A virtual roll call to formally nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee kicked off on Thursday.

The Democratic National Committee’s electronic voting for their party’s 2024 standard-bearer comes less than two weeks after President Biden, in a blockbuster announcement, ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice president to succeed him at the top of the ticket.

Unlike the Republicans, who held their roll call in-person during their convention in Milwaukee last month, the DNC is using a virtual roll call which will conclude on Monday, two weeks ahead of the Aug. 19 start of the party’s convention at the United Center in Chicago.

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But similar to the GOP nomination of former President Trump, there is no drama, as the vice president is the only candidate who qualified by a Tuesday night deadline to have her name placed on the roll call.

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Biden’s disastrous performance against Trump at a late June debate that was held in Atlanta fueled questions about his physical and mental abilities to serve another four years in the White House.

It also spurred a rising chorus of calls from within his own party for the 81-year-old president to end his bid for a second term in the White House. 

President Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his re-election bid. (Evan Vucci, Pool via AP)

Biden’s immediate backing of Harris ignited a surge of endorsements for the vice president by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders and elders. Within 36 hours, Harris announced that she had locked up her party’s nomination by landing the verbal backing of a majority of the nearly 4,700 convention delegates.

The DNC decided to hold a virtual roll call – which is similar to the one they held four years ago to nominate Biden amid the coronavirus pandemic – in order to formally have a nominee topping their ticket ahead of an Aug. 7 ballot access deadline in Ohio.

“Our delegates have an important responsibility – and opportunity – in the days ahead to cast their history-making ballots for Vice President Harris, ensuring that she will be on the ballot in every state this November,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement earlier this week.

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The DNC reported that 3,923 delegates petitioned to put Harris on the ballot for the Democratic nomination, and that no other candidate met the party’s threshold of 300 delegate signatures to qualify for the ballot. 

While the official nomination vote by the delegates is being held remotely, the DNC says a ceremonial roll call will be held at the convention in Chicago. 

Former President Trump, speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

With the nomination of Harris not in doubt, speculation has soared in the past week over whom the vice president will choose as her running mate. The Harris campaign announced that the vice president and her soon-to-be-named running mate will embark on a swing through all seven key battleground states starting Tuesday in Pennsylvania.

The running mate announcement could potentially come as early as Monday evening.

That’s when it’s expected Harris will be announced as the nominee, following the 6 p.m. ET conclusion of the virtual roll call. DNC rules then allow for Harris to place the name of her running mate into nomination. 

According to the DNC, the convention chair would then declare that candidate to be the party’s vice presidential nominee.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

A conservative congressman who has twice filed articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris is grabbing national attention as Tennessee holds primary elections on Thursday.

Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and a vocal critic of President Biden’s administration, is facing a primary challenge from Nashville councilwoman Courtney Johnston as he seeks a second term representing Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.

After filing articles of impeachment against both the president and Harris last year, Ogles filed impeachment articles against the vice president a second time after she replaced Biden at the top of the Democrats’ national ticket.

HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON THE 2024 ELECTIONS

Ogles faced several controversies two years ago, as he came out on top in a crowded nine-candidate Republican primary in the redrawn 5th District, which includes southern parts of Nashville and surrounding suburbs and rural areas.

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While they’re similar in supporting conservative policies, Johnston is taking aim at Ogles as a “do-nothing grandstander” who she argues is “mired in scandals.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump dances as he wraps up a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

But Ogles enjoys the support of former President Trump, the party’s 2024 Republican presidential nominee, as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Bill Hagerty.

Johnston has the backing of many establishment Republicans, including former Sens. Bill Frist and Bob Corker, and former Gov. Bill Haslam.

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in November’s general election.

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee speaks during Day 1 of the Republican National Convention, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 15, 2024.  (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a former House member who’s seeking a second six-year term in the Senate, is the clear favorite as she faces a GOP primary challenge from Tres Wittum, a former state Senate policy analyst who came in last in the 5th Congressional District primary two years ago that was won by Ogles.

There’s a crowded primary field for the Democratic Senate nomination.

There are also primaries for seats in the state Senate and House, where Republicans hold super majorities in the red-dominated state.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

The killing Wednesday of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh will likely derail urgent U.S.-led talks to stop the fighting in Gaza and open the door to a potentially ferocious response from Iran.

In an action widely blamed on Israel, Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not claimed responsibility, but few entities have the military capability to pull off what was apparently a precisely targeted lethal attack.

The timing of the assassination frustrated the Biden administration, which has invested enormous capital in cease-fire talks to bring at least a temporary end to the nearly 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington just last week. Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris separately hammered him on the vital importance of agreeing to a cease-fire.

For months, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been engaged in tense and arduous negotiations with Israel and Hamas on a deal that would stop the fighting and release the hostages still being held by Hamas.

The hostages were captured in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered the current conflict. Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The fighting has spurred a massive humanitarian crisis.

Haniyeh, who was based in exile in Qatar and headed the political wing of Hamas, was key in the cease-fire negotiations and the group’s main international interlocutor.

He was the Hamas figure who would sit with Qatari negotiators to receive the latest proposals and counterproposals from Israel, then relay them to the ultimate decision-maker, Yahya Sinwar, head of the Hamas military wing and believed to be in hiding in deep tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. Then Haniyeh would relay Sinwar’s response back to negotiators.

Both the Israeli side and Hamas have put up obstacles to impede a final agreement, negotiators say. Hamas has wanted agreement to a permanent cease-fire, while Israel has wanted to reserve the right to resume bombardments.

U.S. officials Wednesday were urgently trying to prevent talks from breaking down altogether. Though a short-term suspension seems all but certain, U.S. officials said they believe talks will eventually resume, especially because there are lower-level leaders in Hamas who want a cease-fire despite Sinwar’s resistance.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spent much of the day in brief but pointed phone calls with Arab allies, particularly the Qataris, in an effort to get talks back on track. The Qataris have not yet threatened to end their mediation role, but voiced displeasure over Haniyeh’s killing.

“Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatar’s Prime and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani said on the social media platform X. “Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”

Blinken said the U.S. had no role in or advance knowledge of the assassination.

Netanyahu, however, has long vowed to wipe out Hamas.

“Israel is trying to show its own people that it’s open season on Hamas leaders,” said Daniel Byman, a veteran researcher on the Middle East and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Pointing to the killing of senior people is one way to say ‘we are winning.’”

But experts say “winning” against Hamas is an elusive goal. And Hamas leaders quickly said Wednesday that no killings will stop its fight against Israel.

“Hamas and the resistance are following a clear strategy, that was laid through multiple institutions,” said senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya in a news conference after the assassination. “It shall not be erased either by martyrdom or the death of a leader or 10 leaders. Whoever will carry the flag after Commander Ismail Haniyeh will walk the same path.”

That the assassination took place in Tehran — hours after an inauguration ceremony with some 110 foreign delegates amid heightened security — infuriated Iranian officials.

“The criminal, terrorist Zionist regime martyred our dear guest in our territory and has caused our grief, but it has also prepared the ground for a severe punishment,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in response Wednesday.

“Following this bitter, tragic event which has taken place within the borders of the Islamic Republic, it is our duty to take revenge.”

Further exacerbating regional tensions was Israel’s drone strike Tuesday on a high-ranking Hezbollah commander in a residential building in Beirut that killed seven people — including two women and two children — and wounded 78, Lebanese officials said.

The attack, which left the building half destroyed in a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, may constitute a red line for Hezbollah. The group has threatened to bomb Israeli cities if Israel struck Lebanese cities.

The widening cross-border violence heightened fears that the Gaza conflict will ignite a broader Mideast war.

In Israel, reaction was mixed. While there was little outrage at the assassination of one of Hamas’ political leaders, many braced for the retaliatory fallout. There was particular anxiety among the hostages’ families who questioned Israel’s timing of the attack and feared another possible doorway to freedom for their relatives was now closed.

Longtime observers of Israeli politics blame Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for effectively boosting the profile of radical Hamas over the more moderate Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party that leads it — both of which, unlike Hamas, recognized Israel’s right to exist and advocate for two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side.

Eliminating Haniyeh put the more extremist Sinwar “more at the center of gravity,” said Sarah Parkinson, a political scientist and international studies professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“Assassinations can cause friction, disarray, competition [in the targeted group],” she said, but they can also serve as “a way of elevating more extreme adversaries.”

Wilkinson reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.