Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to speak Friday at the annual meeting of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit organization that leads the effort to ban mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism from K-12 classrooms.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is announcing a “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” with over 50 stops to motivate voters ahead of November. The first stop is next Tuesday with an event near former President Donald Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
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Trump campaign pushes for mail-in voting, contradicting previous position
Former President Donald Trump will speak to more than 4,000 spectators at the Cambria County War Memorial Arena in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where the 1977 hockey cult classic “Slap Shot” was filmed.
The pre-show featured elected Republicans and other Trump supporters from the swing state of Pennsylvania and across the country, who repeatedly urged attendees to request mail-in ballots or take advantage of early voting.
Trump himself contradicted this message at times. While in 2020 he claimed that mail-in voting encouraged fraud, today he claims that early voting and mail-in voting are trustworthy.
A turbulent life, a turn to faith and a man who wonders if it is time to vote
Decades ago, when he was studying political science and later law at the University of Southern California, Timothy Walker voted. Everyone in his family voted Democratic, so he did, too.
Then his path took a different turn. He became addicted to cocaine and spent years in and out of drug treatment centers. He lost his home and his job as a marketing manager at a law firm. He never passed the bar exam. Elections came and went, largely unnoticed.
This year is different. He completed a religious rehabilitation program at the Los Angeles Mission, a Christian nonprofit that helps the homeless and others in need. He has been immaculate for almost two years now. He has a job again and writes thank-you cards to donors in a miniature office at the mission.
And for the first time in about forty years, he is thinking about voting.
He isn’t sure if he will vote, nor will he say whether he leans toward a particular presidential candidate. But he credits his faith with changing his life and wants to see that faith reflected in the presidency.
“A Christian in the White House would be moral, ethical and rooted in love and would want the best for humanity – not just for himself or any particular company,” said Walker, 64.
The two major party candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, are both Christians, although neither has made their religious beliefs the focus of their campaign.
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How Trump and Georgia’s Republican governor made peace, supported by allies worried about the election
Efforts to make peace between Donald Trump and Georgia’s powerful Republican governor began in a lavish neo-Victorian mansion in Atlanta’s exclusive Buckhead enclave.
At a fundraiser on August 7 hosted by former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, fellow Republican Lindsey Graham approached Governor Brian Kemp. Graham, the senator from South Carolina and a longtime confidant of the former president, had already planned to attend the fundraiser.
Now Graham had a up-to-date goal: to try to ease years of tension between Trump and Kemp that were jeopardizing Republicans’ chances in a crucial battleground in 2024.
Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s home. And in the weeks that followed, Graham and other people familiar with the matter say, allies of both men arranged the two-part detente that became public last Thursday to the surprise of many political observers.
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Trump wants to activate his supporters at the Moms for Liberty rally, but risks alienating moderate voters
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to speak Friday at the annual meeting of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit organization that leads the effort to ban mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism from K-12 classrooms.
At a “fireside chat” in the nation’s capital, the former president will seek to win the support and enthusiasm of much of his following. The majority of the group’s more than 130,000 members are conservatives who agree with him that parents should have more say in public education and that racial equity and transgender accommodation programs have no place in schools.
However, Trump also risks alienating more moderate voters, many of whom view Moms for Liberty’s activism as too extreme to be legitimized by a presidential candidate.
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The Interview: Kamala Harris’ inaugural interview stood out because it seemed … ordinary
After Vice President Kamala Harris avoided a probing interview with a journalist in the first month of her sudden presidential campaign, her first interview on Thursday was notable for how routine it seemed.
CNN’s Dana Bash met Harris and her running mate Tim Walz at a Georgia restaurant and asked her about some of the issues on which she has changed her position, the historic nature of her candidacy, what she would do on her first day as president and whether she would invite a Republican to join her Cabinet (yes, she said).
What Bash did not ask – and the Democratic candidate did not volunteer – is why it took her so long to agree to an interview and whether she will do more as a candidate again.
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Veterans who attended Trump’s event in Michigan deny reports of clashes at Arlington National Cemetery
Veterans attending Donald Trump’s event in Michigan on Thursday largely dismissed reports of an altercation between his campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery, pointing to the former president’s past as evidence of his values.
Tom Barrett, an Iraq war veteran and Republican candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, said he “understood that President Trump had been invited there by families.”
Barrett shifted her focus to criticizing the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying, “Trump and those families would not have been there if Joe Biden had not led an absolute, direct failure of leadership that allowed the deaths of 13 of our soldiers.”
Rusty L. Smith, a Trump supporter from Albion, Michigan, was unaware of the incident at Arlington National Cemetery but said he believes Trump “wholeheartedly supports veterans.”
Smith added that he was rather outraged by allegations made by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, about his record.
“He wasn’t in the war. He wasn’t in combat. He held the rank of command sergeant major, but that was only temporary, and he never completed the rank. So he shouldn’t carry a coin that says command sergeant major. But he does. And that’s wrong,” Smith said.
Trump calls for universal coverage of IVF treatments, but does not provide any details on how his plan will work
Former President Donald Trump has said that if he is re-elected, he would like to make IVF treatment free for women, but he has not provided details on how he will fund his plan or how it will work.
“I am making an important statement today that under the Trump administration, your government will cover all costs associated with IVF treatment – or your insurance will be required to do so,” he said at an event in Michigan. “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”
IVF treatments are notoriously steep and can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single round. Many women require multiple rounds and there is no guarantee of success.
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Harris defends her departure from some liberal positions in her first interview in the presidential campaign
Vice President Kamala Harris defended her move away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign on Thursday, but stressed that her “values have not changed” even as she “strives for consensus.”
Sitting down with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about her about-face on banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, positions she took during her last presidential run. She confirmed that she does not want to ban fracking, an energy production process critical to the economy of swing state Pennsylvania, and said there “should be consequences” for people who cross the border without permission.
“I think the most important and meaningful aspect of my political perspective and decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris said.
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Harris’ campaign team launches bus tour on the topic of “Reproductive Freedom”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team is launching a “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” with over 50 stops to motivate voters before November.
The first stop is an event on Tuesday near former President Donald Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Our campaign is going on the road to meet voters in their communities, highlight the importance of this election for reproductive freedom, and introduce them to the Harris-Walz contingent’s vision to move our country forward, which is in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to take us backwards,” Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “As we travel across the country, we will bring that contrast to red and blue voters and independents.”
