Kamala Harris to speak for first time since Biden left race - as endorsements mount

It'll be the vice-president's first public remarks since Joe Biden announced he was no longer running, albeit at an event planned before he transformed the presidential race on Sunday.

You can watch along at the top of this page, and we'll be bringing you text updates here with any key lines.

I’m here at the White House, where Kamala Harris will make her first public remarks since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election and endorsed her for the Democratic presidential nomination.

She’s speaking on the White House South Lawn at an event to celebrate National Collegiate Athletic Association championship teams.

Dozens of reporters have gathered to hear what the newly-declared candidate for president has to say. This was a pre-planned event before President Biden dropped out of the race.

But with Harris’s presence, interest has skyrocketed in the normally light-hearted gathering - even despite the weather: it’s lightly drizzling and humid outside.

With Biden stuck in Delaware, isolating with Covid-19, it is symbolic that the first White House event will be hosted by Harris — whom he endorsed to be his successor to take on Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

Crowds gathered on the lawn of the White House

Kamala as child with her mother and younger sister Maya

Kamala Harris, 59, is the first woman, and first black and Asian-American, to serve as vice-president.

She was born in Oakland, California, to immigrant parents from India and Jamaica, and studied at one of the nation's preeminent historically black colleges and universities, Howard University in Washington DC.

Harris previously worked as a prosecutor, including as district attorney of San Francisco and she was the first woman and first black person to serve as California's attorney general.

In 2016, she became only the second African-American woman to serve in the US senate. She also unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic nomination for presidency in 2020.

She married lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2014, and is stepmother to his children Cole and Ella.

Harris launched her first presidential bid in front of a huge crowd in California - but her campaign soon ran out of steam

Much was expected of Kamala Harris when she launched her first White House bid in front of 20,000 supporters in her native California back in January 2019.

The hype around her candidacy saw her surge in early polls and Harris gained further traction after attacking frontrunner Joe Biden in a televised debate.

However, she struggled to maintain momentum in a race packed with other big names like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, while other debate moments were deemed lacklustre by commentators.

Harris’s attempts to appeal to both the centrist and progressive wings of her party meant she struggled to make inroads with either, while some questioned her record as an attorney general in California.

That scrutiny included her decision to prosecute people for cannabis offences - an issue which animates many younger left-leaning Democrats who favour legalisation - despite having admitted to trying the drug herself.

When Harris dropped out 11 months later, she told supporters it came down to the one commodity no US politician can do without: money.

“I’m not a billionaire,” Harris said, weeks after being forced to lay off campaign staff due to a lack of donations.

If Harris is installed quickly as her party’s nominee this time around, money should be less of an issue - but there will still be lessons to be learned from her failed 2019 bid.

Three women hold signs bearing various thank you messages to Joe Biden

I just spoke to three generations of voters here - Susan Raskin, 75, Hannah Raskin, 11, and Emily Raskin, 47. Grandmother, mum, and daughter.

We are just down the beach from where Joe Biden’s holiday home is.

They told me they felt some sadness at Biden stepping down, but also “relief.” They’ve made some signs they plan to leave near his home to thank him for his work as president.

All three seemed confident about Kamala Harris replacing him and, in particular, said she would be good at bringing out more young people and women to vote and “energise” the campaign.