Vice President Kamala Harris will join President Joe Biden in announcing price cuts for popular Medicare drugs. Federal officials have reached deals with drug companies to lower the price for 10 of Medicare’s most popular and costliest drugs. The drugs include the blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia. Medicare spent $50 billion covering the drugs last year. It’s a landmark deal for the Medicare program, which provides health care coverage for more than 67 million older and disabled Americans.
Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has invited reporters to his New Jersey golf club for a news conference — his second in as many weeks. Trump will meet the press as he steps up his criticism of Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for interviews since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her to replace him. The vice president has barely engaged with reporters since becoming the Democratic nominee.
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Here’s the Latest:
Harris to hold rally in Milwaukee next week
MADISON, Wis. — Harris plans to hold a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday in the same venue where Republicans gathered for their national convention last month.
Harris will hold the event at the Fiserv Forum while the Democratic National Convention is underway about 100 miles to the south in Chicago, the Harris campaign said Thursday.
The stop will mark the third time since Harris become the Democratic presidential nominee that she’s come to swing state Wisconsin, a nod to the importance of the state.
Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, planned to be in Milwaukee on Friday to speak at the Milwaukee Police Association. That would be his second visit to Wisconsin as the vice presidential nominee.
Harris to deliver economic policy speech
Harris is giving a preview of the economic policy speech that she plans to deliver in North Carolina on Friday, and she’s zeroing in on corporate price gouging.
Her campaign says Harris plans to push for a federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries. She’s putting particular emphasis on rising meat prices, which she says account for a large part of rising grocery bills.
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years. But many Americans are still struggling with food prices, which remain 21% above where they were three years ago. Trump has been pointing to inflation as a key failing of the Biden-Trump administration and its energy policies.
Judge rejects Donald Trump’s latest demand to step aside from hush money criminal case
Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as it heads toward a key ruling and potential sentencing next month.
In a decision posted Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.
It’s the third time Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee. They contend the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she sought the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.
The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never “developed an individual relationship” with her, consulting firm founder Mike Nellis told the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not worked for Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-ended reelection bid or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.
Democrats plan “DemPalooza” during the party’s convention in Chicago next week
The Democratic National Committee will offer a schedule of trainings, panels and other programming it’s calling “DemPalooza” during the party’s convention in Chicago next week. The name is a play on the Lollapalooza music festival Chicago plays hosts to every year.
“DemPalooza” events will range from trainings on how to use organizing tools to polling briefings and skills workshops. The DNC says these programs are part of its and the Harris campaign’s efforts to organize and reach voters in an evolving media environment and provide opportunities for Democrats to take what they’ve learned back to the communities that will decide the November presidential election.
Presented with rise in border crossings, Kamala Harris chose a long-term approach to the problem
Vice President Kamala Harris was never the “border czar,” as her critics claim.
Biden administration officials say she was assigned to tackle the “root causes” of migration from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that were responsible for a large chunk of border crossers.
A review of Harris’ work on immigration reveals a record that is more nuanced than the one presented by her critics or allies. It also provides insights into how Harris — who took over as the Democratic standard-bearer when Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month — might tackle one of the nation’s most vexing concerns.
Read more about Harris’ work on immigration
There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?
Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up.
“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to offer his take on possessive proper nouns.
The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.
While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ’s.
Read more about the political world’s latest grammar debate
Walz launches 5-state fundraising blitz in LA, warns Trump will wage ‘war’ on working people
In his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz warned cheering union members Tuesday that Donald Trump would wage war on working people and threaten Medicare and Social Security as he kicked off a five-state fundraising swing.
He spoke of a grim future for unions if Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance are elected, describing a nation where bargaining rights, overtime pay and other protections would be scuttled. He said Trump and Vance have “waged war on working people.”
However, Trump also has courted union support. When he accepted the Republican nomination, he said that he would rescue the auto industry from what he called “complete obliteration.”
Read more about Walz’s 5-state fundraising blitz
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