The First Woman of Color to be a Major Party Candidate: Ms. Biden and the Democratic Reionization of the First Lady

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While she has not officially become the nominee, if she does when the DNC holds its virtual roll call on Aug, 7, Harris will become the first woman of color to be a major party presidential nominee.

Voters aren’t looking for instability. Democrats want to focus on beating Mr. Trump, which is why they will not revolt if Ms. Harris takes the reins quickly. Many voters were concerned that Mr. Biden could not serve four years because he couldn’t clear the low bar.

The House-Lawmakers meets the Secret Service: Donald Trump’s Assassination on a War-Road Roof?

HouseLawmakers grilled the director of the secret service about Donald Trump’s assassination attempt. She was in the hot seat for nearly five hours. In her testimony, she said the agency is cooperating with the multiple investigations that are underway and conducting its own review into what went wrong. Lawmakers left without the answer to their biggest question: How was the gunman allowed on the roof with a clear line of sight to Trump?

One of Ukraine’s largest book-printing plants, Factor Druk, looked like a massacre after a Russian missile strike in May. 20 employees were wounded, seven of them died. A huge amount of books and printing machinery was destroyed under the caved-in roof. The Words and Bullets, a collection of interviews with writers on the war’s front line, was destroyed by the attack. The owner of the printing plant, Serhii Polituchyi, says he has not been deterred from plans to reopen because the industry is thriving. The Ukrainian Book Institute tells NPR that bookstore chains have opened dozens of new stores in the past year alone.

Source: Harris’ campaign faces potential legal challenges. And, a new dinosaur discovery

Do You Wanna Have a Sex Life? Some New Parenting Tips from Relationship Experts after a Baby: The Effects of a Change-Up at the Top of the Democratic 2020 Race

A message to my readers who are new parents: Congrats! Do you have a sex life? Chances are, it’s not so great. Between diaper duty, sleep deprivation, hormonal changes and general exhaustion, you might not have time or energy left for physical intimacy. After having a baby, you might be not feel ready for sex. Here are some tips from relationship experts to help keep the romance alive in the postpartum period.

President Biden announced on Sunday afternoon that he was dropping out of the 2024 race and endorsing Vice President Harris, as my latest national survey of voters wrapped up.

I was one of several pollsters who were trying to figure out how the events of the previous days would impact Donald Trump and the election of his running mate.

The 2024 race has been turned on it’s head. To get a full read on the effect of the change-up at the top of the Democratic ticket, we need two things.

Ms. Harris could make what they wanted happen. A quarter of voters are “double haters” — those who were seemingly begging the two major parties to give them choices other than Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden. Now, one party has answered the call, and one question becomes: Is Ms. Harris that longed-for alternative, or is she seen as simply a continuation of the much-maligned Biden candidacy? Early indications are that she gets a two-point bump relative to Mr. Biden among these voters.

Ms. Harris will drive abortion messaging more sharply. During the June debate, when asked about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mr. Biden’s answer was meandering. Abortion, though, is one of the few issues where voters consistently say they trust Democrats more than Republicans, and Ms. Harris has already indicated that she’ll make this issue a centerpiece of her message.

Republicans could fall into a trap if they face Ms. Harris. It’s hard to overstate the extent to which Republicans view Ms. Harris as unappealing. If you only read about her from conservative media, you’ll most likely get “unburdened with what has been” in the video recaps of her laugh. Assume this is how most voters think of her — or that they will care about this slight awkwardness — at your own risk.

The Times of Gaza: Raising the Numbers of Israelis Redically Undecided to Support Israel and Israel in the War in Gaza

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There will be a mixed reception when Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the U.S. Congress today. Republicans strongly support Netanyahu and Israel in the war in Gaza. But Democrats are increasingly critical, with President Biden calling for a cease-fire. About 200 protestors were arrested yesterday after staging a sit-in against the war in Gaza on Capitol Hill. The central theme of Netanyahu’s speech will likely be what he believes to be the destruction of Hamas in Gaza.

According to a new NPR poll, Harris has a chance to win over a large number of undecided voters. A week ago 1 in 5 independents were undecided, but now it’s up to them. Harris needs to reintroduce herself in the next few weeks.

Source: Newly undecided voters could be crucial for Harris. And NASA races to save a telescope

A Conversation with Joel Clement during a Second Trump Term: What Happened When Madeline Hamilton Vocals Become More Complex?

Joel Clement spent seven years at the Interior Department working on policies meant to help Alaskan communities that are threatened by thawing permafrost and rising sea levels. His work moved forward during Obama’s administration. When Trump took over, Clement was reassigned as part of a government-wide effort to stop working on climate change. Clement was one of the scientists who became a whistle blower on what they saw as the Trump administration’s interference in science. Many scientists are concerned that such interference would be even more severe in a second Trump term. Here’s why:

PhD student Madeline Hamilton set out to explain our emotional connection to popular music and made a different discovery along the way. The most popular music is less complicated than in the past. Hamilton analyzed more than 1,000 pop songs to show how the vocals have gotten less sophisticated over time. Today’s hits don’t lack complexity.

She was criticized for helping to put more bias in the criminal justice system when she was California’s attorney general. The law had “unintended consequences” for the families, Harris said.

More broadly, Harris failed to distinguish her positions on key issues, in ways that her competitors, such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, were able to. In the months following, Harris failed to gain steam with limited funds and little excitement behind her campaign, and she dropped out by December 2019

Harris ran to the left of Biden on many criminal justice issues, such as ending solitary confinement and implementing a national standard for deadly force.

It took her years as the district attorney of San Francisco, even though her staff recommended the policy, to change her mind and adopt the Brady doctrine. As state attorney general, she rejected the use of advanced DNA testing in the case of a Black man who was — and still is — on death row for a notable murder case, though she has since said she felt “awful” about that decision. She also did not go after cases that involved killings by the police in San Francisco shortly after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which brought on the ire of protesters in Oakland. The year after, she was not in favor of a bill to investigate officer-involved shooting and did not support statewide body cameras for police officers.

That was one of several times that Harris had gone after officials and politicians in the Trump administration, among them former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, and former Attorney General William Barr.

“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” She asked the question pointedly about reproductive rights.

While Trump called her “nasty” for how she questioned Kavanaugh, her line of questioning piqued Trump’s interest when she was freshly nominated by Biden to be his running mate in 2020, showing him and Republicans she was capable of going after them.

Things did not go off well when she entered the White House. During an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, she mis-stepped when she replied to why she hadn’t yet traveled to the border, had turnover in her staff, and had poor approval ratings early in her tenure as vice president.

Kamala Harris, the first black and white attorney general, is the first female attorney general in California, having a female lawyer general and an Asian attorney general

A 2020 study found that Harris was the victim of gendered abuse and misinformation in almost all of the times she was attacked in politics.

Nina Jankowicz, who researches disinformation targeting women in politics and is the co-founder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, said harmful narratives are “part of the criticism and abuse that women in public life frequently receive.”

The sexist and racist online trolling of Harris has only grown since Biden announced he was running for president.

“And I just think it’s really important at this historic moment that we label these narratives and lies as what they are: an attempt to undermine Kamala Harris’ public service and her record of public service because of her gender, her background and her skin color,” she said.

Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, has had a career with many firsts: She became the country’s first Indian American senator when she was inaugurated in 2017. California is the first state to have a female and South Asian attorney general. In 2021, she became the first woman to become vice president, in addition to being the first Black or Asian American person in the position.