ATLANTA (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris told a cheering, boisterous, packed Atlanta arena on Tuesday that the next 98 days would be a fight, but they'd win come November, as she taunted Donald Trump for wavering on whether he'd show up for their upcoming debate.
“The momentum in this race is shifting," the likely nominee said. "And there are signs Donald Trump is feeling it."
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FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 9, 2024, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
The crowd responds as Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris admires the crowd suring a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Fulton County Chairman Rob Pitts, right, as she arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris talks to reporters after arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, left, and Fulton County Chairman Rob Pitts, right, as she arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 9, 2024, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
Little more than a week ago, Georgia appeared to be slipping out of the Democrats' reach: President Joe Biden's campaign pledged to concentrate more on holding the Midwestern "blue wall" states and indicated they might be willing to forsake “Sun Belt” battlegrounds. But now that Biden has bowed out of the race and Harris is the likely nominee, Democrats are expressing new hopes of an expanded electoral map.
In the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, Harris pulled off what has been a signature Trump event: A big, loud rally full of supporters cheering her name, as she mocked her rival and his running mate JD Vance as “just plain weird,” and derided their policies as backward, outdated and dangerous.
Harris mentioned Trump’s efforts to stop the passage of an immigration bill that had bipartisan support and would have been among the strongest border security in decades. She said she’d work to push the bill across the finish line. “I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed and I will sign it and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
Trump earlier said he'd debate Harris, but is now questioning the value of a meetup and saying he “probably” will debate her, but he “can also make a case for not doing it.”
Harris seized on it. “So he won't debate me, but he and his running mate have a lot to say about me,” she said. “And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird.”
"Well Donald," she said, addressing him head-on. “I do hope you'll reconsider. Meet me on the debate stage ... because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say, say it to my face.” Trump has suggested the Sept. 10 debate on ABC News should be moved to a different network, calling ABC “fake news.”
The roughly 8,000-capacity basketball arena at Georgia State University was filled to its rafters with voters waving signs, dancing to the Harris campaign soundtrack and a performance by Megan Thee Stallion. Such an atmosphere would not have been possible just 10 days ago, with the party reeling over whether the 81-year-old Biden would remain in the race after a dismal performance magnified concerns about his age and abilities and ultimately ended his campaign.
“This is like Barack Obama 2008 on steroids for me,” said Mildred Hobson Doss, a 59-year-old who came downtown from suburban Lilburn. “I would have voted for President Biden again. But we are ready.”
Harris' campaign argues her appeal to young people, working-age women and non-white voters has scrambled the dynamics in Georgia and other states that are demographically similar, from North Carolina to Nevada and Arizona.
In a strategy memo released after the president left the race, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who held the same role for Biden, reaffirmed the importance of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a trio of industrial states that have formed the traditional Democratic blue wall.
But she also argued that the vice president’s place atop the ticket “opens up additional persuadable voters” and described them as “disproportionately Black, Latino and under 30” in places like Georgia.
“The energy is infectious,” said Georgia Democratic Chairwoman Nikema Williams, a congresswoman from Atlanta. “My phone has been blowing up. People want to be part of this movement.”
Harris began Tuesday with her days as a prosecutor — setting up the contrast between the law and Trump's many legal problems and misdeeds. But she also aggressively defended the Biden administration's record and she'd work to pass voting rights legislation and work to restore reproductive rights stripped by the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“America has tried these failed policies before. And we are not going back. We're not going back,” she said, shaking her head no as the crowd cheered “we're not going back.”
Republicans, who still control Georgia’s state government, counter that Biden’s lagging popularity and concern over higher consumer prices and immigration will transfer to Harris in the historically conservative state.
But they concede that the landscape suddenly looks much closer to 2020 – when Biden won by about 0.25 percentage points — than when Trump was riding high after the Republican National Convention and surviving an assassination attempt.
“Trump was going to win Georgia. It was over,” said Republican consultant Brian Robinson. “The Democrats have a chance here for a reset.”
And Trump is not taking chances. Earlier Tuesday, the former president announced that he would come to Atlanta on Saturday for a rally in the same Georgia State arena.
Robinson said Harris still has plenty of liabilities, including the progressive positions she took in her failed 2020 primary campaign and her various rhetorical stumbles. But he said Harris so far in this campaign has been “in command,” and if that continues, “we have a new ballgame and she will be competitive in Georgia.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed Harris as “just as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden” and said the vice president would have to explain her support of Biden administration policies that “hurt working families in Georgia over the past four years.”
The campaign and Georgia Democratic officials have 24 offices across the state, including two added last weekend in metro Atlanta. Trump and the Republican National Committee opened their first Georgia offices only recently.
In a call with supporters after her speech, Harris thanked them for their work and noted early voting starts in some states in just 38 days. She hasn't yet formally seized the nomination, nor picked a running mate; both are expected soon.
“This is a sprint," she said. "And we know what we need to do to cross the finish line.”
The fast-growing, diversifying Atlanta suburbs and exurbs offer the most opportunity for swings, especially from GOP-leaning moderates disenchanted with Trump.
For Harris, that means depending on voters as varied as Michael Sleister, a white suburbanite, and Allen Smith, a Black man who lives not far from downtown Atlanta.
Sleister, who considers himself an independent, has lived in Forsyth County for 35 years. “I've voted Republican many times in my life,” he said, but not since the GOP took a rightward turn during President Barack Obama's administration.
"Now I see the Republican Party as representing a direct threat to my grandchildren," he said, adding that he sees Trump “as just a horrible person.”
Smith is a 41-year-old Atlanta native who has become a first-time campaign volunteer since Harris became the likely nominee.
“I was driving when I heard the news about President Biden endorsing her, and I started pounding my fist — I decided right then I would do whatever I could to help her get elected,” Smith said.
Long reported from Washington. Follow the AP's coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
The crowd responds as Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris admires the crowd suring a campaign rally, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and Fulton County Chairman Rob Pitts, right, as she arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris talks to reporters after arriving at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, left, and Fulton County Chairman Rob Pitts, right, as she arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, where she will be attending a campaign rally. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Jan. 9, 2024, in Atlanta. With President Joe Biden having bowed out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, their party is suddenly eyeing an expanding map, betting that a new burst of energy and fundraising surge has helped make Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, a toss-up again. Harris is planning a show of political force on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta, the latest example of just how much the presidential contest against Republican former President Donald Trump has changed. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian rescuers retrieved two more bodies after they resumed their search Wednesday for people missing after floods and landslides on Indonesia’s main island of Java, bringing the death toll to 19.
Waters from flooded rivers tore through nine villages in Pekalongan regency of Central Java province and landslides tumbled onto mountainside hamlets after the torrential rains Monday.
Videos and photos released by National Search and Rescue Agency showed workers digging desperately in villages where roads and green-terraced rice fields were transformed into murky brown mud and villages were covered by thick mud, rocks and uprooted trees.
National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said flooding triggered a landslide that buried two houses and a cafe in the Petungkriyono resort area. The disasters all together destroyed 25 houses, a dam and three main bridges connecting villages in Pekalongan. At least 13 people injured and nearly 300 people were forced to flee to temporary government shelters.
The search and rescue operation that was hampered by bad weather, mudslides and rugged terrain was halted Tuesday afternoon due to heavy rain and thick fog that made devastated areas along the rivers dangerous to rescuers.
On Wednesday, they searched in rivers and the rubble of villages for bodies and, whenever possible, survivors in worst-hit Kasimpar village, said Budiono, who heads a local rescue office.
Scores of rescue personnel recovered two mud-caked bodies as they searched a Petungkriyono area where tons of mud and rocks buried two houses and a café. Rescuers are still searching for seven people reported missing.
Landslides and floods were also reported in many other provinces, Muhari said. On Monday, a landslide hit five houses in Denpasar on the tourist island of Bali, killing four people and leaving one missing.
Heavy seasonal rain from about October to March frequently causes flooding and landslides in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile floodplains.
The British Geological Survey defines a landslide as a mass movement of material, such as rock, earth, or debris moving down a slope. Landslides can happen suddenly or slowly and can be caused by rain, erosion, or changes to the slope’s material.
Rain adds weight to the slope, making it more unstable. The slope’s steepness or erosion at the base can make landslides more likely. They can be caused by the movement of nearby bodies of water or vibrations from earthquakes, mining or traffic. The types and sizes of the rocks and soils can determine how much water land can absorb before weakening and collapsing.
Studies have found that landslides could become more frequent as climate change increases rainfall.
Associated Press writer Isabella O’Malley in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
People affected by a flash flood walk on a muddy road in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Janaki DM)
People examine the damage at an area affected by a landslide following a flash flood in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Janaki DM)
Workers clear a road cut off by a landslide following a flash flood in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Janaki DM)
The wreckage of a car is stuck in the mud at an area affected by a landslide following a flash flood in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Janaki DM)
In this photo released by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), rescuers carry the body of a victim of flash flood in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (BNPB via AP)
In this photo released by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), rescuers carry the body of a victim of flash flood in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (BNPB via AP)
In this undated photo released by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, rescuers search for the victims of flash flood which triggered a landslide, in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia. (BNPB via AP)
In this undated photo released by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, rescuers carry the body of a victim of flash flood which triggered a landslide, in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia. (BNPB via AP)