Vice President Kamala Harris took her presidential campaign blitz to the largest US teachers’ union on Thursday, promising a “fight for the future” as new opinion polls showed her narrowing the gap with Republican rival Donald Trump.

Harris’ swift emergence as the successor to President Joe Biden, 81, as the Democratic presidential candidate in the Nov. 5 election has shaken up a stagnant presidential race, with polls showing her narrowing former President Trump’s advantage.

In an address in Houston to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris, 59, focused on economic policy and workers’ rights, touting plans for affordable healthcare and child care and criticising Republicans for blocking gun limits in the wake of school shootings.

“Ours is a fight for the future,” Harris told a crowd of about 3,500 people. “We are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms. And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on.”

More than 100,000 predominantly white women later joined a Zoom call to raise money for Harris and discuss strategy, organizers of #AnswerTheCall said. The call followed similar ones recently among Black women, Black men and Latinas.

A series of polls conducted since Biden ended his reelection bid on Sunday, including one by Reuters/Ipsos, show Harris and Trump beginning their head-to-head contest on roughly equal footing, setting the stage for a close-fought campaign over the next three-and-a-half months.

A New York Times/Siena College national poll published Thursday found Harris has narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with a lead of 49% to 41% over Biden in early July, following Biden’s disastrous debate performance that led to a wave of Democratic calls for him to step aside as candidate.

While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the US Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.

Harris also got good news on that front as Emerson College/The Hill published a poll finding that she had begun to close the gap with Trump in five critical battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump still narrowly leads Harris in all but Wisconsin, which is tied, according to the poll of registered voters in those states.

Together, the polls suggest that while Trump, 78, retains a narrow advantage, he has not seen the sort of bump in support following last week’s Republican National Convention that candidates hope to get out of the highly scripted, televised and expensive events.

Trump on Wednesday night laid into Harris in his first rally since she replaced Biden atop the ticket, then continued his criticism online on Thursday.

“We’re not ready for a Marxist President, and Lyin’ Kamala Harris is a RADICAL LEFT MARXIST, AND WORSE!” Trump posted on his social media platform.

DEBATE UP IN THE AIR

Trump’s campaign on Thursday cast doubt about a Sept. 10 debate that had been previously scheduled against Biden. Harris has said she is prepared to debate Trump that day, but the Trump campaign said in a statement that debate details cannot be finalized until the Democrats formally name a candidate, which could happen the first week of August.

More than 40 former U.S. Justice Department officials, primarily from Democratic administrations, signed a letter endorsing Harris and calling Trump a threat to the rule of law in the U.S.

“Former President Trump presents a grave risk to our country, our global alliances and the future of democracy. As President, he regularly ignored the rule of law,” reads the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters and signed by former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other former officials.

Former President Barack Obama has been in regular contact with Harris and plans to soon endorse her as the Democratic presidential candidate, a source familiar with his plans said on Thursday.

The Harris campaign released its first video advertisement online on Thursday. Harris narrates the ad, framing the campaign as a battle to protect Americans’ individual liberties to the sound of Beyonce’s song “Freedom.”

Harris also reached out to younger voters by creating an account on TikTok, amassing over 500,000 followers in a few hours.

The next highly anticipated development will be Harris’ choice of a vice-presidential candidate to counter Trump’s selection of US Senator JD Vance of Ohio.

The list of contenders amounts to a who’s-who of rising Democrats, including US Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Governors Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Harris’ rise has largely pushed Trump out of the headlines, a week after the Republican National Convention and 12 days after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt that wounded his ear.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House panel on Wednesday that investigators are not certain whether Trump’s injury was caused by a bullet or by shrapnel. Trump has said a bullet hit his ear.

A Trump campaign spokesperson, Jason Miller, called the idea that Trump was not hit by a bullet a “conspiracy,” adding an expletive. 

 Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the son of his ex-partner, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, were arrested on Thursday in El Paso, Texas, in a major coup for US authorities that may also reshape the Mexican criminal landscape.

Zambada is one of the most consequential traffickers in Mexico’s history and co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with El Chapo, who was extradited to the United States in 2017 and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison.

Both Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of El Chapo, face multiple charges in the US for funneling huge quantities of drugs to US streets, including fentanyl, which has surged to become the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.

Zambada, who is believed to be in his 70s, and Guzman Lopez, who is in his 30s, were detained after landing in a private plane in the El Paso area, two US officials told Reuters.

Guzman Lopez is one of four sons of El Chapo — known as Los Chapitos, or Little Chapos — who inherited their father’s faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. His brother, Ovidio Guzman, was arrested last year and extradited to the United States.

In recent years, the Sinaloa Cartel has become the biggest target for US authorities, who have accused the crime syndicate of being the biggest supplier of fentanyl to the United States.

Zambada and Guzman Lopez face multiple charges in the US “for heading the Cartel’s criminal operations, including its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

The arrest of Guzman Lopez was first reported by Reuters, ahead of the Justice Department statement where it was confirmed they were detained in El Paso.

One worker at the Santa Teresa airport, near El Paso, on Thursday afternoon told Reuters that he saw a Beechcraft King Air land on the runway, where federal agents were already waiting.

“Two individuals got off the plane… and were calmly taken into custody,” said the man, who declined to share his name out of concern for his safety.

“It seemed like a pretty calm, arranged thing,” he added.

The US authorities had a $15 million reward for Zambada’s capture, while Guzman Lopez had a $5 million bounty on his head.

The Sinaloa cartel traffics drugs to more than 50 countries around the globe and is one of two most powerful organized crime groups in Mexico, according to US authorities.

Zambada and El Chapo’s sons belong to two different generations of traffickers, with differing styles.

Zambada is known for being an “old-school” narco, avoiding the limelight and operating in the shadows. El Chapo’s sons, by contrast, have a reputation for being flashy narcos who courted attention as they ascended the ranks of the cartel.

El Chapo’s sons are also known to be more violent and hot-headed than Zambada, who had a reputation as a shrewd operator.

Zambada and El Chapo’s sons have had a fractious relationship since their father was extradited in 2017, and the arrests of Zambada and Guzman Lopez may trigger instability or even violence in their heartlands in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Previous arrests of important cartel leaders has triggered violence as power vacuums open, leading to significant infighting within the organizations and between them and their rivals.

“This possibility certainly looms very large,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a researcher at Washington’s Brookings Institution who closely monitors Mexican security.

Their arrests were part of a joint operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agencies, HSI said in a statement.

US authorities have over the past year launched fresh indictments against Zambada and Guzman’s sons on new charges in the United States that focus on fentanyl smuggling, as well as the flow of precursor chemicals to the illicit labs operated by their crime syndicate.

Over decades, the cartel has set up sophisticated supply chains to move drugs across the globe and to source heavily regulated chemicals to their home base in Sinaloa.

Earlier in the day on Thursday, Reuters published an investigation that revealed how fentanyl precursor chemicals are astonishingly easy and cheap to buy online from Chinese sellers that ship the substances door-to-door in North America.

“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland added. 

North Korean hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign in efforts to steal classified military secrets to support Pyongyang’s banned nuclear weapons programme, the United States, Britain and South Korea said in a joint advisory on Thursday.

The hackers, dubbed Anadriel or APT45 by cybersecurity researchers, are believed to be part of North Korea’s intelligence agency known as the Reconnaissance General Bureau, an entity sanctioned by the US in 2015.

The cyber unit has targeted or breached computer systems at a broad variety of defence or engineering firms, including manufacturers of tanks, submarines, naval vessels, fighter aircraft, and missile and radar systems, the advisory said.

Victims in the US have also included the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, FBI and US Justice Department officials said on Thursday.

In the February 2022 targeting of NASA, the hackers used a malware script to gain unauthorized access to its computer system for three months, US prosecutors allege. Over 17 gigabytes of unclassified data were extracted.

“The authoring agencies believe the group and the cyber techniques remain an ongoing threat to various industry sectors worldwide, including but not limited to entities in their respective countries, as well as in Japan and India,” the advisory said.

Internationally isolated North Korea, known formally as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), has a long history of using covert hacking teams to steal sensitive military information.

To fund their operations, the hackers used ransomware to target US hospitals and healthcare companies, US officials allege.

On Thursday, the US Justice Department said it had charged one suspect, Rim Jong Hyok, for conspiring to access computer networks in the United States and money laundering.

One of the ransomware incidents that Rim is charged with involved a May 2021 hack against a Kansas-based hospital that paid ransom after the hackers encrypted four of its computer servers.

The hospital paid in bitcoin, which was transferred to a Chinese bank and then withdrawn from an ATM in Dandong, China, next to the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge which connects the city to Sinuiju, North Korea, the indictment said.

The FBI said it is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information that would lead to Rim’s arrest. He is believed to be in North Korea.

FBI and Justice Department officials told reporters on Thursday they have seized some of the online accounts belonging to the hackers, including $600,000 in virtual currency that will be returned to victims of the ransomware attacks.

“The global cyber espionage operation that we have exposed today shows the lengths that DPRK state-sponsored actors are willing to go to pursue their military and nuclear programmes,” said Paul Chichester at Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, part of the country’s GCHQ spy agency.

In August last year, Reuters exclusively reported that an elite group of North Korean hackers had successfully breached systems at NPO Mashinostroyeniya, a rocket design bureau based in Reutov, a small town on the outskirts of Moscow.

As was the case with that hack, APT45 – part of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau intelligence agency – used common phishing techniques and computer exploits to trick officials at the firms they were targeting into giving away access to their internal computer systems, Thursday’s advisory said.