The police clashed with protesters in Seattle on Saturday. President Trump has tried to play up violence at demonstrations in American cities. Grant Hindsley for The New York Times
Democrats are angry about Trump’s use of federal agents. But as a political tactic, it doesn’t worry them much.
President Trump seems insistent on making the protests in the streets of America’s cities — including those in response to the deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore. — a key focus of his re-election campaign: in remarks from the White House briefing room, in his television ads and across his Twitter account.
But while Democrats have expressed dismay at the use of federal law enforcement in Portland, Ore., advisers to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his Democratic allies seem mostly unconcerned about the impact of Mr. Trump’s tactics politically, even as protests escalated and spread over the weekend.
For one thing, the president’s dire warnings of a dark Democratic-run future is in dissonance with the reality that the current unrest is happening during his own Republican tenure.
“The sense of disorder that Trump is promoting as a national threat actually works against him because it reinforces a sense that America under Donald Trump is a country in disorder and disarray,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who works for a leading Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA.
For another, Democrats believe the issue of violence at protests is being perceived by many voters as a distraction by Mr. Trump from his faltering pandemic response and the economic downturn.
“It’s not geared toward quelling the violence,” Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist, said of Mr. Trump’s response to unrest in the streets. “It’s geared toward creating clashes that create the imagery he can use in the election.”
One particular challenge for Mr. Trump is that his “law and order” focus is not necessarily the current obsession of the voting public. As Jared Leopold, another Democratic strategist, put it, “It’s very hard to take an issue that’s not on people’s top five issues on their plate and turn it into something they give a damn about.”
Biden’s team lays out its strategy and previews a new ad campaign in six key states.
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign said it had “recently added Texas as the seventh state Donald Trump won in 2016 where we are running ads on television and across digital platforms.” Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
With less than 100 days until the election, the Biden campaign is intensifying its efforts to cast the contest as a choice about character and leadership “in times of extreme peril and struggle,” according to a campaign memo circulated over the weekend, arguing that Mr. Trump has failed the nation at a critical juncture.
The memo, sent by Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager, and obtained by The New York Times, lacerated Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the coronavirus crisis, the economic challenges facing the country and the national outcry over systemic racism, and noted his struggles to negatively define Mr. Biden.
“The conclusion voters continue to draw is straightforward and clear: Joe Biden cares about you and your family, and Donald Trump only cares about himself, the super-wealthy, and corporations — and he doesn’t care who he hurts,” the memo said.
The campaign announced a new one-minute ad on Monday that featured a Wisconsin woman lamenting the death of her grandmother from Covid-19. “I felt like our elderly have not been a priority for this administration. That they don’t matter. And I feel like my grandmother didn’t matter,” she said, holding back tears over the fact that her grandmother died alone.
The ad was part of what the memo described as “a new $14.5 million ad buy in Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — six states Donald Trump won in 2016.”
The Biden campaign has made it a priority to solidify its incursions into Mr. Trump’s base of older voters.
In the memo, the campaign highlighted several tactical steps it is taking to reach them and other key elements of Mr. Biden’s coalition: “voters in the suburbs, seniors, African Americans, and independent voters.”
Mr. Trump is hoping to cut into those constituencies by seeking to paint Mr. Biden — who does not support defunding the police — as radical on matters of law enforcement, and by arguing that he remains the best leader on the economy.
The Democratic coordinated campaign will “have well over 2,000 staff on board in August and tens of thousands of additional volunteers across the country,” according to the memo.
And the Biden campaign, which began organizing in the battleground states later than Mr. Trump and the coordinated Republican effort did — an advantage of incumbency — now “has staff in 17 battleground states and recently added Texas as the seventh state Donald Trump won in 2016 where we are running ads on television and across digital platforms,” the memo noted.
The memo was first reported by NBC News.
Who’s in contention to be Biden’s running mate? Here’s the latest.
Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren at the Democratic presidential debate in October. Both are considered top vice-presidential contenders. Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Mr. Biden is nearing his rough deadline of Aug. 1 for announcing a vice-presidential candidate, but there is little expectation at this point that he will stick to that timetable.
His search committee has completed thorough vetting reports on several candidates and Mr. Biden said he intended to conduct personal interviews with all of the most serious contenders. That could take a while, and Mr. Biden is not exactly known for his quick decision-making process.
There is no particular sense of impatience within Mr. Biden’s campaign or the Democratic Party at large, since the current state of the presidential race is so favorable for Mr. Biden. He and his advisers see no urgent need for him to shake up the race, and few Democrats are prodding him to rush toward a vice-presidential announcement.
Still, many voters — and not only Democrats — are eager to see whom Mr. Biden selects as his chief political and governing partner in a moment of national crisis.
A few of the women have been widely recognized as formidable candidates since the start of the search, like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, while others have emerged in the public eye as serious contenders, like Senator Tammy Duckworth, Representative Karen Bass and Susan Rice, the former national security adviser.
But it is tricky to game out the prospects of each candidate when the decision is ultimately expected to be made by just one person, guided by a distinctive sense of the vice presidency and a hunger for personal chemistry with his running mate — Mr. Biden.
John Lewis will be the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil rights icon, will lie in state Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, the first Black lawmaker to receive one of the highest American honors, before a viewing for the public to be held outside.
Mr. Lewis, a 17-term congressman from Georgia and the senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, died July 17 after battling pancreatic cancer.
With the Capitol closed to the public amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Lewis will spend only a few hours lying in state under the Capitol dome after an invitation-only ceremony on Monday afternoon.
Among those paying their respects will be Vice President Mike Pence and Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, according to their public schedules. President Trump is not scheduled to attend.
The invitation-only arrival ceremony will begin at 1:30 p.m., with an invocation followed by remarks from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. Several members of Congress will participate in a presentation of wreaths.
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the majority whip, will give the benediction.
Afterward, Mr. Lewis’s coffin will be moved outside to the Capitol steps, and members of the public will be able to line up — with masks required and social distancing enforced — to view it from the plaza below on Monday evening and all day Tuesday.
On Sunday, Mr. Lewis, known as the “conscience of the Congress” for his moral authority acquired through years of protest for racial equality, made his final journey across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., his coffin carried by a horse-drawn caisson past the very spot where a state trooper wielding a club fractured his skull 55 years ago.
Last year, Representative Elijah E. Cummings became the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol, though he was honored in Statuary Hall, not in the Rotunda, where presidents and other statesmen have lain. Rosa Parks, the civil rights pioneer, lay in honor there in 2005, receiving the highest honor afforded to a private citizen.
Ocasio-Cortez takes aim at military recruitment in high schools.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigning in Queens last month. Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, is seeking to block federal funding for the military to recruit in middle and high schools and request data about students.
Her proposal, which would be added to the annual defense spending bill, comes days after she introduced a related amendment that would block funding for “the Armed Forces to maintain a presence on Twitch.tv or any video game, esports, or live-streaming platform.”
Struggling to hit recruiting goals, the Army has begun expanding its recruitment techniques, including seeking to enlist gamers. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez argues the military is using the novel tactics to recruit too heavily from low-income communities.
“Whether through recruitment stations in their lunchrooms, or now through e-sports teams, children in low-income communities are persistently targeted for enlistment,” she said in a statement.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that the military “can for some provide a rewarding career,” but added that “low-income Americans are not being given anywhere near the same information or access to trade schools, college or other post graduate opportunities.”
“In many public high schools where military recruiters have a daily presence, there is not even a counselor,” she said. “As a result, the military stops feeling like a ‘choice’ and starts feeling like the only option for many young, low-income Americans.”
It is not clear whether Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s proposals will receive a vote. The House Rules Committee will consider them on Tuesday, ahead of action on the defense spending measure later this week.
Republicans are seeking to trim an expiring jobless benefit to $200 as stimulus becomes a political football.
Enhanced unemployment benefits are set to lapse on Friday. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Millions of Americans relying on enhanced unemployment benefits are set to see their $600-a-week unemployment insurance expansion expire at the end of this week.
Republicans are now seeking to slash that jobless benefit by two-thirds, to $200, in a new $1 trillion economic stimulus proposal, according to officials familiar with the talks.
Democrats, congressional Republicans and the White House remain far apart in their efforts to craft and agree upon a new round of pandemic-inspired stimulus. Democrats are proposing to spend three times as much to stabilize the economy.
“This is an emergency,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” as she and other Democrats accused Republicans of foot-dragging.
The stimulus is now both a critical relief package for millions of Americans and a political football with less than 100 days until the election.
Democrats want the program extended, while Republicans have complained that the initial $600-a-week benefits “went too far,” as Larry Kudlow, a Trump economic adviser put it on Sunday, arguing that they incentivized people to stay away from work.
But rolling back an economic stimulus program less than four months before the election would hurt whatever fragile economic recovery is underway, meaning the White House itself is incentivized to strike some kind of deal.
A convention preview: Lights, camera, livestream.
The Biden campaign billed it as a “Celebration for Change.” But Sunday night’s livestream featuring Democratic politicians, celebrities and musicians — hosted by Jay Leno — felt as much as a practice run for an all-digital convention that the party will hold in less than a month as much as anything.
There were performances from Sara Bareilles, Andra Day and John Legend. Short cameos from Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.
And some Broadway music was remade to pitch Mr. Biden’s presidential bid.
Mr. Leno served as emcee in what felt at times like a telethon — “We’re up to $225,000!” “Donate now, right in your screen!” — shouting out the names of donors and bidding up small contributors all the way up to the $760,000 he said had been raised by the end of the event.
It wasn’t always compelling viewing. But it did go off without any technical hitches as celebrity after celebrity railed against Mr. Trump.
The talk show host Andy Cohen said he looked forward to having a president “who doesn’t lie every time he opens his mouth.” The singer Barbra Streisand gave a particularly long speech about Mr. Trump’s “blatant narcissism” and how he is “unfit mentally and morally.”
“Thank you. Joe Biden all the way,” the singer Dave Matthews said at the end of the program.
“What a night we’ve had,” Mr. Leno concluded.
The Biden campaign did not respond to an inquiry about the viewership of its livestream.
Here’s why Montana is a test case for Democrats aiming to take back the Senate.
Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana met with volunteers at a food bank as he campaigned in Columbia Falls this month. Nick Cote for The New York Times
Democratic hopes for gaining a clear Senate majority depend in part on winning in conservative-leaning states where Mr. Trump may also prevail, even as he sags in the polls.
That includes states like Montana, where Democrats are hoping their Senate candidate, Gov. Steve Bullock, can outperform Mr. Biden, and where ticket-splitting is as much a way of life as fly-fishing.
Montanans have supported Republican presidential candidates, with one exception, for over a half-century. In that same period, though, they have elected a series of Democratic governors and senators.
Yet as Senator Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent, faces off against Mr. Bullock, whose popularity has risen as he leads the state’s coronavirus response, Mr. Daines is counting on Montanans to act a little more like voters everywhere else and stick with one party as they make their way down the ballot.
The race here will measure the political impact of the pandemic; many governors have grown in stature for their handling of the virus, and Mr. Bullock is the only sitting governor running for the Senate. It will also test Montana’s iconoclastic identity in a time of encroaching red-and-blue homogeneity. But for Democrats, going on the offensive in a red-leaning state in an age of polarization is no easy task.
By nominating the moderate Mr. Biden, though, Democrats hope they can at least lose more closely, if not win outright, in states where Mrs. Clinton was thrashed and her party’s Senate candidates went down with her.
“The reason he was so strong in ’16 is because you could go up and down here — Democrats and Republicans would both tell you they hate Hillary,” Jon Tester, a Democrat who is Montana’s senior senator, said of Mr. Trump over an afternoon beer in Great Falls.
This college town in Virginia is liberal. It also has a Stonewall Jackson Hospital and Robert E. Lee Hotel.
Lexington residents talking with Mayor Frank Friedman in front of The Robert E Lee Hotel. Eze Amos for The New York Times
For 150 years Lexington, Va., a picturesque city nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, has been known to the outside world as the final resting place of Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s commanding general during the Civil War, and Stonewall Jackson, whom Lee referred to as his “right arm.”
They form the basis of a daily existence that has long been tethered to the iconography of the Civil War and its two most famous Confederate generals, whose legacy has seeped into the town’s culture like the July humidity.
But Lexington is no longer a bastion of conservatism. It is a liberal college town of about 7,000 people that voted 60 percent for Hillary Clinton four years ago, and in 2018 gave 70 percent of its vote to the Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine. Black Lives Matter signs dot the windows of downtown stores, and residents haven’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan.
These dueling sensibilities place Lexington at particularly delicate intersection of the national debate over Confederate monuments and emblems. As Americans protesting racial injustice have torn down statues and memorials to Confederates, the town finds itself reassessing its identity, divided between the growing imperative to eradicate symbols of slavery and decades of cultural and economic ties to the Confederates who fought to preserve it.
“When you’re surrounded by all of the symbols, it just is a way of life,” said Marilyn Alexander, 67, the lone Black member of the City Council. “It was not until recently that there was a realization for me that there was such an outcry from the community, that felt these symbols and signs needed to come down or be changed.”
Trump backs away from his plan to throw the first pitch at a Yankees game.
Mr. Trump playing catch with the former Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Trump said he would no longer be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch before a Yankees game on Aug. 15 — days after he said he would be doing so, causing a political stir.
Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday afternoon that he would not be in New York that day, when the Yankees will play the Boston Red Sox, because of his “strong focus” on the pandemic, “including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else.” He added, “We will make it later in the season!”
During an event at the White House on Thursday that featured Mariano Rivera, the former star closer for the Yankees, Mr. Trump announced he had been asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The president said he had been invited by the Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, who used to work for Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, during Mr. Giuliani’s tenure as New York City mayor. Mr. Trump is a longtime Yankees fan and was friends with the Yankees’ former owner, George Steinbrenner, who died in 2010.
Trump’s announcement had drawn criticism from New York political figures, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who wrote on Twitter on Saturday, “After CONDEMNING racism, the next step isn’t inviting it to your pitcher’s mound. To the players that knelt for the BLM movement, we applaud you. To the execs that have aligned with hatred, you are on the wrong side of history and morality.”
The New York Times
