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.