Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at Moms for Liberty’s annual meeting on Friday. A national non-profit organization has led efforts to remove mention of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism from elementary school classrooms.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is announcing a 50-plus-stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” as it looks to motivate voters ahead of November. The first stop is next Tuesday at an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.
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How Trump and Georgia’s Republican governor made peace to help allies worried about the election
The effort to make peace between Donald Trump and Georgia’s powerful Republican governor began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.
At a fundraiser hosted by former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler on August 7, fellow Republican Lindsey Graham approached Gov. Brian Kemp. Graham, a South Carolina senator and longtime confidant of the former president, was already planning to attend the fundraiser.
Now Graham had a new purpose: trying to defuse years of tensions between Trump and Kemp that jeopardized the GOP’s chances in the crucial 2024 battleground.
Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s house. And in the coming weeks, say Graham and others familiar with the matter, allies of both men orchestrated a two-pronged softening that played out publicly last Thursday to the surprise of many political watchers.
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Trump seeks to activate his base at Moms for Liberty, but risks alienating moderate voters
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at Moms for Liberty’s annual meeting on Friday. A national non-profit organization has led efforts to remove mention of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism from elementary school classrooms.
In a “fireside chat” in the nation’s capital, the former president will seek to garner support and enthusiasm among much of his base. Most 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 programs and transgender accommodations should not belong in schools.
Yet Trump also risks alienating more moderate voters, many of whom see Moms for Liberty’s activism as too extreme for a presidential candidate to legitimize.
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Interview: Kamala Harris’ opening session was most notable for seeming … ordinary
Vice President Kamala Harris’ first Thursday in the first month of her impromptu presidential campaign, avoiding an investigative reporter’s interview, was notable mostly for routine.
CNN’s Dana Bash, who sat down with Harris and candidate Tim Walz at a Georgia restaurant, asked him about some of the issues he’s switched positions on, the historic nature of his candidacy, what he’d do on his first day as president and whether he’d invite a Republican cabinet member (yes, he said).
Bash did not ask — and the Democratic candidate did not volunteer — why it took so long to participate in the interview and whether he is doing more as a candidate.
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Veterans attending Trump’s Michigan event deny reports of altercation at Arlington National Cemetery
Veterans attending Donald Trump’s event in mid-Michigan on Thursday largely denied reports of a dispute between his campaign and an Arlington National Cemetery official, citing 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 the families invited President Trump there.”
Barrett focused on criticizing the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, stating, “Trump and those families wouldn’t be there if Joe Biden had not led the absolute immediate failure of leadership that allowed 13 of our service members to be killed.”
Rusty L. Smith, a Trump supporter from Albion, Michigan, was not aware of the incident at Arlington National Cemetery, but said he believed Trump “supports veterans with all his heart.”
Smith added that he was more offended by the claims made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, an aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, about his service record.
“He wasn’t in the war. He wasn’t in combat. He wore the rank of sergeant major, but it was temporary and he never finished the process. So he shouldn’t be carrying a coin that says sergeant major. And he does. And that’s wrong,” Smith quoth.
Trump is calling for universal coverage of IVF treatment without details 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 didn’t say how he would fund his plan or exactly how it would work.
“I’m making a big statement today that under the Trump administration, your government will pay — or your insurance company will be required to pay — 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.
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Harris defends moving away from some liberal positions in the first interview of the presidential campaign
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended moving away from some of her liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign, but insisted that her “values have not changed” even as she is “looking for consensus.”
Sitting down with his running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about his measures to ban trespassing and decriminalize illegal border crossings. In these positions, he took up his last term for the presidency. He confirmed that he does not want to ban fracking, an energy extraction process that is central to the state of Pennsylvania’s economy, and said there “should be consequences” for people who cross the border without a permit.
“I think the most important and significant aspect of my political perspective and my decisions is that my values have not changed,” Harris said.
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Harris campaign launches ‘Reproductive Freedom’ bus tour
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a more than 50-stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour” as it looks to motivate voters before November.
The first stop is on Tuesday at an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.
“Our campaign is reaching out to meet voters in their communities, highlighting the stakes of this reproductive freedom election and presenting them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision for moving our country forward, which is in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans. pulls us back,” Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. “As we travel across the country, we’re bringing that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”
