2024 election is live: Harris and Biden salute prisoners released from Russia as Trump scraps swap deal

The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, security executive Paul Whelan and radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland at 11.37pm on a charter flight from Ankara, in Turkey.

Biden was the first to greet the three as they disembarked from the plane, followed by Harris, and then there was a reunion scene with his family.

Whelan came out first, shook hands with the president and asked: “How are you, sir?” He then hugged his sister to the applause of the people gathered on the asphalt.

Gershkovich followed, and then Kurmasheva. Biden said “happy birthday” to the radio reporter’s daughter, who ran to her mother in tears, saying: “I love you so much, I can’t believe you’re here.” Her husband added: “This is real.”

The United States and Russia completed a prisoner exchange of 24 people on Thursday, the largest in post-Soviet history, with Moscow freed. The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.

The jet went down shortly before midnight at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris and the brother of a former prisoner await greetings.

Speaking to the media, President Biden: “The most difficult call for this is for other countries. Because I am asking them to do something that is against their own interests. It is very difficult to do. Especially Germany and Slovenia.

Tears of joy flowed in the Oval Office as the families of prisoners such as Evan Gershkovich, freed by Russia in the biggest swap since the Cold War, spoke for the first time by phone with their loved ones, a White House video showed Thursday.

“This is Grandma. Can you hear me? That’s your mother,” Gershkovich’s mother told her son, a The Wall Street Journal reporter, in an emotional two-minute video of the virtual reunion, posted by the social media account of president Joe Biden on X.

“We just want to say we’re overwhelmed,” Mr. Biden told the released prisoners as their families stood around the president’s Resolute Table. “You’ve been wrongfully detained for a long time, and we’re glad you’re home.”

Russia freed Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and others on Thursday as part of a multi-country exchange that the White House said involved 24 prisoners, including Russian hitman Vadim Kasikov, released by Germany.

“Every parent, child, spouse and loved one who joins me in the Oval Office today has been praying for this day for so long,” Mr. Biden posted about the deal, which was negotiated in secret for more than a year.

Tennessee state representative Gloria Johnson has won the Democratic primary for the US senate and will face Republican senator Marsha Blackburn in November, fighting a survivor of a Republican-led eviction effort over gun control protests against a close ally of former president Donald Trump.

Ms Johnson defeated three primary opponents, including Marquita Bradshaw, the Memphis activist and community organizer who primarily won the Democratic Senate nomination in 2020 and then lost to Republican Bill Hagerty by a wide margin.

During the Tennessee primary, Republican representative Andy Ogles also defeated his well-funded opponent, Nashville councilwoman Courtney Johnston, as he sought a second term in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.

Ms. Blackburn is facing a Republican primary challenge from Tres Wittum, a former Tennessee legislative staffer who is running for last in the 5th Congressional district in 2022.

Tennessee has only elected statewide GOP candidates for nearly two decades. Blackburn also led into the fall campaign with a significant edge in campaign cash over any of the Democrats.

Blackburn won her first Tennessee Senate seat in 2018, defeating former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen by nearly 11 percentage points.

Donald Trump is advocating a race war against Kamala Harris despite his own campaign team opposing the approach.

Democrats expressed fresh outrage this week over the former president’s outrageous and false accusations that vice president Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, had only recently “become black” for political gain.

Trump’s advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity on Thursday to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign should not focus on “identity politics” because the case against Ms Harris was that she was “very dangerously liberal”. The adviser pointed to Ms Harris’ record on the Southern border, crime, the economy and foreign policy.

In a sign that Trump is unable to coordinate his message with his own team, the Republican presidential candidate doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harris’ racial identity. She posted on her social media site a picture of Harris wearing traditional Indian dress in a family photo.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has endorsed Trump, was among several lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Thursday that rhetoric about race and identity isn’t “helping anyone” this election cycle. “The color of a person’s skin doesn’t matter. one iota,” Lummis said in an interview.

Virginia state senator John McGuire, a former Navy Seal endorsed by former president Donald Trump, on Friday defeated conservative representative Bob Good in a recount of the Republican primary results in Virginia.

Mr. McGuire defeated Mr. Good, one of the most conservative members of Congress and chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus.

Election officials previously certified McGuire’s narrow win in the June 18 primary, with 374 votes from nearly 63,000 casters. But with a margin of victory of just six-tenths of a percentage point, Mr. Good had every right to recount.

Mr McGuire’s margin of victory was reduced by four votes to 370 after Thursday’s recount.

The last sound came into the courthouse around 9:00pm on Thursday – almost 14 hours after officials began the recount process.

About the same time, Mr. McGuire arrived in court.

The biggest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War was invisible even a few days ago, at least to the outside world. The willingness of the Biden White House and Putin’s Kremlin to make such a trade cannot be easily predicted from the state of relations between the two powers.

Complicated, to say the least, with the war in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East and uncertainty over the outcome of this year’s US election, stalemate and stasis are increasingly likely prospects. However, perhaps with the active involvement of Turkish President Erdogan, which is still ambiguous, two projects of many journalists, spies, double agents and others have been released.

Justin Rohrlich take a look at the behind-the-scenes operation, as documented in meticulous detail by The Wall Street Journalto get the Americans detained and others released.