Kamala Harris' first ad features footage from Philly visit; Harris is polling better in Pa. than Biden did

Former President Gerald Ford predicted 35 years ago that a woman would become president under circumstances that bear some similarity to those unfolding in 2024.

At a forum in Iowa, a schoolgirl asked him what advice he night offer to a “young lady” who aspired to the presidency.

Ford said that he could foresee a circumstance in which a woman would become president but that it wouldn’t happen “in the normal course of events.”

A network of more than two dozen public education advocacy groups from across the country published a letter Wednesday night urging Vice President Kamala Harris not to select Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate because of his support for private school vouchers.

School vouchers, which provide parents with state funding to send children to private schools, are an issue on which Shapiro has agreed to compromise with Republicans since becoming governor.

Shapiro has said he supports vouchers, with the caveat that it must be paired with increases in public education funding so that money is not being diverted away from public schools.

Two days after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro took the stage at a rally in Wynnewood, a Jewish stronghold in his home Montgomery County, and vowed to be a champion for Israel.

“This is not a moment to retreat from who we are, but to be proud of who we are,” Shapiro, the third Jewish governor in the commonwealth’s history, told the crowd of more than 1,000 after the attack killed roughly 1,200 people.

Shapiro’s status as a popular governor in a battleground state has put him high on the list of contenders to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate after President Joe Biden’s unprecedented withdrawal from the presidential race. Shapiro, if picked, would be only the second Jewish vice presidential nominee for a major party in history.

Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords visited Philadelphia to campaign on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday, as the vice president is said to be vetting Gifford’s husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as potential running mates.

Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011, spoke about gun policy alongside Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton, who has been a fierce advocate of Shapiro as a vice presidential candidate.

The former Arizona representative demurred when asked whether she’d thought about being second lady. But she spoke highly of her husband.

The Working Families Party "overwhelmingly" endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee Thursday, wrote WFP national director Maurice Mitchell in a statement.

In total, 95% of members, chapters, and party leaders voted to back Harris as "a historic opportunity to stop Trump's authoritarian movement in its tracks," Mitchell wrote.

The party, which was founded roughly 25 years ago in New York as a movement for labor unions, community organizations, and activists, said they have a clear plan for a victory for both Harris and the WFP which includes "engaging and mobilizing the majority of Americans who oppose MAGA’s extremist agenda," winning majorities in the House and Senate, and cultivating progressive leadership in state houses across the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris continued on her pursuit of the presidency, speaking to the American Federation of Teachers — the first union to officially endorse her candidacy — in Houston on Thursday afternoon.

Harris, who called herself a “proud product of public education” continued to capitalize on the forward-looking nature of her campaigning having coined the phrase “We are not going back” in recent campaign speeches. “One [vision is] focused on the future and the other [is] focused on the past and we are fighting for the future,” Harris said to the crowd during her half-hour speech.

The vice president spent much of her speech touting her campaign platform and Biden-Harris administration policies on unions and education, including their student loan forgiveness program.

Vice President Kamala Harris' first campaign ad features footage from a recent rally held in Philadelphia's Fairmount neighborhood.

Released on social media Thursday, the ad showcases Harris' stop at Girard College with President Joe Biden back in May. The rally served as a kickoff for President Joe Biden's "Black Voters for Biden-Harris" effort, which itself came amid polling indicating an erosion of the president's support among nonwhite voters throughout Pennsylvania.

A majority-Black preparatory school, Girard College serves roughly 300 students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in the first through 12th grades. The May rally marked Biden's fifth appearance in Philadelphia this year, and came about a month before his debate with former president Donald Trump in June.

U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D., Pa.) was the first to speak on a DNC-hosted call with union leaders organized to contrast a potential Kamala Harris presidency with a Trump-Vance ticket.

“The Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-worker administration in my lifetime,” Deluzio said. “I know if we get Kamala Harris to the White House, we can continue this vision that President Biden has been leading on.”

Deluzio of western Pennsylvania, railed against Trump’s tax cuts, which he said gave the most benefit to billionaires and corporations and “exploded” the country’s debt.

Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris at an event in Pennsylvania on Monday.

It will be the first time Shapiro, who is widely considered to be on Harris’ shortlist of running mates, has campaigned for Harris since President Joe Biden exited the race and she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

The campaign did not say where the event would be held, but two sources told The Inquirer it is being planned in the Philadelphia region.

It looks like "Freedom" from Beyoncé's 2016 album, Lemonade is the soundtrack of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign so far.

For her first public appearance on Monday, a day after President Joe Biden’s endorsement, Harris walked through her Delaware campaign headquarters to speak with staff as the Beyoncé track played.

According to CNN, Harris' team received approval from Beyoncé's reps to use the song throughout her campaign, a feat for the singer who is typically guarded about granting usage permissions.

Following stops in Milwaukee and Indianapolis this week, Vice President Kamala Harris will appear in Houston Thursday to give a keynote speech at a teachers’ union event.

Harris is scheduled to speak at the American Federation of Teachers’ national convention in Houston as part of what will be her second visit to Texas this month, the White House said. Previously, she appeared in Dallas earlier this month for a keynote speech at the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s Boulé event.

Delegates from the 1.8 million-member AFT on Monday voted to endorse Harris for president, with federation president Randi Weingarten saying in a statement that members are “united, mobilized and ready to vote in this year’s election.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was polling better than President Joe Biden in the battleground state of Pennsylvania before Biden ended his reelection campaign and Harris became the presumptive nominee.

However, she has not yet caught up to former President Donald Trump nationwide since she received Biden’s endorsement, according to The New York Times’ average of recent national polls.

The analysis, first published by The New York Times, shows that while there may be some slivers of optimism for Democrats in key states or demographics, time will tell whether Harris as the party’s presumptive nominee — a historic shakeup 100-some days from the election — is swaying voters nationwide.

Donald Trump unleashed a barrage of attack lines Wednesday against his likely new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he called his “new victim to defeat” and accused of deceiving the public about President Joe Biden ‘s ability to run for a second term.

The rally in Charlotte, North Carolina marked his first public campaign event since Biden dropped out of the 2024 matchup and Harris became the Democrats’ likely nominee. The rally concluded minutes before Biden addressed the nation to explain he dropped his reelection bid to “pass the torch” to Harris, who is 22 years younger than him.

“So now we have a new victim to defeat: Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” Trump said, labeling her “the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history.”

President Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered a solemn call to voters to defend the country’s democracy as he laid out in an Oval Office address his decision to drop his bid for reelection and throw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

Insisting that “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden used his first public address since his announcement Sunday that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former President Donald Trump. He did not directly call out Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. The 10-minute address also gave Biden a chance to try to shape how history will remember his one and only term in office.

“Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” Biden said, in a somber coda to his 50 years spent in public office. “And that includes personal ambition.”

March for Our lives, a gun control advocacy group founded by survivors of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in its first political endorsement ever.

The group called her “a forceful champion for gun safety and for young people,” and said she’s worked with the organization through the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Harris oversees.

“Kamala Harris has proven herself to be a thoughtful and forceful leader on gun violence, who has time and again listened to young people and fought for our lives,” said March for Our Lives cofounder David Hogg, an activist and survivor of the Parkland shooting.