US elections campaign live: Barack Obama reportedly expected to endorse Kamala Harris nomination soon | US elections 2024

Shortly after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump said the projectile that hit his ear and caused it to bleed was a bullet.

But in testimony before the House judiciary committee yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray said it was not clear if that was indeed the case, or if Trump was struck by shrapnel:

Trump has been criticized for not being forthcoming about his health following the assassination attempt, which left one rallygoer dead and others wounded.

He released a memo about his recovery from the shooting from former White House doctor and current Republican congressman Ronny Jackson, but has not allowed the medical professionals who treated him to talk publicly about his condition.

During yesterday’s protests in Washington DC as Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress, a group lit an American flag on fire outside Union Station, the main passenger rail hub in the city:

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who led the push to have Netanyahu speak, later that evening went to the station, which is right across from the Capitol, to restore the flags:

This morning, Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also condemned the flag burning in a statement:

Defacing public property, desecrating the American flag, threatening Jews with violence and promoting terrorist groups like Hamas is not acceptable under any circumstance.

There is a difference between lawful expression and disorderly conduct. Anyone who violates the law must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Kamala Harris heads to Houston, Texas, this morning to give the keynote speech at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) national convention.

Delegates for the AFT, the second largest US teachers union with 1.7 million members, voted on Monday to endorse Harris’s bid to become the first woman and second African American to serve as president of the United States. Harris has received a flurry of endorsements from many of the country’s largest labor unions since she announced her candidacy for president.

With less than a 100 days to the presidential election, high-profile endorsements could prove pivotal in helping maintain the momentum that Harris campaign has enjoyed among Democrats since she entered the race less than a week ago.

She is due to speak at the AFT event at 11am ET and then will fly back to Washington, DC to meet with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The former US president Barack Obama is expected to add his endorsement soon for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, to become the Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 election, according to the latest report.

Obama was America’s first Black president when he was elected to office in 2008 in a historic victory for the Democrats, and his endorsement is crucial for the US vice-president who is now attempting to become America’s first female president and first woman of color to occupy the White House.

Obama privately has fully supported Harris’s candidacy and has been in regular contact with her, a report by NBC said, citing people familiar with the discussions.

Aides to Obama and Harris also have discussed arranging for the two of them to appear together on the campaign trail, though no date has been set,” the report said and Reuters has reported.

With no one stepping up to challenge Harris for the nomination, she won the backing of party delegates on Monday, a day after Joe Biden announced that he was dropping his re-election bid, following which he gave a speech to the nation on Monday night from the Oval Office.

The Obama Foundation, the former president’s charitable organization, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters, the news wire further reported.

The Harris for President campaign has launched its first official video, less than a week after US President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.

The ad caps a week during which Harris also broke funding records and quickly clinched enough delegate support to become the presumptive nominee in an election that is now just over 100 days away.

Harris memes are everywhere – but will tweets and TikToks turn into votes?

Dani Anguiano

“kamala IS brat,” pop star Charli xcx declared on Sunday, a reference to her new album released last month that has launched countless memes declaring it the season of the brat. A brat, in the British singer’s own words, is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”.

Brat was having a moment, Kamala was having hers, and the two came together in cultural union via a tidal wave of posts – largely from younger Americans – like videos with the pop star’s music over clips of the vice-president’s frequently shared coconut tree remarks.

Harris’s campaign quickly embraced the memes, adopting a lime green Twitter/X background in the same aesthetic of the Brat album. The internet went wild.

Now the question is what it might mean for Harris’s chances come November. Will tweets and TikToks turn into votes?

Republican attacks on Harris to get ‘as ugly and bigoted as they can’

David Smith

For Barack Obama there was “birtherism” and a name they said sounded like a specific Middle East terrorist. For Hillary Clinton there was “Lock her up” and merchandise that said, “Trump that bitch”, “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” and “Life’s a bitch: don’t vote for one.”

Rightwing playbooks deployed in past election campaigns are being dusted off for an all-out assault against Vice-President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee aiming to become the first Black woman and first person of south Asian descent to be US president.

“It’s obvious that the Republicans are going to play the race and gender card, which we’ve seen already in some of the attacks on social media,” said Tara Setmayer, a Black woman who is co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee. “It may be catnip for their Maga base but it will be a turnoff for the moderate voters in the battleground states that will determine this election.”

Harris’s sudden ascent after 81-year-old Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election has upended the race for the White House, giving Democrats a much-needed jolt of energy and instantly turned the tables on Republicans on the question of age: Donald Trump, 78, is now the oldest presidential nominee in history.

Having built a campaign against Biden, Republicans are hastily recalibrating and racing to define Harris, 59, before she can define herself. They intend to tie her to Biden’s immigration policy, which they say is to blame for a sharp increase last year in the number of people crossing the southern border with Mexico illegally.

A second line of attack will revolve around the economy. Public opinion polls consistently show Americans are unhappy with high food and fuel costs as well as interest rates that have made buying a home less affordable.

Read on here:

Andrew Roth

On his third day in Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu finally got the attention he so desperately wanted in the US capital.

Republicans and their guests in the House chamber stamped their feet and whistled as a joint session was gaveled into order, while the Democrat lawmakers who chose not to boycott someone whom colleagues had called a “war criminal” looked on in sullen silence. In a 56-minute speech punctuated with 50 rounds of applause, the Israeli prime minister dashed hopes of a quick end to the war in Gaza and dispensed red meat to the Republican faithful, blasting anti-war protest culture and vowing to fight until “total victory”.

For two days, Netanyahu had mostly been ignored at the Watergate hotel, passed over for the spectacle of a US political cycle averaging a West Wing season finale a week. Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race amid rumours of his cognitive decline, endorsing the vice-president, Kamala Harris, weeks before the convention and reinvigorating the Democratic party overnight. A bullet had grazed Donald Trump’s ear in an assassination attempt just 11 days ago, sparking comparisons to the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus Christ. America has been living decades in just weeks; was there even room on the cable TV schedule for Netanyahu to deliver another incendiary speech?

But the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Republican, had put Netanyahu on the schedule on 24 July and neither the US political tumult nor Biden’s bout of Covid-19, nor a requested international criminal court warrant accusing him of “crimes against humanity” would deter Israel’s prime minister from coming to Washington to make his case before Congress for a record fourth time (once more than Winston Churchill).

So when he had his moment, Netanyahu stood up to give a speech filled with verve but absolutely devoid of details: when and how Israel’s war in Gaza would come to an end and the 120 remaining hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October would be brought home.

Read on here:

Joe Biden will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu later today as the Israeli prime minister seeks to shore up US support for the ongoing war in Gaza.

Biden will also meet with families of Israelis taken hostage in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu gave a speech – arranged weeks ago and instigated by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson – to US Congress.

This was met with protests inside and out of the building, with Democrats declining to attend and thousands protesting in the streets.

With tensions over Israel’s nine-and-half-month war on Gaza running high, police mounted a huge security operation to seal off the US Capitol from protesters.

Streets in Washington’s downtown area were closed to traffic, while officers experienced in dealing with mass protests were drafted in from the New York police department. The Capitol building itself was ring-fenced off.

“Shut it down,” a large group of protesters chanted as they marched toward the Capitol after blocking a nearby intersection, adding “Bibi, Bibi, we’re not done!” Capitol police deployed pepper spray at protesters they claimed had crossed the police line.

Analysis: Biden’s address was a moving piece of political theatre and a rebuke of Trump

David Smith

There was 6 January 2021, and a violent coup attempt by a president desperately trying to cling to power. Then there was 24 July 2024, and a president explaining why he was giving up the most powerful job in the world.

Joe Biden’s address on Wednesday night was a moving piece of political theatre, the start of a farewell tour by “a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings” who entered politics in 1972 and made it all the way to the Oval Office. For diehard Democrats it was a case of: if you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

The speech was also a rebuke of his predecessor Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses in both word and deed. Although he never mentioned his predecessor by name, Biden laid out two radically different visions of the US presidency set to clash again in November.

Last Sunday the 46th president bowed to a chorus of fellow Democrats questioning his age and mental acuity and announced that he would drop out of the presidential election. On Wednesday, recovered from the coronavirus, the 81-year-old made his first public remarks to explain why.

Speaking against the backdrop of window, two flags, gold curtains and family photos including his late son Beau, Biden began by citing the Oval Office portraits of former presidents Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

“I revere this office but I love my country more,” he said. “It’s been the honour of my life to serve as your president. But in the defence of democracy, which is at stake, I think it’s more important than any title.”

It was a definitive rebuke of Trump, a man who has slapped his name on countless buildings and for whom the title is everything. Backed by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, the Republican nominee is intent on an expansion of presidential power. But by giving power away – in what Hillary Clinton described “as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime” – Biden demonstrated he will always be the bigger man.

Welcome back to our live US political coverage.

Senior Democrats have rallied round Joe Biden after the president, in an address to the nation, set out in detail his reasons for stepping down as a candidate in November’s election.

Biden delivered a reflective and hopeful message about the need to begin a new chapter in America’s story.

I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term, but nothing – nothing – can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.

So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. You know, there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices – yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.

You can read our full report on that address here:

After his speech, senior Democrats including Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom took to social media to show their support and gratitude.

Harris posted:

Other messages included: