More than 30 Democratic lawmakers to skip Netanyahu speech – report
More than 30 House and Senate Democrats are not planning to attend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech today to Congress, NBC News is reporting.
Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint meeting on Congress this afternoon at 2pm ET.
The #NBC Capitol Hill team says more than 30 House & Senate Democrats are planning to skip Netanyahu’s speech today to Congress
Some will boycott it entirely.
Others will listen from their offices instead of the chamber.
And some have planned counter-programming events— Doug Adams (@DougNBC) July 24, 2024
Key events
Biden to meet with Netanyahu in the Oval Office on Thursday
Joe Biden will meet with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Oval Office on Thursday, the White House said.
The two leaders will “discuss developments in Gaza and progress towards a ceasefire and hostage release deal and the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including countering Iran’s threats to Israel and the broader region”, according to a statement from the White House.
Afterwards, Biden and Netanyahu will meet with the families of Americans held hostage by Hamas.
Netanyahu is also expected to meet with Donald Trump on Friday, the former US president announced on his Truth Social platform.
The Israeli leader has kept a low profile since arriving in Washington DC on Monday, holding a series of small meetings with the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas, but he is scheduled to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress later today.
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are planning to boycott Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Kamala Harris will not be attending, which an aide said was because of a scheduling conflict. According to his public schedule, Netanyahu will meet with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, before the speech.
Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential candidate and the country’s first female presidential nominee from a major party, has said she believes Kamala Harris can beat Donald Trump despite the “sexism and double standards of American politics”.
Clinton, in an op-ed for the New York Times, wrote:
I know a thing or two about how hard it can be for strong women candidates to fight through the sexism and double standards of American politics. I’ve been called a witch, a ‘nasty woman’ and much worse. I was even burned in effigy. As a candidate, I sometimes shied away from talking about making history. I wasn’t sure voters were ready for that.
The former US secretary of state said she was “excited” about Harris, who she said represents “a fresh start” for American politics and who offers a “hopeful, unifying vision”. “She is talented, experienced and ready to be president,” Clinton wrote.
Ms Harris will face unique additional challenges as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket. That’s real, but we shouldn’t be afraid. It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible.
Kevin McCarthy calls DEI attacks on Kamala Harris ‘stupid and dumb’
Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican House speaker, has described attacks by his former colleagues on Kamala Harris claiming that she was hired as part of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are “stupid and dumb”.
McCarthy, speaking to NBC News’ Meet the Press NOW last night, said:
I disagree with DEI, but she is the vice-president of the United States, she is the former US senator. These congressmen saying it, they are wrong in their own instincts.
WATCH: Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy says DEI attacks on VP Kamala Harris are “stupid and dumb.”@SpeakerMcCarthy: “I disagree with DEI, but she’s the vice president of the United States. … These congressmen that are saying it, they’re wrong in their own instincts.” pic.twitter.com/rKNaFLL95l
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 23, 2024
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the veteran Republican election lawyer Charlie Spies, a former counsel for the Republican National Committee, argued that the Biden-Harris team must be formally nominated by their party before any money could be shifted. Spies wrote:
If President Biden is committed to passing the torch to his vice president, and wants to be able to seed her campaign with the current Biden for President campaign war chest, he’ll first have to become his party’s legal nominee. After shuffling through the Democratic National Committee’s planned roll call vote he’d be free to drop out. Ms Harris could seamlessly slip into the driver’s seat.
Dara Lindenbaum, the commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, has said she agrees with the view that Kamala Harris can access Joe Biden’s campaign funds if she becomes the Democratic party’s nominee.
Lindenbaum, in a post to X on Sunday, wrote:
If Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic Party nominee, she gets access to the Joe Biden campaign funds.
In an interview reported by the New York Times, Lindenbaum said it was “very clear” that Harris “gets to use all the money in the account if she is the party’s presidential nominee. “In my view, this is not an open question,” she said.
Hugo Lowell
Whether the Federal Election Commission complaint generates traction with the FEC remains unclear, but the Trump campaign has been looking for any way to slow down the momentum Kamala Harris has been able to generate with voters and donors after she quickly became the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The strategy, according to people familiar with the matter, has included opening new legal battles to try to prevent Harris from accessing Biden’s funds, although the complaint on Tuesday stopped short of a lawsuit.
The complaint, earlier reported by the New York Times, also argued that Harris taking over Biden’s remaining campaign funds amounted to an excessive unlawful contribution given that “Biden for President” was not an authorized committee for the Harris campaign.
The Harris campaign has viewed the FEC complaint as a spurious legal effort to throw sand in their gears, noting that the Biden-Harris committees have always been authorized committees for either Biden or Harris, according to a person familiar with the thinking.
Trump files complaint against Harris for taking over Biden’s campaign funds
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the vice-president, Kamala Harris, accusing her 2024 campaign of violating federal campaign finance laws by replacing Joe Biden’s name with her own to take control of his campaign funds.
The complaint, filed by the Trump campaign’s general counsel, David Warrington, argued that the Biden campaign could not rename its committee from “Biden for President” to “Harris for President” once Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, and roll over $91m. The eight-page complaint said:
This is little more than a thinly veiled $91.5m excessive contribution from one presidential candidate to another, that is, from Joe Biden’s old campaign to Kamala Harris’s new campaign. This effort makes a mockery of our campaign finance laws.
“Federal candidates are prohibited from keeping contributions for elections in which they do not participate,” it added.
Biden for President 2024 has shown no intention to properly refund or re-designate the general election funds it has already received. This makes them all excess contributions.
Some more comments from German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Kamala Karris. He said he had met several times with the US vice-president and called her a “competent and experienced politician”.
Scholz said it was always important for him to assess in talks whether politicians were simply saying what had been prepared for them or actually able to engage in dialogue – and in his several meetings with Harris, she had convinced him of the latter.
“She knows what she wants and what she can do,” he said on Wednesday in an annual summer news conference that touched on a wide range of topics.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed it was “very possible” US vice-president Kamala Harris would win the US election later this year, stopping short of endorsing Harris over Republican Donald Trump.
Scholz had been unusually direct in his endorsement of US President Joe Biden before the latter dropped his reelection bid last weekend and endorsed Harris as the Democrat party’s candidate to face Trump in the November election.
“The election campaign in the USA will certainly be exciting, now with a slightly new lineup and a new constellation,” Scholz told an annual summer news conference on Wednesday.
“I think it is very possible that Kamala Harris will win the election, but the American voters will decide.”
Dozens of Democrats plan to skip Netanyahu address to US Congress
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the US Congress on Wednesday as dozens of Democrats plan to skip the speech.
Protests over his arrival in Washington DC have already begun, including a sit-in at a congressional office building that ended with multiple arrests, according to the Associated Press.
He will speak to a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives at 2pm (7pm UK time). This will be his fourth time making such an address, surpassing Winston Churchill’s record as the foreign leader who has made the most joint addresses to the US Congress.
Dozens of Democrats plan to skip the speech, many expressing dismay over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza which has killed more than 39,000 people and led to a humanitarian crisis on the ground. Presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will not be in attendance as she is on the campaign trail outside DC but she plans to meet Netanyahu separately.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told reporters: “For him, this is all about shoring up his support back home, which is one of the reasons I don’t want to attend.”
“I don’t want to be part of a political prop in this act of deception. He is not the great guardian of the US-Israel relationship.”
The Democrats planning to stay away also include Senators Dick Durbin, the chamber’s number two Democrat, Tim Kaine, Jeff Merkley and Brian Schatz, all members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Patty Murray, who chairs Senate Appropriations.
In the House, those staying away included progressives like Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Ami Bera, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Adam Smith, the top Democrat on Armed Services.
Smith said he never attends joint meetings but also described himself on Tuesday as “very, very opposed to what prime minister Netanyahu is doing in Israel.”
Murray normally would have presided, as the senior Senate Democrat, because Harris will not attend. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, who leads the foreign relations committee, will replace her.
Netanyahu is due to travel to Florida to meet with Donald Trump later this week. The meeting will be their first since the end of Trump’s presidency, during which the two forged close ties.
Harris Campaign raises $126m since announcing 2024 run
The Harris Campaign has announced that, as of Tuesday evening, they have raised $126m since announcing 2024 run.
Trump to turn fire on Harris in his first rally since Biden dropped out of race
Welcome to our coverage of the US presidential race with all the major players due to speak today.
Republican nominee Donald Trump will hold his first rally since it was announced that Joe Biden will drop out of the race. The former president will appear at an event in Charlotte, North Carolina, a state that will be an important battleground in the 5 November election. He will turn his fire on Kamala Harris, who is almost certain to run against him, amid fears from his aides of a “Harris honeymoon”.
Meanwhile, as Reuters reports, the vice-president will head to Indianapolis to speak at an event hosted by the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, which was founded at Howard University, the historically Black college that Harris attended.
She hopes to tap sororities’ multi-generational network of Black women to deliver strong voter turnout for Democrats in November.
Harris held an energetic first rally as the likely nominee on Tuesday in Milwaukee, telling the crowd that Americans were “not going back” to the “chaos” of the Trump years.
Joe Biden will also be speaking. He is set to make a case for his legacy on Wednesday night when he delivers an Oval Office address about his decision to bow out of the race and “what lies ahead.”
