had a busy 24 hours after being endorsed as the Democratic presidential candidate by President Joe Biden. She to earn the party’s nomination and raised more than $81 million, a record sum for the 2024 political cycle. Harris also spoke Monday at a White House celebration with the NCAA championship teams, since President Biden announced he was leaving the race.

and was called on to resign over security failures at a rally where a 20-year-old gunman former President .

Follow the AP’s Election-2024 coverage at: .

Here’s the Latest:

Harris: I look forward to accepting the nomination soon

Shortly after securing the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement that she is looking forward to formally accepting the nomination while also making her case against a second Donald Trump presidency.

“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top,” Harris said.

The 2024 election is about two different visions for America’s future, Harris said.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time before many of us had full freedoms and equal rights,” she said. “I believe in a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”

The AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats hold a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.

Harris has enough support of Democratic delegates to become party’s presidential nominee: AP survey

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an   taken in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.

Harris, who was endorsed by Biden minutes after he announced he would not accept the Democratic nomination, worked to quickly lock up the support of her party’s donors, elected officials and other leaders, and has so far received support from at least 2,214.

However, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats hold a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.

For young voters, Harris is ‘far closer’ in age

Tatum Watkins, a 19-year-old college student from southwest Iowa and a delegate to the DNC, said she appreciates as a young woman that Harris is speaking out on issues like reproductive rights and is “far closer” in age to a whole new generation of voters.

“She is very much leaning into what’s popular right now,” Watkins said. “I’ve seen already her branding is .”

Watkins said that has energized and excited her and other young Iowans, making what will be her first experience voting in a presidential election “even better.”

Rep. Dean: ‘I’ve never been more optimistic about America’

The mood among many House Democrats lifted quickly as lawmakers returned to Washington with Biden having handed off the election to Harris.

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America because of his leadership, his selflessness, his putting country first,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania.

“And then Kamala — woo! — I am excited,” she said. “I’m hearing from my constituents and folks they are so fired up.”

She said one way Harris could approach campaigning in a swing state like hers would be to pick Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate for the vice presidential spot.

Biden to return to the White House, Harris will hit the campaign trail

President Biden is set to return to the White House tomorrow after spending six days at his beach home in Delaware convalescing from COVID-19. Biden became ill while campaigning in Las Vegas last week and headed to his vacation home to isolate.

Vice President Harris, meanwhile, will head to the battleground state of Wisconsin as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear.

The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy on Sunday.

Kansas DNC delegates vote to support Harris

Kansas delegates for the DNC met virtually Monday evening and agreed to give all 44 of the state’s votes on the presidential nomination to Vice President Harris.

“We are united in our endorsement,” the delegation’s leader, state party Chair Jeanna Repass, said after the meeting. “Time is not our friend. We have got to be united.”

Repass rejected suggestions — some from Republicans — that the Democratic Party is ignoring the will of its primary voters. She said primary voters who backed Biden understood that Harris would be president if something happened to Biden.

She said there is still time for other candidates to come forward if they can get enough delegates to sign onto their efforts.

“This has already been adjudicated through the primary process,” Repass said. “That’s why you’re seeing us come together so quickly. She has been our choice since 2020, and she is still our choice today.”

New ad contrasts Trump and Harris as felon and prosecutor

A Democratic group is targeting Trump and trumpeting Harris’ past as a prosecutor with new ads in the swing states expected to be key to the general election.

American Bridge 21st Century says it is launching a $20 million ad buy in the northern swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin later this week.

The group says the spots feature voters from the trio of states with the goal of contrasting Harris — a former prosecutor — with Trump, recently convicted on 34 felony charges.

The $20 million ad buy is part of a $200 million campaign American Bridge and is aimed at swing voters in smaller media markets that are less saturated with political advertising. The group hopes to reach people who may be on the fence.

The first round of ads focuses on abortion rights and health care access. One of the new ads shared by American Bridge features a Pennsylvania veteran who says he felt “violated” by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and called it an “example of Trump spitting on all of us who served.”

Democrats plan to push forward with a virtual roll call

The Democratic Party plans to push forward with a virtual roll call in which delegates to its convention can choose a presidential nominee before they meet in person next month in Chicago, with Vice President Kamala Harris heavily favored now that President Joe Biden has abandoned his reelection bid.

The convention rules committee will meet Wednesday to approve how the virtual roll call will work, but a draft of what they are set to approve was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

It does not list a date for when the roll call will take place, but Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said the process will be completed by Aug. 7. It could contain multiple rounds of voting, but to qualify, candidates will need 300 electronic signatures of support from convention delegates.

The Democratic National Convention opens Aug. 19. State delegations to the gathering began pledging their near-unanimous support for Harris in the hours after President Joe Biden announced he was abandoning his reelection bid on Sunday.

Trump campaign advisers peg Harris as ‘dangerously liberal’

Trump’s campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles have released a memo after Harris’ visit and remarks at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, calling her “dangerously liberal” and saying she “is as bad, if not worse, than Joe Biden.”

“It’s a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to defeat not just one Democrat nominee for president, but two — in the same year!”

The advisers have called this “a ploy to try and shake up the race” and said Harris is just as responsible for Biden’s policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, which saw illegal crossing arrests reach record highs at the end of 2023.

Harris leans into her prosecutor background and draws contrast with Trump

Vice President Harris is honing the political message she plans to use to seek the White House in November.

Rallying staffers at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, now hers to inherit, Harris emphasized her professional background as a prosecutor. She contrasted that with Trump, who has been convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in New York.

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said, adding, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

She also announced that Jen O’Malley Dillon, who had chaired Biden’s reelection campaign, will run her bid.

Biden calls into Harris’ appearance with campaign staff

President Biden called into a campaign staff meeting while Vice President Harris was visiting, pledging, “If I didn’t have COVID, I’d be standing there with you.”

Harris traveled to Wilmington, Delaware, today to rally campaign staffers a day after Biden withdrew his presidential candidacy and endorsed Harris to replace him atop the Democratic ticket.

The crowd at first gasped, then cheered as Biden promised, “I’m going to be on the road” and campaigning for Harris.

“I want people to remember, what we have done has been incredible,” Biden said. He added, “I want to say to the team, embrace her, she’s the best.”

Harris devoted much of her brief remarks to praising Biden, saying, “I love Joe Biden. I know we all do.”

Interest in the Harris campaign surges

More than 28,000 new volunteers have registered to join Harris’ campaign since Biden chose to withdraw his candidacy and bestow his campaign infrastructure to his VP. It’s a rate more than 100 times an average day from the previous Biden reelection campaign, underscoring the enthusiasm behind Harris.

Ohio state Senator regrets suggesting ‘civil war’ would follow a Trump lose

A Republican state senator from Ohio who spoke at Vance’s first solo rally has apologized for saying on stage that it would “take a civil war” to save the country if Trump loses.

The apology from George Lang, the state lawmaker, came after Harris’ team highlighted his remarks in a post on X.

“I regret the divisive remarks in the excitement of the moment on stage,” he said on the same social network. “Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included.”

Voter Voice: ‘Nothing’s been handed to him in life’

Trump supporter Christina Chrisley, who lives in Virginia’s New River Valley, said she knew very little about JD Vance before he was announced as the Republican vice presidential nominee. She had hoped Glenn Youngkin would be selected.

But after doing more research, she said she’s excited by Vance. She has respect for Vance’s background and service as a marine and thinks he’ll do everything he can to “help Donald Trump win the election and do everything he possibly can for blue-collar workers.”

“Nothing’s been handed to him in life,” she said, sitting in a lawn chair looking out at the New River in a hot pink Trump shirt before the rally’s start.

She also said she was impressed by Vance’s speech at the RNC, calling him “eloquent and very well-spoken.”

DNC Delegate: ‘There is incredible excitement’

Ron Meehan, who works at an Anchorage food bank and, at 25, is the youngest member of Alaska’s Democratic delegates, said Harris is creating a buzz in the party.

“I think that there is incredible excitement among Democrats right now, and particularly the young Democrats that had maybe been tuned out of the process,” he said Monday. “We’re on the verge of making history, the first woman president.”

Meehan is the western regional adviser to the Democratic National Committee’s Climate and Environmental Crisis Council.

“Climate issues in particular are ones that I think young people across the country, including myself, are watching very closely,” he said. Meehan credited the Biden-Harris administration for protecting southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, both the nation’s largest national forest and the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging there.

“I think that she has the policy and track record, the temperament and the skill set to run a very strong campaign and to be a strong president,” he said.

Harris raises $81 million in 24 hours, setting new presidential donation record

Vice President Harris’ team has raised more than $81 million in the 24-hour period since President Biden announced his decision to step aside.

The massive fundraising haul represents the largest 24-hour fundraising sum by either party in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump reported raising more than $50 million in the 24-hour period after his felony conviction in the New York hush money trial. Biden reported $38 million in the four days after his disastrous debate performance.

Harris’ new total features donations from hundreds of thousands of first-time donors, the campaign said.

Top California Democrat urges delegates to support Harris

The head of the California Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, is urging delegates to quickly line up behind Harris and has circulated an online form to submit endorsements.

“I am asking delegates from our great state of California and home to our vice president, Kamala Harris, to officially endorse her nomination,” wrote Hicks, who also heads the nation’s largest delegation to the August convention.

“The future of our country is at stake in this election,” Hicks added in an email to delegates, who were expected to hold a virtual meeting on Harris’ nomination later Monday.

Vance calls Democrats ‘a threat to Democracy’ — not Trump

Sen. Vance also sought to deflect the criticism that Trump, who has refused to accept the 2020 election results and tried to overthrow his loss, is a threat to democracy by instead claiming that the Democrats were the threat.

“The idea of selecting the Democrat party’s nominee because George Soros and Barack Obama and a couple of elite Democrats got in a smoke-filled room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard, that is now how it works,” Vance said. “That is a threat to democracy. Not the Republican Party.”

With Biden stepping aside, Democrats technically start with an open convention. But realistically, his endorsement of Harris pushes Democrats into murky territory. Harris has solidified support among more than half of the almost 4,000 party delegates and 700 more .

Harris’ governor endorsements roll in

1. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said, “She’s tough, she’s smart and she’s ready to unite the country.” 2. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said, “Americans are looking for a new generation of leadership that will move past the divisiveness and unite us around our shared American values.” 3. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said, “Harris has always done what’s best for American families,” citing her record on abortion rights and helping to “safeguard democracy.” 4. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy called Harris “a proven leader who has delivered for the American people again and again.”

AP survey finds Harris now backed by more than half of delegates needed to win nomination vote

An AP survey finds that Vice President Harris has the support of more than half of the delegates she’ll need to take President Biden’s place at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Over 1,000 pledged delegates told The Associated Press or announced that they plan to support Harris in a forthcoming vote to pick a new White House nominee.

Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1,976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the nomination. Of the about 1,070 delegates who have spoken to the AP or announced their plans, fewer than 60 either declined to answer or said they were undecided. And Harris is the only Democrat to receive support from delegates so far.

Pat Chesbro, an Alaska delegate and former U.S. Senate candidate, said she could think of no better option than Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket. “People are doing their best to find the best candidate in this situation, which is pretty unusual,” she said. “I look forward to the convention and to seeing whatever the next phase is,” said Chesbro, a lifelong educator.

Bipartisan leaders call Secret Service director to resign

Bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee have ended a contentious, nearly five-hour hearing with the Secret Service director by calling for her to resign after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

In a rare moment of unity for an often divided committee, Reps. James Comer and Jamie Raskin issued a letter to Director Kimberly Cheatle, asking for her to step down as director given her own description of the “most significant operation failure” in the agency’s history.

Cheatle, a 29-year veteran of the Secret Service, spent the majority of the hearing fielding attacks from both sides of the aisle and deflecting questions about the details of the ongoing criminal investigation into the July 13 shooting. But she remained defiant, saying that she believes she is the “right person” to lead the agency at this time and that she will move “heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong.

Harris fires off first campaign fundraising email

Kamala Harris is launching her first campaign fundraising email with a nod to the campaign theme she adopted as far back as her campaign for California attorney general 14 years ago.

“My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” the email begins, referencing her abbreviated 2020 presidential campaign theme, “Kamala: For the people.”

It’s a riff on a prosecutor’s role and the customary introduction in criminal proceedings.

“That was true when I was a prosecutor in California, when I served in the Senate and throughout my time as your Vice President,” Harris’ email states.

“And it’s true as I make this announcement to the world. My name is Kamala Harris, and I’m running for President of the United States.”

Speaker at JD Vance campaign event warns of ‘civil war’ if Trump loses election

While Republicans touted a unifying message last week and decried inflammatory language in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump, one of the first speakers to introduce Vance on Monday in his hometown took a sharp departure from that message and suggested the country may need to come to civil war if Trump loses in November.

“I believe wholeheartedly, Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country,” said George Lang, a Republican state senator. “Politically, I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country and it will be saved. It’s the greatest experiment in the history of mankind.”

Secret Service director says she apologized to Donald Trump after his assassination attempt

Speaking during a congressional hearing, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the rally in Pennsylvania.

White House chief of staff: There’s still much work to be done

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told White House aides and political appointees across the administration that there remains much work to be done in the next six months, according to two people familiar with this message, even as Biden suspends his candidacy for president.

In separate calls, Zients told hundreds of aides and appointees that in every call he’s had with Biden in the last 24 hours, the president has urged his team to focus on key policy goals, such as continuing to implement his legislative achievements and zeroing in on efforts to lower health care and housing costs.

As for Biden’s successor, Zients stressed Biden has been clear on his thoughts and acknowledged Harris’ tenure, which he described as extraordinary. Zients noted that as an official side employee, he had been advised by the White House counsel’s office that he could not speak about politics nor who the next president would be – whomever she is.

— Seung Min Kim

Secret Service chief: Roof where shooter fired was identified as a potential vulnerability days before rally

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said the roof from which the shooter fired had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania.

Cheatle said Monday that her agency failed in its mission to protect Trump during a highly contentious congressional hearing with lawmakers of both major political parties demanding she resign over security failures that allowed a gunman to scale a roof and open fire at the campaign rally.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorses Harris for president with ‘enthusiastic support’

Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts to Harris, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, endorsed Harris on Monday. Pelosi said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’ effort to lead the party.

More than 700 pledged delegates have told The Associated Press or announced that they plan to support Harris at the convention, which is over one-third of the pledged delegates she needs in order to clinch the nomination. Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1,976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the nomination.

French president wrote letter to Biden praising ‘spirit of responsibility’ that led him to leave race

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote President Joe Biden a letter praising the ‘’courage, spirit of responsibility and sense of duty’’ that led him to withdraw from the presidential race.

’’Just after we commemorated together the 80th anniversary of D-Day, I share a hope that this spirit of partnership between the two coasts of the Atlantic continues to animate the historic relations between our two countries,″ the letter reads, according to excerpts released Monday by his office.

AP survey of Democratic delegates finds early signs that Harris is consolidating support for presidential nomination

More than 700 pledged delegates have told The Associated Press or announced that they plan to support at the convention, which is over one-third of the pledged delegates she needs in order to clinch the nomination.

Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1,976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the nomination.

Secret Service director: Agency had been told about ‘suspicious person’ at Trump rally 2 to 5 times before shooting

In her first congressional hearing over the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump, acknowledged that the agency was told about a suspicious person “somewhere between two and five times” before the shooting.

Yet, Cheatle gave no indication Monday that she intends to resign even as she said she takes “full responsibility” for any security lapses at the Pennsylvania rally. Cheatle vowed to “move heaven and earth” to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.

Lawmakers peppered Cheatle with questions about how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded and about why Trump was allowed to take the stage after local law enforcement had identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as suspicious.

Republican JD Vance to make first solo campaign appearances as Trump’s running mate

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is making his first solo appearances on the campaign trail, a day after the 2024 presidential race was thrown into upheaval as President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Vance, an Ohio senator, and is scheduled to hold a rally in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, on Monday afternoon, followed by a second rally Monday evening in Radford, Virginia.

Vendors outside of the Vance event in Ohio appeared for have pivoted quickly with the news of Biden dropping out. They had removed merchandise referencing Biden and added coffee mugs, t-shirts and other items that featured Vance.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper: ‘The vice presidential conversation needs to occur later’

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he had a “great” conversation Sunday with Vice President Kamala Harris about “winning this race.”

Cooper, a term-limited governor with a history of strong support for the Biden-Harris administration, is a possible contender for Harris’ running mate should she win the nomination. Asked twice if he would consider being Harris’ running mate, Cooper instead said the focus needs to be on Harris alone this week.

“The vice presidential conversation needs to occur later,” Cooper said. “I want to make sure Kamala Harris wins. I’m going to work for her all over this country and do what I can to stop Donald Trump.”

Cooper also said he had a conversation with President Joe Biden on Sunday, where he told him he “cemented his legacy among the greatest of presidents.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear says Harris called him after Biden’s announcement

“The vice president called me personally yesterday and called me within a couple of hours of President Biden’s announcement,” Beshear said. “And that meant a lot to me, to reach out to me personally and ask for my support.”

The Democratic governor said he pledged his support to her.

“The rest of that conversation I said would stay between us,” he said.

Asked if she mentioned the No. 2 spot on the ticket, Beshear said: “I’m not going to get into any of those details, but the call was about asking for my support and I pledged it.”

Harris heading to Delaware to meet with Biden campaign staff

Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Delaware to meet with staffers of the reelection campaign that President Joe Biden gave up.

Her office says Harris will hold a “campaign engagement” in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday afternoon. Biden reelection campaign headquarters occupies space in two buildings there.

Biden endorsed Harris shortly after announcing he was leaving the presidential race. The campaign announced raising $49.6 million in the hours after his announcement.

Harris is not yet the formal Democratic presidential nominee, but top party elected officials and donors, as well as labor unions and leading advocacy groups, have endorsed her.

Secret Service director faces storm of criticism at congressional hearing

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle faced a storm of bipartisan criticism at a congressional hearing Monday, with many lawmakers asking why she had not yet resigned from her job in the wake of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

The director, who’s spent nearly three decades combined at the agency, remained defiant that she was the “right person” to lead the agency despite overseeing the “most significant operational failure” in decades.

Even so, both Republicans and Democrats pushed Cheatle on why she wasn’t more forthcoming with details about what went wrong on July 13 or how she would ensure it never happens again.

“Tell us what went wrong!” Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, yelled at Cheatle. “Tell us and don’t try to play a shell game with us.”

Harris praises Biden but doesn’t mention her own candidacy in remarks at the White House

Vice President Kamala Harris says President Joe Biden’s list of accomplishments are “unmatched in modern history.”

In her first public remarks since Biden announced he was leaving the presidential race, Harris made no comment of her own presidential candidacy.

Speaking at a Monday event with NCAA athletes on the lawn of the White House that Biden missed as he recovers from COVID-19, Harris said that Biden, in one term, got more done than many two-term presidents.

“I am firsthand witness that every day, our President Joe Biden fights for the American people,” she said. “And we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”

Senior adviser to Obama: ‘Democrats didn’t have a chance on Sunday and now they have a chance’

David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Biden’s withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris doesn’t simply erase concerns about Biden but elevates Harris as a motivating, tested national candidate who’s grown while in office.

“Democrats didn’t have a chance on Sunday and now they have a chance,” Axelrod told The Associated Press Monday. “It’s really that simple.”

“I think that it’s a different race now because she has maybe some of his liabilities and she may have some of her own,” Axelrod said. “But no one judges her as too old, or unfit in that way.”

The electoral map stays essentially the same, with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin being the most pivotal states, he said. And within them, Harris will motivate in particular younger voters, Axelrod said.

But Harris faces the daunting task of launching a campaign and building one at the same time. “Which is hard, but it can be done,” Axelrod said.

The reaction in the Gaza Strip on Biden’s exit from the race

In the central city of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians coping with more than nine months of the devastating Israel-Hamas war say they feel indifferent about Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential election.

“We feel the United States is a partner in the assault on Gaza,” Hassan Shaqalieh told The Associated Press. “The news that matters the most to us is the end of the war.”

Biden in May presented a deal that aims to end the war in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages the Palestinian group Hamas kidnapped in their surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, but Washington is Israel’s biggest political and military ally.

Hamza Fayyad who was displaced from the southern city of Khan Younis, says there has been no trust in Washington for the Palestinian people’s aspiration to a state and end to Israel’s occupation in the Palestinian territories.

“Someone bad leaves, only for someone worse to come in,” he said.

The reaction from China on Biden’s exit from the US presidential race

China’s foreign ministry on Monday said it had no comment on Biden’s exit from the presidential race, citing that “the presidential elections are the U.S.′ own affairs.”

The official Xinhua news agency, however, opined that it “once again exposed the ugly reality of U.S. politics.”

“Biden’s withdrawal once again expose the chaos and the essence of U.S. politics where partisan interests rule supreme and money drives elections,” Xinhua said in an editorial.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorses Harris for president

The second-term Democratic governor from one of the most-contested presidential states said in a news release Monday, “Today, I am fired up to endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States.”

Whitmer continued, “In Vice President Harris, Michigan voters have a presidential candidate they can can count on to focus on lowering their costs, restoring their freedoms, bringing jobs and supply chains back from overseas, and building an economy that works for working people.”

Whitmer had been mentioned as a potential Democratic presidential prospect.

“So Michigan, let’s go to work,” Whitmer said. “We cannot let Donald Trump anywhere near the White House. Let’s go!”

Secret Service chief says she takes ‘full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency’ after Trump rally attack

The director of the Secret Service says the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades.

Director Kimberly Cheatle told lawmakers Monday during a congressional hearing: “On July 13, we failed.” Cheatle says she takes full responsibility for the agency’s missteps related to the attack at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.

Prominent Democrats endorse Harris, who has no declared rival, as party rapidly coalesces around her

Additional endorsements Monday, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, left a dwindling list of potential rivals to Vice President Kamala Harris as she moves to lock up Democratic delegates behind her campaign for the White House.

Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for her after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday morning call with the president. If she’s successful at locking up the nomination, she must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just over 100 days until Election Day.

Amid calls to resign, Secret Service director to testify before congressional committee

The Secret Service director is set to testify Monday before a congressional committee as calls mount for her to resign over security failures at a rally where a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.

The House Oversight Committee hearing will be Director Kimberly Cheatle’s first appearance before lawmakers since the July 13 Pennsylvania rally shooting that left one spectator dead.

Lawmakers have been expressing anger over how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded.

How Vice President Kamala Harris, in sweats, began launching her presidential bid

As President Joe Biden was deciding to withdraw from the race Sunday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris had multiple phone conversations with him, according to a person familiar who spoke only on background to more freely divulge details.

Harris was at the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington. She was surrounded by family and staff and wore a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers, the person said.

She spent 10-plus hours Sunday placing calls to more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, and leaders of advocacy and civil rights organizations. Harris told all that she was grateful Biden endorsed her upon leaving the race but she planned to earn the Democratic presidential nomination in her own right.

The vice president also called her pastor, Amos Brown III, who, along with his wife, prayed over her.

Harris arranged lunch and dinner for assembled aides. They ate afternoon sandwiches and salad and pizza in the evening. Harris’ pizza had anchovies, which the person said is her go-to topping.

— Will Weissert

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear endorses Harris while sidestepping questions about becoming her running mate

“The vice president is smart and strong, which will make her a good president,” Beshear said during a Monday morning appearance on MSNBC. “But she’s also kind and has empathy, which can make her a great president.”

Beshear praised Harris’ resume as a former prosecutor and says she’s ready to assume the presidency. He says he’s willing to do everything he can to support her.

Asked if he’s open to potentially joining the ticket, Beshear said he loves his job as governor. “The only way I would consider something other than this current job is if I believed I could further help my people and to help this country,” he said.

Beshear defeated Trump-endorsed Republicans to win the governorship in 2019 and to win reelection last year in his Republican-leaning state.

Sen. Joe Manchin says – again – that he’s not running for president

Speaking on Monday to CBS, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent said “I don’t need that in my life.”

Manchin had been the latest senator to call for Biden to exit the 2024 race before Sunday’s announcement by Biden that he would do just that.

Manchin had already mulled a late-breaking 2024 White House bid of his own but said in February after a listening tour that he didn’t want to be a “spoiler.” As a Democrat, he had often bucked his own party’s leadership.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister praises Biden’s ‘courageous and difficult decision’

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel praised President Joe Biden for his announcement that he’s ending his bid for reelection.

“It takes courage for a politician to say ‘I’m a bit old and I’m not capable of doing it anymore,’” Bettel said, describing it as a “courageous and difficult decision” by Biden.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York endorses Harris

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, endorsed Harris and called her “an unwavering champion for families, workers and justice.”

Gillibrand, who ran against Harris in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, said in a statement Monday that the vice president is “incredibly well-qualified, with experience as a prosecutor, as a lawmaker, and as a leader on the world stage.”

“Now is the time to unite,” the senator said. “VP Harris has the grit and toughness to beat Donald Trump and I’m eager to join her in this fight.”

Small

-dollar donations total $46.7 million for Harris

ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, announced that it had as of 9 p.m. ET from small-dollar donations for Vice President Harris’ campaign.

The Biden campaign and affiliated groups previously had about $96 million in cash on hand. The Republican National Convention, by contrast, reported a campaign fund of $102 million in June.

Trump’s campaign quickly pivots to Harris after Biden withdraws

Donald Trump’s campaign has spent the last year and a half viciously attacking Joe Biden, ridiculing his policies, mocking his fumbles and relishing a rematch they felt they were winning.

But it has also spent weeks preparing for the possibility that he might exit the race, readying a bevy of attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that it unleashed as soon as Biden made his stunning announcement Sunday that he would step aside.

Biden soon after endorsed Harris, who was quickly winning support from Democrats to be the party’s nominee.

The shakeup less than four months before Election Day lays out new challenges for Trump’s team, which had until recently been focused on contrasting the former president’s vigor and mental acuity with Biden’s.

about the Trump campaign’s pivot toward Harris.

Hochul, 62, in two weeks will become the state’s first female governor, following a remarkable transition period in which Cuomo has said he will stay on and work to ease her into a job that he dominated over his three terms in office.

She stayed out of public sight Tuesday but said in a statement that she was “prepared to lead.” Hochul planned to hold her first news conference Wednesday afternoon at the State Capitol.

Cuomo, 63, announced Tuesday that he would step down rather than face a likely impeachment trial over allegations that he sexually harassed at least 11 women, including one who accused him of groping her breast.

Cuomo has continued to deny that he touched anyone inappropriately, and said his instinct was to fight back against claims he felt were unfair or fabricated. But he said that with the state still in a pandemic crisis, it was best for him to step aside so the state’s leaders could “get back to governing.”

That job will fall to Hochul, who served briefly in Congress representing a Buffalo-area district, but purposely kept a modest profile as lieutenant governor in a state where Cuomo commanded — and demanded — the spotlight.

A seasoned veteran of retail politics, Hochul shares some of Cuomo’s centrist politics, but is a stylistic contrast with a governor famous for his love of steamrolling opponents and holding grudges. She’s well-liked by colleagues, who say voters shouldn’t confuse her quiet approach under Cuomo with a lack of confidence or competence.

“Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will be an extraordinary governor,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, another upstate political veteran, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. “She understands the complexities and needs of our state, having been both a congresswoman and having been lieutenant governor for the last several years.”

It remains to be seen how involved Cuomo will be in state government over the next two weeks, or how he’ll manage handing over authority — something he rarely ceded during his time in office.

His circle of advisers has shrunk, but his closest aide and policymaking partner Melissa DeRosa — who was a familiar face at Cuomo’s side during his televised briefings on New York’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic — made a surprise return after having announced her resignation from the administration Sunday. The governor’s office said she will remain in her job as secretary to the governor until Cuomo departs.

Leaders in the state legislature have yet to say whether they plan on dropping an impeachment investigation that has been ongoing since March, and which had been expected to conclude in the coming weeks.

In addition to examining his conduct with women, lawyers hired by the state Assembly had been investigating whether the administration’ manipulated data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and whether Cuomo improperly got help from his staff writing a book about the pandemic.

Republicans have urged the Democratic-controlled legislature to go ahead with impeachment, possibly to prevent Cuomo from running for office again.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting pressure Tuesday to resign, including from President Joe Biden and other onetime Democratic allies, after an investigation found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers.

“I think he should resign,” Biden told reporters Tuesday, echoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New York’s U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, all Democrats.

The leader of the state Assembly, which has the power to bring impeachment charges, said it was clear Cuomo could no longer remain in office. Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat, said he would move to complete an impeachment inquiry “as quickly as possible.”

Cuomo remained defiant, saying in a taped response to the findings that “the facts are much different than what has been portrayed” and that he “never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances.”

In a telephone conversation with Heastie, Cuomo insisted he wouldn’t leave office and told the speaker he needed to work fellow Democrats and garner enough votes to stop an impeachment, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

But Heastie said he couldn’t do that, said the person, who could not publicly discuss details of the private conversation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The nearly five-month, non-criminal investigation, overseen by New York’s attorney general and led by two outside lawyers, concluded that 11 women from within and outside state government were telling the truth when they said Cuomo had touched them inappropriately, commented on their appearance or made suggestive comments about their sex lives.

Those accusers included an aide who said Cuomo groped her breast at the governor’s mansion, and a state trooper on his security detail who said he ran his hand or fingers across her stomach and her back.

Anne Clark, who led the probe with former U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, said the allegations had varying degrees of corroboration, including other witnesses and contemporaneous text messages. Investigators interviewed 179 people, including the governor himself.

“These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture: Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees in violation of federal and state laws,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Many of the women said they feared retaliation if they reported Cuomo’s behavior, investigators said, describing his administration as a hostile workplace “rife with fear and intimidation.”

On one occasion, the probe found, Cuomo’s staff took action “intended to discredit and disparage” an accuser — Lindsey Boylan, the first former employee to publicly accuse him of wrongdoing — including leaking confidential personnel files and drafting a letter attacking her credibility.

The investigation’s findings, detailed in a 165-page public report, turn up the pressure on the 63-year-old governor, who just a year ago was widely hailed for his steady leadership during the darkest days of the COVID-19 crisis, even writing a book about it.

Since then, he’s seen his standing crumble with a drumbeat of harassment allegations, questions in a separate, ongoing inquiry into whether state resources went into writing the book, and the discovery that his administration concealed the true number of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

Schumer and Gillibrand said Tuesday’s report only reinforces the calls they and other New York Democrats made for Cuomo to resign after the bulk of the allegations were made public last winter.

“No elected official is above the law. The people of New York deserve better leadership in the governor’s office. We continue to believe that the Governor should resign,” they said in a joint statement.

While James concluded the investigation without referring the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges, local authorities could use its evidence and findings to mount cases. Albany District Attorney David Soares said he would request materials from James’ office and welcomed victims to contact him.

Heastie said the investigation’s findings are crucial to expediting the ongoing state Assembly inquiry into whether there are grounds to impeach Cuomo, who’s been raising money for a potential fourth term. The Assembly hired its own legal team to investigate myriad allegations regarding harassment, his book, nursing homes and special access to COVID-19 testing.

In his taped response, Cuomo apologized to two accusers: Charlotte Bennett, who said the governor asked if she was open to sex with an older man after she confided she had been a sexual assault victim, and a woman he kissed at a wedding. Cuomo said he was hiring an expert to reform sexual harassment training for state employees, including the governor.

But he denied other allegations as fabricated and lashed out at the investigative process, saying it was fueled by “politics and bias.” He explained that he’s physically embraced people his whole life, that his mother and father — former Gov. Mario Cuomo — had done the same and that the gesture was meant to “convey warmth.”

Cuomo’s lawyer issued a written rebuttal to the investigation’s findings, arguing in most cases that serious allegations, like the alleged groping, didn’t happen, or that his actions were misconstrued.

“For those who are using this moment to score political points or seek publicity or personal gain. I say they actually discredit the legitimate sexual harassment victims that the law was designed to protect,” Cuomo said.

Bennett called the governor’s apology “meaningless.”

“If he were sorry, he would step down. That’s how accountability works,” she told the AP. “I don’t believe he will resign. I think it’s the speaker’s job now to begin impeachment proceedings.”

The report detailed, for the first time, the allegations involving the state trooper. It said that in addition to touching her, Cuomo kissed her on the cheek, asked for her help in finding a girlfriend and asked why she didn’t wear a dress.

The report also included an allegation from a woman working for an energy company who said Cuomo touched her chest at an event, running his fingers across the lettering on her shirt and reading the name of her company aloud. According to the report, he then leaned in and told her, “I’m going to say I see a spider on your shoulder” before brushing his hand between her shoulder and breasts.

“These brave women stepped forward to speak truth to power and, in doing so, they expressed faith in the belief that although the governor may be powerful, the truth is even more so,” Kim told reporters.

Cuomo faced multiple allegations, starting with Boylan, who said Cuomo kissed her on the lips after a meeting in his office and “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs.”

After Boylan went public, Cuomo’s staff released personnel memos to the media revealing that she left the administration after being confronted about complaints she belittled and yelled at her staff. Boylan has said the leak was “an effort to smear me.”

In an 11-hour interview with investigators last month, Cuomo admitted to certain behaviors while denying other allegations, investigators said. For example, Clark said, he conceded asking Bennett whether she had been involved with older men and said he may have kissed the state trooper at an event but denied touching her.

Asked about an allegation that he grabbed a woman’s breast at the executive mansion, according to the report, Cuomo responded: “I would have to lose my mind to do such a thing” to a woman he hardly knew, with multiple staff members around.

Cuomo always denied inappropriate touching, but he initially said he was sorry if his behavior with women was “misinterpreted as unwanted flirtation.” He got more combative in recent months, saying he did nothing wrong and questioning the neutrality of the lawyers leading the probe. Kim was involved in previous investigations of corruption by people in Cuomo’s administration.

New York state regulations define sexual harassment to include unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature — from unwanted flirtation to sexual jokes — that creates an offensive work environment, regardless of a perpetrator’s intent.

Cuomo championed a landmark 2019 state law that made it easier for sexual harassment victims to prove their case in court. Alleged victims no longer have to meet the high bar of proving sexual harassment is “severe and pervasive.”

___

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.

___

On Twitter, follow Michael Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak and Marina Villeneuve at twitter.com/reportermarina and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/

The leading lawmaker voice on this issue, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, has bipartisan, filibuster-proof support for a bill that would take prosecution decisions out of the chain of command for major crimes, including sexual assault, rape and murder. The legislation is caught in a procedural struggle in the Senate that supporters see as an effort to stall the bill and water down its language.

The Pentagon appears resigned to a new approach. Austin, who has emphasized the importance of the issue since his nomination was confirmed in January, is weighing military service leaders’ views, which some or all provided to him in recent days.

For years, military leaders have acknowledged sexual assault is a big problem but resisted taking prosecutions out of the chain of command; they have argued that it would undermine commanders’ ability to lead and would not reduce the frequency of assaults. That concern — and others — remains, but some leaders have begun publicly emphasizing their openness to change.

The Biden administration’s nominee as Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, indicated he’s prepared for a new approach.

“Change is necessary, and hopefully we can move forward,” Kendall told Gillibrand at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, praising her efforts. He added that he believes the problem of sexual assault is rooted in military culture and leadership flaws, and he’s uncertain how broadly her proposed changes in prosecution authority should be applied.

“This is a generational change whose time has come,” Gillibrand said Tuesday on the Senate floor in seeking the required unanimous consent to put her bill to a vote.

Reflecting tensions on this issue among Democrats, Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blocked Gillibrand’s procedural move, arguing that her bill must be folded into the broader 2022 defense authorization bill that his committee will take up this summer and fall.

Reed has said he expects the broader defense bill to include “a robust change in the role of the commander in sexual assault cases.”

The shift in attitudes among some military leaders has emerged since President Joe Biden took office. During his campaign, Biden emphatically endorsed removing sexual assault prosecution decisions from the chain of command. He said he would set up a commission to recommend a way forward early in his term.

“We have to change the culture of abuse in this country, especially in the armed services,” Biden said on April 29, 2020.

At Biden’s direction, Austin, the Pentagon chief who is a former Army commander, established an Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault to study ways to attack the problem. In April, the commission recommended taking prosecution powers out of the chain of command. It said that for certain special victims crimes, designated independent judge advocates reporting to a civilian-led Office of the Chief Special Victim Prosecutor should decide two key legal questions: whether to charge someone and, ultimately, whether that charge should go to a court martial. The crimes would include sexual assault, sexual harassment and, potentially, certain hate crimes.

Austin is weighing the military service leaders’ views on this before deciding whether he will support it.

Doubts persist about whether establishing an independent prosecuting authority for sexual assault cases would help reverse a yearslong upward trend in the number of reported sexual assaults in the military.

The acting Army secretary, John E. Whitley, said in an Associated Press interview that the Army is focused more on improving the selection of commanders as a way to change attitudes and improve trust. He said data on the military’s prosecution of sexual assault cases indicates that taking it out of the chain of command would not address the crux of the problem.

“Part of my concern is we’re perhaps, we’re in a very fever pitch debate right now,” Whitley said. “And I worry that the data are not perhaps coming through to the extent they should.”

But some military leaders in recent weeks have signaled a willingness to consider new approaches to prosecution, given the failures of the current system and in light of growing pressure from Congress.

“I’m open to the conversation,” the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, said Tuesday.

Brown did not say whether he believes that taking prosecution decisions out of the chain of command would be a step in the right direction, but his comments suggest a break from the past. His predecessor and other service chiefs had been united in arguing strongly against the move, saying it would send a confusing message to service members about trust in their commander’s judgment.

That solid wall of opposition began to crack in early May when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, previously a prominent opponent, told the AP and CNN that he had changed his mind. Although he no longer opposes the idea, he has not publicly endorsed it, either. He said the time had come to try something different because “we’ve been at it for years, and we haven’t effectively moved the needle.”

Sexual assault has long plagued the military, triggering congressional condemnation and frustrating military leaders who have struggled to find effective prevention, treatment and prosecution methods. The most recent of the Defense Department����ap biennial anonymous surveys, done in 2018, found that more than 20,000 service members said they experienced some type of sexual assault, but only a third of those filed a formal report.

Milley said he shifted his thinking in part because he is concerned that junior enlisted service members lack confidence in the fairness of sexual assault case outcomes. He said this amounts to an erosion of confidence in the military chain of command.

“That����ap really bad for our military if that����ap true, and survey and the evidence indicate it is true,” he said.

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Even 20 years after that era, when I worked in midtown Manhattan at a newsmagazine, the remnants of that sexist world existed. The idea of women writing about world events was still novel. And when I had been interviewed for that job, my future boss asked me to come up to his hotel room, spurring me to go out onto the street and scream in frustration and fear that the job was gone.

So I could not have been more thrilled when #MeToo ripped away the curtain on the murky transgressions and diminishments that women had endured in the droit du seigneur era.

But as with any revolution, there was some overcorrection.

When liberals heralded the idea that all women must be believed, it made me wince. Al Franken was pressured to pack up without a hearing, given a push by Kirsten Gillibrand, who told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that while she had not talked to any of her colleague’s accusers, “the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment. So it was.”

Most Democratic women already considered Brett Kavanaugh guilty of attempted rape as a 17-year-old virgin before he took the stand to defend himself. The eagerness to pin Kavanaugh produced a giddy new environment in which incredible tales, like that of Julie Swetnick, who claimed to have witnessed Kavanaugh at parties with rape lines, were treated as credible.

As Joe Biden said of Christine Blasey Ford, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it����ap been made worse or better over time.”

To suggest that every woman who alleges a sexual assault is as credible as the next is absurd. The idea that no woman can ever be wrong just hurts women. Half the human race is female. Who has never been lied to by people of both genders? Who has never seen the mesmerizing female psychopaths of film noir?

Democrats always set standards that come back and bite them. They have created a cage of their own making.

In the case of Anita Hill and Blasey, these poised, professorial women were yanked into the public arena and turned into pawns; the women were making charges against conservative Supreme Court nominees whom Democrats and feminists were eager to derail. So it became a preemptory matter of, all women must be believed — when it����ap convenient for my side.

The Clintons did great damage on this score, sliming the women who told of sexual encounters with Bill Clinton, with backup from feminists who wanted to keep his progressive policies on women.

Republicans always ruthlessly played to win their preordained outcome. But this belief of convenience has infected both sides of the aisle. Republicans, joined by some disaffected Bernie supporters, want to push Tara Reade’s recent allegations against Biden because it����ap convenient for them to try to make younger voters and suburban women and progressives turn on Biden.

And Biden, Democrats and the liberal media have been late in addressing Reade’s allegations that when she worked in Biden’s Senate office in 1993, he assaulted her in a corridor, because it was inconvenient for them to do so.

While Reade was being shunned by TV, Hillary Clinton, Nancy (“Joe Biden is Joe Biden”) Pelosi, Gillibrand and some of the women on Biden’s veep list, Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris, were offering testimonials to his character.

At the urging of women’s rights advocates, Biden finally stopped ducking and talked to Mika Brzezinski on Friday from his basement bunker.

He denied it “unequivocally,” noting five times that this was said to have happened 27 years ago.

It was a strange acid flashback, seeing Biden having to defend himself three decades after he was the one who shut down the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearing without allowing the appearance of the three women waiting to come forward as corroborating witnesses for Hill.

There are some unanswered questions about Reade. She said there’s a complaint, so let����ap see it. On Friday, Biden wrote a letter to the secretary of the Senate to see if a record of it was there. But he should also agree to let someone search his papers at the University of Delaware.

It����ap injurious to look like you’re hiding something. As one Democratic strategist told me about Biden’s effort to stonewall, these kind of charges are like COVID-19: You have to jump on it early and contain it, or you’re left with mitigation. The 77-year-old did not understand that in the age of social media, you don’t assume people won’t believe stuff if it����ap left unchallenged.I’ve covered Biden my entire political career, and he is known for being sometimes warmly, sometimes inappropriately, hands-on with men and women. What Reade accuses him of is a crime and seems completely out of character.

But that is how my brother, who coached Kavanaugh in basketball at Georgetown Prep and stayed friends with him after, felt about Blasey’s allegations.

In the end, these moments highlight the hypocrisy of both parties. Each case has to stand or fall on its own facts, patterns, corroborations, investigations — not on viewing it only through partisan goggles.

You could ask if hypocrisy in the age of Trump is antiquated. Why should the Democrats hold themselves to some higher standard of conduct when Donald Trump, a serial assaulter of women according to his accusers and own “Access Hollywood” confession, is wallowing in amorality and refusing to release a scrap of paper about personal finances or conduct?

But moral relativism is not the answer. Biden is running — or for the moment, sitting — on compassion and decency, the antithesis of Trump. If he throws that away, he’s going along with Trump’s worldview: We live in a corrupt jungle. Everybody’s down here in the muck. So you might as well go with me because I’m stronger.

From the day Trump was elected, it has always been a race between the damage he could do and the day his term was up. Let����ap hope that damage doesn’t include the Democrats sinking to his cynical, miserable level.

Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary and author of three New York Times best sellers, became an Op-Ed columnist in 1995.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Five Democratic candidates for Senate will compete in Saturday’s caucuses: John Hickenlooper, Andrew Romanoff, Stephany Rose Spaulding, Erik Underwood and Trish Zornio. Five other candidates will try to obtain ballot access for the late June primary by collecting signatures, bypassing the weekend caucuses.

For the five competing Saturday, a preference poll of caucus attendees will be the first gauge of their statewide support and a true test of their ability to compete. The poll will be used to allocate delegates to county assemblies later in March. Polls taken at county assemblies will then be used to allocate delegates to the state assembly April 18, where a candidate will need 30% support to have their name placed on June 30 ballots.

“This is the first time Colorado will get a sense of where people actually stand on the candidates,” Spaulding said of Saturday’s caucuses. “Coloradans are not yet decided on who they want to be their nominee.”

In interviews Thursday, several candidates said they have spoken to engaged Democratic voters who are unaware caucuses are occurring or who have lost faith in caucuses after Iowa’s mishaps this year. In Romanoff’s words, Colorado’s caucuses are “a system that no one would design from scratch.”

“I actually have no idea what the turnout will be,” he said.

The field of five caucusing candidates includes Hickenlooper, the former governor and leading Democratic candidate, as well as two of his top liberal opponents, Romanoff and Spaulding. Zornio has been running longer than the other four and has toured every Colorado county twice. Underwood has been through the caucus process before, when he was a gubernatorial candidate in 2018.

“I do expect to win, of course,” Hickenlooper told reporters Feb. 28 at a Denver event with U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who endorsed him that day.

“He’s going to kick some serious butt,” Gillibrand added with a laugh, before Hickenlooper slightly downplayed his chances.

“You have to understand, our caucus system is an old-fashioned caucus system, so I might not kick that much butt in the caucus system,” he said. “But I look forward to the primary election.”

Underwood said he will spend Friday meeting with voters in population centers along the Front Range. to what he estimated to be 1,000 people at a Capitol rally opposing , which would make the process for requesting vaccine exemptions more onerous.

“I will never get in between a woman trying to protect her child or children,” Underwood said into a megaphone on the steps of the Colorado Capitol. In that day, he wrote, “We cannot let Big Pharma to become a shadow government controlling our choice, freedom, and bodies.”

Romanoff will spend Friday in Colorado Springs, Highlands Ranch, Littleton and Fort Collins. Spaulding said her campaign will continue knocking doors and operating phone banks. Zornio, fighting an illness, will remain at home and make calls reminding her supporters to caucus Saturday.

“We’re feeling good as we look at the number of people who say they’re going to come out and support us,” Zornio said. “We just have to see what happens on Saturday.”

Hickenlooper has led the Democratic field by a wide margin in early polls but faces an engaged and enraged left flank of the party that prefers his more progressive challengers. The caucuses will be the first test of Hickenlooper’s well-funded campaign, as well as those of his liberal critics.

“In the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, many of them are very much anti-Hickenlooper,” said Spaulding. “We’ll see how much they are anti-Hickenlooper come Saturday.”

Preference poll results will be posted by the Colorado Democratic Party online and on Twitter on Saturday afternoon and evening. Though crucial for allocating delegates, such polls are not always indicative of primary success. In 2018, for example, Cary Kennedy easily won the Democratic gubernatorial preference poll but lost handily to Jared Polis in that summer’s primary.

Democrats can take part in Saturday’s caucuses if they will be at least 18 years old by Election Day, are registered to vote, and were registered as Democrats by Feb. 14. Precinct numbers can be found on the Secretary of State’s Office website, and precinct locations are at .

Republicans will also gather for caucuses Saturday, though there isn’t a competitive Senate primary. For the re-election campaigns of Sen. Cory Gardner and President Donald Trump, the caucuses are an opportunity to organize grassroots support and energize volunteers eight months before November.

Re: “Gardner stays silent as Senate trial looms,” Jan. 6 news story

Yes, our elected Republican senator, Cory Gardner, is silent. What can he say about a Republican president who has basically admitted to bribing a foreign country to gain a political advantage here at home? He could say what another Republican from the Denver area, Ken Buck, says. Buck doesn’t have any qualms about speaking out. Of course, what he’s saying is incomprehensible to citizens who believe in the rule of law. Gardner, at least, has the decency to not make a complete fool of himself by denying the undeniable. Buck has no such filter.

What this should mean to the voter is that our Republican representation favors a law-breaking president. They favor daily lies from the White House. They favor gridlock in the Senate for legislation that would actually benefit the citizens these people say they represent.

Why isn’t Gardner calling for witnesses and documents for the impeachment trial? If he did, he might gain in popularity instead of hiding behind Mitch McConnell’s egregious and unethical actions.

Vernon Turner, Denver

Dem candidates are a joke

Re: “What will it take for Dems to beat Trump?” Dec. 29 commentaries.

Trump can be beaten in 2020, but the Democrats will have to come up with a better candidate. Here are the top five: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker. They are all too far left.

Here are five losers who have all dropped out: Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro and Bill De Blasio. All of them are or were left-leaning.

They are a joke. But that����ap just my opinion. Do any of the above deserve to be in the White House? No.

Joy Privette, Elizabeth

Come meet the real GOP

Re: “Readers rail on President Trump impeachment,” Dec. 29 letter to the editor

One of your Sunday letter writers said that the GOP “has become a party of the ill-informed, anti-immigrant, Christian fundamentalists, and old white nationalists.” Really? I would like to invite the writer to attend some of our Republican events in Denver, where he will find cause to revise his opinion and may determine that he agrees with many GOP aims. He will learn that we Republicans are actually quite well informed (remember, pundits have referred to Democrats as “low information” voters) and that we favor economic prosperity, equal opportunity, and respect for and even-handed enforcement of our laws, including immigration laws.

Republicans embrace many religions, including, yes, Christianity. So what? Same for race and age. Does anyone believe that the wisdom of a policy or law depends on the religion, skin color, or age of those who support it?

We Denver Republicans are a welcoming group. Find particulars on our events at DenverGOP.org. I recommend particularly the First Friday Breakfast each month.

Osborne Dykes, Denver

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

When it was Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet����ap turn, he wound up with about a dozen supporters and a pep talk from Secretary of State Bill Gardner, the dean of the New Hampshire primary.

“Giving the little guy a chance, that����ap what it����ap about,” Gardner assured Bennet, who sits at about 1% in most polls.

Voters cast ballots in fewer than three months, and the Democratic primary is still crowded with little guys. Roughly a half-dozen candidates in the very bottom tier of the Democratic presidential primary are soldiering on, hoping that even after months of campaigning without catching fire that there’s still a chance. Their resolve reflects, in part, some Democrats’ insistence that the lineup of top contenders is deeply flawed and the race is primed for some late twists and turns.

“I truly believe that that person is as likely to be someone polling at 1% today as it is to be the people that are leading in the race today,” Bennet told reporters after filing his paperwork. “Stranger things have happened than that.”

Candidates such as Bennet have some reason for optimism. Polls show many Democratic voters, even in early-voting states, have not made up their minds. In Iowa, the first state to weigh in, the front of the pack is crowded — another sign of ambiguity, some argue. Worries about the strength of the front-runners prompted Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, to move toward a bid, threatening to expand the field just as the party thought it would be winnowing.

Some higher-profile aspirants, including New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand or former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, weren’t able to stick it out, after months of poor polling and lackluster fundraising. Some middle-tier candidates, meanwhile, have had to scale back their operations. California Sen. Kamala Harris pulled staff from New Hampshire this past week, while former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro cut positions there and in early-voting South Carolina.

But Bennet and others seemed to have prepared for a long, very slow burn. Bennet and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock never expected to raise much money and built small-scale operations that could carry them until the first part of February, when Iowa and then New Hampshire vote.

“Everybody goes up and down, and what I need to be is organizing and catching fire as voting starts,” said Bullock, another candidate mired in the bottom tier who has announced an initial $500,000 advertising campaign in Iowa.

Bennet and Bullock stand out in the crowded bottom tier as two well-regarded moderate politicians who got into the race late — in May — and appear to have the same strategy: wait for former Vice President Joe Biden’s support to collapse and hope they’re the best centrist standing. A Bloomberg bid would immediately add another contender — and millions of dollars — to the competition on that front, though the former mayor’s team says he will likely stay out of early states.

Other perennial 1% polling candidates have plans that are far less clear. They include spiritualist and best-selling author Marianne Williamson, who moved from Los Angeles to Iowa for the race; former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, who just concluded a walk across New Hampshire to attempt to draw attention to his campaign; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, a wealthy businessman who is self-funding much of his race.

Delaney explained his continued campaign with a “why not?” rationale. After millions spent and countless hours of time, “it just seems kind of crazy for me to get out before the caucus,” he said.

Looking for hope, Bennet has clung to the example of Gary Hart, a U.S. senator from Colorado who was considered a longshot White House hopeful in 1984 when he stunned the political world by winning New Hampshire. Hart, whose picture is on the wall of Gardner’s office, has endorsed Bennet and recently wrote an opinion piece for USA Today urging people not to write off his younger protege.

Hart, however, was not shut out of most of the primary debates, as Bennet and Bullock have been this year. The Democratic National Committee’s increasingly rigorous polling and fundraising criteria are a new attempt to shrink a historically large field. And Hart, in the end, found there were limits to what an underdog can achieve in a presidential primary. He ultimately lost his bid for the nomination to Walter Mondale, the party’s former vice president and heir apparent. (Hart����ap 1988 campaign for the nomination was undone by a sex scandal.)

Still, Bennet����ap team notes that there has been no dominating political presence in their party’s primary, such as Mondale or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in 2008.

“This is the most unsettled field ever,” said Craig Hughes, a top Bennet strategist. “The dynamics are unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

Hughes proudly noted the one sign of movement in the race: The Bennet campaign is shopping for new office space as it expands in New Hampshire. One of the spots it toured last week had just been vacated by the formerly top-tier Harris campaign.

Hours ahead of a midnight Wednesday deadline to qualify, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced she was dropping out of the race after spending at least $4 million on advertising in recent months to qualify.

Billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and self-help guru Marianne Williamson were also among those missing September’s debate, as were Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and a handful of others.

To appear on stage in Houston next month, they had to hit 2% in at least four approved public opinion polls while securing 130,000 unique donors. Two new polls released Wednesday affirmed that they were all below the threshold.

The question shifted from who would qualify for the following debate to who would stay in the race.

“Our rules have ended up less inclusive … than even the Republicans,” Bullock said on MSNBC, referring to the thresholds set by the Democratic National Committee. “It is what it is.”

The 10 candidates who qualified for September’s debate are Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.

In a still-crowded Democratic field, not qualifying for the debate was expected to severely cripple a candidate’s prospects. However, several have pledged to forge on in hopes of reaching the requirements in time for the next debate, in October.

Although earlier debates had lower thresholds, the DNC raised the stakes for the fall debates.

“We believe you need to show progress in your campaign,” said Democratic Party spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. “There hasn’t been one candidate in 40 years who has polled under 2% the fall ahead of a primary and has gone on to be the Democratic nominee.”

The DNC designed the requirements to bring order to an unwieldy field of more than 20 White House hopefuls, while elevating the role of online grassroots donors who are among the party’s most fervent supporters.

In some ways, the party has succeeded. But the process has drawn complaints from those unlikely to make the cut. They argue that the rules are arbitrary and have forced candidates to pour money into expensive online fundraising operations that can sometimes charge as much as $90 for every dollar raised.

Bennet said the threshold favored Steyer, and a memo by his campaign accused the billionaire of trying to buy his way into the debate. “Other candidates have had to spend millions to acquire donors on Facebook, instead (of) communicating with voters and laying the groundwork to beat” President Donald Trump, the Bennet campaign memo stated.

Steyer, a late entry in the race, was the closest to qualifying but acknowledged Wednesday night that he too had fallen short.

“While I’m disappointed that I won’t be on the debate stage in Houston this month, I’m excited by all the support you’ve shown us,” he tweeted to supporters. “We started this campaign to get corporate influence out of politics, and I won’t stop fighting until the government belongs to the people again.”

In a separate letter to Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez, Bennet����ap campaign asked how the DNC decided which polls to allow and questioned why Democrats were trying to narrow the field months before Iowa caucuses.

Yet Hinojosa, the DNC spokeswoman, said those who are upset have had ample time to build support and reach the thresholds. Instead, most have consistently polled at 1% or below.

“We are asking Democratic candidates to hit 2% in four polls. That is not a high threshold,” said Hinojosa, who added the DNC is accepting the results from 21 polls.

Steyer and Gillibrand both poured millions of dollars into Facebook and TV ads to boost their standing in recent months. While Steyer met the donor threshold, he was one poll shy. Gillibrand was three polls away and had yet to lock in enough donors.

Gabbard was two polls away from qualifying, and Williamson was three polls away.

Several others who struggled had already chosen to drop out. Washington Gov. Jay Inlsee, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper all recently ended their campaigns.

With no more than 10 participants, the September debate would be the first of the cycle held on a single night. Earlier debates featured 20 candidates split across two nights.

Biden, the race’s early front-runner, said he would like the field to winnow even further.

“I’m looking forward to getting to the place, assuming I’m still around, that it gets down to a smaller number of people so we can have more of a discussion instead of one-minute assertions,” the former vice president said Wednesday while campaigning in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

___

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Spartanburg, S.C., contributed to this report.

The 52-year-old New York senator said Wednesday that she was suspending her campaign. That comes after failing to meet minimum thresholds for required numbers of donors and polling to qualify for the September Democratic debate in Houston.

“I know this isn’t the result that we wanted. We wanted to win this race,” she said in an online video. “But it’s important to know when it’s not your time.”

Gillibrand topped an incumbent Republican in a conservative part of upstate New York to get to the U.S. House in 2007, and was appointed to the Senate two years later, filling the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, who was tapped to be U.S. secretary of state. Gillibrand later easily retained the seat during a 2010 special election, as well as in 2012 and 2018.

Vocal in the Senate on curbing sexual harassment and promoting equal pay for women and family leave, Gillibrand made those and her staunch defense of abortion rights the core of her presidential bid. She stood out in the crowded field by becoming the first Democratic presidential hopeful to declare that she’d only appoint judges to the Supreme Court who consider the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide settled law, though most of her competitors quickly followed suit.

After forming an exploratory committee in January and formally entering the race by calling President Donald Trump a “coward” in a March speech delivered near the New York City skyscraper bearing his name, Gillibrand began with $10.5-plus million left over from her 2018 Senate campaign in her presidential campaign account.

That seemed like more than enough resources for the long haul. But Gillibrand was the first Senate Democrat in December 2017 to call for Minnesota Sen. Al Franken’s resignation amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, and she has said for months that that alienated donors and some voters in his neighboring, make-or-break Iowa.

Many of her Senate colleagues seeking the Democratic presidential nomination — including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — followed her lead in calling for Franken to step down before he quit in January 2018. But Gillibrand has continually faced more questions than others about being too quick to condemn him.

Speaking in Manhattan in July, Gillibrand said she didn’t regret urging Franken’s resignation but argued that female senators were being blamed more than their male colleagues for a decision that Franken himself ultimately made.

“Women are asked to hold accountable their colleagues. The men are not,” Gillibrand said. “It’s outrageous. It’s absurd.”

A record 100-plus women were elected to Congress in 2018, and #MeToo seemed to provide a clear lane for 2020 success. Gillibrand failed to catch fire, though, despite embracing feminist issues. This month, she visited St. Louis, home to Missouri’s lone remaining abortion clinic, to decry efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures around the country to restrict abortion — after previously visiting Georgia’s state capital for the same purpose.

During a Fox News town hall in June, Gillibrand said, “We want women to have a seat at the table,” and when moderator Chris Wallace responded, “What about men?” Gillibrand shot back with one of the most memorable lines of her campaign: “They’re already there — do you not know?”

The two-dozen-plus Democratic presidential field had already begun to winnow before Gillibrand’s announcement. U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California left the 2020 race in July, followed by former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts earlier this month.