Illinois voters weigh in on 2024 vice presidential picks Tim Walz and JD Vance
(CHICAGO) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday to formally accept the vice presidential nomination and deliver a keynote speech.
Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Walz to be her running mate earlier this month, just a couple weeks after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s exit.
Walz, 60, gained traction during the veepstakes with his folksy mannerisms and viral comments advocating for the Democratic Party’s agenda and critiquing former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance. But nationally, he was a relatively unknown figure.
“When Harris announced that Tim Walz was running for vice president, I had absolutely no clue who this man was,” said Valerie Jencks, a moderate Democrat from Illinois who is supporting the Harris-Walz ticket.
Jencks and other local voters sat down with ABC News at Chicago’s Green Door Tavern to discuss the 2024 election.
Jencks said she was “personally relieved” that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was not selected because she’d like him to remain in his position leading the state, and said she was a strong supporter of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the veepstakes.
Still, she said she thought Walz was “a breath of fresh air.”
“He is knowledgeable about the issues. He has a very strong record, and he’s very personable and authentic,” Jencks said of Walz. “I feel like he really understands the issues of the everyday American.”
Last month, Trump announced Vance would be his running mate during the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Vance, a 39-year-old first-term senator from Ohio, has become a staunch ideological ally of the former president who rose to fame due to his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. But he was also not a big name in politics until he began to emerge as a top contender to join Trump on the ballot.
David Spada, a conservative Republican, said he was surprised by Trump’s pick and thought he would have picked a more moderate Republican such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“He probably should have picked someone more towards the middle, rather than more towards the right, which I think might hurt him,” Spada said. “But again, you never know what Trump’s gonna do. He just does what he wants.”
A recent ABC News poll found Walz was getting a more positive public reception than his Republican counterpart in the initial rollout of their candidacies.
Thirty-nine percent of Americans surveyed had a favorable impression of Walz as a person, while 30% viewed him unfavorably. Vance, meanwhile, was viewed unfavorably by 42% of respondents compared to 32% who viewed him favorably. Though a sizable portion of respondents said they had no opinion of either candidate (31% in Walz’s case and 26% in Vance’s case).
(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Mike Johnson will make a trip out West late Thursday to visit the southern border shared with California and Mexico — an effort to take criticisms of the Biden administration’s border policies outside Washington, D.C.
The visit will include a press conference along a border fence called “Whiskey 8” in San Ysidro, California — south of San Diego — with California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa as well as a tour of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and Imperial Beach locations, Johnson’s office told ABC News.
During the press conference, the speaker is expected to illustrate what Republicans count as failures on the Biden administration’s part to secure the border and highlight the SAVE Act, a bill the House recently passed to ban noncitizens from voting in elections.
The border and immigration are key issues for voters who are set to head to the polls to decide the next president in what’s expected to be a close contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who has secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee if they all honor their commitment when voting.
In recent weeks, San Diego has had the highest number of encounters of any border region in the U.S., according to a senior CBP official. But those numbers have declined by 60 percent since the new asylum restrictions from the Biden administration were put in place earlier this summer.
Details of Johnson’s visit come hours after the House approved a resolution to condemn Harris’ border policies. Six Democrats in vulnerable House races — Reps. Mary Peltola, Don Davis, Henry Cuellar, Yadira Caraveo, Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden — voted with Republicans to pass the measure.
Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the resolution “fake and fraudulent” during his weekly press conference.
“[Kamala Harris] was never assigned border czar. [Republicans] are making that up,” Jeffries said.
Johnson last visited the border in January 2024 when the speaker led a delegation of 64 Republicans to tour the Eagle Pass, Texas, port of entry.
The House has passed its own border bill called the Secure the Border Act, but rejected the bipartisan Senate border bill after Trump pressured Republicans to kill the deal.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday morning to mark the third anniversary of the Kabul airport attack that killed 13 U.S. service members.
Trump will also later address the National Guard Association at the group’s annual conference in battleground Michigan.
The chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 continues to be a focal point of conservative criticism of the Biden administration.
Trump has long decried President Joe Biden’s handling of what he said on Monday was a “botched” exit and “embarrassing” moment for the nation, though recently has included Vice President Kamala Harris — his new 2024 rival — in his denunciation of the event.
“Exactly three years ago this month, the weakness and incompetence of Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe Biden delivered the most humiliating event in the history of our country and one of the biggest military disasters in the history of the world,” Trump claimed at a rally in North Carolina last week.
Harris on Monday released a statement honoring the 13 U.S. service members who lost their lives when an ISIS-K terrorist detonated a suicide bomb at the Abbey Gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, where evacuation efforts were centered after the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan. At least 170 Afghan civilians were also killed in the bombing and dozens of others wounded.
The vice president said the fallen soldiers “represent the best of America, putting our beloved nation and their fellow Americans above themselves and deploying into danger to keep their fellow citizens safe.”
“I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families and I will always honor their service and sacrifice,” she said.
Harris went on to defend Biden’s decision to end “America’s longest war.”
“Over the past three years, our Administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and ISIS, without troops deployed into combat zones,” she said in the statement. “I will never hesitate to take whatever action necessary to counter terrorist threats and protect the American people and the homeland.”
Harris has previously spoken about being in the room with Biden for important decisions, including his decision to carry out a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — which Trump reportedly tried to launch in his final days as president. The Trump administration’s negotiated peace plan with the Taliban included a date of May 1, 2021, for the final withdrawal of troops — which Biden then continued to carry out with a September deadline.
Top officials have testified before Congress on the tumultuous withdrawal, some of whom have detailed regrets about how it was handled.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday announced he will present the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously on Sep. 10 to honor the 13 service members who were killed in Kabul. The medals, Congress’ highest civilian honor, will be presented to their families.
Biden, in his own statement on Monday, said the 13 Americans killed at Abbey Gate embodied “the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless. And we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay, but will never cease working to fulfill.”
Biden said “we must never forget the immense price that was paid for our freedom. We must never forget that each beloved service member we lost was a human being, who left behind entire families and communities. And together, we must never stop striving to be worthy of their ultimate sacrifice.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debated for the first time on Tuesday, a consequential matchup with just eight weeks until Election Day.
The debate was hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The 90-minute showdown was filled with animated zingers and tense exchanges on key policy issues facing the American people.
Harris sought to portray herself as a new generation of leadership with a track record of results, while Trump tried to paint her as a radical Democrat and continued to criticize the Biden administration.
Here are some key takeaways from the debate:
Harris put Trump on defensive early on
The vice president didn’t waste any time in going on the attack against Trump.
“What we have done and what I intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations and the hopes of the American people,” Harris said minutes into the debate. “But I’m going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
She later took a dig at his rallies, claiming people leave them early out of “exhaustion” as he gives long speeches that sometimes include references to windmills causing cancer or to fictional characters such as Hannibal Lecter. Trump immediately defended his events and crowd sizes, saying he has the “biggest” and “most incredible” rallies in political history.
After Trump railed against crime in the nation, Harris said she thought the comments were “so rich” coming from someone who has been criminally charged multiple times. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in each of the cases against him.
Trump continues attacks on — Biden
Trump, who had a difficult time changing his message when Harris succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee, continued to criticize Biden and continually tried to tie Harris to Biden’s record — most notably on the economy, immigration and leadership abroad.
“She is Biden,” he said. “The worst inflation we’ve ever had, a horrible economy because inflation has made it so bad, and she can’t get away with that.”
Harris, who has supported many of Biden’s stances while also offering her own economic proposals, quickly responded, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country.”
In the “spin room” with reporters after the debate, Trump continued to blast the Biden-Harris record.
“She’s trying to get herself away from Biden, and she wasn’t able to do that tonight,” he said.
Did Harris succeed in introducing herself to viewers?
A key question heading into the debate was whether Harris would be able to define herself to voters who say they don’t feel they know her or what she stands for well enough.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found a sizable share of likely voters (28%) and registered voters (31%) feel they need to know more about Harris as a candidate. Those numbers were even higher among independent voters: 41% of registered independents and 38% of likely voters who identified as independent said they needed to learn more about her.
Harris began her first response to a question on the economy by saying she was raised by her mother in a middle-class family. Later, she highlighted her background as a prosecutor who has taken on transnational criminal organizations. She also noted that as a senator, she was at the U.S. Capitol when it was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6.
She also hit on some of her signature policy proposals, including her support for reproductive freedom and economic plans like expanding the Child Tax Credit and assisting first-time homebuyers. She also noted that both she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, are gun owners and wouldn’t take people’s guns away.
While neither candidate went too deep into policy specifics, Harris did try to paint a clear contrast between what she is offering and what she believes Trump is proposing if elected.
“What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country, one who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people,” she said.
Meanwhile, Trump argued Harris is a “radical left liberal” and pressed her on some of her shifts on police funding, fracking and more since her 2019 Democratic primary campaign.
Trump still refuses to concede he lost the 2020 election
Trump tried to explain his own remarks recently in which he appeared to accept he lost the 2020 election, including his comment last week that he “lost by a whisker.”
“I said that?” Trump said on the debate stage when it was read back to him.
“Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?” ABC News moderator David Muir asked.
“No, I don’t acknowledge that at all,” he said. “That was said sarcastically.”
Asked about the peaceful transfer of power, Trump did not say that he regrets anything about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. He claimed he had “nothing” to do with what happened that day, which culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Race comes up, but not gender
For the second time, Trump is campaigning against a woman for president. Harris’ gender was not broached during the debate, though her race was.
Asked by moderators about his previous false comments on her racial identity — including that Harris, who is Black and South Asian, “happened to turn Black” — Trump said he “couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t care what she is. I don’t care,” he said. “Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”
When pressed, Trump doubled down, saying he read that she was not Black, and then that she was.
“And that’s okay. Either one was okay with me. That’s up to her. That’s up to her,” he said.
Asked for her thoughts, Harris went on the attack — but didn’t focus on herself. Instead, she focused on Trump’s falsehoods about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace and noted “he was investigated because he refused to rent property to Black families” to cast him as divisive and unfit.
“Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she said. “I think the American people want better than that, want better than this.”
“This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country,” Trump responded.