QUESTION AND ANSWER: Vice President Kamala Harris both answered and dodged questions about her policy shifts in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash last night. It was a joint interview with her running mate, Tim Walz.

  Both showed an ability to speak clearly without fumbling or running on while also showing a professional ability to evade.

  Harris said she no longer wants to ban fracking in the oil drilling business because she now believes it’s possible to get clean energy without it. Fracking is the process of fracturing bedrock to extract oil and gas while also releasing methane into the atmosphere. 

  The Vice President also said her support for Israel is “unequivocal” as the Gaza war continues but, “Far too many Palestinians have been killed and we have to get a deal done.” More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed. 

  She was evasive on why the Biden administration took three years to get better control of the southern border.

  Harris reiterated her call for extending a $6,000 child tax credit to families for the first year of a child’s life, and a $25,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers

  Walz, “the Carhartt candidate,” sat with his shirt collar hanging over his jacket lapel. Challenged on having once wrongly said that he had carried weapons in war, he meandered rather than just admitting he had misspoken. “I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” Walz said, referring also to his 1995 drunk driving arrest. 

LEGALITIES: Lawyers for Donald Trump filed a request late yesterday to have his Manhattan criminal case moved to federal court in an effort to stave off sentencing next month on 34 felony convictions.

  “The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Trump’s lawyers, wrote in the filing.

  Trump also has a pending request to delay the September 18^th sentencing to beyond election day. It’s already been delayed once.

  The former president faces a maximum of four years in prison although that is unlikely.

RESPECT FOR THE DEAD: It’s hard to keep up with the controversies generated by Donald Trump. This week he promoted a social media post that suggested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris boosted their political careers by performing a certain sexual act.

  But that was overshadowed by Trump’s visit to Arlington cemetery with the family of a soldier killed in the Abbey Gate bombing during the US military’s messy pullout from Afghanistan. Trump’s people were told they could not take video or pictures in Section 60 where the recent war dead are buried. Trump’s crew was then reported to have gotten into a physical confrontation with a cemetery official trying to block them.

  In the tradition of Trump insult, a campaign spokesman said an “unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.” 

  The Army yesterday issued a statement defending its employee and saying the Trump team had been informed of the rules. Federal law clearly says that Arlington cannot be used as a backdrop for political events. Yet Trump had his photo taken, smiling with thumbs up, surrounded by the family of Sgt. Nicole Gee while standing over her grave. Trump was not solemn.

  His campaign later released a video montage of his visit. The former president has wrapped himself in the flag and the uniform even though he was once overheard saying that war dead were “losers.” 

  Trump running mate JD Vance piled on with a related attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of criticizing Trump’s cemetery visit saying: “And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up? She can — she can go to hell.”

  Harris had not criticized the Trump Arlington visit.

THE WAR ROOM: Ukraine lost one of its few American-made F-16 fighter jets and one of its best pilots in a crash on Monday. Whether the jet was shot down or went down for other reasons has not been explained, but Ukraine is looking at the possibility of pilot error or mechanical failure.

  Ukraine has received only a handful of F-16s so far. The one that crashed Monday had been scrambled to intercept a flight of incoming Russian missiles.

  The Ukraine air force identified the pilot as Oleksiy Mes who “saved Ukrainians from deadly Russian missiles.” CNN identified him as the pilot who went by the handle “Moonfish,” on their air.

THE NORTH SEA: An American archeologist died when a replica Viking ship overturned in rough weather and tossed its crew of six into the water. Karla Dana of Florida was trapped under the 33-foot boat while five others climbed into a life raft.

  The six were on a research journey from the Faroe islands to Norway trying to duplicate Viking navigation.

  Dana had written in a blog post before setting off that, “It’s hard to keep excitement from turning into fear when you see those waves casually tossing around huge modern boats like toys.” But she said, “There’s a wild beauty in the North Sea, a reminder of nature’s raw power, and I feel incredibly lucky to be part of this adventure.”

THE SPIN RACK:  Following the listeria outbreak that is linked to a Boar’s Head processing plant in Virginia, federal meat inspectors say they found black mold, water dripping over meat, and dead flies at the plant now linked to nine deaths. — The University of Virginia has suspended campus tours that some conservative alumni complained was too focused on the use of slave labor to construct campus buildings. — The California legislature passed a bill requiring all public schools to limit or prohibit student smartphone use during the school day.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Police in Redlands, California burst into a nudist ranch looking for a suspect in the disappearance of a local couple. No weapons were evident.

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