Kamala Harris has speeches scheduled after Milwaukee rally; Joe Biden to address nation; Josh Shapiro gives VP paperwork update

While many Pennsylvania Democrats are publicly advocating for Gov. Josh Shapiro to be Kamala Harris’ running mate, the Democratic nominee for treasurer is pushing for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — and taking some shots at Shapiro.

Erin McClelland, the Democratic candidate for treasurer in Pennsylvania, posted her endorsement of North Carolina’s governor on Twitter on Tuesday night — alluding to criticisms of Shapiro.

“I want a VP pick that’s secure enough to be second under a woman, is content to be VP & won’t undermine the President to maneuver his own election & doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug,” McClelland wrote on X.

Who will Vice President Kamala Harris choose as her running mate? Online gamblers think they have it figured out.

Harris, who on Monday secured enough state delegation endorsements to secure the Democratic nomination following President Joe Biden’s abrupt exit from the race, has yet to indicate who she will choose as her second-in-command.

Short lists of potential picks have circulated for weeks, including an array of prominent Democratic governors and senators, with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro emerging as a front-runner in recent days.

Philly, Newark... Syracuse?

No matter what happens on election day this year, Joe Biden will no longer be president come January 20, 2025. And while there are more pressing political decisions being made at the moment, there’s another choice Biden will be faced with in the coming months: where to place his presidential library.

By federal law, the National Archives are supposed to automatically assume responsibility for the custody and preservation of presidents’ records at the end of their term. Presidents can choose to build and donate a presidential library to the National Archives, but they are not required to do so.

Gov. Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania big in 2022.

From the Allegheny to the Schuylkill to the Delaware, he drove up Democratic margins, winning the state by 14 percentage points and outperforming President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.

That performance has led some Democrats across the country to hypothesize that, with him on the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris could stand a much better chance of bringing home must-win Pennsylvania.

Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to travel to Indianapolis Wednesday, where she will give a keynote speech at a sorority event.

Harris will appear at Zeta Phi Beta's Grand Boulé event Wednesday, the White House has announced. The event serves as the historically Black sorority's convention, and marks another early appearance for Harris as she begins her campaign for the presidency following President Joe Biden's decision to not seek reelection over the weekend.

Founded in 1920, Zeta Phi Beta is among nine historical Black sororities and fraternities, which are commonly referred to as the Divine Nine. Harris herself is is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., another Divine Nine sorority.

The Democratic National Committee will set a July 30 deadline for any nominations for president to be submitted, according to a member of the DNC Rules Committee.

Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia attorney and member of the rules committee, said the committee would be releasing a set of rules for a virtual nomination vote on Wednesday.

The rules, he said, would set a July 30 deadline for any nominations for president and allow up to five days after nominations are in place for a vote to take place.

With President Joe Biden’s withdrawal, a 68-year streak remains intact.

Not since 1956 has a presidential election involved two major-party nominees who opposed each other in the previous presidential election.

In 1952, Democrats nominated Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson to run against mega-popular World War II supreme allied commander, Gen. Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, who had been wooed by both parties but chose to run as a Republican. Eisenhower won all but nine states in a presidential campaign in which the new medium of television became a significant factor.

While Vice President Kamala Harris has received many endorsement from top Democrats since President Joe Biden himself endorsed her as the party's candidate Sunday, one notable name remains missing from the list: former President Barack Obama.

Following Biden's announcement that he was dropping out of the race, Obama issued a statement calling him a "patriot of the highest order" who had served as one of the nation's most "consequential" leaders. Biden's decision to "pass the torch to a new nominee," Obama said, is "sure one of the toughest in his life."

Obama, however, did not mention Harris in his statement, and did not endorse any figure in particular as the next Democratic presidential nominee.

In the first rally of her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris began with comments about President Joe Biden, saying that working with him is "one of the greatest honors of my life."

"I know we are all deeply, deeply grateful for his continuing service to our nation," Harris told a crowd of supporters in Milwaukee Tuesday. "And it is my great honor to have Joe Biden's endorsement in this race."

Harris then turned her attention to Donald Trump, saying the former president and Republican nominee hopes to use policies outlined in the right-wing policy blueprint Project 2025 to "take our country backward. If successful in November, Harris said, the Trump administration would follow it to take actions such as giving tax breaks to large corporations, end the affordable care act, and curtail reproductive freedoms, among other rollbacks.

Gov. Josh Shapiro said that he has not been asked, nor has he submitted, any vetting paperwork for vice president.

During a Tuesday press conference focused on higher-education, Shapiro repeatedly avoided giving specific answers to questions about reports that he is one of the top contenders to be the running-mate for Vice President Kamala Harris — who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — but he was clear that he has not submitted any vetting materials.

"The vice president now has an incredibly important and deeply personal decision to make, similar to the decision that then candidate Biden made when he chose her to be his running mate ... Vice President Harris should make that decision free from any political pressure. It is her decision to make, she'll make it on the timeline that she so chooses," Shapiro said, reiterating previous remarks he's made on the topic.

Before President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, Biden and former President Donald Trump had agreed to one final showdown. Then everything changed.

Now, the general public is left wondering: Will the previously scheduled presidential debate still go on? Will the public have an opportunity to watch Harris and Trump — who have already made public jabs at each other — go toe-to-toe on political positions on the national stage?

The next Trump v. Biden debate was scheduled to take place on Sept. 10 and would air on ABC.

In the first 24 hours of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign — from Sunday evening to Monday evening — more than 2,500 Pennsylvanians signed up to volunteer, according to the campaign.

That’s four times their previous biggest single-day signup.

The bump in interest was also evident in fundraising. The campaign reported a single-day record of $81 million brought in during the first 24 hours that Harris was a candidate for president.

The director of the Secret Service is stepping down from her job following the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump that unleashed intensifying outcry about how the agency tasked with protecting current and former presidents could fail in its core mission.

Kimberly Cheatle had served as Secret Service director since August 2022.

Cheatle announced her departure in an email she sent to staff. Cheatle had been facing growing calls to resign and several investigations into how the shooter was able to get so close to the Republican presidential nominee at an outdoor campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

It looks almost certain former President Donald Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris in this year's presidential election. But not so long ago, he donated twice to her political campaigns.

In September 2011, Trump donated $5,000 to Harris' campaign for California attorney general, according to the Sacramento Bee. In February 2013, Trump donated another $1,000. His daughter, Ivanka, donated $2,000 to Harris in 2014, the Bee reported.

Trump's first donation came just months after he began falsely accusing former President Barack Obama of not being a U.S. citizen. As a result, Harris donated Trump's campaign contribution to charity, a spokesperson told the Bee in 2020.

The Democratic National Committee is preparing to move forward with a virtual nomination for president and vice president but has not yet announced a date for the vote.

In a memo sent to delegates Monday the party’s rules committee said it was prepared to hold a virtual vote before its annual convention in August to ensure nominees for president and vice president are set before state ballot access deadlines. However, no state has a ballot access deadline that falls before the convention, meaning the party could wait for an in-person vote if it wanted to.

An early vote would help the party quickly cement support behind Vice President Kamala Harris and avoid jostling for the top two jobs at the convention. Harris has already earned the support of enough delegates to win the nomination but that will not be official until they formally vote.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is one of five potential vice presidential candidates being vetted as a possible running make for Kamala Harris, according to NBC News.

The news outlet reported that those being vetted are:

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm, Covington & Burling, is leading the vetting process, according to Bloomberg.

Actor and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney is throwing his support behind Kamala Harris after his op-ed in the New York Times helped push Joe Biden out of the race.

In a statement to CNN's Jake Tapper, Clooney praised Biden for showing "what true leadership is" by stepping down after a devastating debate performance caused Democrats to question whether he could defeat former President Donald Trump.

"He’s saving democracy once again," Clooney said in the statment.

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to hit the campaign trail for the first time since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Harris is slated attend a rally in Milwaukee Tuesday, the site of last week's Republican National Contention.

Harris is scheduled to arrive in Milwaukee around 12:30 p.m. Eastern and is expected to speak sometime after 1 p.m. The location of the campaign event has not yet been released.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to return to the White House from his home in Rehoboth Beach on Tuesday, where he has been isolating and recovering after contracting COVID-19.

According to his public schedule, Biden is scheduled to depart Delaware around 1:30 p.m. and arrive back at the White House at 2:30 p.m.

It will be Biden's first public appearance since dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. He called into the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del. Monday during Harris' visit, and his comments were played over the speakers.

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to secure the party's nomination at their convention next month, according to an Associated Press survey.

As of Tuesday morning, Harris had secured over 2,600 delegates, well over the threshold of 1,976 delegates needed to win the nomination. That includes Pennsylvania's 159 delegates, who voted unanimously Monday to support her.

“We sense the urgency of this moment,” said Rev. Mark Tyler, a delegate from Philadelphia. “This is on the one hand a wonderful opportunity to help make history once again, but it’s also about protecting democracy.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro neither confirmed nor denied his interest in becoming Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate Monday, as speculation swirled around him and a handful of other potential candidates.

Shapiro, swarmed by national media at a news conference in Pittsburgh the day after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed his vice president, said Harris will make the “deeply personal decision” of choosing who she wants to campaign and govern with.

“She will make that decision when she is ready,” Shapiro added. “That decision should be made, really, free from any political pressure.”