News
Fred Harris, former Democratic U.S. senator and presidential candidate, dies at 94
Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, presidential hopeful and populist who championed Democratic Party reforms in the turbulent 1960s, died Saturday. He was 94.
Harris’ wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. He had lived in New Mexico since 1976.
“Fred Harris passed peacefully early this morning of natural causes. He was 94. He was a wonderful and beloved man. His memory is a blessing,” Elliston said in a text message.
Harris served eight years in the Senate, first winning in 1964 to fill a vacancy, and made unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1976.
“I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of my longtime friend Fred Harris today,” Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote in a post to social media. “Harris was a towering presence in politics and in academia, and his work over many decades improved New Mexico and the nation. He will be greatly missed.”
Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said in a statement that “New Mexico and our nation have lost a giant,” describing him as a “tireless champion of civil rights, tribal sovereignty and working families.”
It fell to Harris, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, to help heal the party’s wounds from the tumultuous national convention in 1968 when protesters and police clashed in Chicago.
He ushered in rule changes that led to more women and minorities as convention delegates and in leadership positions.
“I think it’s worked wonderfully,” Harris recalled in 2004, when he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “It’s made the selection much more legitimate and democratic.”
“The Democratic Party was not democratic, and many of the delegations were pretty much boss-controlled or -dominated. And in the South, there was terrible discrimination against African Americans,” he said.
Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, quitting after poor showings in early contests, including a fourth-place win in New Hampshire. The more moderate Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency.
Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico. He wrote and edited more than a dozen books, mostly on politics and Congress. In 1999 he broadened his writings with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.
Throughout his political career, Harris was a leading liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty programs to help minorities and the disadvantaged. Along with his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he also was active in Native American issues.
“I’ve always called myself a populist or progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I’m against concentrated power. I don’t like the power of money in politics. I think we ought to have programs for the middle class and working class.”
“Today ‘populism’ is often a dirty word because of how certain leaders wield power,” Heinrich said in his statement Saturday. “But Fred represented a different brand of populism — one that was never mean or exclusionary. Instead, Fred focused his work and attention on regular people who are often overlooked by the political class.”
Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s.
The commission’s groundbreaking report in 1968 declared, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”
Thirty years later, Harris co-wrote a report that concluded the commission’s “prophecy has come to pass.”
“The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are suffering disproportionately,” said the report by Harris and Lynn A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, which continued the work of the commission.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris rose to prominence in Congress as a “fiery populist.”
“That resonates with people…the notion of the average person against the elite,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to articulate those concerns, particularly of the downtrodden.”
In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He and others pressed Humphrey to use the convention to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited to do so until late in the campaign, and narrowly lost to Republican Richard Nixon.
“That was the worst year of my life, ’68. We had Dr. Martin Luther King killed. We had my Senate seatmate Robert Kennedy killed and then we had this terrible convention,” Harris said in 1996.
“I left the convention — because of the terrible disorders and the way they had been handled and the failure to adopt a new peace platform — really downhearted.”
After assuming the Democratic Party leadership post, Harris appointed commissions that recommended reforms in the procedures for selecting delegates and presidential nominees. While lauding the greater openness and diversity, he said there had been a side effect: “It’s much to the good. But the one result of it is that conventions today are ratifying conventions. So it’s hard to make them interesting.”
“My own thought is they ought to be shortened to a couple of days. But they are still worth having, I think, as a way to adopt a platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to get people together in a kind of coalition-building,” he said.
Harris was born Nov. 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, about 15 miles from the Texas line. The home had no electricity, indoor toilet or running water.
At age 5 he was working on the farm and received 10 cents a day to drive a horse in circles to supply power for a hay bailer.
He worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to help for his education at University of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952, majoring in political science and history. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954, and then moved to Lawton to practice.
In 1956, he won election to the Oklahoma state Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he launched his career in national politics in the race to replace Sen. Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963.
Harris won the Democratic nomination in a runoff election against J. Howard Edmondson, who left the governorship to fill Kerr’s vacancy until the next election. In the general election, Harris defeated an Oklahoma sports legend — Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had coached OU football for 17 years.
Harris won a six-year term in 1966 but left the Senate in 1972 when there were doubts that he, as a left-leaning Democrat, could win reelection.
Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and had three children, Kathryn, Byron and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.
Topline
Graham Platner, Maine’s presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, faced a new set of allegations Thursday reported by The New York Times, which interviewed multiple women who accused Platner of disturbing behavior and creating “toxic” relationships—just days after he and his wife dismissed reports he sexted other women while married.
Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Senate race in Maine (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images).
Getty Images
Key Facts
Some of the women interviewed by the Times described Platner as fun, caring and safe to be around, though others detailed “toxic” relationships they had with him.
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, told the Times that Platner was “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’”
Fifield also accused Platner of being rough with her while he drank, clarifying to the Times she was never struck by him but was regularly grabbed by the shoulders.
Jenny Racicot, 41, who said she dated Platner between 2019 and 2021, referenced controversial online posts he made in the past about sexual assault and rural white Americans, saying she “recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”
Forbes has reached out to Platner’s campaign, which told the Times he “strongly disputes” claims of physical intimidation or altercations—though it did not dispute the claims around his remarks.
The Times noted it could not independently corroborate Fifield’s altercation claims.
Has Platner responded to the allegations?
In an MS NOW interview, Platner was confronted with the latest allegations and he said they were not true. After interviewer Chris Hayes read out a snippet from the article, the Democratic candidate responded: “There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about, are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who’s politically motivated.” Platner noted that the reporting about him “struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol,” is something he’s been “very up front since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service.” He added there are things in the article he “absolutely will take responsibility for…But those serious allegations are just not true.”
What Do We Know About Platner’s Sexting Scandal?
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told his Senate campaign last year about sexually explicit texts he sent to several women to ensure they didn’t impact his campaign. Former Maine state legislator Genevieve McDonald, who also served as the Platner campaign’s political director until October last year, told the Times that Gertner reached out to her before a rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to inform her about the texts he sent to as many as a dozen women. McDonald also told the Times the Senate is “not a training ground for redemption,” and instead a “place for proven leaders with moral clarity and integrity.”
How did Platner and his campaign respond to the sexting scandal?
After a campaign event on Sunday, Platner was asked about the reports and said he wasn’t surprised that “establishment media outlets” were running “gossip” instead of issues that “actually matter in this race.” The Democratic candidate, who was standing with his wife, accused the Times and the Journal of “journalistic malpractice” and claimed that they ran stories without any evidence “besides the gossip from a former staffer” He added: “I’m confirming that what Genevieve McDonald said in the New York Times is not true.” His campaign also released a video statement from Gertner in which the Democratic candidate’s wife said she was “really angry, disappointed” that her disclosure was made public and she “[finds] it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on.”
How have betting markets reacted to Platner’s scandals?
Platner’s odds of winning Maine’s Senate race against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins have plummeted this week on election betting markets. Bettors on Kalshi predict the race is now a toss up with the Democratic candidate’s odds falling from 72% last month to 55% early on Friday. On the crypto betting platform Polymarket, Platner’s odds have a similar drop, falling from 78% in on May 23 to just 54% as of early Friday.
Crucial Quote
“Let’s be very clear: This is a lifelong G.O.P. operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans.” Platner’s campaign told the Times about Fifield, who has worked for Republican campaigns in Virginia.
Tangent
Platner’s odds of winning one of Maine’s Senate race have plummeted this week on Kalshi. The GOP nominee (expected to be longtime Sen. Susan Collins) is now the 52% favorite, a dramatic change from the 72.7% odds Democrats held on May 22.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Maine’s primaries are June 9.
Further Reading
Progressive Leaders Brush Off Graham Platner’s Sexting Controversy: ‘He Has Grown’ (Forbes)
Graham Platner And His Wife Dismiss Reports Of His Alleged Sexting As ‘Gossip’ (Forbes)
The mammoth triumphal arch President Trump wants to build would sit under one of the most complex sections of the national airspace — directly in the paths of flights in and out of Ronald Reagan National Airport and just a few miles from the site of a catastrophic midair collision last year.
Airplane traffic in April 2026
The Trump administration said on Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration had compiled preliminary findings from an initial review of whether the proposed arch presented any risks to Washington’s airspace.
But the extent to which those findings, which have yet to be made public, will influence the administration’s plans to move ahead with construction as planned is uncertain. According to a New York Times analysis, the arch as currently planned would warrant further study under at least one F.A.A. guideline.
The F.A.A. had been looking into the administration’s plan for about a month to determine whether the proposed 250-foot structure — a height chosen to commemorate 2026 being the 250th year since American independence — would pose any hazard to flights in and out of Reagan National.
But in recent days, the National Park Service, acting on behalf of the Trump administration, appeared to change tack, quietly asking the F.A.A. to conduct a feasibility study — an advisory review that is normally preliminary and that, according to the F.A.A.’s own procedures, is usually given lower priority than official evaluations.
The reason for the new request, which administration officials defended as routine, was not immediately clear. Though the F.A.A. requires proposed structures over 200 feet to submit to a formal evaluation to determine their impact on local air traffic, feasibility studies are voluntary.
Some aviation experts said the administration’s decision to pursue one at this stage could indicate that possible problems had been identified with the height of the structure, which climbed from 250 feet in the initial filing to 259 feet in the feasibility study request, making the top of the arch sit 288 feet above sea level. In that case, they said, asking for an advisory study could be a strategy to avoid the potential black mark of having Mr. Trump’s pet construction project labeled a risk to flight safety.
It could suggest a project “ran into some issues and is more complicated than they had hoped,” said Michael O’Donnell, an aerospace consultant who previously worked as a senior F.A.A. official focused on air traffic safety.
The change in approach may reflect the sensitivity with which the federal government has approached potential risks in the airspace surrounding Washington since a midair collision last year that killed 67.
In the wake of that accident, in which an Army helicopter flew into a commercial jet 278 feet up in the air just southeast of Reagan National Airport, the F.A.A. shut down much of the surrounding sky to most helicopter traffic. It also instituted new prohibitions against pilots relying on “see and avoid” methods to avoid hitting planes going in and out of the airport.
Change in helicopter traffic
An airspace of unparalleled complexity
Should the arch proceed as planned, some aviation experts said it could be just the latest complication to befall a section of airspace already considered one of the nation’s most complicated.
Air traffic within a half-mile radius of the proposed arch location
Reagan National poses special challenges to pilots navigating the surrounding airspace. Planes cannot fly below 18,000 feet over the National Mall — a wide swath of Washington sitting just north of the airport — and the Naval Observatory, where the vice president lives, meaning that pilots routinely have to make tight turns when ascending from and descending to the airport to avoid them.
Flight restrictions for special events and security surrounding movements of government officials are frequent. Noise concerns in the surrounding metro areas push planes to tightly follow the Potomac River. And two of the airport’s three runways are short, which reduces the margin of error for flights landing or taking off — and contributes to the congestion of Runway 19, which is the nation’s busiest commercial runway.
Air traffic in April 2026 for Runway 19
The Reagan airspace has “just about every congested airspace issue that you can have,” said Dennis Tajer, a 737 pilot who is a spokesman for the American Airlines pilot union. “And we know the tragedy that happened — there’s room for error, but not much.”
A New York Times analysis of federal regulations, traffic patterns and flight procedures found that if the arch were built at the 250-foot height, it would penetrate what is known as the 40-to-1 obstacle clearance surface, an imaginary slope that begins at the departure end of the runway and represents a baseline standard for evaluating the impact of a nearby structure.
How the arch would penetrate the 40-to-1 slope
A structure that breaks through the surface does not necessarily pose a risk but requires further study to determine whether it can safely be built; whether changes such as reducing its height or adding obstruction lighting may be necessary; or whether the F.A.A. could make reasonable changes to flight operations and procedures to accommodate its construction as proposed.
The top of the arch as planned only slightly pushes through the bottom of the 40-to-1 slope — an altitude that virtually all planes would be well above when passing over the planned structure.
Still, some experts speculated that throwing an arch of such height and proximity into the mix could still prompt the F.A.A. to change flight procedures in and out of Reagan National in order to minimize risk. Such changes could affect the work of pilots and air traffic controllers, limit the number of planes allowed to take off or land, or change the maximum amount of weight they can carry.
“The accommodation may be just: Change other things that make it work,” said Scott Dunham, a former air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and former air traffic controller.
Buildings taller than the arch are farther from the airport
While the height of the planned arch would put it among the tallest structures in the airport’s vicinity, the structure wouldn’t break records. Both the Capitol building and the Washington Monument are taller, but they are both located in a no-fly zone. Memorial Circle, the planned location for the arch, is not.
The arch would also be dwarfed by some structures in Arlington, Va., including a pair of highrise apartments in the Crystal City neighborhood and the towers at Amazon’s new campus in the Pentagon City neighborhood, all less than a mile from the perimeter of Reagan National — and all of which were the subject of heated debate and intense F.A.A. scrutiny. But those structures are not under the main flight path in and out of the airport like the location of the planned arch is.
The nearest buildings that are over 250 feet and in proximity to the climb and descent paths to the airport are clustered in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, but those sit nearly a mile farther north than the arch, at a greater distance away from the airport.
Several of the buildings in Rosslyn have red obstruction lights to warn approaching pilots to steer clear, a common way to mitigate concerns about height.
Almost 1,700 public comments about the arch, nearly all in opposition, had flooded into the National Capital Planning Commission ahead of its Thursday meeting. Commenters protested issues ranging from its appearance to its significance to its potential impact on flight patterns.
The Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, said in a statement that feasibility studies, like the one the administration requested, were “standard practice as part of the compliance process.” It did not respond to questions about what prompted the study at this stage or what may have been communicated by the F.A.A. during the previous evaluation.
Under federal regulations, the arch must still complete the full evaluation to receive a final determination about whether it poses a hazard. But the F.A.A.’s determinations are not enforceable. A notice of hazard would typically prevent a commercial structure from obtaining insurance, a factor unlikely to prevent the president from proceeding if he so wishes.
Aviation experts and former F.A.A. officials interviewed by The Times said they trusted that any actions ultimately taken by the F.A.A. would not compromise safety standards. Among them was Michael McCormick, a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee reviewing risks in the Reagan National airspace in light of the 2025 collision.
But “in my assessment, the airspace and procedures in and out of Washington National are very complex and should not be modified to accommodate a new structure being built,” said Mr. McCormick, who previously led the F.A.A.’s air traffic control operations. “Instead, the structure should be modified to accommodate the procedures in and out of Washington National.”
Sources
Air traffic data shown in this article is for the entire month of April 2026 and Jan. 1-28, 2025, as provided by ADS-B exchange historical records.
The obstacle clearance surface shown is based on the Aeronautical Information Manual and is not a complete set of surfaces that the F.A.A. will review.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (left) talks to President Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in April 2025.
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President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war with Iran together, but they have different ideas for how to end it.
Host Scott Detrow steps in for Mary Louise Kelly again this week. He speaks with NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre and NPR White House Correspondent Franco Ordoñez about the current friction between the two leaders, and where pain points have come up in the past. Also, where the elusive deal with Iran stands.
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