Freed American Paul Whelan thanks lawmakers for bringing him home during Capitol Hill visit
(WASHINGTON) — Against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol at dusk, freed American Paul Whelan, who just completed a government resettlement program in Texas following his return from wrongful detainment in Russia, thanked the lawmakers who worked to help secure his release.
Whelan praised a “bipartisan effort that brought me home” after spending the day meeting with lawmakers who took up his case from his home state of Michigan and elsewhere.
“The Michigan delegation brought me home here,” he said.
“You know, it was five years, seven months and five days,” he added of his time in Russian custody. “I counted each one of them.”
The former Marine revealed he spent the final five days in the Russian prison in solitary confinement.
“I couldn’t leave my cell,” he said, “but I made it home.”
Whelan wouldn’t preview what’s next for him — offering only that he needs a new car and that suddenly he’s in a place with electric and driverless vehicles — but said he’s involved in discussions over how to support other wrongfully detained Americans around the world.
“We’re coming for you,” Whelan said to those Americans. “The United States is not going to let people like me, Marc [Fogel], Trevor [Reed], Brittney [Griner, who was released in December 2022] languish in foreign prisons. It might take time, but we’re coming for them and everybody else.”
Whelan acknowledged the reporters he recognized by name or face, recalling the precise month he spoke with them via a smuggled phone from prison. He thanked them for reporting on his case.
He also thanked “all of the people that work for agencies that I will never meet, people that I will never know, their staff members, everyone that’s been involved at every level.”
Rep. Haley Stevens, who represents Whelan’s district in Congress, told ABC News she expects to lean on him for the complex policymaking to mitigate foreign detentions like his.
“Well, he might not know it, but I plan to be in touch with him for a very long time to come, as long as he’ll welcome it, because there’s a lot to learn from his experience,” she said.
She noted that Whelan’s case was “the first one” of a series of high-profile detentions in Russia, including Griner and Evan Gershkovich, and it “certainly changed the relationship that the United States had with Russia, even before the war in Ukraine began.”
“Our message to Russia is that when it comes to your shenanigans and your illegal and unjust and unlawful behavior, we, as the United States of America, are united. We will fight for our people,” she said. “We will bring them home, and we will win.”
Whelan returned to the United States on Aug. 2 after five-and-a-half years in a Russian penal colony.
Russian authorities released Whelan, as well as American journalists Gershkovic and Alsu Kurmasheva, in a multi-country deal that freed eight Russian prisoners abroad. The 26-person swap was the largest between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War.
Whelan was arrested in Moscow in 2019 on charges of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, who frequently visited the city, was deemed as wrongfully detained by the U.S. Department of State.
The former Marine wasn’t the only former Russian captive on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British national whose release was secured by the U.S., met with lawmakers. Kara-Murza was imprisoned in Russia for two years for his opposition to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
(WASHINGTON) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday indicated that the central bank would soon begin cutting interest rates.
Speaking at an annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said the “time has come” for the Fed to adjust its interest rate policy. The announcement comes after a yearslong effort to fight inflation with highly elevated interest rates.
At previous meetings, Powell said the Fed needed to be confident that inflation had begun moving sustainably downward to its target rate of 2% before instituting rate cuts. On Friday, Powell appeared to indicate that the Fed had achieved that objective.
“My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path down to 2%,” Powell said.
Price increases have slowed significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.
In recent months, the labor market has slowed alongside cooling inflation. That trend was highlighted last month by a weaker-than-expected jobs report that raised concern among some economists that the U.S. may be headed toward a recession.
The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. In theory, low interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment; high interest rates slow economic performance and ease inflation.
Recent economic developments have shifted the Fed’s focus away from controlling inflation and toward ensuring a healthy labor market, Powell said. The unemployment rate has ticked up this year from 3.7% to 4.3%.
“A cooldown in the labor market is unmistakable,” Powell said.
The chances of an interest rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September are all but certain, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
Market observers are divided over whether the Fed will impose its typical cut of a quarter of a percentage point or opt for a larger half-point cut. The tool indicates a roughly 60% chance of a quarter-point cut and a 40% chance of a half-point cut.
“Powell has rung the bell for the start of the cutting cycle,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at investment firm Principal Asset Management, told ABC News in a statement. “Make no mistake, if the labor market shows signs of further cooling, the Fed will cut with conviction.”
Wall Street rallied in early trading on Friday after the remarks from Powell. Each of the major stock indexes climbed more than half a percentage point on the news.
(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) — America has no shortage of big donors or political fundraisers, but five years ago, a relatively small group of people looked at the crowded Democratic field in U.S. presidential election and came to the same conclusion – they would use their money and influence to support a young senator with little national recognition at the time: Kamala Harris.
Some are familiar names to those who follow campaign finance, media titans with known eyes for plucking promising talent out of large pools: superstar Hollywood talent agent Bryan Lourd, Emmy-winning “Glee” producer Ryan Murphy, filmmaker J.J. Abrams, Jeff Shell – now the president of Paramount Global – and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
But like most campaigns, other early supporters were less well known or moneyed but just as vital: grassroots activists who energized neighbors and posted on social media to drive donations for the woman they wanted to see one day shatter the highest and hardest glass ceiling in America.
“She was not focused on how much money did somebody raise. She was focused on ‘we’re building a community, a network, and a family that believes in my message and wants to help get it to the rest of the country,’ Harris’ 2019 National Finance Chair Jon Henes told ABC News, noting that they raised over 40 million dollars during her primary campaign.
He added, “If you just leave it up to people who can write a big check, you’re not going to be able to build a real movement.”
ABC News spoke to over 25 people from Harris’ 2019 national finance committee, a group in charge of raising money and galvanizing communities to support their candidate. Some of them were known to Harris as a part of her “Ride or Die” crew.
“The finance committee was so diverse – racially, geographically, professionally. It laid the groundwork for this moment,” Henes said. “So what we’re seeing now with these Zoom calls to raise money and the rallies shows the excitement and diversity coming to play.”
The presidential campaign they invested in then fizzled out two months before the 2020 Iowa caucus. Now, however, it has come roaring back – no surprise to many supporters who had watched Harris’ ascent long before the world knew her name.
The prescient early supporters
Neil Makhija, commissioner of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, first met Harris in 2010 when she was running for California attorney general. “I walked up to her and said I had not been that inspired since I heard Barack Obama,” he told ABC News, adding that he further told Harris she would be president one day.
Multiple “bundlers,” as they’re called – people who collect donations from multiple contributors for a candidate and deliver them as a single, large donation – said they saw the same quality in Harris.
Kimberly Marteau Emerson, the regional co-chair of the Southern California Harris Victory Fund PAC, said she also first met Harris in 2010 when she was running for California attorney general. Nearly a decade later, shortly before Harris launched her presidential campaign in 2019, Emerson watched her at an event publicizing her book.
“She communicates like Barack Obama. She is that good. She is a great storyteller,” Emerson says she told her husband, John B. Emerson, also a Harris PAC regional co-chair as well as a Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegate. “She spoke in a way that helped us relate to her and each other. There was a common humanity.”
Emerson said she and her husband knew many candidates who were running in 2020. But the day Harris announced, Emerson texted her: “I’m in.”
Many of Harris’ supporters point to her ability to connect with people. “I thought she had a great people’s touch. And an interest in people in all walks of life,” Wells Fargo Vice Chairman of Investment Banking Frederick Terrell told ABC News. “She was intellectually curious, our conversations were engaging … She will make a fabulous president.”
Yet some people stressed that winning wasn’t the only factor in their decision to invest in Harris.
“I’m a values-based supporter. I’m not a frontrunner supporter,” said Jill Louis, who was one of Harris’ 38 line sisters at the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, Alpha Chapter at Howard University. “We came up in a time when we believed this country stood for freedom and equality … that’s what we’re so steeped in.”
Jubilation over the new likely Democratic nominee
Many donors with whom ABC News spoke for this story said they have been playing the long game in supporting her. And now, with fewer than 100 days remaining before Election Day, many said they’ve never before experienced this level of excitement in politics.
Just an hour after Biden announced on July 21 that he was no longer seeking reelection, top donor and bundler Alex Heckler was in the audience of the Broadway musical “Suffs,” based on the women’s suffrage movement a century ago and co-produced by Hillary Clinton. As the curtain opened and before the lead actress delivered her first line, Heckler recalls, something unexpected happened.
“Before she can say a word, there was an outrageous applause. People started chanting ‘Kamala’ for a minute,” Heckler told ABC News. “I had chills. People in the crowd were crying.”
Wanda James, a DNC delegate from Colorado, said realizing that Harris would likely be the Democratic presidential nominee took her back to former President Obama’s first campaign.
“I feel all 2008 … You could hear the Beatles singing ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ James said. “My phone was ringing and buzzing so much, my phone was hot.”
Others told ABC News that while they were initially relieved and excited by the news that Biden had stepped down and endorsed Harris for the Oval Office, they are also facing a blunt reality.
“Donors recognize it’s more difficult electing a Black woman – [a] double whammy in this world of misogyny and sexism,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a longtime Democratic donor and activist who’s also a close friend of Hillary Clinton’s, for whom she also was a campaign bundler. Yet Buell also feels Harris is the clear pick to support.
“It’s so obvious. She has the aura. She’s tenacious. She has it all,” Buell declared, but added that supporters “need to understand the reality of this process … This is uncharted territory for all of us.”
Harris’ VP pick
Should Harris secure the Democratic presidential nomination, one of her first tasks will be to select a vice presidential running mate, a process that has already begun.
Areva Martin, a California at-large Democratic delegate who has known Harris since they were both college freshmen, says she’s comforted by the fact that that Harris is supported by strong Democratic leaders.
“I like that she picked Eric Holder to do the vetting,” Martin said, referring to Barack Obama’s former attorney general. “I think he’s brilliant. Bringing Holder in is bringing the Obama coalition.”
ABC News has confirmed the two frontrunners for Harris’ VP pick remain Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Governor Mark Shapiro. Nearly every donor with whom ABC News spoke said they supported both.
Yet a few donors had different ideas. Takeila Hannah, who held the first large fundraiser for Harris in North Carolina during her 2019 campaign, said prior to state Gov. Roy Cooper announcing on July 29 that he was withdrawing from consideration for the position that she would also strongly support him for the job.
“What they have in common is they’ve both been [attorneys general] of states. That’s a language they can speak … they both come from the law,” said Hannah.
Dr. Manan Trivedi, a Democratic donor and former candidate for Pennsylvania’s 6th congressional district, echoed several others with whom ABC News spoke in saying he hoped Harris would make a more unconventional pick to continue shaking up the race. His choice is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“I know it’s not going to happen. But as a dad of two daughters and a successful wife, I think we’re overdue,” Trivedi said. “And I think Gretchen Whitmer is a dominant force and we need Michigan; it’s not just because she’s female. She has a great record and it brings the race into stark contrast.”
Looking ahead
Since President Biden withdrew from the presidential race just over one week ago, the Harris campaign said it has so far raised over $200 million, including the record-shattering $81 million in donations it received in the 24 hours immediately following Biden’s announcement. That enthusiasm, some donors believe, demonstrates high-level support for the candidate.
Asif Mahmood was deputy national finance chair for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as well as the financial point person for Asian outreach for Harris’ 2019 campaign. He notes that there are “stark differences” between 2016 and now that work in Harris’ favor, one of which is the major boost Harris has received due to the presidential race focusing on Biden’s age and other perceived weaknesses for as long as it did.
“In 25 years, I haven’t seen the energy Kamala is enjoying right now,” Asif told ABC News. “This is more than Obama energy.”
Even so, Asif said, the campaign cannot afford to be complacent, particularly regarding the swing states that Clinton lost to Trump in 2016. He expects campaign workers to visit those states to bolster efforts there.
Fundraiser Tina Duryea, who’s also a Connecticut delegate to the Democratic National Convention, said it’s not just the big checks that are significant in this moment. Duryea says she raised a respectable amount of money for Harris from grassroots supporters in the 24 hours after Biden’s withdrawal.
“I did TikToks, Facebook posts, Threads, Instagram, and raised 30 thousand from small-donor donations,” Duryea told ABC News.
Michael Kempner, founder and CEO of the global PR film MikeWorldWide, who’s accustomed to collecting high-dollar donations for Democratic candidates, said the Harris candidacy is generating renewed interest from potential supporters.
“I’ve received close to a 100 texts, emails and calls from people who want to be more involved who previously were not enthusiastic,” Kempner said. “The level of excitement feels Obama-esque. There’s a level of enthusiasm [that] in my 40 years I have never experienced.”