September 20, 2024, presidential campaign news

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The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday that nearly 100,000 residents who may not have fulfilled the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirements can still vote in state and local races this year, quickly resolving how election officials should address a clerical glitch that had left in question the eligibility of those registered voters in the critical battleground state.

The court was asked to decide whether these voters should get a “federal-only” ballot or the “full ballot,” which would also include state and local races. Regardless of the outcome, these voters would have been able to cast presidential ballots.

Arizona uses these separate ballots because the state requires all voters to prove their citizenship before they can vote in state and local races. Such documentation isn’t required to cast ballots for federal office in Arizona.

The decision to let these roughly 98,000 voters use the full ballot is a victory for Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, and liberal groups that pushed for this outcome.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled just three days after the lawsuit was filed. Election officials hoped a quick resolution of the issue would reduce confusion heading into voting season.

Besides state and local races, the ruling could also affect Arizona’s referendum on abortion rights this fall.

Read more about the ruling here

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday emphasized to Wisconsin voters that it will be a “tight race until the very end” ahead of November’s election.

A Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this week finds no clear leader in the race between former President Donald Trump and Harris in Wisconsin. Harris takes 48% to Trump’s 47% when third party candidates are included – with similar results in a head-to-head matchup between just Harris and Trump. Meanwhile, other polls also show a tight race nationally.

In her first rally in the Badger State since the presidential debate, Harris again contrasted her debate performance with that of Trump.

“I talked about issues that matter to families across America, like bringing down the cost of living, investing in America’s small businesses, protecting reproductive freedom and keeping our nation safe and secure,” Harris said.

“But that is not what we heard from Donald Trump. Instead, it was the same old tired show, the same old tired playbook we’ve heard for years with no plan on how he would address the needs of the American people,” she added. 

She again painted the former president as an “unserious man,” warning of the serious consequences of a second Trump term. She hit him on a number of policy issues including his economic plan, women’s reproductive rights and health care. 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson should put the future of the state and the party “before himself” if CNN’s reporting on his past disturbing comments in a porn forum “is true.” 

Tillis said in a social media post on Friday that Robinson must “take immediate legal action” if CNN’s reporting is “a total media fabrication.” But if the reporting is accurate, Tillis said Robinson “owes it to President Trump and every Republican” to take responsibility.

Tillis is among the most prominent North Carolina Republicans calling out Robinson in the wake of CNN’s reporting.

On Thursday, hours after CNN’s reporting was published, Tillis urged North Carolina Republicans to shift focus to the presidential election and state legislative and judicial races.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson speaks on stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15.

Offensive posts by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson were removed from the pornographic website Nude Africa on Thursday, hours after a CNN KFile investigation revealed a series of inflammatory comments posted on the forum by the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina.

It’s unclear whether the comments were removed by Robinson or Nude Africa administrators. Neither the Robinson campaign nor Nude Africa responded to inquiries from CNN.

Robinson denies making the comments, which were made between 2008 and 2012 – predating his entry into politics and current tenure as lieutenant governor – and stand counter to his public stances on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.

Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, a pornographic website that includes a message board, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades.

Many gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature, the comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online. CNN was able to identify the username as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.

Robinson commented on issues of race, gender and abortion in posts. In some, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery. In others, he discussed his affinity for transgender pornography – despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric.

Following the revelations, pressure mounted on Robinson, who is currently in a competitive race against Democrat Josh Stein to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, to exit the race. But the deadline under state law for Robinson to remove his name from the ballot passed Thursday without him doing so, and the state’s first absentee ballots were set to be mailed out Friday.

Read more about the latest developments here

Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Elissa Slotkin warned of the high stakes in her battleground state of Michigan with a little more than six weeks until Election Day. 

“We know real well that it is not over until it is over,” she said at an event in Oakland County. 

Mail ballots will start going out to Michigan voters next week. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, as well as their running mates, have all made stops in the state within the past week.

Slotkin slammed Trump’s comments in Flint on Tuesday that if he doesn’t win Michigan will have “no auto industry within two to three years” because “China is going to take over” all manufacturing plants “because of the electric car.”

Slotkin was joined by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who stressed the importance of keeping a majority in the Senate.

Some people can already start casting their ballots in the 2024 presidential race while both candidates continue to hit the campaign trail as Election Day gets closer.

Widespread early voting started Friday in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia.

Here’s what to know today:

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event in Atlanta on Friday.

A fired-up Vice President Kamala Harris adopted a rapid-response mentality to seize on the key issue of abortion rights over the last several days. The pivot to an intense focus on the issue evolved over the course of the week after the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica published a report on two Georgia women who died as a result of delayed medical care linked to the state’s abortion ban.

By Thursday, the mother of one of the women was in the audience of an event live streamed from Michigan, telling the story of her daughter’s tragedy to Harris and Oprah Winfrey.

On Friday, at the direction of Harris, according to reporting by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, the campaign had planned a last-minute rally in Georgia, where Harris spoke in front of signs that argued a third of women live under a “Trump abortion ban,” a phrase she repeated throughout the speech.

People take photos of the Reproductive Freedom Bus during the kickoff of the Harris-Walz campaign reproductive rights bus tour in Boynton Beach, Florida, on September 3.

Former President Donald Trump has argued that he did the country a favor by appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and return the abortion issue to state legislatures. Trump says that’s what “everyone” wanted, but polling and recent elections suggest the opposite is true.

Harris’ strength on abortion rights is built on key groups that she hopes will show up in droves for her on Election Day. Among young people, ages 18-29, nearly three-quarters said they trust Harris on the issue. Among Black voters, 83% trust Harris, and among Hispanic voters, it was 63%.

A majority of voters, 61% in a KFF poll released this month, said they would prefer a federal law restoring abortion rights nationwide, although such a law seems unlikely to pass through the US Senate, where it would likely require a supermajority of 60 votes to enact such a change.

Read the full analysis

Former President Donald Trump made a brief call on Wednesday to Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and a group of state legislators who were gathered at the governor’s residence in Lincoln, a Nebraska Republican official and a source familiar with the call told CNN.

The official described it as a brief conversation with the former president, who talked about the importance of Nebraska changing its election law to winner-take-all, rather than awarding electoral votes by congressional district. At one point, the official said, Trump described the law as unfair, not mentioning that he won the Omaha-area district in 2016, but lost it four years later.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also attended the meeting, at the request of Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, the sources said.

Trump was neither threatening nor overly persuasive in his brief remarks, the official said, which Graham arranged.

Graham has been fully supportive of the move and has discussed the effort with Trump directly.

The Washington Post was first to report the call.

Some background: Nebraska is one of two states – along with Maine – that divide Electoral College votes by congressional district, rather than statewide, winner-take-all rules. Under the system, the statewide winner receives two electoral votes, and the rest are split, one apiece, among the leading vote-getters in each district.

Omaha is a blue dot in a sea of Nebraska red, which is precisely why Trump and his allies are furiously fighting to change the system.

A previously scheduled fundraiser for North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is no longer happening, according to a source familiar.

The fundraiser was to feature Republican Governor’s Association Chair Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who is no longer traveling to North Carolina.

It follows a CNN investigation that unearthed dozens of disturbing comments Robinson made on a porn forum more than a decade ago. 

Robinson now faces mounting pressure to exit the gubernatorial race following the revelations, but the deadline under state law for a candidate to drop out was Thursday, with the state’s first absentee ballots set to be mailed out Friday.

President Joe Biden wrapped a meeting with his Cabinet on Friday, the first high-profile convening of his advisers in a year as he tries to set his post-presidential legacy.

Ahead of the meeting, a White House official said Biden would instruct Cabinet members to “sprint to the finish,” as he looks to burnish legacy items while ensuring as much of his agenda is implemented before a potential second Trump presidency.

Coming almost a year after he last convened his Cabinet and exactly four months until the next president is inaugurated, Biden’s position at Friday’s meeting was drastically different from when he last spoke to his top officials.

He is no longer a candidate for president and is now staring down his final months in office. His unexpected withdrawal from the race over the summer prompted White House officials to urgently assemble his final-months agenda that hadn’t been considered before his decision.

Biden wants to ensure Americans know what he accomplished while also making irreversible as much of his record as possible, should former President Donald Trump return to the Oval Office.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Atlanta on Friday.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday railed against former President Donald Trump and Republicans during an impassioned speech Friday about reproductive rights.

Harris’ trip to Georgia marks a rapid response from the vice president to highlight the story of a Georgia mother who died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from the state’s restrictive abortion law, as first revealed in a recent report from ProPublica.

Harris also tailored her message to Peach State voters, warning of the stakes of the election under a second Trump term, calling it “a fight for the future” and “a fight for freedom.” She also mocked Trump’s record on flip-flopping on the issue, while again arguing he would implement a federal abortion ban. 

In this 2020 photo a woman holds a flavored disposable vape device in New York.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday said he would “save Vaping” if reelected — despite his administration enacting a partial ban on flavored e-cigarettes in 2020. 

“I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019, and it greatly helped people get off smoking. I raised the age to 21, keeping it away from the ‘kids,’” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

“I’ll save Vaping again!” Trump posted. 

Trump claimed without evidence that “Kamala and Joe want everything banned, killing small businesses all over the Country,” but neither President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have proposed a ban on vaping. 

Some background: Trump said in 2019 that he would ban flavored e-cigarettes to address a surge in youth vaping but later backed off of a full ban and supported a partial one.

The FDA in 2020 announced a policy that would clear the market of most flavors for cartridge-based e-cigarettes but that did not apply to flavored products for open tank systems that are sold in vape shops. Still, many flavored products remain available for purchase while the agency reviews marketing applications.

Prior to this move, the Trump administration moved the tobacco buying age from 18 to 21.

The president of a local union group will introduce Vice President Kamala Harris at her campaign rally this evening in Madison, Wisconsin, according to a source familiar.

Milwaukee-based Teamsters Joint Council 39 President Bill Carroll is among a group of state labor leaders who endorsed Harris in the wake of the national Teamsters organization declining to support any presidential candidate this cycle in spite of a long history of backing Democrats in recent decades.

However, a host of other local labor organizations have endorsed Harris and the campaign has been intentional about highlighting support from organized labor while characterizing her as an ally to working-class voters through policy pledges and leaning into her personal biography. 

“As Vice President of the most pro-union administration ever, Kamala Harris worked with the Teamsters and other union workers to pass the historic Butch Lewis Act which has saved the pensions of over a million retirees to date,” said Carroll in a statement released earlier this week. 

Teamsters Joint Council 39 represents about 15,000 workers at three locals across Wisconsin.

Doug Emhoff attends Harris' debate against Trump at The National Constitution Center on September 10, in Philadelphia.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff condemned former President Donald Trump for “scapegoating Jews” after he suggested Jewish voters would be partially responsible if he loses November’s election.

Emhoff, who is Jewish, was responding to Trump’s comments at an event in Washington DC, on Thursday billed as combatting antisemitism.

Trump’s comment on Thursday marks the latest escalation in rhetoric attacking Jewish voters who support Democrats. He has repeatedly said Jewish voters who plan to support Harris “should have their head examined.”

Emhoff also called Trump’s repeated criticisms of Harris’ positions on Israel and outreach to Jewish voters “gaslighting,” pointing to the former president’s previous comments about Jewish people.

“He is somebody who has had dinner with known antisemites, he is somebody who during — after the horrific events of Charlottesville, people marching with tiki torches and chanting ‘Jews will not replace us,’ and he said fine people were on both sides of that,” Emhoff said in an interview with ABC News that aired Friday.

“This is a guy who has had a record of saying incredibly vile, antisemitic things,” he said of Trump.

In 2022, Trump hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at his Mar-A-Lago home during a visit with rapper Kanye West. In 2017, then-President Trump said there were “fine people on both sides” of a clash between white supremacist protesters and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

This post has been updated with comments from Emhoff’s interview with ABC.

To date, Democrats have outspent Republicans on ads overall and in the swing states, and Democrats also have the edge in future bookings.

Since President Joe Biden dropped out on July 22, the presidential race has seen almost $950 million worth of advertising, and Democrats lead by about $563.5 million to $380.2 million, according to data from AdImpact.

The split is closer in the swing states, where there’s been $762.6 million worth of presidential advertising since Biden dropped out, and Democrats lead by about $418.5 million to $340 million.

Emphasis on digital ads: A big part of Democrats’ overall edge is their commitment to digital advertising. Outside of the swing states, the Harris campaign and its allies have plowed more than $100 million into digital advertising, much of it aimed at online fundraising, powering a record-breaking fundraising surge. Over the same period, Republicans have spent about $27 million on digital ads.

Looking ahead, Democrats have more than $325 million in total remaining advertising reservations, with $281 million of that targeting the seven key swing states. Republicans have about $185 million worth of total remaining ad time booked, virtually all of it in the battlegrounds.

Pennsylvania dominates the lists of both states that have seen the most ad spending so far, and states with the most ad time remaining. The parties have already combined to spend more than $200 million in the commonwealth since Biden dropped out, Democrats leading by about $113 million to $91 million. And $129 million worth of presidential advertising remains to air in Pennsylvania, Democrats with $74 million left booked, and Republicans with $56 million.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted a video of him changing the air filter on his car while warning of the consequences of Project 2025, the policy proposal authored by conservatives that the Harris campaign has sought to frame as the road map for a possible future Trump administration.

In the video, Walz leans over the open hood of a turquoise truck parked at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he inspects the car’s “old school carburetor” and its air filter.

“You can always tell something about somebody’s maintenance when how clean their air filter is,” he said.

Walz then drew a comparison between the owner’s manual of the vehicle and Project 2025, which he said provides instructions for former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance to “stick it to the middle class” through policies he says would provide tax cuts to wealth Americans.

Walz ended the video by referring back to his car’s mechanics, holding his car’s air filter while suggesting that someone who’s car has a clean air filter indicates they “do good maintenance.”

“And you can always tell again, somebody, if they keep a clean air filter, they do good maintenance,” he said.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson arrives to speak during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 15.

North Carolina lawmakers are reacting to the scandal surrounding gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, following CNN’s reporting about his extreme and graphic comments on an adult website. 

Here’s what some lawmakers are saying:

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign on Friday launched a new television ad seeking to tie former President Donald Trump to North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, a day after a bombshell KFile report detailed a series of inflammatory comments Robinson made more than a decade ago.

Robinson denied he made the remarks, which predated his political career. 

This is the first Harris campaign ad tying Trump to a down-ballot campaign, the Harris campaign told CNN.

The spot, titled “Both Wrong” and obtained exclusively by CNN, intersperses Trump’s past praise for Robinson with the gubernatorial candidate’s anti-abortion comments, including him voicing support for a statewide abortion ban that would not include exceptions.

It opens with Trump’s comments calling Robinson “an unbelievable lieutenant governor” and referring to him as “better than Martin Luther King” while interspersing with Robinson saying, “For me, there is no compromise on abortion” and “we could pass a bill and say, ‘You can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason.’”

The new ad is part of the Harris campaign’s $370 million in digital and television advertising reservations between Labor Day and Election Day, the Harris campaign told CNN. The spot will begin airing Friday on television across North Carolina markets on a variety of programs including local news, “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

Read the full story.

Allies of former President Donald Trump who control the Georgia State Election Board approved a controversial new rule Friday requiring counties to hand count the number of ballots cast on Election Day, over bipartisan objections from election officials and poll workers.

The vote was 3-2, with the three Trump allies supporting the controversial move, and a Democratic and independent GOP-appointed member of the board strongly opposing it.

Kamala Harris’ revelation at the most recent presidential debate that she is a gun owner caught some viewers by surprise – the vice president has said relatively little over the years about her personal experience of owning a firearm.

Responding to Donald Trump’s warning that Harris “wants to confiscate your guns,” the Democratic nominee fired back:

And Thursday night, Harris suggested to Oprah Winfrey at a campaign event that she would use her gun to protect herself from an intruder:

Harris’ gun – which one source described as a pistol that could fit in a small purse – is securely stored inside her home in Los Angeles, an aide to the vice president told CNN. Harris had mentioned owning a firearm in 2019 – that gun, the aide said, is the same one she owns now. As vice president, Harris has mainly resided in Washington at the Naval Observatory, where she does not keep a second firearm.

Harris’ brief explanation four years ago for why she owned a gun was simple: self-protection.

Read the full story.

The House unanimously voted Friday to pass a bill bolstering Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates, a move that comes in the wake of two apparent assassination attempts targeting GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The bill directs the Secret Service director to apply uniform standards for protection of presidents, vice presidents and major presidential and vice presidential candidates.

The Secret Service is under scrutiny in Congress after two apparent assassination attempts on Trump, the first on July 13 at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and the second on September 15 at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.

Now that the bill has passed by the House, the bill now needs to be passed by the Senate before It can be signed into law.

Following the first assassination attempt on July 13, “the Secret Service moved to increase assets to an already enhanced security posture for the former president,” Ronald Rowe Jr., acting director of the US Secret Service, said at a briefing the day after the September 15 incident.

“In the days that followed, President Biden made it clear that he wanted the highest levels of protection for former President Trump and for Vice President Harris. The Secret Service moved to sustain increases in assets and the level of protections sought. And those things were in place yesterday,” he added.

The bill’s fate is unclear in the Senate, in part, because many Democrats in the chamber have pointed to the enhanced security already in place for Trump.

Who are Nikki Haley supporters voting for? That will be one of the many questions to be studied in November when the primary election results are matched against the outcome of the general election.

Dawn Roberts, a lifelong Republican from Des Moines who was the co-chair of Haley’s Iowa caucus campaign, is giving her answer now in an op-ed from today’s Des Moines Register: Kamala Harris.

The sentiment of Roberts, a longtime GOP leader with her late husband, Steve Roberts, may contribute to the findings of the recent Des Moines Register poll that showed a close race between Harris and Donald Trump.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein speaks to the media during a protest outside of a joint meeting of Congress with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, DC.

The US Supreme Court on Friday declined a request from the Green Party to ensure presidential candidate Jill Stein could appear on the ballot in the battleground state of Nevada.

The Green Party, which was represented by a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, argued its candidates were “ripped from the ballot” in the Silver State because campaign workers had used an incorrect form to collect signatures needed to ensure Stein’s place on the ballot.

But in filings this week, Nevada election officials said it was too late to interrupt ballot printing for the November election. Ballots for military-overseas voters, state officials said, needed to be mailed by Saturday under federal law. A ruling for the Green Party, the state Democratic Party told the high court, would “inject chaos and uncertainty into Nevada’s election process.”

Nevada’s State Democratic Party sued the state’s Green Party to keep Stein off the ballot, underscoring the significance third-party candidates can play in swing states. Polls show that Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a tight race in Nevada.

The Green Party was represented by Jay Sekulow, who was a member of Trump’s personal legal team.

The Supreme Court rejected the request with a single sentence. There were no noted dissents.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance deflected on the scandal surrounding North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, attempting to punt the focus to Vice President Kamala Harris and her role in contributing to higher grocery prices in America.  

“My comment on Mark Robinson is that Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Explosion Act and because of that a lot of Americans can’t afford groceries,” Vance posted on X.

This was in response to @KamalaHQ’s reposting of a video taken by CNN where Vance declined to comment on Robinson. He also explained why he was at the doctor’s office on Capitol Hill briefly on Thursday. 

“I was *walking* to the doctor (because one of my kids gave me the plague),” Vance said.

Suspicious packages were sent this week to election offices in more than 20 states, leading to an FBI investigation, triggering evacuations and rattling staff, according to a CNN survey of state offices and Associated Press reporting.

The threatening envelopes arrived as election officials across the country prepare for Saturday’s deadline to send the first ballots to overseas and military voters and as states are weeks away from the widespread start of in-person early voting and mail-in balloting.

According to CNN and AP reporting, suspicious envelopes were received by election officials, or intercepted on the way to officials in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wyoming.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Thursday that his office has been notified by the US Postal Service that a suspicious package was “headed our way,” and that the mail service will try to intercept it, as it previously did last November when an envelope of fentanyl was sent to an election office in Fulton County.

“We’re on the lookout for it, and so are they,” Raffensperger said of the package.

What other election officials are saying: Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told CNN that the battleground state was also targeted this week.

Bell said staff are now wearing gloves while processing the mail and isolating parts of the office when they find a suspicious item that might be contaminated. An official from the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office also told CNN that, after this week’s incident, they directed staff to wear gloves while handling mail, “out of an abundance of caution.”

“When we have to take these extra measures, it really adds to the workload and it really adds to the anxiety that we have about doing our job, that really what we want to do is make sure people are able to vote,” Bell said.

Read the full story.

Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine is calling out former President Donald Trump and others who continue to push baseless rumors about the city of Springfield and its residents.

“This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

DeWine attributed Springfield’s “resurgence in manufacturing and job creation” in part to “the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs.”

“They are there legally. They are there to work,” he wrote.

For context: CNN’s Zach Wolfe noted earlier this week there seems to be an ocean of disconnect between Republican leaders in Ohio, who argue that Haitians filled a desperate need in Springfield, and Trump and Vance, who argue, as Vance did, that “thousands of residents have had their lives destroyed” by the arrival of the Haitians.

Both DeWine and Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, have been careful in their criticism of the former president and his running mate.

Trump said he would visit the city “in the next two weeks” during a campaign rally on Wednesday.

Rue told CNN Friday he has concerns about how a visit from any presidential candidate would impact his city, which has seen dozens of bomb threats in the week since Trump made false claims about Haitian immigrants during the presidential debate.

“My concern is, what we’ve seen on the national stage, I really wouldn’t want that repeated … in our community,” Rue said of a possible visit by Trump.

In his op-ed, the governor noted he was born in Springfield and lived his entire life within 10 miles of the city. He rejected the way his hometown has been characterized by politicans and in the media.

“The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors,” he wrote. “I am proud of this community, and America should be, too.”

Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview on Wednesday where she answered a variety of frequently online searched questions, including if she has children, which comes at a time when Donald Trump’s allies in recent weeks have sought to dig at Harris over not having biological kids.

“Does Kamala Harris have kids?,” Harris read aloud. 

“Yes, I have two,” she said. “Cole and Ella became my cherished children. Doug, my husband, I was very clear with him that when we started dating, I wanted to see how this thing was gonna go before I would meet Cole and Ella.”

She continued, “You know, I’m a kid of divorced parents. It was important to make sure that when I developed a relationship with the kids, that it would be lasting. I love those kids to pieces. They are my children, and I’m very proud of them.” 

On Tuesday night, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders renewed controversy over how allies of the former president talk about stepmothers and childless women when she told Trump supporters that Harris doesn’t have anything to keep her humble. 

The 10-minute interview covered a wide range of topics focused on Harris’ policy plans, last week’s presidential debate, women’s reproductive rights and celebrity endorsements. It’s the latest example of the campaign’s aggressive approach ahead of November, which includes Harris engaging in more media interviews in swing states and appearances that bring her into direct contact with voters.

North Carolina Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson – who’s running to be the state’s Attorney General this fall – said that the scandal embroiling GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson could “swing a whole bunch of elections, including the presidential election” in the Tar Heel State.

Jackson continued, “And given that most of the statewide races are basically 50-50 races, my race is a 50-50 race – we have a dozen statewide races in North Carolina – if he affects it by half a percent, which he certainly could, he could swing a whole bunch of elections, including the presidential election.”

He praised how Kamala Harris’ campaign has handled the Robinson fallout so far and its ground game in North Carolina. 

“She is pulling every single lever that you can pull to win this state,” he said. 

Jackson also made clear that Robinson does not reflect the values of North Carolinians. 

“We are good people. We are not Mark Robinson,” he noted – arguing that Robinson’s behavior won’t be “normalized” in the election. 

“I don’t think that’s going to happen here. I think moderate Republicans are going to say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with this,’” he added.

Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Rob Rue wants the world to know his city is a “wonderful place” that’s working hard to come together despite the recent hateful rhetoric and attacks directed at the city and its Haitian immigrants. 

In an interview with CNN’s John Berman Friday morning on CNN News Central, Rue reiterated that should former President Donald Trump visit Springfield during the campaign, he wants the Republican candidate to focus on the “real issue” of immigration reform, instead of advancing false claims about the city. 

Rue’s comments come after Trump said Wednesday he would visit Springfield “in the next two weeks.” The city has received dozens of threats since last week’s presidential debate in which Trump repeated false claims of Haitian immigrants in the city eating people’s pets.

Since the September 10 debate, Springfield has received more than 35 threats of violence, including bomb threats, the mayor has said, which has prompted evacuations of elementary schools and supermarkets, lockdowns of hospitals, and a transition to remote learning at several local colleges.

“My concern is, what we’ve seen on the national stage, I really wouldn’t want that repeated … in our community,” Rue said Friday of a possible visit by Trump. 

The Trump campaign is hammering Kamala Harris with a third new attack ad this week, launching a new spot Friday criticizing Harris for supporting “taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners’ surgery.”

“Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners,” the ad opens, referencing CNN reporting on a 2019 questionnaire that Harris filled out in the course of her unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, in which she backed several progressive policies, including taxpayer-funded surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.

The ad also includes a clip of Harris at a town hall event during the 2020 campaign hosted by the Transgender Equality Action Fund, in which Harris discusses her support. “Surgery for prisoners — every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access,” Harris says in the clip.

“It’s hard to believe, but it’s true,” the ad says. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” it closes.

The ad began airing Friday morning in Wisconsin, part of a broader effort from the Trump campaign and its allies to portray Harris as a left-wing radical and undercut the Harris campaign’s own concerted bipartisan appeals. Several recent pro-Trump ads have seized on comments or progressive positions that Harris took in the context of the 2020 presidential primary.

For context: Harris has acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an interview with CNN last month.

Wisconsin Democrats are highlighting Dane County as a crucial part of their path to victory in the key battleground state ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to the county when she speaks at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday.

In a memo released on Friday, Harris campaign Wisconsin communications director Brianna Johnson is touting the campaign’s organizing strength in the area surrounding the state’s capital and stressed the need for Harris to drive up the margins in what she called “the fastest-growing county in the state.”

Johnson said the campaign opened its 50th field office in Wisconsin near the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus earlier this week, boasting what she claimed is an organizing advantage over the Trump campaign in the state.

“Trump’s campaign is far behind in Wisconsin. They recently would only confirm they have ‘more than 20 staffers’ – we have more than 250. They are not reaching out to the key Dane County voters needed to win in November,” she said.

Johnson pointed to high turnout and growing margins of victory in the central Wisconsin county for Democrats in recent elections as evidence the county could be the key to keeping Wisconsin blue.

“Having the Vice President here will help us leverage our massive campaign infrastructure – which now includes 50 coordinated campaign offices – to drive up the vote score here in Dane County,” she concluded.

Members of the US Secret Service Counter-Sniper team set up watch from the roof of the House of Representatives on March 15, 2023, in Washington, DC.

The House is expected to vote Friday to pass a bill bolstering Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates, a move that comes in the wake of two apparent assassination attempts targeting GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The bill directs the Secret Service director to apply uniform standards for protection of presidents, vice presidents and major presidential and vice presidential candidates.

The Secret Service is under scrutiny in Congress after two apparent assassination attempts on Trump, the first on July 13 at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and the second on September 15 at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told CNN he expects the vote on the House bill to be unanimous.

Following the first assassination attempt, “the Secret Service moved to increase assets to an already enhanced security posture for the former president,” Ronald Rowe Jr., acting director of the US Secret Service, said at a briefing the day after the second incident.

A source with direct knowledge of the legislation told CNN that the House bill will codify what President Joe Biden did and the process by which he did it. The bill will also authorize the president to extend this protection to any other presidential or vice presidential candidate for whom they have otherwise authorized the Secret Service to protect.

Read the full story.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at Enmarket Arena during a two-day campaign bus tour in Savannah, Georgia, on August 29.

Vice President Kamala Harris directed her team this week to immediately schedule a visit to Georgia following a media report that revealed two deaths linked to the battleground state’s abortion restrictions, according to two sources familiar with the planning – a callback to the rapid response travel she’s done over the past year.

It’s reminiscent of the type of quickly arranged travel that placed Harris at the center of President Joe Biden’s then-reelection effort and an example of the types of moments her campaign is seizing on to elevate – and amplify – issues it believes will galvanize voters and mobilize them to vote.

“She uses her platform to command the attention of the country to these issues. This is a natural succession of that,” a senior Harris adviser told CNN.

Before she replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris had traveled the country to offer forceful pushback over contentious Republican-led state legislation or laws on a range of issues.

Last year, for example, she delivered an impassioned speech in Nashville after Tennessee Republicans expelled two Black Democratic state legislators, who had protested on the state House floor against inaction on gun control following a mass shooting in the city.

That was later followed by a trip to Florida, where she slammed Republicans over a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools.

And earlier this year, she went to Arizona, where she coined the term “Trump abortion bans” in reference to the restrictions on the procedure implemented in Republican-led states since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Harris’ advisers see Friday’s trip to Georgia as emblematic of that approach: rushing to the scene of issues of consequence and using her bully pulpit to put a spotlight on it; and doing so in a state that Democrats are trying to keep in play.

Read more ahead of Harris’ trip to Georgia to address reproductive rights.

Miriam Adelson listens to Trump speak during a "Fighting Anti-Semitism in America" event at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill on September 19 in Washington, DC. 

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that “the Jewish people” would be partially to blame if he loses in November, escalating his persistent trail criticism of Jewish voters and insisting that Democrats hold a “curse” over them.

Trump has frequently questioned why Jewish Americans would consider voting for his opponent, repeatedly saying that Jewish Democratic voters “should have their head examined.”

In the first of two speeches to Jewish groups on Thursday, Trump warned an audience that included GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, who introduced him onstage, that the upcoming US election is “the most important” in Israel’s history.

He claimed that the Jewish state would be “eradicated,” “wiped off the face of the earth” and “cease to exist” if Harris wins the presidency.

Trump appeared preoccupied with what he described as ingratitude from Jewish voters, whom he said should be supporting him in greater proportions because of his record on Israel.

Later Thursday, at the Israeli American Council’s national summit, Trump said he had not been “treated properly by voters who happen to be Jewish” during the 2020 election and, for the second time in a few hours, said Jewish voters would hold some responsibility if he is defeated this year.

Read the full story.

Vice President Kamala Harris joins Oprah Winfrey at a "Unite for America" live streaming rally in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on September 19.

Vice President Kamala Harris sought to capitalize on the star power of Oprah Winfrey and a host of Hollywood celebrities to help her win over persuadable voters during an online rally Thursday night that ranged from participants’ searing accounts of personal loss and trauma to the Democrat’s unguarded remark about her own gun ownership.

During the “Unite for America” event in Michigan, Harris also reflected on the change that Winfrey said she and others had observed in the vice president once she became the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer.

“We each have those moments in our lives where it’s time to step up,” Harris responded, adding that she felt a “sense of purpose,” given the stakes of November’s election.

Winfrey delivered her coveted endorsement of Harris at last month’s Democratic National Convention. At times, the night evoked Winfrey’s long-running talk show, with Harris taking questions from the media mogul and listening to members of the invited live audience gathered in a suburb of Detroit. Celebrities, ranging from Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts to comedian Chris Rock, chimed in virtually.

Read the full story.

Teamsters General President Sean M. O'Brien shakes hands with workers during a rally with workers and union members in Long Beach, California, on August 29.

Teamsters president Sean O’Brien defended his labor union’s decision against endorsing in this year’s presidential race, saying on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that “this was not an endorsement for the Republican Party, this is a wake-up call that the system is broken.”

O’Brien explained that one reason for not endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris was a lack of “a commitment that the government will not interfere or impede our right to strike,” citing the 2022 rail strike, when the Biden administration used a century-old labor regulation to end the work stoppage.

Former President Donald Trump, O’Brien said, “couldn’t commit to vetoing national right to work” or commit to supporting the PRO Act during his meeting with the Teamsters. 

Responding to the New York lawmaker’s criticism of the decision, O’Brien said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “has to remember: there is a clear divide, especially in Teamster members, between the Democrats and the Republicans and instead of trying to pick a fight with labor leaders who listen to their members and embrace their members’ opinions, she should maybe get into her district.”

“She may want to focus on her job instead of mine,” he said, claiming that Teamster members in her district voted overwhelmingly for the former president, without providing data to back up that claim.

“This is an opportunity for Republicans who claim they want to be the working party for American workers to prove that they can do that by supporting the PRO Act,” O’Brien said.