Presidential Library, an event reflecting the way Biden likes to think of himself — as a president who championed racial equity and pushed through an expansive social agenda.

About 40 minutes into the flight, Biden sat down with the elected officials and civil rights leaders who had joined him for the flight, around a table covered with disposable coffee cups and bottles of water, and asked for input on how he should spend the next six months.

Some of his guests raised the need to do more on affordable housing, while others brought up the rights of undocumented immigrants and criminal justice reform. Still others urged Biden to push the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, though they acknowledged the steep political hurdles.

“He was particularly focused on where to go from here,” Clyburn said. “Martin Luther King’s last book was ‘Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?’ That’s pretty much where we are today. Are we going to have chaos going forward or community going forward? That’s what’s on the president’s mind more than anything else.”

Biden looked around the room, participants say, and told them to put their plans into writing, including exactly what they wanted him to do and how he might do it.

He also told them how proud he was of the work they had all done. He nodded at Clyburn, who had encouraged Biden to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. He looked to Sharpton to reflect on some of the police reforms he had tried to institute. He took on the demeanor of a coach in a locker room, urging them to go out and help win the election for Harris.

“I think he’s looking at these six months as determined to prove his legacy by winning this election and being able to finish things he started,” Sharpton said. “I definitely think he’s now seeing himself in historic terms rather than tomorrow’s newspaper or this evening’s TV show.”

Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s aides have said they aim to beat Vice President Harris in November by portraying her as a San Francisco liberal who is responsible for illegal border crossings and inflation.

Yet in the past 48 hours, Trump has repeatedly deviated from that messaging to more familiar territory: personal attacks.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” he declared at an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday. “Is she Indian or is she Black?”

Harris will be “like a play toy” that world leaders will “walk all over,” he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, in a clip that aired Tuesday night. “I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.” And he claimed in a radio interview that Harris, whose husband is Jewish, “doesn’t like Jewish people.”

Trump’s statements are emblematic of the broader challenge the GOP faces: Many of his aides and his Republican allies want to focus on Harris’s record. They have watched Democratic enthusiasm about the vice president’s campaign and believe that some of her personal qualities could help, not hurt her, with independent voters.

But Trump himself keeps changing the subject.

This week, the Trump campaign launched a $12 million ad buy that featured video of Harris dancing, as the narrator declared: “This is America’s border czar and she has failed us,” a reference to President Biden’s decision to ask Harris to lead a multipronged effort to reduce mass migration from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump, ran an ad accusing Harris of covering up “Joe’s obvious mental decline.” Another ad described her as a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”

“At the end of the day, it’s really about demonstrating through her own words how dangerous, how weak and failed she really is, and it’s not hard to do when you have her doing the talking,” said Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser. “Why tell the American public what she’s for when she does such a good job herself?”

LaCivita added: “With Joe Biden, it was the walking … with Kamala Harris, it’s the talking.”

But despite the ad blitz, Trump’s words, rather than Harris’s, dominated the news this week. Trump’s false accusation that Harris downplayed her Black heritage forced Republicans to respond throughout the day Wednesday. Harris attended Howard University, a prominent historically Black institution and joined a historically Black sorority.

“I was born Black and I’ll die Black and I am proud of it,” she said in 2019. “And I am not going to make any excuses for it for anybody because they don’t understand.”

Even as several Senate Republicans declined to weigh in on Trump’s remarks, he doubled down on them. At his rally in Harrisburg, Pa., a screen showed the headline of a Business Insider story that said: “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian American U.S. senator.”

He also posted a video on his social media site, Truth Social, featuring Harris speaking to Indian American comedian Mindy Kaling, in which Kaling refers to Harris’s Indian heritage. Trump claimed: “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!”

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump has also called Harris “dumb as a rock,” questioned her legal credentials and mocked her laugh.

People close to Trump doubt that the personal attacks will be an effective strategy. Alleging the election was stolen, defending Jan. 6 rioters and getting into fights with Harris about race or personality “are not winning issues for us,” one person close to Trump said. Comments that seem derogatory about women also don’t help, and neither does attacking her personally, this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to criticize the former president’s messaging so far.

Instead, the campaign wants Trump to make data arguments on food prices, gas prices, illegal border crossings and tout his foreign policy record, and not talk about her race or gender, the person added,

Trump has publicly lamented the change at the top of the ticket, calling it a “coup” at a recent event. In private, he’s complained about Harris’s rise in the polls, according to another person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. Trump has also been frustrated that Harris has received positive media coverage, while his vice-presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has come under criticism, this person said.

Even though Trump campaign officials and allies publicly maintain that the fundamentals of the contest haven’t changed, some Republicans, including Vance, acknowledge privately that the race has shifted quickly.

Vance told donors during a Saturday fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minn., that the change at the top of the Democratic ticket was a “little bit of a political sucker punch” and that Harris “does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger.”

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Trump and Harris have moved into a virtual tie in a two-way vote choice, with Trump at 47 percent support and Harris at 46 percent, according to a Washington Post polling average.

Harris’s favorability rating increased to 43 percent last week, up from 35 percent the previous week, according to an ABC-Ipsos poll conducted last week. Trump’s favorability rating decreased slightly to 36 percent from 40 percent the previous week.

The Trump campaign’s messaging is “scattershot,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“They weren’t able to brand Biden in 2020 and they haven’t been able to brand Kamala Harris in 2024,” he said. “The arguments that they do make are very ideological in nature, which has never worked for Trump.”

Conant added that Trump does best when he portrays himself as the outsider and said the campaign hasn’t done enough to portray Harris as an establishment pick.

“Instead, they’re saying she’s too progressive which is not an argument that’s proven very effective in modern politics,” he said.

Prominent Republicans in Washington say they have not been given messaging from Trump’s team on how to attack Harris. One top aide to a GOP senator said they were trying to follow the campaign’s lead, but it was difficult to follow sometimes.

One Republican close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, described the campaign ad about the border as a positive development.

“The challenge is to stay on message,” the Republican said.

Scott Clement and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.

Voters in Tennessee head to the polls on Thursday to cast their ballots in the state’s primary, which includes a competitive Republican primary challenge against a sitting member of Congress.

There are two major races to watch on Thursday in Tennessee: the 5th Congressional District Republican primary and the Senate Democratic primary.

5th Congressional District Republican primary

Rep. Andrew Ogles (R) faces a primary challenge from Courtney Johnston, a Nashville Metro council member who has so far raised more money than the freshman congressman.

Ogles, endorsed by former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), was one of the holdouts to approving Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker in early 2023. However, Ogles later voted against McCarthy’s ouster that fall.

In Congress he’s frequently criticized the Biden administration, filing articles of impeachment against President Biden and Vice President Harris last year. After Harris became a front-runner to replace Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this month, Ogles filed new articles of impeachment against her.

His brief tenure in the House has brought scrutiny on several fronts.

After a deadly Covenant School shooting in 2023, Ogles — who represents the district where the Christian school is located — said in a statement that he was heartbroken. At the time, gun-control advocates and Democrats circulated a 2021 Christmas photo of his family posing with firearms. Ogles has also been accused of making several misrepresentations about his background, admitting last year that he misstated the degree he received. Earlier this year, he was also the subject of an ethics complaint over his personal and campaign finances.

Johnston, whose political positions are largely aligned with Ogles’s, has the endorsements of former senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and former governor Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.).

The winner will face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in November.

Senate primaries

Four Democrats are competing in Thursday’s Democratic primary for Senate: Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw (who lost the 2020 Senate race in Tennessee against Sen. Bill Hagerty (R) by a wide margin), educator Civil Miller-Watkins and Lola Denise Brown, chair of the membership committee of the NAACP in Nashville.

Johnson, outraised her Democratic competitors and was one of the “Tennessee Three” — a group of state lawmakers who faced backlash in the statehouse when they joined protesters demanding gun-control legislation at the state Capitol in 2023 following the shooting at the Covenant School. At the time, Johnson was the only lawmaker out of the three to narrowly survive an expulsion vote by the state legislature.

Incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) has one GOP primary challenger, Tres Wittum — a former state Senate policy analyst, though the senator is widely favored to win on Thursday. The Senate seat remains solidly Republican according to the Cook Political Report’s Senate race rankings.

Democrats on Thursday began the process of making Vice President Harris their formal presidential nominee on a day that saw several campaign developments and highlighted one of the solemn challenges of an American president: bringing hostages home.

Democratic delegates began online voting Thursday in a process that almost certainly will result in Harris formally becoming the party’s nominee, since she is the only candidate who qualified and most of the delegates have already endorsed her. Yet her official selection will mark a significant milestone, making her the nation’s first Black woman to become a major-party presidential nominee and capping one of the most tumultuous months in recent American political history.

Parties typically nominate their ticket at their in-person convention, but Democratic leaders were concerned that early ballot deadlines in several states could make it risky for them to wait until the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22. They set up a virtual nomination process that started Thursday morning and could last until Monday, though Harris could clinch the nomination sooner.

Harris is expected to name her running mate in the coming days before launching a joint nationwide campaign tour starting Tuesday across seven battleground states. The campaign has announced that Harris and her running mate will travel to Philadelphia; Eau Claire, Wis.; Detroit; the Research Triangle in North Carolina; Savannah, Ga.; Phoenix; and Las Vegas.

There was no indication of a final decision Thursday, but strategists on both sides were carefully watching the actions of the Democratic figures who have been mentioned as potential running mates.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has canceled some upcoming appearances in what could be read as a schedule-clearing move to join Harris. But a spokesman said the governor’s trip this weekend to the Hamptons on Long Island, which was planned “several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee,” was canceled because “his schedule has changed.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) on Thursday attacked former president Donald Trump’s recent comments about Harris’s racial identity. “It’s such a desperate, desperate attempt to rebuild his campaign that’s obviously faltering,” Kelly told reporters in the U.S. Capitol. “She’s the person to bring us into the future, and Donald Trump is about divisiveness.”

At an event Wednesday hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump said he “didn’t know [Harris] was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.” He added, “Is she Indian, or is she Black?”

Kelly declined to comment on reports that he met with Harris’s vetting team in the past few days. “This isn’t about me. This is about beating Donald Trump,” he said.

Other senior Democrats who are considered close to the Harris campaign and could be potential running mates are Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Harris on Thursday delivered a eulogy at a Houston service for the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), who died last month at age 74 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

She called her late friend “a change-maker” and a “coalition builder.” At one point, Harris misspoke and referred to herself as “president” before correcting to say “vice president” — triggering cheers from the crowd.

“It was Sheila Jackson Lee whose bill made Juneteenth a federal holiday,” she said, “which, as a United States senator, I was proud to co-sponsor. And then as president — as vice president — it was my honor with the president … [to make it into law]. It was my honor.”

On the Republican side, nominee Donald Trump’s campaign announced that the former president would participate in a rally in Bozeman, Mont., on Aug. 9. Montana is the site of a major battleground Senate race between incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL.

Trump’s campaign also announced that it had raised $138.7 million during the month of July and had $327 million cash on hand. Harris’s campaign said it had raised $200 million during the first week of her candidacy. The figures cannot be confirmed until later this month, when financial disclosures are filed.

Trump did not hold any public events Thursday, but Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), the Republican vice-presidential candidate, delivered remarks at the U.S.-Mexico border in southeast Arizona.

Dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans and hiking boots, Vance greeted law enforcement authorities with handshakes and was shown a spot where the border wall — which Trump started building when he was president — was incomplete.

After 30 minutes of speaking with law enforcement officials and touring the border, Vance made comments in which he repeatedly criticized Harris and referred to her as the “border czar.” Harris and other Democrats have rejected that title, noting that Biden asked her to tackle the root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, not to address illegal border crossings.

Vance described several policy initiatives that he said a Trump-Vance administration would implement, including resuming border wall construction, more aggressively deporting undocumented immigrants and investigating drug crimes further.

“It’s hard to believe, until you see it with your own eyes, just how bad the policies of the Kamala Harris administration have been when it comes to the southern border,” Vance said.

Vance also said he and the former president have a “good relationship” and sought to push back on criticism that Democrats — and some Republicans — have leveled against him since he was put on the ticket. Vance, for example, has come under fire for previously calling Democrats such as Harris “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable.”

“Look, it’s the same thing they did to Dick Cheney, the same thing they did to Mike Pence,” Vance told NOTUS in an interview Wednesday, referring to past Republican vice-presidential nominees. “I think that any Republican who comes out of the gate as the new VP nominee is going to get attacked. I have no doubt that the president is confident in the way that I’ve been doing things.”

Vance said his “good relationship” with Trump “will keep on going through all the way to November — hopefully past that, too.”

The Ohio senator said he has no regrets over having been supportive of the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, a blueprint for an incoming conservative administration that Democrats have attacked and from which Trump has distanced himself.

“The Heritage Foundation has some good ideas, and also has some ideas that … I think are bad ideas,” Vance told NOTUS. “And regardless of whether you think they’re good ideas or bad ideas, it has nothing to do with the Trump campaign.”

Vance said he had not read the entire 900-page document. “There are some things I like about it, and some ideas in there that I strongly disagree with,” he said.

The organizers of Project 2025 recently announced that the initiative is winding down its policy operations and that its director, former Trump administration personnel official Paul Dans, is departing.

Amid the campaign activity, events unfolded Thursday showcasing the gravity of the office that Harris and Trump are seeking. Biden announced a complex release of hostages — including Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, who were both held by Russia.

Biden made forceful remarks signaling that while he is no longer running for reelection, he intends to use the powers of his office to the fullest for the six months he has remaining in the office. Trump immediately questioned whether the deal was as beneficial to the U.S. side as it could have been.

Harris, who was in Houston for the memorial service, flew back to Washington to join Biden in greeting the hostages at Joint Base Andrews. She also spoke with Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny, and welcomed the release of 16 individuals from Russia, including political prisoners who worked with Navalny.

“The United States stands with all of those who are fighting for freedom in Russia,” Harris said on the tarmac outside Air Force Two before flying back to Washington. “As we celebrate today’s news, we must also keep front of mind that there are other Americans that are unjustly being held in places around the world, and we will never stop fighting for their release.”

Meryl Kornfield, Mariana Alfaro, Liz Goodwin, and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.

President Biden cast the release of several detained Americans in a multicountry prisoner swap as a vindication of his effort to cultivate international alliances, rebuking his predecessor’s isolationist impulses while celebrating a long-sought foreign policy achievement.

“The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy — and friendship,” Biden said Thursday as he announced that three American citizens and one green-card holder had been released from Russian prisons. “For anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do. They matter. And today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world — friends you can trust, work with and depend upon.”

The line was a thinly veiled jab at Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has often criticized allies while pushing an “America first” agenda.

Asked directly what he would say to Trump, who has previously attacked Biden over Americans held abroad, the president responded with a question of his own.

“Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” Biden said. About an hour later, Trump blasted the deal, saying it set a “bad precedent.”

The moment reflected how an intricate, seven-country prisoner exchange — coming just 96 days before Election Day and with less than six months before Biden leaves office — was quickly thrust into the nation’s fraught political landscape.

Members of Biden’s team credited Vice President Harris for helping facilitate the deal, aiming to burnish her foreign policy credentials in her presidential campaign against Trump. Lawmakers offered praise for the diplomatic push that led to the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan. Republicans were largely muted, though some questioned the wisdom of releasing Russian criminals for unjustly detained Americans.

Trump took to his social media site to suggest that U.S. negotiators had gotten the short end of the bargain, without expressing any gladness that the captives returned home safely.

“How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I’m sure the answer is NO)?” Trump wrote on Truth Social about the deal with Russia. “Are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs?”

Trump falsely claimed he freed hostages with “never any cash.” In 2017, Trump authorized a $2 million payment to North Korea to bring home American college student Otto Warmbier, two people familiar with the incident told The Post. It’s unclear whether the money was ever paid. Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student imprisoned in North Korea after being accused of pulling down a propaganda poster, was comatose when he left the country and died shortly after arriving in the United States.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that no money was exchanged in Thursday’s exchange.

He also praised the president for building the international relationships that helped facilitate the agreement, saying it “honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden.”

For an 81-year-old president who was nudged out of his reelection bid by members of his own party concerned about his ability to carry out his duties in a second term, the swap amounted to the first major foreign policy achievement during a period in which he is aiming to bolster his legacy before leaving office.

As part of the deal, Russia agreed to release 16 prisoners: four Americans, five Germans and seven Russians, including pro-democracy dissidents. A convicted Russian assassin was released from Germany, and several Russian intelligence operatives held in the United States and Europe were also set free in the largest international prisoner exchange since the Cold War.

“It’s an important part of Biden’s legacy building phase in the lame duck period, the kind of success that has become part of the history books,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “And what’s good for Biden is good for Vice President Harris.”

The release of detained Americans undercuts one of Trump’s frequent lines of attack against Biden’s handling of foreign affairs. Trump has argued that only he would be able to free U.S. citizens imprisoned abroad.

“The entire world, I tell you this: We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price,” Trump said in his presidential nominee acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July.

For the first year of Gershkovich’s detention, Trump remained conspicuously silent on it, part of a long-standing pattern of avoiding criticizing Putin. As reporters increasingly asked Trump about Gershkovich, he began claiming he would secure the reporter’s release after being elected before taking office. Trump did not explain how he would accomplish that but vaguely referenced a special personal dynamic with Putin.

“Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, will do that for me, and I don’t believe he’ll do it for anyone else,” Trump said.

As for Whelan, who was first arrested in Russia during Trump’s term, Trump claimed in 2022 that he turned out down a deal as president to free the former Marine in exchange for a Russian arms dealer nicknamed “the Merchant of Death.” The United States released the arms dealer, Viktor Bout, in 2022 in exchange for basketball star Brittney Griner. Trump called that deal “crazy and bad.”

In a statement, Whelan’s family criticized the Trump administration’s early response to Paul Whelan’s imprisonment.

“Early on, we were discouraged from speaking out about Paul’s case,” they wrote. “… Those first years were hard when the Trump Administration ignored Paul’s wrongful detention, and it was media attention that helped to finally create critical mass and awareness within the U.S. government.”

The family also praised Trump’s ambassador to Russia, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, for advocating on Whelan’s behalf in 2019.

Harris plans to join Biden to welcome Whelan and the other released Americans at Joint Base Andrews on Thursday night.

Harris was in Houston to attend the funeral of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) when the deal was announced but celebrated it on social media, writing on X that she would continue working “until every American who is wrongfully detained or held hostage is brought home.” She echoed those comments in brief remarks to reporters before returning to Washington.

Biden administration officials touted Harris’s role in the negotiations as pivotal. She helped advance the talks during a high-level meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference in February, Sullivan said.

“She was a participant in, very much a core member of, the team that helped make this happen,” he said.

Harris used the opportunity at the security conference to discuss the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the leaders’ private conversation.

“It became clear to us early on that to secure the release of the Americans, a critical part would be the release of Krasikov, so the vice president spoke directly to Scholz about the need to get this done,” the official said.

Harris on Thursday spoke with Yulia Navalnaya, who welcomed the release of three allies of her late husband Alexei Navalny, the political opposition leader who died suddenly in a remote Arctic prison in February.

Biden and Harris have used high-profile appearances to champion the cause of unjustly detained Americans in the past. Biden mentioned Gershkovich and Whalen during his State of the Union address in March and his speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner in April. Speaking to reporters last week, Harris mentioned the names of several Americans who were taken captive to Gaza by Hamas terrorists in October.

John Hudson contributed to this report.

The Department of Homeland Security’s chief watchdog Thursday issued its long-awaited findings on the Secret Service’s handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying the protective agency had looked into the possibility of protests but “did not anticipate” the level of violence that occurred that day, according to a copy of the report sent to Congress and obtained by The Washington Post.

The report said the Secret Service did not sweep the bushes at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, where a pipe bomb had been placed the night before. The explosive did not detonate, but Kamala Harris, then the vice president-elect, had walked within 20 feet of the device, the report said.

The report praised agents for safeguarding top officials that day but also said it could improve communication with law enforcement and other procedures.

“Although it did not anticipate or plan for the level of violence that ultimately occurred that day, the Secret Service took actions to respond to and mitigate the threats it encountered and avoid any harm to its protectees,” the 82-page report said.

The report from the office of Inspector General Joseph Cuffari is based on interviews with more than 100 Secret Service personnel and over 183,000 emails and attachments as well as video footage from the agency.

The recommendations in the report urged the Secret Service to update its working agreement with the U.S. Capitol Police to ensure they have adequate support. The office also urged the agency to improve protocols for bomb sweepings and ordnance removal, and to ensure adequate procedures are in place for conducting internal reviews.

The report also recommended that the Secret Service develop protocols so that it could more quickly dispatch agents to support local law enforcement in case of an emergency such as Jan. 6.

Cuffari’s office sent the report to Congress but had not posted it on the agency’s website as of Thursday evening. His office did not immediately respond to questions about the report.

The Department of Homeland Security urged Cuffari’s office to make the report public.

“DHS communicated to the independent DHS Office of the Inspector General Wednesday evening and again Thursday morning our request that the IG release to the American public the same report provided to Congress,” spokeswoman Naree Ketudat said in a statement.

In a response included in the report, the Secret Service agreed with most of the OIG’s recommendations but said it could not commit to providing emergency aid to other law enforcement because that could compromise “its foremost responsibility to protect the White House and the President” as well as others in the region.

In one of her final acts as head of the agency, Director Kimberly Cheatle last month wrote Cuffari that she was pleased he acknowledged the agency’s efforts to protect the president, the vice president and other leaders, and to support the Capitol Police.

“The Secret Service is proud of the actions its dedicated personnel took on January 6, 2021, to prevent any harm to our protectees, actions that we remain committed to performing each and every day under any and all circumstances,” she wrote June 25.

She resigned July 23, days after the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

The report was in response to the assault on the Capitol by supporters of Trump, who were attempting to overthrow the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. The report does not highlight security failures that might have prevented the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump, the Republican nominee for president in the November election.

The Secret Service is facing multiple investigations into its security failures during the rally in Pennsylvania. The DHS watchdog is also investigating that attack. Lawmakers and others have demanded answers about why a gunman was able to climb atop a roof and fire at Trump, who was wounded. A rally attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured.

Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe on Tuesday told a joint Senate committee that he was “ashamed” that his agency did not secure the rooftop.

The service — an elite agency charged with protecting nearly 40 U.S. leaders, their relatives and foreign dignitaries — has been praised for its agents’ selfless bravery in putting themselves in harm’s way to protect officials and safeguard democracy.

But the agency also has had embarrassing incidents, including its failure to intercept threats and a 2012 scandal in Colombia when agents arranging a presidential trip brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms. In 2014, an armed security guard with an arrest record was allowed to share an elevator with President Barack Obama during a visit to Atlanta.

In 2014, an independent panel urged major changes at the Secret Service, calling for the appointment of an outsider as director and the hiring of hundreds of new agents and officers.

In 2015, a bipartisan report by the House Oversight Committee found that the Secret Service had a staffing crisis and an insular culture that resisted change.

The report follows years of allegations that Cuffari bungled the Secret Service probe.

Cuffari did not immediately inform Congress that the Secret Service had erased its text messages from the time of the Capitol attack, costing investigators possible evidence.

The Post has reported that Cuffari’s office halted his own office’s efforts to recover the text messages. He also opened a criminal investigation and ordered the Secret Service to halt efforts to retrieve the messages.

An independent panel under the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency has been investigating multiple allegations against Cuffari since 2021, including his handling of the Secret Service probe, court records show. The panel is also investigating allegations that he led partisan investigations and retaliated against whistleblowers.

His office paid nearly $1.2 million last year to settle a wrongful termination suit from his former deputy, Jennifer Costello, who said she was fired after denouncing Cuffari for delaying a report on the Trump administration’s widely condemned migrant family separation policy on the southern border, according to the Project on Government Oversight. The nonprofit has called for Cuffari to resign or for Biden to fire him.

A pair of Democratic lawmakers also urged Cuffari to resign last year after he admitted he had failed to secure text messages from his iPhone, a possible violation of federal law, for delaying or censoring reports on domestic violence and sexual misconduct at DHS, and for not notifying Congress about the Secret Service’s deleted texts, which they said is also required by law.

Trump picked Cuffari to run the office in charge of rooting out corruption and misconduct inside the Department of Homeland Security, and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2019.

Cuffari had worked for years as a supervisor in the Justice Department Inspector General’s Tucson outpost. He retired in 2013 after an internal investigation concluded that he had misled investigators about his testimony in an inmate’s lawsuit against the government.

Carol D. Leonnig, Lisa Rein and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this report.

A federal appeals court on Thursday made it harder for Black and Hispanic voters to form coalitions to elect the candidates they prefer in three southern states, overruling long-standing precedents.

For decades, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that the Voting Rights Act allows voting districts that give Black and Hispanic voters the ability to elect candidates of their choice when they have common interests and can form coalitions. Voting rights advocates have praised such rulings because they allow Black and Hispanic voters to get their voices heard even when each group does not constitute a majority on its own.

After the 2020 Census, commissioners in Texas’s Galveston County drew new lines that dissolved the only coalition district in the county. The Justice Department and voters sued, and a district court judge ruled in their favor, citing the appeals court’s precedents. A panel of three appeals court judges upheld that ruling — but also called for the full appeals court to take up the issue to reverse its prior rulings.

On Thursday, the full appeals court did just that. In a 12-6 decision, it ruled the language in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and decisions from the Supreme Court do not require coalition districts.

“Nowhere does Section 2 indicate that two minority groups may combine forces to pursue a vote dilution claim,” the court wrote in the majority opinion.

The dissenters issued two opinions, including one that called the majority decision “atextual and ahistorical.”

“Today, the majority finally dismantled the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act in this circuit, leaving four decades of en banc precedent flattened in its wake,” they wrote.

The case centered on the makeup of the Galveston County Commissioners Court, which consists of four county commissioners elected from districts and a county executive, called a judge, elected by the entire county. Until the new lines were drawn, Black and Hispanic residents made up a majority in one of the four commissioner districts for three decades.

In Galveston County, 58 percent of the voting-age population is White, 22.5 percent is Hispanic and 12.5 percent is Black, according to the decision. Hispanic voters are spread across the county, while Black voters are concentrated in the heart of the county.

The ruling is binding on the three states in the New Orleans-based appeals court’s jurisdiction — Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

The case was brought by voters with the help of branches of the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens. They did not immediately say Thursday whether they planned to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. County officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Aaron Schaffer, Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.