Friday Briefing: A Defining Harris Interview

U.S. ELECTION 2024

The presidential election is less than 70 days away. This is what we’re watching.

The Harris campaign’s defining interview with CNN

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, sat for the first major television interview of their campaign. It’s a critical opportunity for them to define their campaign, and will be broadcast on CNN at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Here’s how to watch.

Harris has taken few questions from reporters since President Biden ended his campaign. Astead Herndon, a Times political correspondent, explained the challenges of interviewing her and described his conversation with her last year as “arduous.”

“She didn’t break eye contact,” he told the On Politics newsletter. “It was intense. You feel on trial.”

In other campaign news: Donald Trump reposted an image on his social media platform that implied that Harris had traded sexual favors to help her political career. It was the second time over the past two weeks that Trump shared content making sexually oriented attacks against his opponent.

Israel agreed to short pauses for polio vaccinations

Starting this weekend, Israel will pause Gaza military operations in a staggered schedule so health workers can give polio vaccinations to about 640,000 children under the age of 10, U.N. officials said.

Israel made it clear that this was not the first step to a cease-fire, and that the pauses would be only for several hours at a time and in specific areas. A W.H.O. representative said that it was “critical” that 90 percent of Gaza’s children be immunized “to stop the outbreak.”

Background: Gaza’s first case of polio in 25 years was confirmed by the enclave’s health ministry earlier this month. Type 2 polio was eradicated in most parts of the world in the 1990s, but aid officials have said that severely unsanitary conditions have created an environment in which even rare diseases can spread.

West Bank: Israel continued its raid in the occupied territory for a second day as the death toll rose to 17. Among those killed was a young commander of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whom The Times interviewed in July.

It was the first meeting in years between a senior American official and a vice chair of the commission, and a sign that the two countries are communicating at senior levels. While it was an opportunity to reassure the world that they were working to lower the risk of conflict, it was clear that they were still fundamentally divided on strategic issues.

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Asian men are claiming stronger, sexier roles onscreen

Western pop culture has limited Asian American men to stereotypical, emasculating roles. But recently, many actors, writers and directors have pushed for more nuanced representation and created hunks and heroes who get the girl (or the guy) and save the day. Read more here.

My colleague Matt Stevens, who wrote the article above, talked to Times Insider about how it came together.

“I spoke to almost two dozen Asian Americans: mostly actors, writers and directors, but also scholars, historians and everyday people,” he said. “I needed to understand how laws and immigration policy — and especially pop culture — had shaped America’s view of Asian men. And I was interested in how the years of unflattering Hollywood portrayals made Asian and Asian American men feel.”