| | | | |  | | By Calder McHugh | |  Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at West Allis Central High School today in Wisconsin. | Jim Vondruska/Getty Images | COP OR NOT — Hard-nosed cop or soft-pedaling prosecutor? Friend of Wall Street or closet socialist? Sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians or steadfast defender of Israel? It’s revealing that, this deep into her career in public office, Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies and enemies have struggled to pin down her ideology. Are her political instincts progressive or is she a moderate? As Harris stakes out a party platform and polishes her stump speech, a makeshift Harris doctrine will become clearer. But for now, in some ways she remains a mystery who’s been subject to wildly conflicting portrayals from the media, her Republican rivals and even those within her own party. When she ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, she beat incumbent Terence Hallinan in a nonpartisan runoff by running to his right, attacking Hallinan for not being tough enough on crime, while also courting the police union, with whom Hallinan had run afoul. Yet when the Los Angeles Times profiled her a year into her term it referred to Harris not as a tough-on-crime crusader but as being “in the vanguard of progressive reformers who say that California’s criminal justice system is in dire need of drastic change.” Then she found herself on the wrong side of that same police union — and California Democratic giant Jerry Brown — when she stuck to a campaign promise that she wouldn’t seek the death penalty after a young police officer was killed in the city. After her election as attorney general of California in 2010, Harris quickly won a big settlement from banks amidst the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and established a national profile as a speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. But during her time as attorney general, she also ran afoul of left-wing activists in the state, many of whom had previously supported her. Complaints began to surface that she wasn’t doing enough about police brutality, in particular after she declined to investigate the police shootings of two Black men in 2014 and 2015. In 2016, in the midst of her statewide campaign for U.S. Senate, she proudly adopted the moniker of “top cop,” referring to a tough on crime record. After she won her seat, just as Donald Trump was ushered into the White House, Harris quickly became one of the Trump administration’s leading antagonists, asking probing questions of various Trump officials and allies in Senate hearings. She was particularly harsh on fellow trained lawyers Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh, attacking the latter during his confirmation hearing about the Mueller investigation, then a liberal hobbyhorse. In doing so, she endeared herself to the resistance left, who saw her as well positioned to take on Trump. In the leadup to her 2020 presidential run, Harris tried to build a coalition of more moderate liberals and progressives — in particular, she attempted to build left-wing bona fides by supporting the two legislative building blocks of a progressive agenda, the Green New Deal and Medicare for All (though her M4A plan differed from other progressives’). But progressives nevertheless latched onto the “Kamala is a cop” rhetoric in an attempt to leverage the perception on the left that Harris’ pro-law enforcement background made her unfit to be the Democratic nominee — and thus should be discredited as an opportunistic progressive. The cop memes that proliferated online in 2019 frustrated Harris, who said at the time she was “fully aware” of the memes and upset by them. Ironically, with a shifting political environment and no real primary battle to overcome, the cop memes and the idea that she was not a true progressive prosecutor might actually redound to her benefit this year in a general election setting. And the longstanding critiques of her on the left may also insulate her to a degree against Republican attacks on her as a left wing extremist. The National Republican Congressional Committee has called her “the most extreme progressive presidential nominee in history,” but it’s a difficult case to make given the moments in which Harris has angered the left (she went so far as to write in her 2009 book that liberals should move beyond “biases against law enforcement”). Harris also boasts good relationships on Wall Street, and the top Wall Street executives who are now jumping in to help Harris raise cash are hopeful that she’ll maintain cozier, more moderate relationships with the big banks than the Biden administration has. As some of Harris’ contradictions come to the fore — friend to Wall Street and co-sponsor of the Green New Deal — some critics have cast her as a shapeshifter whose ideology is mutable. In other words, as someone quickly willing to change her mind as the political moment requires. The reality is more complicated. The quick moving nature of her career and the different roles that she’s on her climb up the ladder has made it difficult to discern a cogent worldview. Now, as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, she has to build one, and fast, before Republicans define it for her. Even in her first week in charge, there are already signs it’ll look a little bit different from Biden. When she stumped in Wisconsin today to the delight of a re-energized crowd, she mentioned many of the same pledges as Biden — protecting unions, expanding abortion rights and rebuilding a stronger middle class. The difference was back in D.C. — as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived on U.S. soil, she announced that she wouldn’t be presiding over his address to Congress. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
| | — Menendez to resign next month following corruption conviction: Sen. Bob Menendez — who was found guilty earlier this month on all 16 counts in his corruption trial — said today he will resign from office effective Aug. 20, ending a 50-year career in politics that reached the heights of power on the world stage. “While I fully intend to appeal the jury’s verdict, all the way and including to the Supreme Court, I do not want the Senate to be involved in a lengthy process that will detract from its important work,” Menendez said in a letter processed in the Senate and obtained by POLITICO. — Secret Service director resigns after Trump shooting fallout: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned today amid bipartisan fury over the agency’s failure to prevent the near-assassination of Donald Trump. Cheatle, who initially attempted to salvage her position and described herself Monday as the best person to lead the agency despite admitted failures on her watch, revealed her decision in an internal message to Secret Service employees. — Trump will meet with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago this week: Former president Donald Trump confirmed plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Friday at his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Netanyahu, who is making a swing through Washington, D.C. to meet with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and members of Congress this week, requested the in-person meeting with Trump.
| | GAME ON — Former President Donald Trump today committed to debating Vice President Kamala Harris — and said he would be “willing” to face off against her more than once. The next debate, which is scheduled for Sept. 10, is to be hosted by ABC News. Trump in recent days has pushed for the more conservative Fox News to hold the debate, calling ABC “a joke.” But during a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Trump said he would debate Harris, regardless of whether it was on ABC, and said he “would be willing to do more than one debate actually.” BIDEN SPEAKS — President Joe Biden will address the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening about his historic decision not to seek a second term, the White House announced today. The remarks at 8 p.m. Eastern Time will come one week after Biden was forced off the campaign trail in Las Vegas after testing positive for Covid, and three days after his stunning announcement in a letter posted to his X account that he was stepping aside as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. DEBUT PERFORMANCE — Speaking at a high school today, just miles away from where Republicans gathered for their convention last week, Vice President Kamala Harris leaned into her background as a prosecutor, pitching herself as the candidate built to defeat a convicted criminal. She reused a punchy line she unveiled this week — one that will no doubt become one of her go-tos on the campaign trail — that she knows “Donald Trump’s type,” as chants of “Lock him up” broke out in the crowd. “I was the elected attorney general, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris said. Harris’ first campaign rally since becoming the likely Democratic nominee debuted a more youthful, energetic and aggressive campaign, one designed to prosecute her GOP opponent and draw the kind of contrast Democrats widely believed President Joe Biden could no longer deliver. Members of the party would often bemoan the president’s inability to launch a consistent, cogent message against Trump, a messaging breakdown they say Harris is uniquely positioned to mend. STOP MAKING RACE COMMENTS — House Republican leaders told lawmakers to focus on criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ record without reference to her race and gender, following caustic remarks from some Republicans attacking her on the basis of identity. During a closed-door meeting this morning, chair of the House GOP campaign arm Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and others issued the warning after a series of comments by their members that focused on Harris’ race as well as claims she is a “DEI” pick, according to two people in the room.
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French President Emmanuel Macron gestures toward Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye at the Elysee Palace in Paris on June 20, 2024. | Andre Pain, Pool via AP | HORSESHOE THEORY — France’s far-right National Rally has signaled it’s ready to support the far-left France Unbowed in its bid to repeal President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pensions reform. The stunning act of political cooperation — between parties usually won’t even countenance shaking hands — could unravel one of Macron’s hardest-earned domestic achievements. France Unbowed today presented a bill to repeal Macron’s controversial pensions reform, which raised the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62 for most workers. Speaking on BFMTV, lawmaker and spokesperson for the far-right National Rally Laurent Jacobelli said his party would vote for the bill, because “it’s in [National Rally’s] program.” France Unbowed’s Mathilde Panot said she was confident the bill would pass. “There was already a majority in the previous parliament to beat retirement at 64, I think there will be an even greater majority to beat it today,” she said on France Inter.
| | | | | | | FAR FROM HOME — Decades ago, at the height of his powers, the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar smuggled hippos into the jungle in Colombia. But after he died and his empire came crumbling down, the hippos remained — and proliferated. Hippos, native to sub saharan Africa, aren’t built for the climate or ecosystem of the Colombian jungle. But by late 2023, the official government count of the number of hippos in the country was 169, and estimates suggest it could actually be as high as 200. And though they look cute from afar, hippos are dangerous animals; they’ve already begun to attack farmers and their crops. If the population isn’t controlled, it’s almost certain that their breeding will lead to deaths in the region. For Smithsonian Magazine, Joshua Hammer reports on the quickly increasing hippo population and its implications.
| | |  On this date in 1936: In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, civilian soldiers, carrying rifles supplied by the government, patrol Barcelona in a coach usually used for sightseeing the city. | AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
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