There were hip gyrations from the stage. The playlist included “Girls in the Hood,” “Mamushi,” “Savage,” and “Body.” The candidate quoted Quavo.
Washington
Harris events: Not your father’s campaign rallies (or Biden’s)
In Atlanta, the baton was fully passed to Kamala Harris. This was now her party. Her campaign. Her playlist.
In fact, Joe Biden never came up.
From the music to the outfits — and, most tellingly, the crowd size — it was clearer than ever that the shift to a new Democratic generation was complete.
By and large, it is the same campaign aides who were putting on Biden events that are now in charge of Harris ones. But the types of crowds interested in attending Harris events — and the musicians willing to perform at them — are very different. The new playlist, even if controlled by the same staffers who curated Biden’s soundtrack (a mix including Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom”), has a certain Harris flair, and is put together based on her personal input.
Campaign aides say they are still thinking about how Harris events will be different, and they are determined to not only do large-scale rallies but want to put her in smaller settings as well. The coming days will provide more of a test case as Harris picks a running mate and launches a seven-state tour that will probably include a range of venues.
Harris is attempting to harness the surge in organic enthusiasm to display a show of force around her campaign launch. Aides want to do so in ways that are not only helpful to the vice president’s case but also work to get under Trump’s skin (The Trump campaign has scheduled a rally on Saturday in the same Atlanta arena that Harris filled on Tuesday).
The crowds to date in the Harris for president campaign are simply more energized. They’re bigger and louder. And it is a different tapestry than the Democratic Party has presented to a general electorate since at least 2016.
Biden is the candidate who works rope lines and owns small rooms, but has never been known as the one who can fill large arenas. Filling a middle school gymnasium, as he did last month, was reason for boasting, and success for him is the amount of time he spends on a rope line after the event rather than the number of total supporters who attend it. And four years ago, during the height of a global pandemic, the closest the president came to having large rallies was events where cars gathered, at a social distance, and honked their horns.
Harris, at least in the opening weeks of her candidacy, is drawing the kind of energy and excitement that Barack Obama drew in 2008 or that Donald Trump brought in 2016.
While Democrats have long had strong ties to the entertainment industry — attracting actors as donors and musicians as opening acts — the octogenarian who spent half a century as a politician and rarely dips into pop culture was not a source for inspiration. Biden’s prized possession is a car built in 1967 (a Corvette Stingray) and his favorite movie was made in 1981 (“Chariots of Fire”)
Biden often quotes Abraham Lincoln or Irish poets in his speeches. On Tuesday night, Harris was quoting hip-hop artists in hers.
“Trump … Does not walk the walk,” she said. “Or as my friend Quavo would say: He does not walk it like he talks it.”
Biden often says the Black community was among those that “brung me to the dance.” But he most definitely did not have the playlist, or energy — or the dance — that came from Atlanta.
The rally marked a debut of sorts for Megan on C-SPAN, which streamed the event live. She took the stage amid flashing strobe lights, and was dressed in a blue pantsuit, a white shirt with exposed midriff, and a blue tie. She riffed on one of Harris’s strongest campaign planks: abortion rights.
“Our future president — let’s get this done, Atlanta,” she told the cheering crowd. “We’re about to make history with the first female president. The first Black female president. Let’s get this done, honey.”
As she sang her song “Body” she told the crowd: “Now, I know my ladies in the crowd love their bodies — and if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.”
Harris’s remarks were stylistically different from Biden’s, with her own cadence and without verbal digressions and the storytelling that Biden often relishes. But at the core, many of her policy aims did not significantly diverge from the ones that Biden promotes.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
She talked about the need to tame inflation, and she spoke in sharp tones about immigration.
“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said. “Which goes to show, Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself. I will bring back the border security bill, and I will sign it into law and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
She mocked Trump’s policy positions — called some of the things from him and his running mate “just plain weird” — and poked fun at her GOP rival for not fully committing to a debate. While Biden also often mentions Trump, she seemed to take more glee in poking at her new rival.
“Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider, to meet me on the debate stage,” she said, looking into the cameras. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you got something to say, say it to my face.’”
Harris also echoed what has been a signature line in her brief time as a candidate, as she recalled her time as a prosecutor taking on “predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So hear me when I say,” she added, pausing for effect. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In Atlanta and elsewhere, there are calls-and-response. There is a rollicking feeling that often doesn’t exist amid polite applause at Biden’s events. When Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) on Tuesday night chided Trump for being “too scared to debate Vice President Harris,” the crowd began chanting, “Too scared! Too scared!”
When Harris referenced Trump’s legal problems and guilty verdicts, the crowd yelled, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Biden has acknowledged his milquetoast taste.
“Isn’t it really dull when you have a president known for two things: Ray-Ban sunglasses and chocolate chip ice cream?” he said last month during a gathering in Harrisburg, Pa., as he sought to inject life into his reelection campaign.
Two weeks later, he was out of the race. And now he’s hoping to propel to victory a president known for things far less dull.
Washington
Supreme Court rules states can count late-arriving mailed ballots, rejecting Trump-led challenge
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states should be allowed to count ballots that are mailed on time but arrive after Election Day.
In a 5-4 decision, the high court rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day. The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
The decision, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is a defeat for President Donald Trump who has repeatedly claimed mail-in voting encourages fraud, an assertion not backed up by evidence. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. also joined the court’s three liberals in the ruling.
The question before the court was whether Mississippi was acting legally when it permitted ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrived within five business days of the election.
“The federal election-day statutes do not preempt Mississippi’s law because the defining element of an ‘election’ has always been the electorate’s choice of candidate,” the decision said.
A voter’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received, it said.
Thirteen other states have grace periods for ballots cast by mail. Another 15 have longer deadlines for military and overseas voters.
Last year, Trump signed an executive order that would require votes to be “cast and received” by Election Day, but it has been blocked by court challenges.
Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart noted during arguments before the Supreme Court in March that the Trump administration had failed to produce a single case of fraud due to mail ballots that arrived after Election Day.
Among the state with deadlines after Election Day are California, Texas, New York and Illinois. Rural areas of Alaska also allow post-Election Day ballots.
The Associated Press reported that four states dominated by Republican lawmakers, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio and Utah, dropped their grace periods last year. That’s according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and Voting Rights Lab.
President Donald Trump said he voted by mail in a Florida election due to scheduling conflicts, explaining he could not be there in person. The remarks come as Palm Beach County records show Trump cast a mail ballot in an upcoming special election, despite his public criticism of the voting method as fraudulent.
During arguments, some of the conservative justices seemed skeptical of late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Samuel Alito for example asked about the appearance of fraud if ballots that arrived after Election Day flipped an election.
The liberal justices on the other hand indicated they would uphold the state laws and noted that federal law allows states to set their own regulations governing elections. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the states and Congress should decide the issue, not the courts.
Federal law sets Election Day as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.”
Mississippi passed its election law during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was challenged by the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party and others.
An appellate court, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, struck down Mississippi’s grace period. Judge Andrew Oldham wrote that the state law allowing the late-arriving ballots to be counted violated federal law.
The three judges who decided Mississippi’s law was unconstitutional were all appointed by Trump during his first term.
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – The Supreme Court has one week remaining to release decisions before the end of its term, with seven cases still pending — including a major ruling on birthright citizenship.
Justices face a traditional July 1 deadline to wrap up the term. Among the remaining cases is the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara, argued in April, which is one of several cases involving President Donald Trump that will test the limits of executive branch power.
Meanwhile, the president is set to travel to North Dakota for the dedication of the Theodore Roosevelt Library, the first of multiple events and speeches planned during the week of America’s 250th birthday.
On the eve of Independence Day, Trump will then visit Mount Rushmore before returning to Washington, D.C., for the nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations.
Festivities in the nation’s capital include a fireworks display on the National Mall that organizers say will attempt to break the world record. Views of the display will be available from across Washington, D.C.
Copyright 2026 Gray DC. All rights reserved.
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