September 20, 2024, presidential campaign news

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.

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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.

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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.