Good morning. Kamala Harris has picked former teacher, military vet and Midwestern progressive Tim Walz to be her running mate – more on that below, along with back-to-back hammer throw golds and far-right riots in Britain. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Debris from the B.C. landslide raises concerns for the fate of salmon runs in the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers
- Hamas names Yahya Sinwar its political leader, after Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran last week
- Ottawa signals tougher rules for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program
Kamala Harris with brand-new running mate Tim Walz yesterday.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
U.S. Election
Take this Walz
The timeline: short. The stakes: high. The bench of Midwestern white dudes angling for a spot on the Democratic ticket: pretty deep! But in the end, Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate, appearing together before a fired-up crowd in Philadelphia last night. While Walz may not have had the national profile of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, he did almost single-handedly transform his party’s election messaging, shifting attacks on Republicans from “dire threat to democracy” to just plain “weird.”
In her social-media post on Walz’s selection, Harris highlighted his working-class bona fides. He grew up in rural Nebraska, graduating high school in a class of 24, half of whom were his cousins. (Finding someone to date, he said, was “kind of a problem.”) His family leaned on Social Security cheques after Walz’s dad died of cancer. He joined the Army National Guard at 17, used his GI Bill benefits for college and became a public school teacher, where he served as both the football coach and the adviser for his school’s first gay-straight alliance. In a line that will no doubt get recycled as he separates himself from his GOP counterpart, J.D. Vance, Walz has said that he knows “the golden rule that makes small towns work,” and that rule is “mind your own damn business.”
What he’s done
Walz got his political start in 2006 as a red-district Democrat, winning an upset victory in a rural congressional seat with a campaign staffed mostly by former students. Over six terms in the House of Representatives, Walz came to be seen as a moderate lawmaker, a reputation he used to fuel his 2018 run for Minnesota governor.
A dressed-down Walz at a Harris rally last month.Caroline Yang/The New York Times News Service
He spent his first four years navigating a fractured legislature, pandemic restrictions and the fallout from the murder of George Floyd, when riots broke out across Minneapolis and Walz did not immediately deploy the National Guard. (Expect to hear a lot about that from Republicans.) In 2022, Minnesotans sent Walz back to the Capitol alongside a Democratic-controlled state congress, which he’s since used to push through a raft of progressive policies. (Expect Republicans to hammer that, too.)
Among those policies: Walz enshrined the right to abortion, enacted new gun-control laws, provided free meals to all public-school students, created a paid family and medical leave program, legalized recreational marijuana, protected access to gender-affirming health care, restored voting rights for felons on probation and invested $1-billion in affordable housing. “Minnesota is showing the country you don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz said last year. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
What he brings
Actually, let’s start with what Walz doesn’t bring: the electoral votes of a battleground state. Unlike toss-ups such as Pennsylvania (home of running-mate runner-up Josh Shapiro) and Arizona (where senator and VP short-lister Mark Kelly lives), Minnesota has a 48-year streak of voting for Democratic presidential candidates – it even went for native son Walter Mondale back in 1984. And Walz won’t exactly temper the Republican attack line that Harris is a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.” In fact, just moments after yesterday’s VP announcement, Donald Trump’s campaign insisted that “the Harris-Walz California dream is every American’s nightmare.”
Still, Walz’s folksy Midwestern-dad vibe – on abundant display in his cheerful media blitz – could confound GOP efforts to paint him as a coastal elite. He shoots pheasants, sculpts school buses out of butter and spent 24 years in the National Guard. He and his wife, Gwen, also conceived their two children through in vitro fertilization, so he can speak personally about protections for reproductive rights. (“I think old white men need to learn how to talk about this a little more,” he told CNN.) But for a party that’s positioned the other side as a bunch of oddballs, perhaps Walz’s main benefit to Democrats is that he comes off as super normal. “Not weird” isn’t necessarily the highest bar for a VP candidate, but it’s one Trump might be wishing his own running mate could clear.
Paris 2024
‘I heard my coach screaming from the stands, and looked over and saw my family just losing their minds.’
Camryn Rogers after her golden hammer throw.Al Bello/Getty Images
World-champion hammer thrower Camryn Rogers is now an Olympic gold medalist – and the first Canadian woman to stand on the podium in the sport. Defending silver medallist Moh Ahmed tripped over the leg of a runner in his qualifying heat and will miss the 5000-metre final. The CEO of Athletics Canada says the organization learned of the allegations against Rana Reider, Andre De Grasse’s coach, over the weekend; De Grasse runs in the 200-metre semi-finals this afternoon. Athletes are pretty much done talking about the Seine’s pollution; Canadian men are just getting started in the pool. And, finally, here are a bunch of really lovely shots from The Globe’s photographer in Paris, Siegfried Modola. For all our Olympics coverage, go to tgam.ca/olympics-daily.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: The federal government said it ended a $4-billion program to help small businesses with digital upgrades because it had been such a success. Documents show it was actually a casualty of budget cuts.
Abroad: After a deadly stabbing attack in northwest England and a xenophobia-fuelled disinformation campaign, far-right riots have erupted across Britain, with more than 400 arrests so far.
Hanging up: Saskatchewan students from kindergarten through Grade 12 will have to ditch their cellphones in class this September, as the province becomes the latest to ban usage in schools.
Boning up: Archeologists in Indonesia just found an incredibly tiny, 700,000-year-old fossilized arm bone – and it might unlock the mysteries of the toddler-sized “Hobbit” species.