Senior Democrats are rallying around Kamala Harris to become the party’s presidential nominee, after Joe Biden finally quit the race yesterday and endorsed her. Two potential challengers, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and California governor Gavin Newsom, have publicly backed the vice president, who says she intends to “earn and win” the nomination at the party’s convention in Chicago next month. The Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen has warned there will be a “large and significant” response to an Israeli strike on the port city of Hodeidah on Saturday, which killed six people and wounded more than 80. Israel says the attack was in retaliation for a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv on Friday. Olympic teams will be given more than 200,000 condoms for this year’s Games in Paris, says The Sun. That works out at 20 per athlete – 33% more than concupiscent competitors were given at London 2012.

Republicans write off Kamala at their peril

You can see why many Republicans are “licking their chops” about running against Kamala Harris, says Philip Klein in National Review. She is “one of the most unpopular vice presidents in history”. She bears partial responsibility for the failures of the Biden administration, especially inflation and the lax border policy, and will now have to answer for her involvement in covering up the president’s mental decline. She has an “odd and inauthentic” manner that turns voters off, from her unappealing cackle to her bizarre repetition of the phrase “unburdened by what has been”. When she ran for president in 2020, she polled so badly – including among the female and black voters Democrats now hope she can attract – that she dropped out before a single vote was cast.

But this is a “whole new ballgame”. The head-to-head polls, which have her narrowly trailing Donald Trump, are meaningless until she’s actually on the ticket. Assuming she has the nomination sewn up before the Democratic convention starting 19 August, Harris would have a prime-time opportunity to introduce herself “beyond the embarrassing viral clips”. The media would run endless stories about the “new Kamala”. The “age issue” would become an asset rather than a liability: it would be the Republicans, not the Democrats, running a candidate who’ll soon be in his 80s. And Donald Trump remains “hugely unpopular” – even factoring in the bounce he received after the assassination attempt, his approval rating stands at just 40%. Harris won’t necessarily be the favourite in November. But Republicans write her off at their peril.

🤯 🎥 If Democrats really want to put their money where their mouth is, says Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, in The New York Times, they’d nominate Mitt Romney. The 2012 Republican nominee shares few of their policy goals. But he’s an honourable chap, and he’d probably peel off enough votes from wavering Republicans to beat Trump. Crucially, his nomination would prove that Democrats really believe what they say: that this election isn’t about party politics, but about “stopping a deranged man from taking power”.

Joe Biden’s decision not to run in November means this election will be the first since 1976 not to have a Biden, Bush or Clinton on the ticket.

The Tour de France used to be rather less serious than it is today, says Joe Levin on Substack. In the 1960s, if a rider needed refreshment he would organise “drinking raids”. Cyclists would throw their bikes (and spectators) aside, run into the first roadside cafe available and ransack the place for whatever they could find – red wine, champagne, beer – stuffing it in their jerseys and getting back on the road. When the Tour finished, the race director would receive exorbitant invoices from bar owners across the country: “21 Kronenbourgs, nine bottles of Dom Perignon, 11 bottles of fine burgundy reds, six pieces of brie and two baguettes.”

The “psychotic” self-obsession behind Just Stop Oil

If you look at cult leaders, they all have one thing in common, says Camilla Long in The Sunday Times: “a complete, psychotic inability to understand what it is to be like another person, or even care”. That’s a pretty good description of Just Stop Oil bigwig Roger Hallam, a “thin, grey, unlaundered man” who has been given a five-year sentence for telling his fellow eco-zealots to clamber up on to M25 gantries. Hallam’s cheerleaders insist this is some massive miscarriage of justice. It’s not. Running on to a motorway to stop traffic in “dark, wet, winter conditions” is insanely dangerous, and of course disruptive. It’s a “charmless stunt”, like Hallam’s others: defacing property; shoplifting to supposedly “highlight the instability of global food distribution”. If he weren’t old and middle class with a PhD – in, yes, “civil disobedience” – you’d describe him as a “career criminal”.

Who does Hallam think he’ll convert by “harassing, provoking and inconveniencing” the general public? Why attack the very people you’re meant to be persuading? But that misunderstands the mindset. We live in a world where it’s all about “me”: “my” thoughts, my fears, my opinions. The Just Stop Oil lot are so self-obsessed they won’t even accept a lawyer; they’d rather “self-represent” in court. And their contempt for the law – the glue that holds society together – is unrivalled. In the courtroom, Hallam and his four acolytes screamed, and shouted, and talked over the judge so much that they were rearrested nine times. Locking Hallam up will cost taxpayers a quarter of a million pounds. “A lot for one man’s vanity project.”

People always ask me whether Rupert Murdoch ever intervenes in what we columnists write, says Matthew Parris in The Times. The boring answer, I’m afraid, is “no”. The closest I came to being steered was about two decades ago, when I filed a column describing an evening at a gay pub in east London, and explained for readers the difference between male stripping (“basically ‘Get ‘em off!’”) and female stripping (“a dance, even an erotic art”). The comment editor rang me. “Look,” he said, “Mr Murdoch is in town this weekend, and he really, really doesn’t like this kind of thing. Could we run it next week instead?”

It’s Crush, a rare orange lobster who was rescued from a restaurant in Colorado, says AP News. A dish washer at the Red Lobster eatery in Pueblo spotted the fluorescent crustacean while unpacking a shipment last week. He called the local aquarium, which confirmed it was a one-in-30-million specimen, its unusual colour caused by a genetic mutation. Crush has since been rehomed at Denver’s Downtown Aquarium, where staff say he is settling in well.