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Ady Barkan on Health Care System’s ‘Tragic Consequences’

Ady Barkan, a progressive activist who became a champion for single-payer health care after receiving a diagnosis of A.L.S. in 2016, spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Hello, America. My name is Ady Barkan, and I am speaking to you through this computer voice because I have been paralyzed by a mysterious illness called A.L.S. Like so many of you, I have experienced the ways our health care system is fundamentally broken: enormous costs, denied claims, dehumanizing treatment when we are most in need. Since my shocking diagnosis, I have traveled the country meeting countless patients like me, demanding more of our representatives in our democracy. Today we are witnessing the tragic consequences of our failing health care system. In the midst of a pandemic, nearly 100 million Americans do not have sufficient health insurance, and even good insurance does not cover essential needs like long term care. Our loved ones are dying in unsafe nursing homes, our nurses are overwhelmed and unprotected, and our essential workers are treated as dispensable. We live in the richest country in history, and yet we do not guarantee this most basic human right. Everyone living in America should get the health care they need, regardless of their employment status or ability to pay. Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people’s health insurance. With the existential threat of another four years of this president, we all have a profound obligation to act — not only to vote, but to make sure that our friends, family and neighbors vote as well. We must elect Joe Biden. Each of us must be a hero for our communities, for our country. And then, with a compassionate and intelligent president, we must act together and put on his desk a bill that guarantees us all the health care we deserve.

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Ady Barkan, a progressive activist who became a champion for single-payer health care after receiving a diagnosis of A.L.S. in 2016, spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Amid a pandemic that has highlighted the importance of medical care even as millions of Americans who lost their jobs also lost their insurance, some of the most emotionally resonant moments of the second night of the Democratic convention came in discussions of health care.

It is an issue that Joseph R. Biden Jr. has sought to lay claim to, by invoking both his fight alongside President Barack Obama to pass the Affordable Care Act and his own history dealing with suffering and loss.

One segment showed the candidate listening as supporters described their ordeals in the health care system.

The father of a 4-year-old boy in Arizona talked about how his son’s heart transplant was covered by the Affordable Care Act. A former longtime Republican voter, Jeff Jeans, described putting off seeing a doctor for his laryngitis because he was uninsured, only to find out that he had cancer. He said that he signed up for coverage under the act and “that same day, they started my chemo and radiation, and it saved my life.”

A video reminded viewers that Mr. Biden “was sworn into the Senate next to a hospital bed” after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash and his two sons were injured, and that in 2015 he lost his older son Beau to brain cancer.

“I remember thinking as Beau lay dying in bed, ” Mr. Biden said in a video, “and thinking to myself, ‘What in God’s name would I do if the doctor said I’m sorry, you’ve outrun your insurance, you’ve reached your cap, suffer the last few months of your life on your own.’”

Another clip spotlighted Ady Barkan, the well-known progressive activist who suffers from A.L.S. and is a supporter of “Medicare for all,” which Mr. Biden does not support.

Mr. Barkan, whose disease now requires him to speak through a computerized voice, played up some of the common ground he has with Mr. Biden: their opposition to President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the A.C.A.

“Even during this terrible crisis, Donald Trump and Republican politicians are trying to take away millions of people’s health insurance,” Mr. Barkan said.

Credit…Erin Scott for The New York Times

Night 2 of the Democratic National Convention, according to Fox News hosts and guests, was either the most boring infomercial of all time or a reboot of the classic movie “Weekend at Bernie’s,” with Joseph R. Biden Jr. figuratively assuming the role of the dead man who is used as a prop throughout the movie.

“They’ve got a dead guy that they roll out there, and it’s a little bit like Joe Biden,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who was a guest on the host Sean Hannity’s show. “He’s hiding in his basement, and they’re going to roll him out to accept the nomination and give one speech from a teleprompter. And then they’re going to roll him back to the basement.”

A theme of the night on Fox was the state of Mr. Biden’s health, a common line of attack for conservatives. Mr. Hannity said Mr. Biden looked frail and weak. Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under President George W. Bush, said the country could not have a “president who takes an hour and a half to watch ‘60 Minutes.’”

Fox News viewers did not see much of the convention itself. Mr. Hannity cut away from his programming only to show the brief remarks of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and a few moments from Bill Clinton and Senator Chuck Schumer.

When the Fox News desk took over coverage at 10 p.m., a panel of reporters and pundits dominated the hour while the nominating roll call of states took place. Only speeches by John Kerry, Colin Powell and Jill Biden were carried live on the network.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson spent the first 20 minutes of his show on Tuesday night slamming the Democratic Party and Monday’s convention speakers, including Michelle Obama.

“What you just heard was a total and complete crock,” he said after running a clip from Mrs. Obama about the murders of unarmed Black men by the police.

Other topics covered included a violent confrontation between protesters in Portland, Ore., and a white man, and the explicit lyrics in a song by Cardi B.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is “presumptive” no more.

The Democratic National Convention reached the halfway point after a pretaped rendition of the traditional delegate roll call that put Mr. Biden over the 1,991-vote threshold for official nomination.

With his paperwork now complete, the convention moves on to the big-name moments that will probably define it. Wednesday’s prime-time lineup is the closest the event has yet come to being must-see TV.

The night kicks off with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then comes Hillary Clinton’s much-anticipated return to the party’s center stage.

The final hour begins with the vice-presidential acceptance speech by Senator Kamala Harris. It concludes with former President Barack Obama.

Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The convention will air tonight from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. Kerry Washington is the M.C. There are several ways to watch:

  • The Times will stream the full convention, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches. You can download our iOS or Android app and turn on notifications to be alerted when our live analysis starts.

  • The official livestream will be here. It will also be available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch.

  • ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will air the convention from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night. C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and PBS will cover the full two hours each night.

  • Streams will be available on Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV by searching “Democratic National Convention” or “2020 DNC,” and on Amazon Prime Video by searching “DNC.”

  • The convention will air on AT&T U-verse (Channels 212 and 1212) and AT&T DirectTV (Channel 201). It will also air on Comcast Xfinity Flex and Comcast X1 (say “DNC” into your voice remote).

  • You can watch on a PlayStation 4 or PSVR through the Littlstar app.

  • If you have an Alexa device, you can say “Alexa, play the Democratic National Convention.”

Tonight’s speakers:

  • Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader

  • Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, the nominal home of the convention

  • Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona

  • Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico

  • Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee and former secretary of state

  • Senator Kamala Harris of California, Mr. Biden’s running mate

  • Former President Barack Obama

Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York Times

Hillary Clinton, whose presidential candidacy in 2016 sent Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the sidelines, spent much of the 2020 primaries telling friends that her longtime ally and onetime rival was the only contender who could defeat President Trump, according to people close to both.

But she also saw Kamala Harris as a possible successor of sorts, a next-generation leader with the toughness to build on Mrs. Clinton’s legacy.

So Mrs. Clinton is, by all accounts, reassured by the Biden-Harris ticket. But her return to center stage at the convention on Wednesday night, four years after becoming the first woman to win the nomination of a major party, is bittersweet.

Had things turned out differently, Mrs. Clinton would be preparing her second acceptance speech. Instead, she has spent the last several days putting the finishing touches on a speech aimed at making a case for Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.

It’s a familiar position for Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state. For decades, she spoke on behalf of her husband, Bill, then to help elect Barack Obama. Over her many years at the center of the Democratic Party, she campaigned for hundreds of federal, state and local candidates.

Yet this moment is uniquely emotional for Mrs. Clinton and the tens of millions who propelled her to a popular-vote majority of nearly three million in 2016, but a loss in the Electoral College. It is both a reminder of a job some allies still maintain was unfairly taken from Mrs. Clinton and the wave of feminist activism sparked by her loss.

Credit…Maria Alejandra Cardona for The New York Times

To Krystina François, a Haitian-American executive director of a Miami nonprofit organization, Kamala Harris is a lot like her, a first-generation daughter of immigrants pursuing the American dream.

To Nicole Sanchez, a Chicana consultant in Berkeley, Calif., Ms. Harris is an ambitious woman who listened to the same 1990s hip-hop that she did growing up.

And to Carol Kim, an Asian-American union organizer in San Diego, Ms. Harris is the first woman on a national stage whom she can point to and say to her daughter, “She is one of us.”

In Ms. Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and California senator, each of the women said they saw someone familiar. And as Ms. Harris, whose parents immigrated from Jamaica and India, reaches the highest echelons of American politics, dozens of women of color said they also view her success as their own.

“How could you not see this as a victory?” Afrah Hamin, 66, said of the announcement last week by Joseph R. Biden Jr. that he had chosen Ms. Harris as his running mate.

In interviews with dozens of Black, Latina and Asian-American women, many said that in Ms. Harris’s life, they recognized both her triumphs and the challenges that come with living in a country wrestling with its history of discrimination.

“It’s the twin devils of racism and sexism,” said Ms. Sanchez, 47, who lives near Ms. Harris’s childhood school. “We are told our whole lives to educate ourselves and work hard — God forbid it actually works, we get told we’re asking for too much.”

Credit…Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images

MIAMI — Representative Ross Spano narrowly lost his Republican primary on Tuesday, becoming the highest-profile Florida incumbent to lose his seat this year.

Mr. Spano, an embattled freshman, lost by two percentage points to Commissioner Scott Franklin of Lakeland in a Republican-leaning district that sprawls across the northeastern Tampa suburbs.

Mr. Spano, who had been dogged by investigations into campaign finance violations stemming from his 2018 campaign, becomes the eighth House incumbent — five Republicans and three Democrats — to lose a primary this year.

Last year, Mr. Spano admitted misreporting over $100,000 in contributions that had actually come from friends as personal funds.

Other Florida results from last night:

  • In the Republican primary in President Trump’s home district, Laura Loomer, a self-described anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, beat Christian Acosta, a nuclear engineer.

    Ms. Loomer, 27, a former contributor to the right-wing site Infowars who has called herself “a #ProudIslamophobe” and who was kicked off Twitter in 2018 for violating hate-speech rules, will take on Representative Lois Frankel, a four-term Democrat. Ms. Frankel is widely expected to win.

    Mr. Trump, who votes from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, congratulated Ms. Loomer on Twitter: “Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!”

  • Kat Cammack, the former campaign manager of Representative Ted Yoho, won a 10-way Republican primary in a race to replace him in his safely red district. Mr. Yoho, who made headlines last month for insulting Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Capitol steps, was not seeking re-election.

  • In the Democratic primary in Mr. Spano’s district, Alan Cohn, a former TV news reporter, beat State Representative Adam Hattersley.

  • And Sybrina Fulton, who became an activist against gun violence after the death of her son Trayvon Martin, lost in a close race for a seat on the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners to Oliver Gilbert, the mayor of Miami Gardens.

In a Republican Senate primary in Wyoming, Cynthia Lummins, a former representative, won and is all but certain to replace Senator Michael B. Enzi, who is retiring.

Credit…Democratic National Convention, via Getty Images

As Democrats formally anointed Joseph R. Biden Jr. as their standard-bearer against President Trump, they simultaneously showcased the diversity of their coalition and exposed a generational gulf that increasingly defines the party.

Denied the chance to assemble in Milwaukee, Democratic activists and dignitaries cast their votes from all 50 states, American territories and the District of Columbia, offering a grand mosaic of personal identities and experiences.

The second night of the Democratic National Convention straddled themes of national security, presidential accountability and continuity between the past and future party leaders. Like Monday’s opening night, it took the form of a kind of political variety show, skipping between recorded tributes from political luminaries, personal testimonials from activists and voters, and various forms of music and entertainment.

Two tributes by Republicans carried particular symbolic weight for a Democratic candidate seeking to appeal across party lines: Colin Powell, the retired general and former secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, delivered a message of support for Mr. Biden, whom he had previously endorsed. And Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, appeared in a video about Mr. Biden’s relationship with her husband.

By voting to nominate Mr. Biden, Democrats delivered to the former vice president a prize he has pursued intermittently since before the night’s most prominent young speaker, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was born. Two previous presidential campaigns ended in abrupt defeat: A plagiarism scandal extinguished his hopes in 1988, and his next effort in 2008 fizzled against the higher-wattage candidacies of Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

When Mr. Biden opted not to run for president in 2016, it was widely assumed that his dream of the Oval Office was finished. Instead, his nomination represents the apex — so far — of a slow upward climb by a man who entered the Senate in 1972 at the age of 30 as a grieving single father. No other presidential candidate in modern times has endured such a long interval between assuming a first major office and being nominated for the presidency.

Credit…Democratic National Convention, via Getty Images

The Tuesday night speaking lineup for the Democratic convention was always intended as a muscular contrast on foreign policy and diplomatic integrity, presented to viewers under the evening’s unsubtle theme: “Leadership Matters.”

There were two former commanders in chief, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs turned chief diplomat: Colin Powell. There was Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy attorney general.

John Kerry, the former secretary of state who negotiated the Iran deal that Mr. Trump decimated, said that “America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at.”

Earlier in the day, he sent a fund-raising email saying that Mr. Biden could “begin the hard work of putting back together the pieces of what Donald Trump has smashed apart.”

But putting back the pieces is probably not a feasible option.

The relationship with China has turned poisonous. Mr. Biden’s party has become more hawkish on dealing with Moscow than Republicans who once cast themselves as the party of national security. North Korea has turned a project to build a few bombs into an arsenal that rivals India’s and Pakistan’s, and reconstituting the Iran deal, if that is even possible, is unlikely to change the fundamental tensions dividing the Middle East.

Mr. Biden has offered few detailed policy plans to address how he would tackle this changed world. Instead, the message of the virtual convention came down to this: Trust a man who ran the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who participated in the decisions to take out Osama bin Laden and Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and who would arrive at the White House with an experienced team.

Mr. Trump and his supporters say that Mr. Biden stands for the establishment foreign policy that the current administration took office to destroy.

Mr. Biden, in turn, is arguing that Mr. Trump has allowed adversaries to undercut American interests, coddling strongmen, heartening the Russians and cutting deals for his friends.

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who has largely been credited with rejuvenating former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s struggling presidential campaign in February, said on Wednesday that the election stakes this year were comparable to those in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was on the ballot.

Mr. Clyburn, the House majority whip, made the remarks during a virtual breakfast hosted by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party on Zoom.

He urged the state’s convention delegation to work tirelessly to elect Mr. Biden and said that they should dedicate their efforts in memory of his longtime friend and colleague, Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader who died last month.

“He understood what the consequence could be if we do not have a successful election this year,” Mr. Clyburn said.

Mr. Clyburn provided a momentum-changing endorsement to Mr. Biden in late February in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, which many party insiders regarded as a moment of reckoning for Mr. Biden after his disappointing results in early nominating contests.

Mr. Biden carried South Carolina overwhelmingly, propelling him to victory in a majority of Super Tuesday states and ultimately to clinching the nomination.

Mr. Clyburn said on Wednesday that the country was under the threat of turning back the clock and alluded to President Trump’s opposition to mail-in voting.

“We see what they’re attempting to do to suppress the vote,” he said.

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, called on the Postal Service board of governors to release information about the selection process that led to Louis DeJoy’s becoming postmaster general in May, charging that the board had repeatedly denied lawmakers access to the information.

The agency has blocked lawmakers from questioning Russell Reynolds, the firm involved in the selection of Mr. DeJoy, by refusing to release the firm from a nondisclosure agreement, Mr. Schumer said on Wednesday.

Mr. Schumer said his office had sought a briefing from Kimberly Archer, a leader of the firm’s global nonprofit practice, and other information from the firm so “Congress could satisfy its oversight obligations to better understand the selection of Mr. DeJoy.”

In July, the board had deemed much of the information sought by lawmakers to be confidential, Mr. Schumer said.

“This administration has repeatedly pointed to the role of Russell Reynolds to defend the selection of a Republican megadonor with no prior postal experience as postmaster general while at the same time blocking the ability of Congress to obtain briefings from the firm and concealing the role of Secretary Mnuchin and the White House in its search process,” Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the board of governors, on Wednesday.

President Trump again complained about the timing of congressional oversight hearings on Twitter. “Why are Republicans allowing the Democrats to have ridiculous Post Office hearings on Saturday & Monday, just before and during our Convention,” he wrote. “Let them hold them NOW (during their Convention) or after our Convention is over.”

“Always playing right into their hands!” Mr. Trump added, singling out Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.

Senate Republicans scheduled a hearing on Friday for Mr. DeJoy to appear and face questions. But it was House Democrats who scheduled a vote — not a hearing — on Saturday on legislation that would provide the Postal Service with additional aid and rescind Mr. DeJoy’s changes, as well as a hearing on Monday.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, challenged Amy McGrath, his Democratic opponent, to a single Lincoln-Douglas-style debate in the coming weeks as he seeks to hold off her attempt to unseat him in one of the most closely watched Senate races this fall.

“This would be a debate just between the two of us,” Mr. McConnell wrote in a letter to Ms. McGrath on Wednesday. “No notes at the table, no props and no audience. Kentuckians deserve clear answers from each of us on the issues that matter most, and this is the best format to deliver those answers.”

Mr. McConnell noted that the session would have to be socially distanced and suggested the candidates agree on a neutral timekeeper and a local television station to broadcast the debate. But the terms — no moderator asking the candidates questions and just a single meeting — appeared conceived to give advantage to Mr. McConnell, a seasoned senator who has represented his state since 1985.

Most major campaign debates in recent years feature moderators — usually journalists — who ask a rapid-fire series of questions on a wide range of topics and allow opportunities for only brief rebuttals.

Inspired by a series of debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas as the two men sought a United States Senate seat representing Illinois, the format suggested by Mr. McConnell leaves it to the candidates to more freely lay out their visions for policy and governing and then engage the arguments of their opponent more directly and at length.

Ms. McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who narrowly lost a Kentucky congressional seat in 2018, did not immediately reply to his offer.

She faces long odds in trying to defeat Mr. McConnell, one of the most powerful Republicans in the country in a state Mr. Trump won by about 30 points in 2016. But Democrats have poured tens of millions of dollars into her campaign hoping to at least make the majority leader sweat, and public polling has showed the race may be tighter than previous challenges to Mr. McConnell.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

YUMA, Ariz. — President Trump on Tuesday accused Joseph R. Biden Jr. of seeking to throw open the United States’ borders to criminals and disease, using the backdrop of a border city to stoke fears of immigrants as Democrats prepared for the second day of the party’s nominating convention.

Speaking at an airport hangar, Mr. Trump boasted about his own efforts to sharply limit immigration during his time in office, claiming to have made the country safer by blocking asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants seeking to live and work in the United States.

The president reprised the darkest language of his 2016 campaign, warning that should Mr. Biden win the presidency, the Trump-era restrictions on foreigners would be abandoned in favor of policies that he said would allow “aliens with criminal records” to roam free across the country, threatening violence and stealing jobs from Americans.

“We’re talking about abolishing ICE. We’re talking about abolishing prisons,” Mr. Trump said to an enthusiastic but small crowd, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Biden’s campaign has turned into a cult for open border and other zealots.”

Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant stance helped him win the election in 2016 and has been at the core of his presidency. He has denied entry to foreigners seeking protection from persecution, tried to end a program shielding from deportation young people brought to the United States illegally as children and cut back on legal immigration programs.

Credit…Democratic National Convention, via Getty Images

The spouse of a political candidate often plays a crucial role in highlighting aspects of a candidate’s life that resonate with voters on a personal level.

Dr. Jill Biden reinforced her husband’s folksiness and relatability, not only in the substance of her remarks, but through her fashion choices, according to The Times’s chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman.

Dr. Biden, she wrote, “will not use fashion as a shield against the world. She will not gird herself in glamour, or arm herself with gilded European brand names. She is certainly not a trophy sitting on a shelf.”

As the Democratic Party’s experiment in remote conventioning continued with Day 2 on Tuesday, Dr. Jill Biden brought the effort to present her husband, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as the anti-Trump in character and conviction to a personal close, and played her part in the drama. After all, if he is the presidential alternative, so she, too, is the current first lady’s.

First lady is an odd role, as many historians have pointed out: unelected, yet also crucial to fleshing out the humanity of a president, and the parts of a candidate that resonate with voters. That’s why the spouse gets a keynote during the convention, and also why traditionally so much attention paid to what she wears: why, for example, her clothes can end up in a museum, and why the first lady is sometimes treated like the first influencer. (Why, when it comes time for a first man, his clothes will matter, too.)

The first spouse is a key part of the image-making.

A House candidate in Connecticut who was arrested on domestic violence charges on the day before last week’s Republican primary — allegations that party leaders first learned of in the spring but did not report to the authorities — lost a recount by 81 votes, state election officials said on Wednesday.

The candidate, Thomas Gilmer, who Republicans endorsed in the spring, had been leading his opponent, Justin Anderson, by 17 votes before this week’s recount in the Second Congressional District.

Credit…Lt. Don Crabtree/Wethersfield Police Department, via Associated Press

But Mr. Gilmer’s lead evaporated when local officials in Eastern Connecticut conducted the recount, which was automatically triggered because the margin was less than one-half of 1 percent.

Mr. Gilmer was charged last Monday with strangulation and unlawful restraint in connection with a “possible domestic assault,” in 2017, the police in Wethersfield, a Hartford suburb, said in a statement. The altercation was recorded in a video that showed Mr. Gilmer punching a former girlfriend in the face and using his shirt to put her in a chokehold, several media outlets in the state reported, citing an arrest warrant affidavit. The video had been sent to Mr. Mr. Anderson, Mr. Gilmer’s opponent.

Mr. Gilmer announced in a statement last week that he was suspending his campaign, but state election officials said that he did not formally withdraw from the race.

His arrest has caused turmoil within the Connecticut Republican Party, which endorsed him in the spring and would have been stuck with him as its nominee had he won the recount. It has also raised questions about the party’s vetting of candidates, and led to a call by the top Republican female office holder in the state legislature for the party chairman to step down.

Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Elizabeth Warren’s appearance tonight comes a week after Wall Street sighed in relief when Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate instead of the longtime critic of the financial industry. But there’s a catch, according to today’s DealBook newsletter.

Ms. Warren’s ability to influence a Biden administration may be stronger now than if she were to become vice president, where she would be more directly limited by the wants of her boss. And while progressive Democrats have rallied behind Ms. Harris, they’ll likely expect something in return. That may mean giving Ms. Warren a spot in the administration, making her speech tonight a showcase — or a tryout, of sorts — of the ideas and approach that she would promote during a Biden presidency.

An appointment to Treasury secretary would be a natural fit for the senator, who has made financial regulation a priority (although she is seen as a long shot). If named to the role, Ms. Warren would emphasize Main Street over Wall Street, push for higher taxes on the wealthy and promote spending over fiscal restraint, experts say.

Even if she isn’t nominated for the role, Mr. Biden would probably turn to her for advice, especially on priorities for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency she helped create. “She understands financial regulation as a tool to bring about better outcomes,” said Sarah Bloom Raskin, a law professor at Duke and a former deputy secretary at the Treasury Department.

There are other jobs a Biden administration could offer her, like attorney general, where she would oversee investigations into the market power of big technology companies, or a bespoke position like a regulatory czar. But some would prefer not to give up Ms. Warren’s seat in the Senate, depending on the balance of power in the chamber. But before any of these decisions can be made, of course, there’s the small matter of whether Mr. Biden can win the election in November.

Credit…Randall Hill/Reuters

Kanye West’s petition to be placed on the presidential ballot in Wisconsin was filed too late and should be denied, the staff of the Wisconsin Elections Commission said in a memo filed Tuesday evening.

The agency’s staff found that the lawyer for Mr. West and his running mate, Michelle Tidball, arrived in the agency’s offices too late on Aug. 4, the last day to file, and missed the 5 p.m. deadline by minutes.

“Commission staff recommends that the Commission find that the nomination papers submitted by Mr. West and Ms. Tidball were not filed timely,” the memo said. It recommended that the pair’s “names should not appear on the November General Election ballot as Independent candidates for President and Vice-President.”

The memo, posted on the commission’s website, was first reported Tuesday night by The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Mr. West’s candidacy and efforts to be placed on the ballot in several states is backed by Republican operatives and has been viewed as an attempt to chisel votes away from the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

In a state like Wisconsin, where elections turn on razor-thin margins, Mr. West’s candidacy is perceived as enough of a threat that the former first lady Michelle Obama appeared to refer to it in her speech at the Democratic convention Monday: “This is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning.”

The question of whether Mr. West will appear on the ballot now goes to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which comprises three Republicans and three Democrats. It is expected to meet on Thursday.

So far, Mr. West is on the ballot in only three states — Colorado, Oklahoma and Vermont.

A group of suburban women has begun a nationwide campaign that seeks to send 100,000 copies of a critical letter to Mr. Trump.

The group, which calls itself Suburban Women Against Trump, or SWAT, criticized Mr. Trump in a letter over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his campaign pitch to women voters.

“You consistently underestimate our intellect and instead try to pander to the basest instincts of humanity by planting seeds of fear and distrust,” the letter said. “This is a dirty tactic and not indicative of a democratic leader.”

In the two weeks since the group’s creation, it has gained more than 4,000 members in more than 30 states, according to organizers.

“Donald Trump has failed to lead at a time when our country is facing dire economic and public health challenges,” Dita Bhargava, one of the group’s leaders, said.

Suburban women are widely regarded as a pivotal voting bloc for November. Mr. Trump has tried to chip away at former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s commanding polling lead among women.

In an attempt to stir up racist fears about affordable housing and the people who live in it, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter last month that he would protect “people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream.”

Last week, Mr. Trump doubled down, writing on Twitter that “the ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me” because “they want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood.”

In addition to the letter campaign, the group is planning a virtual march on Washington.



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