Harris Meets With V.P. Finalists in Pivotal Test of Chemistry

Kamala Harris conducted interviews in Washington with top contenders to be her running mate — including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

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Here’s the latest on the presidential race.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday met with top candidates to be her running mate, moving to close out her search with a test of chemistry between herself and a potential partner.

Three leading contenders — Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania — talked with Ms. Harris at her residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, according to several people briefed on the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings.

Ms. Harris often prioritizes personal rapport with her staff and advisers, her aides and associates have said, and she is expected to place considerable stock in the in-person meetings. Her campaign has said it would announce her choice of a vice-presidential candidate before Ms. Harris and her running mate begin a tour of battleground states on Tuesday.

Here’s what to know:

• A dead bear cub: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president as an independent, admitted on Sunday to leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park nearly 10 years ago, and trying to make it look like it had been hit by a bicycle. He said he had picked up the carcass after watching the bear get hit by another driver in the Hudson Valley, so he could skin it and “put the meat in my refrigerator.” But then he ran out of time before a flight, he said.

• Trump and Georgia: At a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, former President Donald J. Trump suggested without evidence that Georgia’s governor and its secretary of state, both Republicans, were hampering his efforts to win the battleground state in November. “In my opinion, they want us to lose,” Mr. Trump said. He also claimed to have won Georgia twice. While Mr. Trump won the state in 2016, he lost there to President Biden by roughly 12,000 votes in 2020. Last year, he was indicted on charges related to his efforts to subvert those results.
• An emerging adviser: Tony West, the brother-in-law of Ms. Harris, has emerged as a close adviser to her campaign. He has been weighing in on polling and potential running mates and is taking an unpaid leave of absence from his job as Uber’s top lawyer to work solely on the Harris campaign. Some progressives who want her to take a hard line against big business are concerned.
• Will there be another debate? Mr. Trump has dropped out of an ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10 and presented a counterproposal to Ms. Harris, his presumptive opponent, to face off on Fox News six days earlier. The change raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.
• A long-ago affair: Ms. Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff acknowledged on Saturday that he had an extramarital affair during his first marriage, years before he met Ms. Harris. At the time, Mr. Emhoff was married to Kerstin Emhoff, a film producer. The couple filed for divorce in 2009, and Mr. Emhoff met Ms. Harris in 2013.

Reid J. Epstein reported from Washington, Theodore Schleifer from New York and Nick Corasaniti from Asbury Park, N.J.

Harris has faced party divisions over her choice of running mate.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has been in hospice care for more than 17 months, has said that he has every intention of voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall, according to his family.

Mr. Carter, 99, who served as the nation’s 39th president from 1977 to 1981, would turn 100 on Oct. 1. No American president has lived longer than him.

Mr. Carter’s son Chip asked his father on Wednesday if he was trying to make it to his 100th birthday, according to the former president’s grandson Jason.

“I’m trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Mr. Carter replied, according to the grandson.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported on the conversation.

Ms. Harris did not immediately comment.

Mr. Carter appeared gaunt and frail at the funeral ceremony in Atlanta for his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, in November. He has remained at home in Plains, Ga., in hospice care far longer than many would have imagined; most people receive hospice care for less than a month.

The early-voting period in Georgia begins on Oct. 15, and Georgia counties are expected to start to mail out absentee ballots about a month before Election Day. Mr. Carter intends to vote by mail, his grandson said.

Georgia is one of a handful of battleground states expected to be crucial in the contest between Ms. Harris and Donald J. Trump, who won the state in 2016 but lost it, and the White House, in 2020 to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday showed Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by three percentage points in the state. But there has been limited public opinion data illuminating the state of the campaign in Georgia since Mr. Biden withdrew and endorsed Ms. Harris last month.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admits he left a dead bear in Central Park.

John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said on "Fox News Sunday" that Vice President Kamala Harris has been a part of the recent decision by the Pentagon to send more fighter jets and warships to the Middle East after Iran vowed retaliation against Israel following the assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on its soil. Harris “absolutely was part of the decision to add additional resources” to the region, Mr. Kirby said.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign announced the creation of a program called Republicans for Harris, highlighting endorsements from moderate, anti-Trump Republicans such as former Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts and former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. The campaign is set to hold kickoff events for the program in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania on Monday.

Harris to interview V.P. contenders in final test of chemistry.

Former President Donald J. Trump suggested without evidence on Saturday that Georgia’s Republican governor was hampering his efforts to win the battleground state in November, a claim that carried echoes of Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat to President Biden there in 2020.

“In my opinion, they want us to lose,” Mr. Trump said, accusing the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, of being disloyal and trying to make life difficult for him.

At a rally at the Georgia State University Convocation Center in Atlanta, in a speech that lasted more than 90 minutes and that was peppered with grievances about his loss four years ago, Mr. Trump falsely claimed, “I won this state twice,” referring to the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden by roughly 12,000 votes in Georgia in 2020. Last year, the former president was indicted by an Atlanta grand jury on charges related to his efforts to subvert the results of that election in that state. On Saturday, he complained that he might have avoided legal jeopardy if Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger had cooperated with his attempts to reverse the 2020 results.

Mr. Trump added that he thought Georgia had slipped under Mr. Kemp’s leadership. “The state has gone to hell,” he said.

Mr. Kemp, who indicated in June that he had not voted for Mr. Trump in the Republican primary this year, said on X that his focus is “on winning this November” and “not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”

“You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it,” he said, sharing a social media message that Mr. Trump had posted earlier Saturday in which he jabbed at Mr. Kemp and Mr. Kemp’s wife.

Mr. Raffensperger shared a screenshot of the same post from Mr. Trump and said: “History has taught us this type of message doesn’t sell well here in Georgia, sir.”

Mr. Trump held his rally in Atlanta in the same arena where his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, held a rally earlier in the week. Both candidates filled the complex, which holds 8,000 people, though Mr. Trump, who has long bragged about his ability to draw overflow crowds, questioned whether Ms. Harris’s supporters had in fact come to hear the hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion, who performed at that event.

Mr. Trump recalled that Bruce Springsteen had performed at a rally for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “I’m not a huge fan,” he said of Mr. Springsteen. “I have a bad trait. I only like people that like me.”

Mr. Trump, who was preceded onstage by his running mate, Senator JD Vance, repeatedly leveled personal attacks against Ms. Harris. He mocked the pronunciation of her first name, insulted her intelligence and communication skills, and called her a “radical left freak.”

“Kamala,” Mr. Trump said, enunciating with derision the syllables of her name. “You know there’s about 19 different ways of saying it. She only likes three.”

The Harris campaign provided a statement on Saturday night from Geoff Duncan, a Republican who was the lieutenant governor of Georgia during the 2020 election, denouncing Mr. Trump.

“Tonight, we heard a particularly unhinged, angry version of the same Donald Trump that Georgia rejected in 2020,” said Mr. Duncan, who has endorsed Ms. Harris.

Mr. Trump, who has been criticized for his past praise of dictators and authoritarian leaders, also suggested that Russia had managed to get the better end of a major prisoner swap with the Biden administration this week, which resulted in the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the security contractor Paul Whelan.

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Mr. Trump said of the Russian president.

He added: “Boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals.”