Harris Selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Running Mate

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will join the Democratic presidential ticket as her running mate. Before being elected governor in 2018, Walz—who served 24 years in the Army National Guard and spent time as a high school teacher and football coach—represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives for 12 years. “One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle class families run deep,” Harris said in a statement. “It’s personal. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own.”
• The U.S. stock market rallied on Tuesday, one day after investors experienced one of the largest single-day market drops since 2022. The three most-watched indices—the Nasdaq Composite, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and S&P 500—all ticked up about 1 percent on Tuesday while remaining below last week’s levels. The U.S. recovery followed a substantial rebound from Japanese stocks, with the Nikkei 225—an index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange—surging more than ten percentage points on Tuesday, its largest single-day gain since 2008. The index had plunged 12 percentage points one day earlier.
• Israel launched an airstrike into southern Lebanon on Tuesday that, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, killed five people. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a terrorist commander, Ali Jamal Aldin Jawad, was among the dead, and that the strike hit buildings used by Hezbollah—an Iranian-armed terrorist organization based in Lebanon. Later on Tuesday, 19 people were injured after Hezbollah launched explosive drones into parts of northern Israel. One civilian is in critical condition after an Israeli counter-missile—part of its Iron Dome air defense system—failed to intercept its target, falling on an Israeli highway. 
• The IDF also temporarily paused movement along a humanitarian pathway into Gaza on Tuesday after Hamas terrorists fired missiles at Israeli forces in eastern Rafah—near the humanitarian route—that injured several IDF soldiers. The route is now considered an “active combat zone” by the IDF, though other humanitarian pathways into Gaza remain open and operational. “The Kerem Shalom Crossing and the other entry routes for humanitarian aid are operating as usual,” the IDF said. “The terrorist organizations in Gaza continue to use any opportunity to carry out attacks against IDF soldiers at the expense of Gazan civilians, including abusing humanitarian routes and aid designated for the civilian population.”
• Hamas’ leadership announced that Yahya Sinwar—the key architect behind the October 7 attacks on Israel—was selected to lead the terrorist organization after its previous leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran last week—presumably by Israel. The 61-year-old Sinwar, who became Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip in 2017 after Haniyeh went into hiding, has spent the last ten months in hiding himself—likely in tunnels beneath Gaza. “We would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation,” Sinwar said in 2018. “We are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us.”
• Reza Rasaei—a 34-year-old Iranian arrested in 2022 for his participation in anti-regime protests—was executed by Iranian authorities early Tuesday morning, the first documented execution of a protester in Iran since Masoud Pezeshkian, its new president, took office late last month. An Iranian court sentenced Rasaei to death in October following court proceedings that human rights group Amnesty International called “grossly unfair” for their reliance on torture to extract confessions. The group also said that neither Rasaei, his family, nor his lawyer were notified about the execution beforehand.
• Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin tapped Muhammad Yunus—an 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist—to form and lead an interim government on Tuesday, one day after anti-government protests in the country’s capital of Dhaka forced its authoritarian prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to resign and flee the country. The Bangladeshi president serves a largely ceremonial role—and the nation’s parliament dissolved following Hasina’s exit—so Yunus, along with other senior interim government leaders yet to be announced, will seek to bring stability to the country after months of protests and violent clampdowns. 
• ​​The Justice Department on Tuesday unveiled charges against a 46-year-old Pakistani man with ties to Iran alleged to be a hired assassin tasked with killing a United States government official or politician. The alleged hit man—currently being held in federal custody—exposed his plot to federal authorities when he tried to recruit fellow hit men who, unbeknownst to him, were undercover FBI agents. “This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. 
• FBI agents reportedly executed a search warrant last week at the home of Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee as part of an investigation into fraudulent campaign finance filings from the first-term congressman. While details of the search—and allegations of potential campaign finance fraud—have yet to be made public, Ogles’ lawyer said the warrant was primarily issued to seize Ogles’ cell phone.
• Progressive Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri lost her Democratic primary on Tuesday to Wesley Bell, a public prosecutor. Bell—who as of last night was leading with more than 51 percent of the vote—was backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group, in a race defined by Bush’s outspoken anti-Israel views. She’s now the second member of the so-called “Squad”—a group of progressive lawmakers in Congress—to be ousted in a Democratic primary this year, after Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York lost his primary in June.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pulled Dacthal—a weedkiller used on various crops, including broccoli, cabbage, and onions—from the market on Tuesday in an emergency order spurred by concerns the pesticide causes health problems in unborn babies. According to the EPA, Dacthal has been linked to instances of “low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ, and impaired motor skills later in life, some of which may be irreversible.” While Dacthal residue can affect consumers, health experts consider farmworkers in close contact with the chemical daily to be most at risk.
• A practice session for Olympic marathon swimmers—scheduled to take place in Paris’ Seine River—was canceled on Tuesday as water quality levels dropped again due to unsafe bacteria levels possibly caused by recent heavy rain. Two triathlon athletes representing Belgium and Switzerland—who had swum in the Seine River last week—dropped out of an Olympic mixed relay contest on Monday due to an illness yet to be publicly identified. “For the moment, there is no direct link between the Seine and any illness,” Pierre Rabadan, the Parisian official overseeing the Olympics, said at a press conference on Monday. As of now, both the women’s and men’s Olympic marathon swimming races are scheduled to take place in the Seine River on Thursday and Friday, respectively—though that is dependent on further water quality tests.

Not a Swing, But a Walz 

PHILADELPHIA—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had a pretty good Tuesday. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, announced that he would be her running mate, completing the governor’s vault to the center of national politics that began only a couple of weeks ago. 

But Jeremy Green Eche—a Brooklyn trademark lawyer who purchased the website www.harriswalz.com all the way back in 2020 for $8.99—is arguably having a better day. He said he’s willing to sell the domain, along with a slew of other Harris websites, for $15,000. In 2016, the Clinton campaign refused to humor the same gambit from Eche over www.clintonkaine.com, leading the Trump campaign to ultimately acquire the site and use it to promote negative news about the Democratic nominee.

We’ll see how much harriswalz.com is worth to the Harris campaign. For now, the site simply displays the governor’s name in the now-iconic “brat” theme. 

On Tuesday evening, Harris introduced her veep pick to more than 10,000 energized supporters at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, casting Walz as a Midwestern everyman and promising the pair would campaign to reach not just Democrats but all Americans. Yet the choice of Walz over the more moderate Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, reportedly the one other finalist for the position, suggests the Harris campaign may be more focused on unifying Democrats than reaching out to independents. 

“I set out to find a partner who can help build this brighter future, a leader who will help unite our nation and move us forward,” Harris told her supporters Tuesday night. “I am here today because I found such a leader.” The bulk of her remarks were spent telling the life story of the man who most people outside of Minnesota were unfamiliar with just a few days ago. 

The quick version? The 60-year-old isn’t an Ivy League-educated, coastal elite. He grew up in a small town in rural Nebraska, working on a family farm during the summer. At age 17, he joined the Army National Guard and served for the next 24 years, reaching the rank of command sergeant major. After he left military service, he became a geography teacher and a football coach who helped lead his high school team to a state championship. Walz left teaching to run for Congress in 2006, and he represented Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District for the next 12 years, until he ran for governor in 2018. Walz is currently serving his second term in that latter role, and his rural roots still show through: He’s a gun owner and hunter who won the congressional shoot-out as a member of Congress.

“Thank you for bringing back the joy,” Walz told Harris as he opened his remarks at the rally. Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket has reinvigorated Democratic voters, and the energy was palpable in the arena as voters cheered and danced between speakers. One attendee described the fresh excitement with Harris as feeling “like a 2008 Obama moment.”

The energetic rollout followed the Harris campaign’s lightning-fast vice presidential selection process, which reportedly included vetting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. 

Shapiro seemed an obvious choice out of the group. He’s a very popular governor in a crucial swing state—a state he won by 15 points just two years ago—and he’s proven an effective surrogate in the early days of the Harris campaign. His more moderate, “get sh— done” profile as governor seemed to make him a great candidate to reach out to independents and potentially even disaffected Republicans. 

But despite his broad appeal, Shapiro faced organized opposition from some progressives in the party that seemed—as violent, and often antisemitic, left-wing protests against Israel have repeatedly dominated headlines in recent months—to be about his religion. Shapiro is a practicing Jew and has been vocal in describing his faith. He has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization, criticized the presence of antisemitism at the recent college campus protests, and supported former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s decision to resign after abysmal congressional testimony in which she equivocated on condemning antisemitism on her campus. But he has also criticized the Israeli war effort and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Josh’s position on Israel is almost identical to everybody else, but he’s being held to a different standard,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida. “So you have to ask yourself why.” 

Even before Harris made her announcement, Republicans were predicting Democrats might pass over Shapiro for such reasons. “They will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of antisemitism in their own caucus and in their own party,” J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said yesterday morning. Dave Sherry, a Trump supporter and a retired restaurant owner from Boiling Springs, told TMD at a Trump rally in Harrisburg last week that Shapiro “seems to be a good governor,” but that he wouldn’t get the nod. “I hate to say it, but he’s a Jew, and he’s not gonna get picked,” Sherry predicted. “That’s the only reason why.”

Even some Democrats seemed to hold that view. “I’ve always considered myself progressive as an adult, and I’m very disappointed in the progressive movement right now and their attacks on Shapiro, because Walz and Kelly hold very similar views or even more conservative than Shapiro’s [views], but they have not gotten the attention that Shapiro has,” Jeremy Johnson—a Philadelphia resident who retired from working in retail merchandising and management last year—told TMD. “I don’t want to use the ‘A—antisemitic—word’ against the progressive left, but it does feel like that.” Johnson didn’t think that Harris made her decision based on that opposition to Shapiro—reporting Tuesday suggested the Harris camp liked Walz’s apparent comfort with playing second fiddle to Harris, in contrast to Shapiro’s ambitions for the vice presidency and beyond.

Walz quickly became a dark horse on the rise in the veepstakes, performing particularly well as a Harris surrogate on TV. During one cable news appearance, Walz labeled Vance and former President Donald Trump “just plain weird”—a moniker that went viral and has become a staple in Democratic messaging since, including among his fellow veep contenders and Harris herself.

Lines like that helped Walz distinguish himself as a communicator who talks to voters in a “beautiful, plain-spoken, Midwestern way,” as Shapiro said last night. Walz landed a few of his zingers in his first remarks as a vice presidential candidate. “Violent crime was up under Trump,” Walz said. “That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”

Shapiro spoke last night to extended applause and standing ovations from rally attendees, offering his full endorsement of the Walz pick. Harris reciprocated the show of support. “I told Josh, ‘Look, I’m so, so invested in our friendship and doing this together,’” she said. “Because together with Josh Shapiro, we will win Pennsylvania.” Walz also thanked Shapiro, calling him “a treasure” and highlighting the raucous support he drew from the crowd: “Holy hell, can this guy bring the fire.”

The Harris campaign is no doubt hoping Walz can help the campaign better appeal to working-class Midwesterners and swing state voters, not just in Pennsylvania, but in Michigan and Wisconsin as well. As Nick wrote on Monday, “He’s neither a businessman nor a lawyer by trade, as Harris and Shapiro are, which gives Walz a degree of populist credibility that’s rare nowadays among the leaders of a party run by, and increasingly for, the professional class.” 

Walz makes particular sense as a foil to Vance, the self-styled Appalachian, and the Minnesota governor seemed to particularly relish taking jabs at the GOP senator from Ohio during his speech on Tuesday. “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community,” Walz said, referring to Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. “Come on, that’s not what middle America is!”

Several of the rally attendees TMD spoke with were less familiar with Walz before the veepstakes but have liked what they’ve seen so far. “I think he’s an everyman,” said Kevin Hackney, a social studies teacher from Atlantic City, New Jersey. “I think his sound bites and the way he communicates is straight to the point. And I think that’s going to resonate with a lot of people in the middle.”

But down-to-earth stylings aside, Walz—unlike Shapiro—has governed as a progressive, and Republicans are already trying to take advantage of his leftist policy record. In 2023, in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, he signed a bill enshrining abortion rights—without any gestational limits—in state law. Walz also signed into law measures allowing illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses and securing access to gender-transition health care services as well.

Walz was also governor of Minnesota during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, was ground zero for the protests, riots, and violence in the days and weeks after the killing. Rioters torched businesses and storefronts there, resulting in almost $1 billion in damages. Then-Mayor Jacob Frey said Walz delayed responding to his request to send in the National Guard. Walz, who later called the city’s response an “abject failure,” claimed city officials needed to provide the state with more information before troops could be deployed. 

Expect the Trump campaign to make an issue out of those fateful few months in 2020. Vance, for example, criticized Walz at an event in Philadelphia yesterday for letting rioters “burn down Minneapolis.” In an ad released yesterday, the Trump campaign alleged “Kamala Harris just doubled down on her radical vision for America by tapping another left-wing extremist as her VP nominee.” Republicans appear to be happier to be running against Walz than Shapiro—after the news broke, Trump simply posted “THANK YOU!” on his Truth Social account. The Trump campaign saw Shapiro as the tougher candidate to run against and, according to reporting from Marc Caputo, it even contributed to a whisper campaign to elevate progressive attacks on the governor. 

While all the Harris supporters TMD spoke to at the rally said that they were excited to move forward with Walz on the ticket, some wondered if passing on Shapiro will end up being a missed opportunity. “He is very popular, and I’ve actually spoken to Republicans not too long ago who said I would have a hard time not voting for Josh,” said Denise Schultz, a Democratic volunteer and Hatboro-Horsham School Board member. “I know it was a really tough decision. I wouldn’t know how to make it either way.” 

Ultimately, the election is about who can get to 270 electoral college votes. “The entire election is rooted in the Electoral College,” said Johnson, the Philadelphia retiree. “There’s 19 votes in Pennsylvania, and that is vital to what [Harris] needs to be able to win the electoral college. That’s probably why I was leaning a little more towards Shapiro, but I like what I’m seeing with Walz.”

Worth Your Time

• On her Good on Paper podcast, Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas explained how we got the maternal mortality crisis wrong. “In 1994, the International Classification of Diseases recommended adding a ‘pregnancy checkbox’ on national death certificates to try and make sure we weren’t undercounting maternal-mortality deaths,” Demsas explained. “It succeeded, but it also ended up overcounting deaths from other causes. For instance, a study looked at Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, and Ohio—four states that had adopted the checkbox—and found that more than a fifth of the pregnancy deaths were false positives. The women hadn’t even been pregnant. Correcting the record on these statistics doesn’t change the fact that the U.S. needs to do more to promote women’s health. But when we’re using shoddy facts to inform our understanding of the world or to inform policy making, it can lead us down fruitless paths. And that’s not in pregnant women’s interests at all.” 
• We need clearer safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for military purposes, Brianna Rosen argued for War on the Rocks. “AI-enabled warfare has reached its ‘Oppenheimer moment,’” she wrote. “From the backroom to the battlefield, AI is now being integrated into the full spectrum of military operations, including in logistics, intelligence collection, wargaming, decision-making, target identification, and weapons systems, with increasing levels of autonomy. … As AI pervades the battlespace, it is time to implement policies and forge consensus around how it will be governed. And while policy debates finally have moved beyond lethal autonomous weapons systems, governance frameworks still suffer from a narrow focus on military operations and international humanitarian law, leaving critical gaps in protection for civilians. Building on the international agreement, policymakers have a rapidly closing window of opportunity to address these problems and ensure that military AI is truly safe—on and off the battlefield.” 

Presented Without Comment

Former President Donald Trump, on Truth Social:

What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!

Also Presented Without Comment

New York Times: Scientists Find Arm Bone of Ancient ‘Hobbit’ Human 

Also Also Presented Without Comment

ESPN: Chicago White Sox Snap [American League] Record-Tying Losing Streak at 21 [Games]

In the (Olympic) Zeitgeist

On a massive day for the U.S. medal count, U.S. distance sprinter Cole Hocker pulled off a stunning victory in the last paces of the 1500-meter race on Tuesday, beating all of the podium favorites—including reigning Olympic gold medalist Jakob Ingebrigtsen and world champion Josh Kerr—to clinch the gold. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Drucker introduced readers to newly minted Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz in a special edition of Dispatch Politics, while Nick explored (🔒) what picking the Minnesota governor might tell us about Harris. 
• On the podcasts: Brookings Institution senior fellow Jonathan Rauch joins Jonah on The Remnant to discuss all things party politics.
• On the site: Charlotte spoke to Marc Fogel’s sister about why the teacher detained in Russia was not included in last week’s prisoner swap, Chris argues Harris is taking a risk with Walz, and Jonah reminds the media they should actually be asking Harris questions.

Let Us Know

Why do you think Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate over all the other finalists?