Election 2024 live: Kamala Harris prepares for weekend campaign blitz as running mate hopefuls fan out across swing states

Haley made the comments on Thursday during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Former president Donald Trump hit out at Vice President Kamala Harris for her insistence that Israel should avoid civilian casualties and allow Palestinians access to humanitarian aid as he hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his self-styled White House in exile on Friday.

Whitmer and Shapiro both endorsed the vice president as the next Democratic candidate to face Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid on Sunday.

The duo is set to appear at a campaign event in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania on Monday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. They are expected to speak out against Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term.

Katie Hawkinson has the details.

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris called the family of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was shot by a sheriff’s deputy in her Illinois home, according to Massey’s family members who spoke to NBC News.

Massey, 36, was killed July 6 after she called the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office because she was afraid there might be a prowler outside, according to an attorney for her family and Illinois State Police,

“It’s made me feel a lot better today,” said James Wilburn, Massey’s father.

Of Harris, Wilburn said, “She gave us her heartfelt condolences, and she let us know that she is with us, 100% that this senseless killing.”

Here’s our most recent coverage of the killing of Sonya Massey:

The Los Angeles Times reports that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff shocked a couple of thousand gay and queer Black men backing Vice President Kamala Harris in her run for president when he made a surprise appearance on an organizing call on Thursday evening.

After telling the assembled supporters that Harris would “be there” for the LGBTQ+ community moving forward, as she has been in the past, Emhoff told the story of how he found out that President Joe Biden had stepped aside from the 2024 race.

Emhoff also told a story of being caught by surprise by President Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out of the presidential race on Sunday, when he said he happened to be in Los Angeles with a gay couple — friends of his — after taking a one-hour SoulCycle class with them in West Hollywood.

“We’re out there having coffee, messing around and talking, and … people are coming up to me, so it’s now, like, after the announcement has gone out, and my friend’s partner said, ‘Um, you need to look at this,’ and I said, ‘What?’” Emhoff said.

What the friend was holding up was Biden’s letter to the country announcing he was dropping out.

“Of course I didn’t have my phone, so I ran and ran and got into our car, and of course my phone is just on fire, and it’s basically, ‘Call Kamala,’ ‘Call Kamala,’ ‘Call Kamala,’ from everyone,” Emhoff said. “And of course, the first thing she said was, ‘Where the … were you? I need you.’”

Since then, Emhoff said, it’s been a “whirlwind.”

Before he became Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance called for higher taxes for childless adults and insisted their votes should count less. He said abortion should be “illegal” nationally, and that the “cat ladies” and the “Kamala Harrises” of the world want to “brainwash” other people’s kids.

Misogynist “cat lady” insults are nothing new, nor is an anti-abortion GOP official advocating nationwide bans on abortion access.

But recently resurfaced remarks from the next potential vice president — and his connections to influential right-wing voices with borderline conspiracy-mongering ideas about childbirth rates — have invited more scrutiny into the natalist movement gripping Republican politics.

A new Emerson poll released on Thursday shows Harris putting an end to the bleeding her predecessor was suffering for weeks across five key states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She still trails Donald Trump in each state, but she’s now within just a few percentage points — ground she has a chance of making up over the next 100-plus days until the general election.

John Bowden looks at the numbers.

Following days of speculation, the former first couple announced their endorsement on Friday morning, with both parties sharing a video on social media of a phone call in which the Obamas pledged their whole-hearted support for Harris’s campaign.

Rachel Sharp has the story.