SAN FRANCISCO — They filed in tentatively, taking seats on plush couches and folding chairs arranged in a semicircle in the cafe’s gently lit backroom. Here would be safe to share their deepest feelings, they were assured, to unspool their still-fresh emotions.

And the Democrats gathered at Manny’s — for what looked and sounded a lot like group therapy — had a lot to unpack.

In one of America’s most liberal cities, this is where San Franciscans come when they need a place to process the latest political bombshell. So they did Monday, gathering after President Biden ended his reelection campaign and ceded the spotlight to one of the Bay Area’s own. In confessional tones, person after person reported how their mood had changed overnight: from depression to delight, anxiety to excitement.

The preceding weeks had been traumatizing, the previous 24 hours life-affirming.

“I think for the first time in months I feel so optimistic,” said Chandru Murthi, a 77-year-old resident who was the first in the circle to share.

Manny Yekutiel imagined exactly this type of discussion when he founded his hybrid coffee shop, bar, bookstore and event space in the Mission district in 2018. The 34-year-old political science major is a longtime Democratic fundraiser and strategist, and he decided to open shop after Donald Trump’s election.

Since then, Manny’s has become a pillar of the city’s political scene, a physical retreat for like-minded souls to talk at a time when so much discourse is chronically online. The back of the cafe is decorated like a living room, with floor lamps, house plants, even a red vintage rug from Yekutiel’s childhood home in Los Angeles.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and first lady Jill Biden are among the prominent Democrats who have all stopped in. Vice President Harris, now the party’s likely ticket-topper in the November election, is also a fan. “You’re amazing,” she told Yekutiel during one of her visits.

For anyone looking to do a wellness check on the psyche of a deeply blue stronghold at this historic moment, Manny’s is where to go.

Responding to Biden’s news, Yekutiel reworked the week’s schedule, starting with Monday’s session. He kicked things off as discussion leader. “Let’s ground this in how we feel right now,” he told the crowd of about three dozen people. “How are we feeling as Democrats, as San Franciscans, as people who have a lot at stake in this election?”

“I feel excited, I feel hopeful,” said Angelina Polselli, 24. “It feels like everyone finally woke up from a long, long nap.”

As Manny’s resident Gen Z expert, she noted that young people have some concerns with Harris, particularly her record as a prosecutor. But there’s also the “brat” factor, which Polselli had to explain to an audience who appeared largely unfamiliar with the catalogue of Charli XCX.

“It feels exciting to have a young candidate who is energized and youthful and who is also talking to young people and using the language we use,” she added.

Soon, however, that familiar fear crept back in.

“I’m a little bit worried about a San Francisco liberal carrying the battleground states,” said Dan Rink, 81 and himself a liberal from the Bay Area.

“I’m not sure she’s a liberal, I view her as more moderate,” David Anderson, 55, a film industry veteran, chimed in.

Yekutiel took a poll: “How many of you, if you’re willing to raise your hand, are worried about her ability to win?” About half the circle responded, though several acknowledged they were “more hopeful than 24 hours ago.”

Hope has been in short supply all year for this crowd. Enthusiasm, even shorter.

“The last few weeks were really difficult because people have just felt this dread, that there’s no point,” Yekutiel said. “And now I have all these ideas, my mind has been racing, people are reaching out to me, asking how they can help. That was not happening 24 hours ago.”

Two nights later, Manny’s hosted a watch party for Biden’s Oval Office address, his first since exiting the campaign. Despite the new themed drinks — “Kamalattes,” sweetened with coconut syrup, of course — the affair was solemn.

As the president’s speech played on a small TV opposite the barista station, some 20 people fell silent and clustered around the screen. Passersby stopped to watch through the cafe’s open front windows. A woman named Lydia walked in to order a mocha and wound up staying for the whole thing.

The elated embrace of Harris expanded to a tearful appreciation of Biden.

“I felt in his voice and his speech and his words so much love for this country,” Michelle Jeong said, choking up. “The hope, unity and the lack of ego.”

For Mike Madison, who had also attended the Monday gathering, the sentiment was overdue. Lost in the memes and the Harris hullabaloo was the fact that Biden had just made a tremendous sacrifice, he said.

“I wanted people to remember what he’s done, his real accomplishments,” Madison said.

If night one’s theme was relief and celebration and night two’s was gratitude, a third event Thursday was something of a reality check. It was also the largest gathering of the week, squeezing about 175 people into Manny’s backroom for a panel featuring two journalists dissecting the upcoming campaign and Harris’s prospects for victory.

“It’s not going to be easy, let’s be clear. It’s not going to be easy to win in November,” said Scott Shafer, politics editor at KQED, a Bay Area public radio station.

The evening served as a call to action: “This is our hometown candidate, she’s one of us,” Yekutiel said. “So we are going to be needed to propel her to this highest office.”

For those interested in getting involved, he announced a very San Francisco option: A “disco for democracy” party, with proceeds going to get-out-the-vote efforts in neighboring Nevada. Only days earlier, when Biden was still heading the Democratic ticket, such festivities were a harder sell, Yekutiel said. But now there was something to dance about.

Lalita Abhyankar, a physician, was ready to volunteer. “I want to knock on doors,” she said. “I’ve never felt this way about a candidate, not even Obama. … I can vote for her instead of just voting against Trump. It feels amazing.”

Thursday was her first time at a Manny’s discussion, she said. A friend told her it was the place to be this week, and she wanted company as she reveled in her new enthusiasm. Sometimes even those who didn’t know they cared leave Manny’s fired up — like the woman who happened to walk in just before Biden’s address.

“She came in for a mocha and participated in a major historic moment,” Yekutiel said. “That was my vision for this place — you trap people with beer and coffee so they don’t even realize they’re walking into a political space. And then, they’re in.”

In his bid to claim the House speaker’s gavel and end three weeks of chaos last fall, Rep. Mike Johnson mapped out an ambitious agenda.

Week by week, month by month, the Louisiana Republican promised to meet the “urgency of this hour” with “bold, decisive action.” Above all else, Johnson promised, the House GOP would finish funding federal agencies before the traditional end-of-summer five-week recess.

“DO NOT break for district work period unless all 12 appropriations bills have passed the House,” he wrote on Oct. 23, in a letter sent to all House Republicans with to-do lists and all-caps directives.

Well, that didn’t pan out.

Before lunchtime Thursday, Speaker Johnson bowed to reality and sent lawmakers home a week earlier than originally planned, turning what is traditionally called “August recess” into a 6½-week break from legislative action.

Republicans have passed five of the 12 bills that fund the federal government, putting them well ahead of last year’s absolutely dysfunctional timeline, when just one bill had been passed at this point. But the House GOP failed to pass two others and decided the rest were too politically tricky to even attempt at this point.

Even those bills that did pass contain so many extremely conservative policy riders and spending cuts to important programs that they are dead in the Senate, where a traditional bipartisan process is playing out as expected. All that House Republicans have to show for their work on government funding is creating more political exposure for a couple dozen incumbents that might further endanger their majority.

While most Americans have focused their attention on the made-for-Hollywood presidential campaign that has captured the nation’s attention, House Republicans have continued sputtering along in the shadows the past three months in their traditionally chaotic fashion.

A few weeks ago, as President Biden struggled, that might have been a fine enough strategy. But his decision to stand down has lit a fire under liberal activists rallying for Vice President Harris, and up to 10 of the most vulnerable House Republicans reside in California or in the New York media market. In those places, former president Donald Trump remains a political anchor while Harris might energize her base out of their Biden-induced slumber — possibly setting the stage for a net gain of at least four seats that would vault Democrats into the House majority next year.

It didn’t have to be this way for House Republicans. Back in the early spring, Johnson allowed passage of a national security bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. That came right after the passage of two massive packages that included all 12 spending bills at the funding level agreed to last year by Biden and Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

As a result, some of Trump’s loudest House allies tried to force him out in similar fashion to McCarthy. But Trump gave the speaker the support he needed to fend off the challenge (also bolstered by some Democratic votes). Johnson’s path to remaining in power became clear: retain the majority and hope Trump wins the presidency and endorses him for another term.

Trump has never shown much interest in the specificity of agency budgets, other than those dealing with border security. Some of the most conservative members encouraged the speaker to not even bother trying to approve the 12 spending bills until after the election, hoping for a Republican sweep that would lead to a very conservative budget.

But House GOP leaders have tried to split the difference by sticking to the rigid outline of the Biden-McCarthy deal. They’re ignoring side deals that led to billions more in domestic funding while also allowing some very conservative policy riders to creep into funding legislation.

Democrats accused the speaker of genuflecting, again, to his most conservative wing by engaging in a spending process that would fail. “They knew these bills could never pass. They went through this charade to appease Republican extremists, and now, Speaker Johnson is sending members home despite promising he would not take August recess unless all 12 bills passed,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

Republicans defend their dismal showing by blaming Democrats for never providing more than a handful of votes for the bills, leaving them little margin for error. “You eventually hit a wall because, you know, we have a few of our own members that vote against some of these bills,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who made the call to send lawmakers home early, told The Hill.

By pushing ahead with these GOP-only bills, Republican leaders have repeatedly forced their most politically vulnerable members to cast votes in the committee and on the House floor that aren’t exactly appealing to centrist voters.

Because of their own conservative political demands, House Republicans protected funding for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, as well as Social Security and Medicare. That forced deep cuts to some domestic programs in order to slash overall spending consistent with their political and policy aims.

The result: Democrats estimate that 72,000 teacher positions for low-income students would be eliminated in the bill funding the Education Department, while the Environmental Protection Agency could face a 20 percent cut. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget would come more than $300 million below the president’s request.

These domestic programs don’t grab national headlines, but they are often beloved in certain regions and can be quite easily turned into political weapons.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), a freshman whose district narrowly backed Biden over Trump four years ago, received an early lesson last year when he voted in committee for the bill funding the Agriculture Department. It included restrictions against mail delivery of pills related to abortions, a vote that Democrats turned into a quick video ad against him.

Democrats homed in on Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), a senior member of the committee who is facing a difficult reelection in his suburban district, for voting to strip LGBTQ+ community funding projects out of another bill.

The more establishment-friendly corner of the House Republican conference often begrudgingly goes along with leadership even if it means supporting bills pushed by far-right Republicans from safe conservative districts.

After final votes Thursday, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), from a Long Island district that leans Republican, told reporters he would center his campaign on bills passed last year that tried to deal with key issues for swing-district voters.

“I’m going to focus my campaign on policy and ensuring that voters know where I stand on the issues that matter the most — about the border, about the economy, public safety, pocketbook issues, inflation,” said LaLota, who faces a well-funded opponent, former CNN news personality John Avlon.

He said he was ready to defend cuts to some domestic programs as a down payment toward reducing the nearly $35 trillion national debt.

“There are things that responsible people from Washington need to do, and that should not be a partisan issue. Members of both parties should be able to join in reasonable, responsible spending cuts,” LaLota said.

Some GOP moderates have rebelled against the spending bills — along with some arch conservatives who make it a habit of voting against almost every funding plan — and that has stalled the appropriations process until the fall, or more likely, until after the November elections.

In trying to placate his hard-line members, Johnson and other GOP leaders are fighting the last war. They continue act as if their biggest fear is a right-wing coup, as befell McCarthy, when their most immediate concern should simply be protecting their majority.

About 20 House Republicans antagonized McCarthy last year, beginning with forcing him to go 15 rounds in early January 2023 before electing him speaker. In October, eight of them joined with Democrats to oust him as speaker.

After three weeks of paralysis over electing a speaker, Johnson’s best résumé highlight might have been that no one hated him, meaning he could win the floor vote for speaker.

But in the past few months, the atmosphere shifted away from the 20 or so most strident conservatives and instead toward whatever best serves the interests of Trump — who seems to clearly get that last year’s chaos should not be repeated anytime soon.

Trump demonstrated that by helping defeat the effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), considered one of Trump’s closest allies, to oust Johnson. And not a single Republican has paid any political price in their primary election for supporting Ukraine aid, with Trump silent in most of those races.

The Trump-Johnson connection was on display at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, where the speaker regularly got spotted in the VIP front rows with Trump and other high-profile Republicans. And some of the fringier conservatives were somewhat sidelined, including Greene, who was often seated a row or two behind Trump and got relegated to a non-primetime speaking role. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) never spoke onstage.

If Trump wins and Republicans retain the House majority, Johnson stands a good chance of winning his endorsement to remain speaker — which would all but silence Johnson’s critics.

If Republicans lose the majority, whether or not Trump wins, Johnson will have a hard time remaining GOP leader.

And Democrats want to make Republicans pay for every vote they’ve cast the past 18 months.

“I think what we should use against them is the fact that they are incompetent,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. “I have served here for a long, long time, and I’ve never seen such incompetence.”

Former president Donald Trump vowed Saturday to stage more outdoor rallies two weeks after surviving an assassination attempt and claimed the Secret Service has agreed to “substantially step up their operation” to protect him.

Trump wrote on Truth Social in a post Saturday morning that the Secret Service, which has been sharply criticized for its handling of security at the Butler, Pa., rally where he was wounded, was “very capable” of providing extra security.

“NO ONE CAN EVER BE ALLOWED TO STOP OR IMPEDE FREE SPEECH OR GATHERING!!!” Trump wrote.

The Secret Service did not confirm or deny that it would provide additional security, citing security concerns, but a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said it was accurate that the Secret Service will be increasing security for Trump’s outdoor rallies.

The Washington Post had previously reported that the Secret Service has encouraged Trump to stop large outdoor rallies and his campaign was scouting indoor venues.

“Ensuring the safety and security of our protectees is our highest priority,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “In the interest of maintaining operational integrity, we are not able to comment on specifics of our protective means or methods.”

The Secret Service said it had previously increased security in June as the presidential campaign heated up and the candidates were appearing at more events.

Trump was wounded in the ear as he spoke at a large outdoor rally on July 13 when a gunman opened fire from a nearby roof. The shooting left one rallygoer dead and injured two others in the crowd that had gathered to see the Republican presidential nominee. Law enforcement snipers shot and killed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.

The FBI said Friday that Trump was injured by a bullet or a bullet fragment fired by the shooter, after lingering questions about whether a bullet or debris caused his injuries.

Trump has not provided medical records about his injuries, but Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), a Trump ally and former White House physician, released a letter saying he had treated Trump for a two-centimeter wound on his ear that did not require stitches.

Trump’s Saturday post followed another on Truth Social on Friday night in which he promised to return to Butler for a “BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” that would honor the firefighter, Corey Comperatore, who was killed at the rally and those injured. Trump did not say when the event would occur or if it would be outdoors.

“WHAT A DAY IT WILL BE — FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” Trump wrote.

Trump has not appeared at an outdoor rally since the shooting. He is scheduled to appear at a hockey arena in St. Cloud, Minn., Saturday night for a campaign rally.

After intense criticism from lawmakers for not preventing the shooting, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned this week. Law enforcement has not been able to determine a motive in the shooting.

Cheatle previously said that an internal review of the agency’s handling of the shooting should be available within 60 days and an independent report ordered by President Biden was due in 45 days. The FBI is leading the investigation into the shooting.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions seeking additional information about the president’s plans for outdoor rallies.

Vice President Harris has had an extraordinary week — a campaign-changing stretch that has unified and energized Democrats, flummoxed former president Donald Trump and upended the 2024 election. She has 100 days to convert all that into a winning campaign.

Robby Mook, who was campaign manager for Hillary Clinton in 2016, said Harris had a “perfect 48 hours” after President Biden announced last Sunday that he was ending his candidacy. Her rapid consolidation of support was almost breathtaking in its velocity and effectiveness.

Buckets of money flowed into the campaign. Tens of thousands of people volunteered to help. Leading Democrats and allied organizations moved to endorse her in a well-choreographed sequence that culminated with former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, on Friday. Harris pivoted from a secondary role to leading the attack against Trump, bringing force and focus that Biden struggled to show.

Talk of assuring an open process to select a new nominee and open doubts about her electability melted away overnight. Potential rivals for the nomination endorsed Harris rather than challenge her. Those who might have considered doing so likely were chastened by the rush to embrace the vice president’s historic candidacy.

A party divided and demoralized ever since Biden’s faltering June 27 debate performance regained hope that Trump now might be beatable. Initial polls, which will be far from the last word on the subject, show Harris running better than Biden, though not with any clear lead.

Harris’s ascent has had a notable impact especially on many women voters. Over the past week, I reached out to women in the Denver and Atlanta suburbs whom I have interviewed in the past to get a better sense of the reaction. Some of those around Denver I first met during the 2018 midterm elections and then sought their views during the 2022 campaign. Those in Georgia were part of a group of Black voters I met in the months before the 2022 midterm elections.

Robin Kupernik, who lives in the Denver suburbs, became a political activist after Trump was first elected in 2016 and has remained so ever since. Her reaction to the shift from Biden to Harris spoke for many women.

“People in my orbit are over the moon,” she said in a text message. “We are so excited to have a fighting chance again. My sister says she thinks this will be our finest hour. My daughter says young people who were apathetic before are now engaged.” Listening to Harris, she said, “makes me tear up.”

In 2022, during a conversation at a public library in Littleton, Colo., Katie Skinner expressed the hope that Biden would not seek a second term. “I always felt like he would just be a one-term president, especially because of his age,” she said at the time. “I would like to see another Democrat in office and maybe somebody just of the newer generation,” she said then.

Biden’s decision is like a burden lifted. “I feel reinvigorated, excited and laser focused on supporting her and seeing this through,” she said in an email last week. “With Biden at the top of the ticket, I felt like I was holding my breath for months. Sunday felt like a big exhale, and now I’m breathing steady.”

Jen Helms, who lives in Denver, was so worried about Biden’s frailties that she tried never to watch him speak. For that reason, she did not watch the Atlanta debate with Trump. “I only saw clips of the debate, and that was enough,” she said in an email. “He just seemed already defeated.”

She is learning more about Harris, likes what she has seen and appreciates the burst of energy inside the Democratic Party. But she has reservations about what comes next. “I’m relieved Joe stepped down ultimately, but anxious about our ability to get Kamala elected.”

In the fall of 2022, many of the suburban women interviewed around Denver were focused on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended half a century of the constitutional right to abortion. Lindsey Zaback was one, saying at the time, “I think that this coming election [2022], women are going to be out in full force.”

In a telephone interview a few days ago, as she talked about her reaction to Harris as the likely nominee, Zaback pointed specifically to the issue of abortion in this year’s election. “What’s happened in our country is a complete tragedy,” she said, referring to the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “We need a leader that will make fixing this a priority. [Harris] has a proven track record … and I think it’s really important that we have someone that will prioritize that for women.”

If the abortion issue has energized Democrats since 2022, the Israel-Gaza war over the past nine months has fractured the party’s coalition, with many younger Democrats believing that Biden has not been forceful enough in condemning Israel’s conduct and the civilian casualties that have resulted.

Cori Detwiler, another suburban Denver resident, sees Harris as a better nominee than Biden but wondered whether the vice president can patch up the divisions. “I am hopeful that him stepping down will reengage a portion of the Democratic [and] Democratic-leaning voters that have been disenchanted with Biden’s policies (especially with the handling of Israel’s occupation of Gaza),” she said in a text. “I worry Kamala isn’t far enough removed from those policies to fully reinvigorate those voters though.”

Black women have been the most reliable voters in the Democratic coalition, and they have responded to Harris’s emergence. Darlena Slate of Peachtree Corners, Ga., in suburban Atlanta, was keeping her distance from the campaign, fearful that the election was moving in Trump’s direction. When she heard that Biden had dropped out and endorsed Harris, she said, “I was in disbelief because I was thinking, wow, he actually nominated a Black woman to be his replacement and ask the country to stand behind her.”

With Harris as the likely nominee, Slate is more committed to help. “Now that we as Black women have a strong Black woman candidate running for president of the United States, I personally will be even more engaged.”

Dennisha Haynes of Lawrenceville, Ga., has run the gamut of emotions this election year, from anger that the party was left with Biden as the sole candidate to panic that the conversation about replacing him was coming so late to trepidation mixed with cynicism that if Harris were not the nominee it would be “a slap in the face” to the vice president and by implication to Black women like her.

“I am now at excitement but am still cynical,” she said in a text message. “I believe wholeheartedly she has what it takes to win and do a great job. She’s exactly what we need. But she is a Black woman in America and this country hasn’t always viewed us as it should.”

Kelly Martin, who is Black and lives in Gwinnett County outside Atlanta, said she was so unenthusiastic about a Biden-Trump race that she was thinking about abstaining from voting for president this fall. Harris’s emergence has made her look at the campaign differently. She said she can “feel the energy shifting,” adding: “Right now I am hopeful, but I have learned that sometimes hope bites me in the end.”

Her larger worry is what would happen if Harris were elected. “I really think that it’s going to divide us even more,” she said. “I think that we are on the precipice of a civil war. … What she represents as a woman and person of color and having the highest position in the land will inflame a lot of people.”

Two years ago, Jasmine Clark, a Georgia state representative, said that Biden had done “a great job” but that in 2024, she believed “it would be better if we lifted up someone else, someone younger.” Now, as a Georgia delegate to the convention, she is excited to cast her vote for Harris. But she also worries about what Harris will face in the months ahead.

“As a Black woman, I am bracing for the inevitable racist and sexist attacks on her and have mixed emotions about us asking her to sprint a marathon and do something unprecedented in an impossibly short timeline,” Clark said. “But I am also extremely hopeful that she can pull this off.”

Clark and the other Black women recognize how difficult the coming months could be for Harris. She has had an impressive opening week, but when she ran for president in 2020, she had a similarly strong start to the campaign, only to falter as the months went on. In that campaign, she struggled to offer a vision or explain her core convictions.

She will have to weather attacks about positions she has taken in the past and move to define herself before Trump’s campaign does it for her. In the past few days, she has shown that she can prosecute a case against Trump. But is she as good a defense attorney as she is a prosecutor?

Harris has big decisions ahead, starting with the selection of a running mate and then whether and how to differentiate herself from Biden and his policies. She offered some hint of that on Thursday after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, delivering pointed words about Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza.

The campaign has changed overnight from one that has been largely backward looking and featuring the two oldest and least popular candidates in history to one that will pit the future against the past. But is Harris a change candidate or merely a continuation of what Biden has been and done?

Her skills as a candidate will be tested, which is why one week is too soon to predict what this contest might look like in October.

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Donald Trump supporters lining up to enter a rally here passed the usual tents hawking MAGA merchandise, but suddenly most of the gear attacking President Biden (often in vulgar terms) was gone. A few straggler “Let’s go Brandon” stickers remained. New swag targeting Vice President Harris, the new presumptive Democratic nominee, had yet to arrive.

Those sale racks were a small but telling symbol of how the White House race has rapidly transformed since Biden withdrew last Sunday. Democrats have swung from despondency to jubilance with a surge of fundraising, volunteering and meme-making, with one dance club literally thumping to an excerpt of a viral quote from Harris about falling from a coconut tree. Republicans, meanwhile, have struggled to adapt to Biden’s exit and settle on a clear message to define Harris, with just 100 days until the election.

A new national survey by the Wall Street Journal found 49 percent of registered voters said they supported Trump and 47 percent backed Harris, within the margin of error, compared to Trump leading Biden by six percentage points in the same poll before Biden dropped out. New Fox News polls in battleground states found the candidates statistically tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Harris led by 6 points in Minnesota.

Interviews with rallygoers ahead of a Trump event that was supposed to signal strength and a widening path to victory reflected the grab-bag attacks that Republicans are currently trying against Harris. Trump supporters referenced her role in the administration’s response to migration, called her liberal and criticized the process of replacing Biden on the ticket. Similarly, the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC launched new ads attacking Harris on the border, accusing her of covering up Biden’s health and having a liberal voting record.

“He will always be my first choice, but she’s my second choice,” Trump said on Saturday of running against Biden or Harris at the top of the ticket.

Harris allies responded with a new spot touting her work as a prosecutor, state attorney general and vice president. The super PAC Future Forward said it would spend $50 million boosting Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. Another group, American Bridge 21st Century, is resuming Trump attack ads in battleground states.

“I will proudly put my record against his any day,” Harris said at a fundraiser in Pittsfield, Mass. “Some folks would suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down … The true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”

Harris allies are leaning into attacking Trump’s new running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as out of touch with the values of most Americans, especially by spotlighting his three-year-old comments calling Democrats including Harris “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable.” (Harris has two stepchildren.)

“You’ve all seen how pathetic JD Vance is, what a weirdo,” second gentleman Doug Emhoff said on Saturday at a door-knocking event in Port Stevens, Wis., in support of his wife. “Seriously, this guy, the more you get to know him, the more it’s just ridiculous.”

In a viral cable news interview, Gov. Tim Walz (R-Minn.), who has emerged as a leading contender for Harris’s running mate, warned Vance that he should careful about stirring the anger of cat people. The Harris campaign followed with a statement describing Vance as a “creep (who wants to ban to abortion nationwide).” Even before changing candidates, the campaign has consistently sought to portray Trump as dangerous and unhinged.

Walz, in an interview with The Washington Post, said he wasn’t trying to drive a political message, just making “an observation.”

“This is weird stuff — they’re way too obsessed with our bedrooms,” he said. “All of a sudden it feels like to me, people are pausing and saying, ‘You’re right, this just doesn’t feel right.’”

Harris’s fundraiser in western Massachusetts on Saturday was expected to bring in $1.4 million for the campaign, according to one of the co-hosts. The campaign said it raised $126 million from 1.4 million donors in the three days after Biden endorsed Harris.

The surge of contributions marks a reversal of fortunes for Democrats. As of June, Trump and the GOP had virtually erased an earlier Democratic cash advantage.

Harris landed in Massachusetts greeted by busloads of local Democrats, Air National Guard base employees and a 4-H youth group. She took her time on the rope line, mostly posing for selfies.

“It’s definitely a complete transformation,” said Valery Franco, a 23-year-old from Springfield, Mass., who works in recruiting at the nearby base. “There was a lot of discouragement about Biden and what we saw in the debate. People felt like they were choosing between the lesser of two evils. But with Kamala — there’s a lot more energy that she’s bringing to the table.”

At the fundraiser in Pittsfield, Mass., Harris told the crowd that Trump and his allies have been resorting to some “wild lies” about her record. And she picked up the Walz line of argument as well.

“Some of what he and his running mate are saying it’s just plain weird,” Harris said to laughter at The Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. “That’s the box you put that in.”

She also noted that Trump had “just pulled out of our debate.” Trump and a spokesman have recently made statements casting doubt on sticking with the debate that Trump and Biden agreed to have in September, hosted by ABC News.

“I hope he reconsiders because we have a lot to talk about,” she said. But she also told the crowd that Democrats are the “underdogs” in the November election. “The bottom line is we have our work cut out for us.”

The event included cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax and singer-songwriter James Taylor. Former governor Deval Patrick is among the co-hosts for the fundraiser, where tickets to attend ranged from $100 to $12,500. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who ran against Harris in the 2020 presidential primary, also attended.

“She made a commitment to come here before this all happened,” said co-host Sherwood Guernsey, an attorney and former state legislator who leads the Rural Freedom Network political action committee. “She could have easily said ‘I’ve got to go to the swing states.’ … She’s got lots of other places to go.”

Across the pivotal swing states, the Harris campaign said it was hosting 2,300 grassroots events this weekend to mobilize supporters. Several of the events doubled as auditions for potential running mates including Walz, and Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Trump, meanwhile, was scheduled to speak on Saturday afternoon at a bitcoin conference in Nashville. The former president previously dismissed cryptocurrency as “a scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen,” but in this campaign he started opposing “a Central Bank Digital Currency,” including adding that to the Republican Party platform, after aggressive lobbying and major donations from industry executives.

In the Nashville speech, Trump repeatedly attacked Biden, adding Harris almost as an afterthought.

“We lost this wonderful person, you know he’s actually a terrible human being,” Trump said of Biden. “The problem is that Kamala,” he added, mispronouncing Harris’s name. “She’s worse than Joe … She’s got a little honeymoon going on now.”

Later on Saturday, Trump was set to join Vance for the rally in Minnesota. Vance has been on defense over his past comments insulting childless people and advocating for a national abortion ban.

Many St. Cloud rally attendees brushed off concerns that Harris could pose a stiffer challenger to Trump than Biden. They asked, rhetorically, what she had done as vice president, convinced she had little to show for it. Like Trump, many mispronounced her name. Some had seen the viral videos of what they called Harris’s “word salads” and predicted she would soon trip up again.

But there was also a hint of apprehension in the crowd that the race just got harder.

“I just feel like there’s more problems ahead with that happening,” said Kris Ryks, a rally attendee from New London, Minn. “It just seems like there’s so much money involved and so many people behind them like never before.”

Knowles reported from St. Cloud, Minn. Reston reported from Pittsfield, Mass. Wells reported from Wasau and Port Stevens, Wis. Arnsdorf reported from Washington.

Democratic lawmakers and Vice President Harris’s campaign joined a chorus of online critics in calling out remarks Donald Trump aimed at a Christian audience on Friday, arguing that the former president and current Republican presidential nominee had implied he would end elections in the United States if he won a second term.

At the conclusion of his speech at the Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Democrats and others interpreted the comments as signaling how a second Trump presidency would be run, a reminder that he previously said he would not be a dictator upon returning to office “except for Day One.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is running for Senate, shared the clip of Trump’s speech on X, writing, “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism. Here Trump helpfully reminds us that the alternative is never having the chance to vote again.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Trump’s comments “terrifying.” And Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said, “The only way ‘you won’t have to vote anymore’ is if Donald Trump becomes a dictator.”

The Trump campaign, however, says the comments, made at the event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action, were about how Trump would unite the country. Asked to clarify what Trump meant, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement on Saturday that the former president “was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”

Trump, who has continued to assert without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against him, preceded his comments about not having to vote again by telling the audience that Democrats “don’t want to approve voter ID — that’s because they want to cheat. But until then, Republicans must win. … We want a landslide that’s too big to rig.”

The Harris campaign is calling Trump’s remarks “a vow to end democracy.”

“When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it,” Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a news release on Saturday. “Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America.” (Project 2025 is a think tank document outlining policy priorities for the next Republican president. Many Trump allies and former administration officials were involved in drafting the document, but his campaign has sought to distance the former president from it.)

Trump’s comments also drew some concern among those on the Christian right.

David Lane, an organizer of conservative Christian pastors, said in a text message that Trump “may have gotten a little over his skis” with what he said because it could discourage conservative Christians from shaping the outcomes of future elections.

“Evangelicals in 2028, 2032, and 2036 must raise their civics game to a new level if America is to return to the Judeo-Christian heritage and Biblical-based culture laid out by the founders,” said Lane, the founder of the American Renewal Project, whose mission is to help elect more Christians to office. He added that “somebody’s values will reign supreme in the public square,” and if Christians don’t vote, their values will not be reflected in their elected officials.

In front of a different Christian audience last month, Trump made a similar suggestion about Christians not needing to vote after this year’s election.

At a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Washington, the former president said Christians “don’t vote as much as they should.”

“Do you know the power you have if you would vote? … You’ve got to get out and vote, just this time. I don’t care — in four years, you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years, don’t vote,” he said. “I don’t care by that time, but we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.”

But if Democrats were to come into power, he said at the time, “they’ll ruin it [and] we’ll have to do this all over again.”

Erica De Bruin, a professor of government at Hamilton College whose research focuses on civil-military relations, civil war and policing, said, “Trump frequently makes these kinds of deliberately ambiguous statements that can be interpreted in multiple ways.”

But she added that “to understand what another Trump presidency would involve, I think it is more useful to look at his past behavior than to attempt to parse what might be the ‘true meaning’ of any individual set of remarks he makes.” She pointed out that the last time he was in office, “he attempted to subvert the outcome of an election and remain in power longer than the American public voted to keep him there.”

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University, and co-author of “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” also said that while he didn’t think Trump’s recent comment was “indicative of an organized plot to end elections in the United States,” it did represent yet another sign that “the guy has got authoritarian reflexes.”

“Over the course of 10 or 15 years,” Levitsky added, a growing number of Republicans “convinced themselves that they weren’t going to be able to win elections in this new, multiracial America. I’m not so sure that’s true, but they were deeply fearful that was true. And so Trump, I think more than anything else, he senses … where they’re going and they’re feeling.”

Christian conservatives — White evangelicals, specifically — make up a substantial part of the voter base that Trump has been courting since his 2016 campaign.

In both 2016 and 2020, a third of Trump’s support came from White evangelical Protestants. So 1 one in every 3 votes Trump received came from White evangelical Protestants, a group that the Religion Research Institute estimates constitutes 14 percent of the population.

Levitsky’s co-author, Daniel Ziblatt, also a professor of government at Harvard, put a finer point on the significance of Trump’s comment. “I can’t think of a major candidate for office in any democracy on Earth since at least World War II who speaks in such overtly authoritarian ways,” said Ziblatt. “Not Victor Orban in Hungary, not Recep Erdogan in Turkey. Nowhere.”

Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” said in an email that she interpreted Trump’s comment as an attempt to address the “double bind” that supposed “strongmen” leaders face.

“They narrate a world of chaos and promise that they are strong enough to fix it in order to win elections, but they frequently don’t actually solve the problems that they’ve said that they could easily solve if given power,” said Mercieca, whose research focuses on the relationship between democracy and American communication practices. “I think Trump is here promising Christians that he will actually solve the problems that he has promised them he’ll solve (a full abortion ban … and various ‘culture war’ issues) and so with all of the problems solved, they won’t feel like the world is so chaotic that they have to vote to save the nation.”

“It’s a big promise,” she added, “and he doesn’t give specific details here.”

Members of former president Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have privately questioned why they were not informed that local police were tracking a suspicious person before that person opened fire on Trump at his July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, according to people with direct knowledge of the concerns.

Approximately 20 to 25 minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at the former president, local countersnipers noticed him behaving strangely and sent his photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, the head of Pennsylvania State Police told a congressional committee Tuesday.

Members of the Secret Service detail that protects Trump and was with him backstage have complained to confidantes and others inside the agency that they were never made aware of that warning, said three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations about that day. They also said they were not aware that the local countersnipers eventually lost track of Crooks, or that another local officer — hoisted up to the roof of a building just outside the rally site’s security perimeter — saw Crooks perched there with a gun.

The Trump detail’s first warning of trouble came as gunshots began ringing out at 6:11 p.m., eight minutes after Trump took the stage, according to the three people. The assassination attempt wounded Trump, killed one rallygoer and critically wounded two others.

Some of Trump’s top advisers, in a large white tent behind the stage where Trump was speaking, thought the spray of bullets was fireworks, two people said, and did not immediately dive to the ground. According to the two people, Trump advisers said that they first learned of any issue when the shots were fired, and that they could not understand why the suspicious-person alert hadn’t been passed on to them so they could consider delaying Trump’s speech — a sentiment Trump echoed in a TV interview.

“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” the former president said in an interview that aired Monday on Fox News. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.”

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Saturday the agency was declining to comment on The Washington Post’s questions about which radio communications Trump’s security detail received at the Butler rally. He repeated that the agency is examining everything about the incident, including whether there might have been a communication breakdown among its staff or other law enforcement, to determine precisely what happened.

“As it relates to communications at the rally, the Secret Service is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again,” Guglielmi said in a statement. “That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”

A spokeswoman for Trump declined to comment.

The concerns from Trump’s security detail and his advisers come after a period in which tensions between the former president’s orbit and top Secret Service officials simmered for months — and boiled over after the July 13 assassination attempt.

Trump’s team has been at odds with Secret Service headquarters over various requests that the agency denied, including more magnetometers at events, more countersnipers at some events and other specialty teams at other events, The Post has reported. The Secret Service and Trump’s team also repeatedly clashed over security and logistics at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.

The Butler, Pa., shooting is also emblematic of what some Secret Service critics say are chronic communication problems that have dogged the agency and contributed to serious security lapses.

Members of Congress have repeatedly questioned the role that poor communication may have played in allowing 20-year-old Crooks an opportunity to shoot at Trump, an episode widely considered the worst Secret Service security failure since then-President Reagan was shot in 1981. Communication breakdowns — because of the different radio frequencies that Secret Service teams use while working together and also technical failures in communications systems — have figured into some of the agency’s other significant security lapses. When a gunman began shooting at the White House one night in November 2011, for example, President Obama’s daughter Sasha was at home with her grandmother. But an agent protecting Sasha Obama did not know about the shooter for several minutes because the agent used a different radio frequency than officers and agents stationed at the White House. and no one had alerted him to the threat outside.

At the Trump rally this month, knowledge that law enforcement officials were looking for a suspicious person just outside the security perimeter may have factored into security decisions by Trump’s team, though it is unclear whether it would have caused them to stop him from taking the stage.

Sometimes there are reports of suspicious people or activities at Trump’s rallies, and they turn out to be nothing, said one of the people who spoke to The Post, and who is in Trump’s orbit and familiar with operations at his rallies. Usually when there are reports of suspicious people, though, this person said, they are located inside the hardened Secret Service perimeter of the rally — which means they have been screened by magnetometers meant to prevent people from entering with weapons. There would have been no such comfort with Crooks, given that he was just outside the secure area.

A Secret Service official told The Post investigators are still working to determine whether anyone relayed the information about the suspicious person to Trump’s security detail or to other Secret Service operational teams.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said reports of suspicious people are fairly commonplace at some public events and sometimes do not rise to the level of changing plans or alerting the senior official’s security detail, a team of about five to 10 agents who serve as the innermost ring of security for that person.

At a House Oversight hearing on Monday, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was asked why the Secret Service didn’t immediately delay the Trump speech or act more aggressively when local police reported a suspicious person. She told lawmakers that such reports were commonplace.

“At a number of our protected sites, there are suspicious individuals that are identified all the time,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they constitute a threat.”

Cheatle told lawmakers the Secret Service was notified of a suspicious person at the Pennsylvania rally “somewhere between two and five times” and that she didn’t know when countersnipers or the “shift” — another term for Trump’s security detail — were notified of those warnings. The agency was examining whether there had been a communications breakdown that prevented an effective response, she said.

Cheatle resigned last week under intense pressure from Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were outraged at the security lapses.

Col. Christopher L. Paris, head of Pennsylvania State Police, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday that local countersnipers saw Crooks as suspicious because he was milling around just outside the rally site and not entering. Their suspicion grew when they saw him with a golf range finder, Paris said. At that point, they sent a picture of Crooks to a Pennsylvania state trooper who was stationed in a command center with Secret Service agents.

That trooper relayed the message verbally to the Secret Service in the command center. The Secret Service requested that the warning be forwarded to a different phone number, which state police understood belonged to a Secret Service “tactical asset,” Paris testified.

Several committee members asked Paris whether various law enforcement agencies had been able to communicate effectively and efficiently on the day of the Butler rally. Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) asked whether there was one common radio channel where any law enforcement could raise a red flag in case of a threat. “If they don’t, how many people does that have to go through to get to the right actor in order to say, ‘Stop!’?”

“I don’t know,” Paris replied.

Paris said that on the day of the Butler rally, there were three different radio systems for local, state and federal law enforcement officials. State police had sought to integrate with Secret Service communications by sitting together in one command post, he said.

He added that there are disadvantages to sharing one communications channel among many law enforcement officers.

On the day of the rally, more than 100 people needed medical attention because of the heat, and officers were fielding reports of a missing 6-year-old and three other suspicious people besides Crooks, he said. “In theory, the more people you have on the same channel, if there was a medical emergency or a lost 6-year-old, and everyone keys up at once, it paralyzes your communication.”

STEVENS POINT, Wis. — Doug Emhoff was late to learn his life had changed, he told an enthusiastic audience of Democratic volunteers Saturday as they prepared to knock on doors in support of his wife, Vice President Harris, running for president.

At home in Los Angeles last Sunday after a campaign swing through Nevada, the nation’s first second gentleman had a delayed flight. Deciding to make the most of “another free morning in L.A.,” he said, “I thought I’d just go to an exercise cycling class with some friends of mine.”

The attendees laughed, anticipating his punchline: “I left my phone in the car.”

Emhoff enjoyed coffee after a spin class with friends until, after about 20 minutes, one of them showed him their phone, displaying the letter President Biden released declaring he was suspending his campaign. As a lawyer, Emhoff said, he skipped toward the end of the letter and assumed Biden was just writing that he would address the nation later in the week after recovering from covid.

But his friend told him to read the paragraphs above, in which Biden said he would not seek reelection — and Emhoff and his Secret Service detail took off running to the car, where his phone was blowing up with people telling him to call Harris.

“You could literally see steam and fire and smoke,” Emhoff said of his phone, to even more laughter. He called Harris. “She’s like, where the” — then he paused, suggesting a missing word — “were you? I need you.”

Emhoff traveled to Wisconsin on Saturday for his first major campaign swing since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, delivering brief remarks at the Hmong Wausau Festival, stopping for soft serve and kicking off a canvas launch at a local party office in Stevens Point. The second gentleman is no stranger to campaigning on behalf of his wife or the then-Biden campaign, but the switch in the ticket last week has revived attention on the man who could be the first gentleman.

A former entertainment lawyer, Emhoff is viewed by many Harris supporters as the ultimate “wife guy” and a purveyor of dad jokes. He’s co-starred in some of the Harris-related memes and fan edits taking over social media over the past week, with a photo of him when he was young going viral, as well as a photo in which he eagerly shows Harris his phone while she looks at him with skepticism. Some social media users even have mused that he is the true “brat” in the relationship, referring to songs from a Charli XCX album used in many of the pro-Harris social media postings.

Speaking in Wisconsin, Emhoff had plenty of jokes (such as suggesting he’s “just a lawyer from L.A.” who’s often thrown into unpredictable circumstances given his White House role) and personal anecdotes to share, including meeting Harris on a blind date. But he also highlighted his experience traveling the world for the Biden administration, speaking at the Hmong community event about his trips to Asia and Harris’s background as the daughter of an Indian immigrant. He leaned on his legal background when describing the election’s role in shaping the future Supreme Court and the actions it could take to restrict access to contraception.

He described “my wife, Kamala Harris, and her vision for the future,” laying out the stakes while running through a list of popular Democratic policies. He also needled both former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who have lobbed a grab-bag of attacks at Harris since she became the likely Democratic nominee.

“You’ve all seen how pathetic JD Vance is, what a weirdo,” Emhoff said while at the canvass launch, where freshly printed Harris signs hung between now-vintage Biden for President signs and memorabilia from past Democratic campaigns. “Seriously, this guy, the more you get to know him, the more it’s just ridiculous.”

He also used his role to directly counter some of the Republican lines of attack against Harris, including Vance’s three-year-old comments calling Democrats — including Harris — “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable.”

“Over the last decade, she’s not just been an amazing partner to me but a loving parent to two kids named Cole and Ella. From Day 1, she’s been present, nurturing and fiercely protective of them,” he said, referring to Harris’s two stepchildren from Emhoff’s prior marriage.

He concluded his remarks with a direct message for Trump, drawing raucous applause.

“Mr. Trump, I know you have so much trouble pronouncing her name,” Emhoff said, hand on his hip before waving it through the air and leaning forward. “Here’s the good news — after the election, you can just call her Madam President.”

Voters who watched Emhoff speak in Wisconsin praised him and his humor and said they hoped to see him out more on the campaign trail.

“I think he’s wonderful. It is not part of our country’s history that the women stand up in front of their husbands and run for something like this — it’s usually the woman’s position to stand back and smile,” said Nancy Foth, 74, a retired librarian who attended the canvass launch.

“I think this is amazing, and it’s time,” she added.