Principals

1. Biden’s Oval address
2. Netanyahu in DC
3. Trump shooter
4. Harris’ youth voter edge
5. Harris’ Silicon Valley backing
6. Tech slump hits markets
7. Vance on the ‘childless left’
8. Olympics polling

PDB: GOP senator criticizes “DEI hire” attacks on Harris

23 arrested in Netanyahu protests … Second quarter GDP data out at 8:30am … WSJ: Inside Vance’s short career as a venture capitalist

Biden passes the torch

President Biden told the country from the Oval Office he chose to end his campaign for reelection after realizing it was time to “pass the torch to the next generation” and endorsed Vice President Harris, Semafor’s Claire Cameron writes. In his first address since dropping out of the race, Biden touted his legislative record, including the CHIPS and Science Act, climate change legislation, his work with NATO, and building up the country’s infrastructure and manufacturing. “I revere this office, but I love my country,” he said. Throughout the speech, he stressed the theme of democracy and urged voters to protect it. “Crooked Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech was barely understandable, and sooo bad,” former President Trump said on Truth Social.

Netanyahu criticizes protesters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s military campaign in Gaza while forcefully criticizing pro-Palestinian protests in his address to Congress. “They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers,” he said of the protesters, calling them “Iran’s useful idiots.” Netanyahu vowed to achieve “total victory” during the speech — which was boycotted by many Democrats — even as the White House searches for a ceasefire deal. Hundreds of demonstrators flooded the area surrounding the US Capitol; the Capitol Police said it used pepper spray to quell some violence. Six guests — all of them family members of hostages — were arrested in the House chamber for disruptions, per Axios. Netanyahu will meet with President Biden and Vice President Harris separately today. “The framework of a deal is basically there,” a senior Biden administration official said of the ceasefire negotiations, adding that the conversation with the Israelis would be about the “remaining gaps and how we close them.”

— Morgan Chalfant

Trump shooter searched JFK assassination

The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump searched “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy” on Google a week before the July 13 rally, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers. “That’s a search that obviously is significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray told the House Judiciary Committee, adding that the gunman “became very focused on former President Trump and this rally.” The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, registered to attend the Butler, Pa., rally on the same day. Wray also confirmed that law enforcement recovered a drone and two explosive devices from Crooks’ car, and that he purchased the AR-style weapon used in the shooting from his father. The rifle had a collapsible stock, Wray said — which may have helped the shooter conceal it. Wray said Crooks flew the drone over the rally site around 4pm on the same day of the event. He also added there remains “some question” as to whether Trump’s ear was injured by a bullet or shrapnel.

Young voters are less ‘meh,’ move toward Harris

A new poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris outperforming Donald Trump in swing states among registered voters 30 years old and younger in data shared first with Semafor. The survey, conducted by Change Research for Investing in US, an investment fund, found Harris leading Trump by 24 points. Harris also surpassed President Biden by 20 points, compared with a similar poll last June comparing Biden, Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Max Lubin from Kismet Research, who worked to develop the survey of 2,228 urban and suburban voters from July 22-24, attributed the bump to online engagement. “I think outside groups have a role to play in reaching young voters online with some of the fun and innovative tactics that we’ve seen so far,” he said. Young voters continue to feel negative about politics and voting, although “hopefulness” has risen from 23% to 30%, with “meh” trending downward from 30% to 23%.

— Kadia Goba

Wealthy Silicon Valley Dems rush to fundraise for Harris

JD Vance isn’t the only one who has fans in Silicon Valley: Wealthy tech donors are getting ready to open up their homes for Kamala Harris fundraisers, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti reports. “New people are like ‘ok, I’m ready to come off the sidelines now,’’’ one organizer of fundraisers said. “They weren’t consciously off the sidelines before but they were feeling beleaguered.” President Biden’s support in the tech industry declined since the last presidential election, when the group overwhelmingly supported his campaign against Donald Trump. In Harris, the industry has a familiar candidate who developed relationships with people in tech when she started out in San Francisco. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is among her past donors.

US stocks plunge on tech selloff

A tech selloff fueled the US stock markets’ biggest drop in almost two years. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index fell by more than 3%, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in recent gains for investors. Despite interest rates being at their highest level in more than 20 years, the S&P 500, an index of the biggest US companies, has reached multiple record highs this year. Other assets such as gold and house prices have also hit record levels, leading some to worry over an “excessive exuberance” from investors, many of whom are already pricing in a rate cut when the Federal Reserve meets in September.

Inside JD Vance’s ‘childless cat ladies’ attack

Three years ago, JD Vance told an audience of conservatives that they needed to take aim” at “the childless left,” whose “rejection of the family” undermines the country. He went on to criticize “childless cat ladies” on the left, naming Vice President Harris — a stepmom — as an example. Semafor’s David Weigel spoke to Vance at the time about the thinking behind the attack line. Trump’s newly tapped running mate said then that the idea grew out of a conversation with a friend who noted that DC was among the top cities where adults had the fewest children. “The city that’s governing for the rest of the country is also the place that, in some ways, is the least like the rest of the country, where most people do want to have children, and most people do start families,” he said. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, called Vance’s rhetoric “baseless.” “For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” she said.

Do people even care about the Olympics this year?

The share of Americans who plan to watch this year’s Paris Olympics is down from previous years. According to new figures from Gallup, 35% said they plan to watch either a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of the Games — they begin tomorrow, by the way — while 34% respond that they won’t watch much and 30% said they wouldn’t tune in at all. In comparison, Gallup found that 48% of Americans said they would watch at least a fair amount of the 2016 Games. Americans are most looking forward to watching women’s gymnastics — perhaps because of the draw of Simon Biles and her withdrawal from the Tokyo Games in 2021.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: Republican hawks are downplaying the impact Sen. JD Vance’s opposition to Ukraine would have on the policies of a second Donald Trump administration. “I am very high on JD Vance and I think he’s for a strong national defense,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Clearly we are not 100% together on the Ukraine issue, but I think President Trump is closer to my position.”

Playbook: Some Democrats are worried Vice President Harris’ campaign is not spending money fast enough on advertisements to define her. “We’re working to get up ads as quickly as we can (though it’s only been 3 days) and in the meantime she’s dominating earned media,” one campaign official countered.

WaPo: The liberal group Indivisible is launching a new push called “All in for Kamala” to recruit volunteers and voters for Harris.

Axios: The iconic photo after the attempted assassination against Trump will be on the book cover for the former president’s forthcoming book “Save America.”

White House

• President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with the families of American hostages being held by Hamas today following their bilateral meeting.
• Vice President Harris is delivering a keynote address at the American Federation of Teachers conference in Houston before heading back to DC.

Congress

• The House canceled votes next week — meaning lawmakers won’t return until Sept. 9 after votes today.
• The House unanimously passed legislation setting up a task force to investigate the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
• Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., will back the pro-labor PRO Act amid speculation he is on Vice President Harris’ shortlist of possible running mates. Some progressives and labor unions were angered that Kelly did not co-sponsor the legislation that would make it easier to create unions and for workers to join them.
• Elon Musk was in the House chamber for Netanyahu’s address.
• The Senate will hold a procedural vote on the Kids Online Safety Act and Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act today.
• Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., remains hospitalized and is receiving breathing assistance following a “setback” after entering the hospital on July 14. — New Jersey Globe
• Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., criticized Republicans who have attacked Vice President Harris as a “DEI hire,” including Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman. She said the party should focus instead on Harris’ record, particularly on the Southern border. “I think we need to take her seriously,” Lummis told Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig. “And I think part of taking her seriously is disregarding issues of race and sex and just going at policy.”

Courts

Boeing finalized a deal with the US government to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy over two deadly 737 Max crashes.

Polls

Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris 49% to 46%, according to a poll from CNN that was conducted by SSRS after President Biden dropped out of the race. The result is within the poll’s margin of error, and closer than earlier polling by CNN this year on the race between Biden and Trump.

On the Trail

• Democratic National Convention delegates will meet virtually in the next two weeks to confirm Vice President Harris as the party’s presidential nominee and her running mate, who has yet to be named.
• Fox News has reached out to the Harris and Donald Trump campaigns to propose a debate on Sept. 17 in Philadelphia and suggested Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as moderators, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports.
• Trump told a rally in North Carolina Wednesday that Harris is “totally against the Jewish people.” Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.
• Trump donated $5,000 to the campaign of then-California Attorney General Harris in 2011 and $1,000 in 2013.
• Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a possible Harris running mate, said Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance would “abandon” Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion. — Politico
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been absent from the campaign trail as Trump shored up Republican support after the assassination attempt and a strong GOP convention and while Harris has assumed the Democratic nomination after President Biden dropped out.

National Security

The US warned that adversaries, including China, are making investments in technology startups to get access to sensitive information and threaten national security.

Foreign Policy

• The UK and Germany, two major donors of European aid to Ukraine, signed a cooperation pact amid fears a possible Donald Trump win in November could be a disaster for Europe’s security.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he will seek a second term, despite poor approval ratings and polls indicating just one-third of the members of his party favor him leading them into the country’s next election.

Technology

CrowdStrike said a bug in one of its quality-control tools to check updates to its system allowed a critical flaw to be pushed to users’ devices. The issue caused a worldwide technology outage that affected multiple industries last Friday that were still being felt into Wednesday.

Media

• A federal judge ruled Donald Trump’s lawsuit against ABC News and host George Stephanopolous can proceed, rejecting the network’s efforts to get the case dismissed. According to the lawsuit, Stephanopolous defamed the former president several times during the March 10 airing of “This Week” by saying he raped writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury for sexual abusing and defaming Carroll and not technically liable for rape, which has a narrow definition in state law.
• Rupert Murdoch is in a legal fight with three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, as he seeks to preserve it as a conservative force after he dies. — NYT

Big Read

Donald Trump’s nephew says the former president told him some people with disabilities “just should die” due to “the shape they’re in, all the expenses” after a meeting between advocates and the then-president, according to an upcoming book from Fred Trump III that The New York Times obtained. Fred Trump’s son was born with a rare medical condition that caused development and intellectual disabilities. A couple of years later, when Fred Trump reached out to Donald Trump for help since the fund for his son’s care was nearly of money, Fred Trump said his uncle replied: “I don’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: Axios accused Republicans of falsely saying Vice President Harris was President Biden’s ‘border czar,’ three years after it reported she was.

What the Right isn’t reading: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill banning “gay and trans panic” defenses in criminal trials.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Jordan Weissmann, Morgan Chalfant

Reporters: Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Kevin Hern is a Republican congressman from Oklahoma and chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

• Wall Street money machine whirs back to life for Harris.
• Kenya’s Ruto ropes opposition into his cabinet amid protests.
• Salman Rushdie’s attacker charged with supporting terrorist group Hezbollah.