Wake up with the Washington Examiner: How Kamala wants to run, Biden’s election grenade, and a desert showdown

Kamala Harris — the face of abortion

Time is ticking away for Vice President and presumed presidential nominee Kamala Harris to define herself. Taking over for her boss, President Joe Biden, who had 36 years as a senator and eight years as the vice president to the most-liked Democrat in a generation, could pose a problem for the district attorney-turned-attorney general-turned-senator. 

Problems haven’t arisen yet, though. Her rollout has featured a fundraising blitz that scooped up more than $200 million in a little over a week. Democrats have added tens of thousands of volunteers. And voters are turning up to Harris’s rallies, showing a sense of excitement and urgency that was lacking with Biden. 

It’s not clear how much of that excitement can be attributed to Harris painting herself as a staunch abortion-rights proponent. She has been the face of pushing for expanded abortion access and the primary attack dog to snap at the Supreme Court in the wake of its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and send the authority to regulate abortions back to states. 

Whether it’s the animating feature of her campaign or simply her preferred narrative, Harris is using abortion as the centerpiece of her quest to the White House. And Republicans appear to be happy letting her stump on that message, banking on the idea that abortion is not the game-changer it was for Democrats in 2022 and that the party’s position is too extreme for centrist voters to stomach. 

In the second part of the Washington Examiner’s series exploring the myriad ways Harris is fighting to define herself with fewer than 100 days until Election Day, Healthcare Reporter Gabrielle Etzel broke down the vice president’s past, present, and future record on abortion. 

“Just as former President Donald Trump rose to political prominence with a focus on immigration, so too Harris is building her campaign on restoring national abortion protections in the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. It’s a change from her brief 2019 campaign for the White House, in which she attempted to court both the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party and failed to persuade either one,” Gabrielle wrote. 

“As Harris seeks to benefit from the abortion debate, the Republican Party writ large is seemingly distancing itself from what Trump has classified as a losing issue. Social conservatives are growing increasingly discontented with the Republican Party’s changes to the platform, which include dropping any reference to national-level restrictions on the procedure and eliminating language about the sanctity of life.” 

There were few abortion battles to fight in navy blue California while Harris was the district attorney of San Francisco and later the state attorney general. However, she did make headlines in 2015, leading an early fight against crisis pregnancy centers that has played out on a grander scale nationwide in recent years. 

“In 2015, Harris advocated legislation targeting crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, as purveyors of misinformation — a position that has gained favor among Democrats across the country in recent years,” Gabrielle wrote. 

“The law required CPCs to disclose to women that they were not licensed medical facilities and mandated that other clinics could provide abortions. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the legislation in 2018,” she added. 

Harris has kept a hard line on abortion since then, with a highly publicized investigation into an anti-abortion activist in 2016, advocating codifying Roe if she was elected president on the stump in 2019, and the last two years excoriating the Supreme Court and pumping up Democratic attempts to lock in abortion rights across the country.

While Republicans will chime in and push back on Harris occasionally, there is little daylight between the parties about whether they should let her cloak herself in an abortion-rights banner. Not least because, as Gabrielle wrote this morning, the policy issue has fallen down the list of things voters say they are concerned about this cycle. 

“Although Harris’s campaign will do her best to make abortion the primary issue until November, polling data from this year suggests that the issue pales in comparison to both the economy and immigration, two issues that advantage Republicans,” she wrote. 

“Only 1 in 8 voters ranked abortion as their most important issue in a March KFF poll. Another 52% surveyed said the issue was a ‘very important issue but not most important,’” she wrote.

Click here to read more about how Harris is trying to define herself with the clock on election running down.

Campaign trail grenade

Real-life explosions are almost never good. Political explosions can be mixed. Biden’s plan to “reform” the Supreme Court squarely fits into the mixed explosion category as Democrats can crow they are marching toward the changes they’ve been demanding and vulnerable incumbents grit their teeth for the electoral storm headed their way. 

Senate Reporter Ramsey Touchberry and White House Reporter Haisten Willis are both up with fascinating reports this morning that put the delicate situation Biden has placed his party in into perspective. 

The good

Faith and trust in the Supreme Court are waning. Democrats argue it is due to partisan decisions that reflect an unhealthy thirst for power by the Republican-appointed justices who dominate the 6-3 court. Republicans point to repeated attempts by Democrats and their allies in the media to discredit the court and its decisions as a primary driver of the growing doubts voters tell pollsters they have. 

Regardless of the root cause of the problem, Biden’s proposals, which have next to no chance of passing, give campaigning Democrats some juice for the trail. And, of course, a lot of that verve comes in the form of abortion politics.

“The Supreme Court initiative is all about abortion,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told Haisten. “The best way for Democrats to use this is to remind voters that Trump picked three Supreme Court justices who made it possible to deny women reproductive rights.”

The plans have something in them for any Democrat who wants to see changes. There are the procedural questions, term limits, and the messaging component it offers. Harris, as Gabrielle wrote, is making abortion the centerpiece of her campaign, and Biden offered another tool for her belt on Monday morning. 

And Democrats picked up on the opportunity straight away. 

“The rule of law is what separates democracy from other forms of government,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said. “The proposals endorsed by the president today will strengthen the rule of law, and Americans’ faith in our democracy. I look forward to working with the president and my colleagues in Congress to pass this vitally important package into law.”

The bad

The Supreme Court reform grenade is already causing blowback, though. 

Two of the Senate’s most vulnerable and valuable Democratic occupants are saying they cannot sign on to Biden’s plan to slap term limits on justices. 

“The term limits measure is the one that is proving most controversial, and Democrats in tough reelection bids avoided endorsing it Monday,” Ramsey wrote. “Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told the Washington Examiner on Monday evening she’s ‘still evaluating’ the term limits element, and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) said he’d yet to look at that portion.” 

As a quick refresher, Biden’s three-legged reform includes an enforceable ethics code for justices, 18-year term limits, and a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s decision on presidential immunity that shields presidents from prosecution for official acts made while in office. 

Both senators told reporters they are on board with the ethics code plan, but supporting one or two parts of a three-legged stool is a good way to hurt yourself. 

It’s not clear why Baldwin and Tester were skeptical about the term limits plan.

Instituting term limits for justices, as well as members of Congress, is a popular idea among voters, but like the rest of Biden’s reform plans, the move would require a constitutional amendment — and a vote to limit justices’ time in office while ignoring restraints on themselves might not be the kind of press Baldwin, Tester, or any other member of the House and Senate are looking for. 

Click here to read more about Democrats’ hopes and fears surrounding Biden’s curtain call plan.

Desert primary

It’s been a while since we’ve had a primary contest to run through, but Arizona voters have candidates to pick through tonight before they return in November. 

The highest-profile races in the Grand Canyon State are on course to be the least interesting this evening. All eyes are on Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and former TV news anchor and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to clinch their party nominations to face off against each other for the Senate seat being left open by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) retiring. 

Gallego and Lake are expected to coast through their primary contests tonight before entering one of the fiercest fights in the country in November.

Senate Reporter Samantha-Jo Roth has a comprehensive look this morning at Gallego, Lake, and everything else you need to know about what’s happening in Arizona. 

Below the headline contests that don’t offer much excitement, there is some drama brewing in Arizona as Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), found themselves at loggerheads before joining forces. 

The top Republicans were at odds over who they wanted to see win the comfortably red 8th Congressional District seat. Trump had already backed Abe Hamadeh before picking Vance, who threw his weight behind former Senate candidate Blake Masters. 

“Trump endorsed two candidates in the Republican primary over the weekend, in an effort to resolve the problem that he and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), made competing endorsements,” Samantha-Jo wrote. “Hamadeh had previously been the only candidate to get a Trump endorsement in the race, while Masters had scored an endorsement from Vance.” 

“While Trump called both candidates ‘spectacular,’ he noted that Masters was a ‘very successful businessman’ and ‘an incredibly strong supporter’ of the MAGA movement. He said Hamadeh was ‘a fearless fighter for election integrity,’” she wrote.

Click here for plenty more tidbits from one of the most important states to watch in 2024.

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In case you missed it

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For your radar

Biden has no public events on his schedule. He will call the president of Brazil at 2:30 p.m. and receive his daily brief at 4:45 p.m.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will hold a briefing at 1:30 p.m.

Harris will travel to Atlanta, Georgia, for a campaign event at 7 p.m.

Vance is in Nevada with a rally in Henderson at 4 p.m. Eastern time and a rally at 7:30 p.m. in Reno.

United States Secret Service acting Director Ronald L. Rowe, Jr. will testify at 10 a.m. before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Trump assassination attempt.