'I will not be silent' on Gaza, Harris says after meeting Netanyahu
Kamala Harris said she pressed Benjamin Netanyahu about her concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza in “frank” talks in Washington that are being closely watched for indications of how she might deal with Israel if she becomes president.
After speaking to the Israeli prime minister she said:
Israel has a right to defend itself. And how it does so matters ... I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there [in Gaza] .... I will not be silent.
Harris’s remarks, which were sharp and serious in tone, reflected what could be a shift from President Joe Biden in how she deals with Netanyahu, Reuters reported.
Hours earlier, Biden pressed for a ceasefire to the nine-month-old war in Gaza in his first face-to-face talks with Netanyahu since the president traveled to Israel days after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel and pledged American support.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said gaps remained between Israel and the Hamas militants who run the Palestinian enclave in the drive for a ceasefire but “we are closer now than we’ve been before”.
“Both sides have to make compromises,” Kirby said.
Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahumet for talks on Thursday, as White House officials said Israel and Hamas were “closer now than we’ve been before” to reaching a ceasefire deal. Biden was expected to put pressure on Netanyahu to commit to at least the first stage of a three-part deal.
Netanyahu also met with Kamala Harris, who struck a sharper tone than Biden in her comments afterwards. She said she had told the Israeli prime minister she had “serious concerns” about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and that she would not “stay silent”. However analysts pointed out that her stance did not depart from the administration’s official policy of expressing concern for ordinary Palestinians while continuing to supply Israel with weapons for its assault.
Netanyahu said he also met with tech mogul Elon Musk after his address to Congress on Wednesday. Musk, who has a history of cosying up to far-right leaders, was Netanyahu’s guest at the address.
The Manhattan prosecutors who secured Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction disputed the former US president’s claim that the verdict should be set aside in the wake of a US supreme court ruling on presidential immunity. In a court filing dated 24 July and made public on Thursday, the prosecutors said the supreme court’s ruling had no bearing on their case, which stemmed from hush money paid to a porn star.
Kamala Harris sought to bolster her pro-labor credentials on Thursday during an address to one of the US’s biggest unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention, in the latest in a blitz of appearances since Joe Biden endorsed her as his successor on Sunday.
Barack Obama is on the verge of publicly endorsing Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, after the pair spoke several times on the phone in recent days, according to a report.
Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of trying to cancel the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for 10 September. “I’m ready to debate Donald Trump. I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” the vice-president said. In a statement late Thursday, the Trump campaign said arrangements for the debate could not be finalized until Harris was officially confirmed as the nominee.
The Harris for President campaign launched its first official video, capping a week during which Kamala Harris broke funding records and quickly clinched enough delegate support to become the presumptive Democratic party nominee.
New polling indicates Kamala Harris has re-engaged voters turned off by Joe Biden’s candidacy, and is vying closely against Donald Trump in crucial swing states.
A vast majority of Black Americanstrust Kamala Harris and distrust Donald Trump – 71% compared to 5% – according to the largest-known survey of Black Americans since the Reconstruction era.
Elena Kagan, a member of the three-justice liberal minority on the supreme court, said she would support creating an enforcement mechanism for its recently adopted code of ethics, according to a report.
Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, raised questions during a hearing on Wednesday in Washington about whether Donald Trump was actually shot by a bullet during the assassination attempt against the former president earlier this month or whether he was instead struck by shrapnel.
In case you missed it earlier, my colleague Alaina Demopoulos has written a fascinating look at Kamala Harris’ very particular way of speaking. Here’s an extract:
“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a phrase Kamala Harris uses so often there are minutes-long supercuts available to watch on YouTube. It even has its own Wikipedia page. In other speeches, Harris has also expressed a belief in “the significance of the passage of time” and a desire to “honor the women who made history throughout history”.
Since becoming the presumptive nominee, Harris has invigorated the Democratic party. It’s not only that she’s a much younger candidate than Biden; she also has a stump speech style that embraces metaphor and a new age vernacular not often heard in national politics. The meme accounts love to quote it. It’s even led some to draw comparisons with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s portrayal of Selina Meyer, the frothy politician in Veep. (In one episode, Meyer stumbles through a speech saying: “We are the United States of America because we are united … and we are states.”)
Although she has proven herself to be one of the most detail-oriented and precise speakers in the Democratic party, Harris also indulges in certain looser Kamalaisms – for example, her now famous anecdote about falling out of a coconut tree and “existing in the context of all in which you live” – which garner (satirical or otherwise) appreciation from supporters and jeering from her detractors. But what are the origins of Harris’s unique speaking style?
Biden pressed Netanyahu to finalize ceasefire deal, remove obstacles to Gaza aid, White House says
US President Joe Biden raised with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the need to close gaps to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the war in Gaza, the White House has said in a readout from their meeting. The statement continued:
The President also raised the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the need to remove any obstacles to the flow of aid and restoring basic services for those in need, and the critical importance of protecting civilian lives during military operations.
It also said that Biden “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis”.
Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman who was grievously wounded in a 2011 shooting in her Arizona district, has been out on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris, the Associated Press reports.
Giffords’ husband, Senator Mark Kelly, has been touted as a potential running mate for Harris. The AP writes:
Giffords, speaking at the Salt & Light church in swing-state Pennsylvania, met with community activists in a predominantly Black section of Philadelphia hit by gun violence recently, including one over the weekend in which three people were killed and at least six others were wounded.
The event had long been planned, Giffords aides said, well before Giffords’ husband, US senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro entered the conversation to be Harris’ running mate, now that President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed Harris.
Giffords spoke briefly about her long recovery from the shooting in 2011, which killed six people during a meeting with constituents at a Tucson grocery store.
Harris’ other surrogates, including Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton, framed the November presidential contest as a choice between Harris, who would sign a ban on assault weapons, and more gun violence under Republican Donald Trump, who gun-rights groups back.
“We are overwhelmed with violence all across America from rural Pennsylvania to inner city neighborhoods like where we are today,” McClinton said. “We as voters can make a decision on having a more violent United States or safer communities in every part of America.”
McClinton — a Shapiro ally in the Pennsylvania statehouse who has rooted on social media for him to join Harris’ ticket — and Giffords batted away questions about the potential that Kelly or Shapiro could be Harris’ pick.
Asked whether she was thinking about becoming the second lady, Giffords said, “later, later.” For her part, McClinton said “I’m not making those decisions,” but then put in a plug for Shapiro as a “people’s champion when it comes to issues around public safety” while calling Kelly someone who “we all hold in high regard.”
President Joe Biden awards the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to former representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona in 2022. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
After Harris accused Trump of “backpedaling” away from a previous agreement for a debate hosted by ABC News in September earlier on Thursday, the Trump campaign has put out a statement saying the debate cannot be finalized until Harris is officially confirmed as the nominee. The Associated Press reports:
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement late Thursday that debate arrangements “cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee.”
“Democrats very well could still change their minds,” Cheung said.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he met with tech mogul Elon Musk after his address to Congress on Wednesday. Musk, who has courted far-right leaders around the world, attended the address at Netanyahu’s invitation.
He also met with Netanyahu during a visit to Israel last year, as he sought to quell accusations of antisemitism after personally endorsing a post on his social network X that claimed Jews hate white people.
In recent weeks, Musk has thrown his support behind Donald Trump’s election campaign and played a direct role in advising the former president to select the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.
Yesterday, after my address to Congress, I met with @elonmusk in Washington. We discussed the opportunities and challenges in AI, its impact on the economy and society, and explored ways for technological cooperation with Israel. pic.twitter.com/1KYQxGm4Nv
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) July 26, 2024
Analysts and commentators are pointing out that although Harris’ comments were sharper in tone that Biden’s have been towards Netanyahu, they do not mark a departure from the US administration’s official line of expressing concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza while continuing to supply weapons for the Israeli offensive:
Useful run-thru. Harris is for now reiterating the admin’s strategy of urging a ceasefire while continuing US military support
No sign of major pressure on Israel + humanitarian language is common from admin (tho often lost coming from Blinken, etc)
Another statement from the Harris campaign that has been making waves today is one titled “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” which came after Donald Trump appeared on the TV network.
The statement included lines such as “After watching Fox News this morning we only have one question, is Donald Trump ok?”; “Trump is clearly worried he made the wrong pick in JD Vance” and” Trump is old and quite weird?”
The Kamala Harris campaign has marked World IVF Day with a statement hitting out at Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, who has been outspoken in his opposition to abortion and fertility treatment.
“Happy World IVF Day to Everyone Except JD Vance”, Harris’s campaign wrote in a statement posted to X. It continued:
True to form, JD Vance is marking World IVF Day by insulting couples struggling with infertility, demeaning women’s choices and their freedoms, and reminding voters about his and Donald Trump’s anti-IVF Project 2025 agenda.”
The statement comes after the recent resurfacing of 2021 comments by Vance in which he said Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable”.
The resurfacing of the comments also prompted Friends actor Jennifer Aniston to put out a rare statement criticising Vance in which she said, “I truly cannot believe this is coming from a potential VP. All I can say is … Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day”.
As the Harris campaign gains steam, the vice-president has now joined TikTok with a very short eight-second video as her first post in which a voice off-camera asks her, “Madam vice-president are you on TikTok?”. Harris looks at the camera and says:
I heard that recently, I’ve been on the For You Page, so I thought I’d get on here myself.
