Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to appear Friday at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris ’ campaign is announcing that it is launching a 50-plus stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour,” as it looks to motivate voters ahead of November. The first stop will be next Tuesday with an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.
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Walz says Democrats have reclaimed freedom, flags and football
Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz says Democrats, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, are reclaiming issues that they had previously ceded to Republicans, from “freedom” and the American flag to football.
Speaking at a fundraiser in Bethesda, Maryland, Walz told donors that Harris, in her convention speech, “took freedom back for us. She took freedom back.” Referencing patriotic scenes at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he added: “They don’t have a monopoly on the flag. We took the damn flag back.”
Walz continued that Democrats were retaking the idea of “family,” as the Harris-Walz ticket says Republicans jeopardize not just abortion access, but potentially fertility care as well.
“You take family back, everybody’s family, every family that they want to have, and what their family looks like is the right one for them,” Walz said. “That’s what got taken back.”
He added: “And this one was just totally me. I took football back, I’m done with them thinking they have it.”
Moms for Liberty get ready for session with Trump
A hotel ballroom in the nation’s capital has transformed into a concert-like atmosphere as supporters of the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty line dance to pass the time before Trump arrives.
Donning shirts with messages like “Moms for Trump” and “We don’t co-parent with the government,” attendees at the group’s annual gathering are eating buffet desserts, drinking beer and cheering to a cover band playing country hits.
Trump is getting ready to join the group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice for a chat onstage, where they are expected to discuss his vision for the future of U.S. education.
Ahead of his visit, Justice expressed support for Trump’s education platform and noted he was an early signer of the group’s “Parent Pledge” advocating more transparency and parental involvement in decision-making for their children’s education.
Donald Trump moves to halt hush money proceedings, sentencing after asking federal court to step in
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers moved Friday to halt proceedings in his New York hush money criminal case and postpone next month’s sentencing indefinitely while he attempts to have a federal court intervene and potentially overturn his felony conviction.
In a letter to the judge presiding over the case in state court, Trump’s lawyers asked that he hold off on a decision, slated for Sept. 16, on Trump’s request to overturn the verdict and dismiss the indictment in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.
They also urged the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, to postpone Trump’s Sept. 18 sentencing indefinitely.
Trump’s lawyers filed paperwork late Thursday asking the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to seize the case from the state court where it was tried. The federal court kicked back that request on Friday on technical grounds, but Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to resubmit it.
▶ Read more about Trump’s attempt to halt his criminal case.
Trump draws attention to Harris’ former antifracking position
During his rally in energy-rich Pennsylvania, Trump made several references to Harris saying that she, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020, supported banning hydraulic fracturing. Though Harris’ campaign says she no longer supports a fracking ban, Trump said he was “exposing how bad it’s going to be in Pennsylvania and our country if we stop doing the fossil fuel thing.”
Man who stormed Trump rally press area is Tased and detained
A man at the Trump rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued by a Taser.
The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
The man made it over a bicycle rack ringing the media area, and close to where television reporters were watching the rally from a riser before being surrounded.
The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?” Moments later police handcuffed another man in the crowd and led him out of the arena, though it wasn’t clear if that detention was related to the initial altercation.
▶ Read more about the altercation.
Trump seems to flip on Florida abortion ballot measure
Donald Trump says he will vote no on a Florida ballot measure that would repeal the state’s six-week abortion ban, a day after he seemed to indicate he would vote in favor of the measure.
Trump has said he thinks Florida’s ban is a mistake and said in an interview with Fox News Channel on Friday, “I think six weeks, you need more time.” But then he said, “At the same time, the Democrats are radical,” and he repeated false claims he has frequently made about late-term abortions and said that he opposed allowing abortions up until nine months.
“So I’ll be voting no for that reason,” Trump said.
The Florida ballot measure would legalize abortion until fetal viability, a term used by health care providers to describe whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally or whether a fetus might survive outside the uterus. It’s generally considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks, which is about six months.
Trump drew backlash from abortion opponents who support him when he seemed to say in another interview on Thursday that he would vote in favor of the ballot measure and repeal the six-week ban when he said, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
Amid the blowback, his campaign quickly issued a statement saying that Trump had not actually said how he would vote but “simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”
Trump responds to critics of his Arlington National Cemetery appearance
Trump lashed out at critics who accuse him of using Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op.
Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania that he was invited by relatives of Marines who were killed in a terrorist attack as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. He said he’s gotten to know the families and they asked to take a photo with him.
“I love those people,” Trump said. “I’m so happy they took pictures of me and them and the tombstone and their lovely son or daughter.”
Trump again blamed the attack and the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal on Biden and Harris.
“Joe Biden killed those young people because he was incompetent,” Trump said. “And then they tell me that I used their graves for public relations services? And I didn’t.”
Trump meets with rapper Anuel AA
Trump has met with Puerto Rican musician Anuel AA, a popular Latin star. Images show the former president and Republican nominee arriving in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and shaking hands with the rapper, who is wearing gold chains and pink sunglasses.
Anuel AA has collaborated with artists such as Shakira, Daddy Yankee, Bad Bunny and Karol G, who he dated until 2021. In 2020, Democrats featured a digital ad with a song from Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny.
Latinos make up the nation’s largest minority group — 19.5% of the total population, according to the 2020 census. Trump has vowed to expand his coalition to win over more of the nonwhite voters.
Harris has won the support of influential Latino groups, and her campaign is looking to energize young Latino voters.
Trump campaign pushes mail-in voting, contradicting previous position
Former President Donald Trump is set to address a crowd for more than 4,000 inside the Cambria County War Memorial Arena in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where the 1977 hockey cult classic “Slap Shot” was filmed.
The preprogram has featured elected Republicans and other Trump supporters from around the swing state of Pennsylvania and nationally who repeatedly implored attendees to request mail-in ballots or take advantage of the early voting period.
That’s a message that has at times contradicted Trump himself, who suggesting that voting by mail encouraged fraud in 2020 but now suggests that early and mail-in ballots are trustworthy.
A tumultuous life, a turn toward faith and one man who wonders if it’s time to vote
Decades ago, back when he was a political science major at the University of Southern California, and later in law school, Timothy Walker would vote. Everyone in his family voted for Democrats, so he did, too.
Then his path took a different turn. Cocaine addiction took hold of him and he spent years cycling in and out of drug treatment centers. He lost his home and his job as a marketing executive at a law firm. He never passed the bar exam. Elections came and went, largely unnoticed.
This year is different. He completed a faith-based recovery program at the Los Angeles Mission, a Christian nonprofit that serves homeless people and others in need. He’s been clean now for nearly two years. He has a job again, writing thank-you cards to donors in a small office at the mission.
And for the first time in forty or so years, he’s thinking about voting.
He’s not sure he’ll vote, and won’t say if he’s leaning toward a particular presidential candidate. But he credits his faith with turning around his life, and wants to see that faith in the presidency.
“A Christian in the White House would be moral, ethical, grounded in love, and would want what’s best for humanity — not just for themselves or any particular business,” said Walker, 64.
The two major-party nominees, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, are both Christian, though neither has made their religious beliefs central to their campaigns.
▶ Read more here.
How Trump and Georgia’s Republican governor made peace, helped by allies anxious about the election
The effort to make the peace between Donald Trump and Georgia’s powerful Republican governor began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.
It was at an Aug. 7 fundraiser hosted by former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler that fellow Republican Lindsey Graham approached Gov. Brian Kemp. Graham, the South Carolina senator and longtime confidant of the former president, was already planning to attend the fundraiser.
Now, Graham had a renewed purpose: to try to ease years of tensions between Trump and Kemp that endangered the GOP’s chances in a crucial 2024 battleground.
Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s house. And over the coming weeks, say Graham and others familiar with the matter, allies of both men arranged the two-part détente that played out publicly last Thursday to the surprise of many political watchers.
▶ Read more here.
Trump seeks to activate his base at Moms for Liberty gathering but risks alienating moderate voters
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to appear Friday at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms.
In a “fireside chat” conversation in the nation’s capital, the former president will seek to shore up support and enthusiasm among a major part of his base. The bulk of the group’s 130,000-plus members are conservatives who agree with him that parents should have more say in public education and that racial equity programs and transgender accommodations don’t belong in schools.
Yet Trump also will run the risk of alienating more moderate voters, many of whom see Moms for Liberty’s activism as too extreme to be legitimized by a presidential nominee.
▶ Read more here.
The interview: Kamala Harris’ inaugural sit-down was most notable for seeming … ordinary
After avoiding a probing interview by a journalist for the first month of her sudden presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris’ first one Thursday was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.
CNN’s Dana Bash, sitting down with Harris and running mate Tim Walz in a Georgia restaurant, asked her about some issues where she had changed positions, the historical nature of her candidacy, what she would do on her first day as president and whether she’d invite a Republican to be a Cabinet member (yes, she said).
What Bash didn’t ask — and the Democratic nominee didn’t volunteer — is why it took so long to submit to an interview and whether she will do more again as a candidate.
▶ Read more here.
Veterans attending Trump’s Michigan event dismiss reports of altercation at Arlington National Cemetery
Veterans attending Donald Trump’s mid-Michigan event on Thursday largely dismissed reports of an altercation between his campaign and an Arlington National Cemetery official, citing the former president’s past as evidence of his values.
Tom Barrett, a veteran of the Iraq War and Republican candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, said that it was his “understanding that President Trump was invited there by families.”
Barrett shifted focus to criticize the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, stating, “Trump and those families would not have been there if Joe Biden hadn’t led to the absolute direct failure of leadership that allowed 13 of our service members to be killed.”
Rusty L. Smith, a Trump supporter from Albion, Michigan, was unaware of the incident at Arlington National Cemetery but said that he believes Trump “supports veterans wholeheartedly.”
Smith added that he was more offended by the claims Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, made about his service record.
“He wasn’t in the war. He wasn’t in combat. He wore the rank of command sergeant major but that was temporary, and he never completed the process. So he shouldn’t be carrying a coin that says command sergeant major. And he does. And that’s wrong,” said Smith.
Trump calls for universal coverage of IVF treatment with no specifics on how his plan would work
Former President Donald Trump says that, if he wins a second term, he wants to make IVF treatment free for women, but he did not detail how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work.
“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for — or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he said at an event in Michigan. “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”
IVF treatments are notoriously expensive and can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single round. Many women require multiple rounds and there is no guarantee of success.
▶ Read more here.
Harris defends shifting from some liberal positions in first interview of presidential campaign
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended shifting away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign, but insisted her “values have not changed” even as she is “seeking consensus.”
Sitting with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about her reversals on banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, positions she took during her last run for president. She confirmed she does not want to ban fracking, an energy extraction process key to the economy of swing-state Pennsylvania, and said there “should be consequence” for people who cross the border without permission.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.
▶ Read more here.
Harris’ campaign launches ‘Reproductive Freedom’ bus tour
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a 50-plus stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour,” as it looks to motivate voters ahead of November.
The first stop will be Tuesday with an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.
“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back,” said Harris-Walz Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in a statement. “As we crisscross the country, we’ll be driving that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”
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