The Latest: 2024 candidates tune their campaigns with less than 100 days to go
The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government has stepped down after blowback from Donald Trump’s campaign, which has tried to disavow the program created by many of the former president’s allies and former aides.
Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do,” said the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, who has emerged as a chief spokesperson for the effort. He plans to lead Project 2025 going forward. Democrats have made the project a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse of how extreme another Trump administration could be.
Trump’s campaign has announced that he will travel to Atlanta on Saturday for a rally in the same venue where Vice President Kamala Harris held one Tuesday night.
Dueling ad campaigns by the presidential candidates portray the Democratic Harris as “fearless,” while an ad from Republican Trump blasts the vice president for problems at the southern U.S. border.
And Trump said in an interview Tuesday on radio station WABC that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” and appeared to agree with a host who called her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, “a crappy Jew.”
Follow the AP’s Election-2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the Latest:
Activists protest Trump’s appearance in Chicago
Dozens of activists are protesting former President Donald Trump’s appearance in Chicago and chanting outside the downtown hotel where he will address the National Association of Black Journalists.
Their chants Wednesday included, “Donald Trump ain’t welcome here!” Several activists carried Palestinian flags and signs calling for “Peace, Justice, and Equity for All.”
Police presence was heavy outside the hotel, where a brass band also played at times. A few cars driving by the hotel along the busy Michigan Avenue corridor honked their horns.
A few people in Trump T-shirts, and at least one counterprotester who spoke against abortion, also stood outside the hotel.
Campaigns spar over appearances before Black journalists
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign said ahead of Donald Trump’s appearance Wednesday at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that he would lie about his record.
“Not only does Donald Trump have a history of demeaning NABJ members and honorees who remain pillars of the Black press, he also has a history of attacking the media and working against the vital role the press play in our democracy,” Jasmine Harris, the campaign’s director of Black media, said in a statement.
Harris, who is not related to the vice president, also said, “Black voters see Donald Trump’s lies and empty pandering for what they are — and they will hold him accountable at the polls this November.”
Kamala Harris is not scheduled to appear at the convention, but the NABJ said in a statement on the social platform X that it was in discussions with her campaign to have her appear virtually or in person for a conversation in September.
Trump posted on his social media network that he was told he could not do the event virtually.
“She declined, and I am getting ready to land in Chicago in order to be there,” Trump wrote. “Now I am told that she is doing the Event on ZOOM. WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”
Trump faces resistance in Chicago
Chicago activists said that former President Donald Trump is “not welcome” in the nation’s third-largest city and that they’ll protest outside the hotel where he is expected to address the National Association of Black Journalists.
Activist groups, including the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said they aren’t sure how many will attend their Wednesday protest. The demonstration is expected to start shortly before noon, when Trump will be interviewed by a panel of reporters.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is also attending the same convention hours after Trump. Johnson said in a post on the social media platform X that his administration’s values and practices “are in complete opposition to former President Donald Trump’s agenda.”
The first-term Democratic mayor says he wants to assure the public that city agencies and departments are “fully prepared to uphold safety during his scheduled visit.”
During his 2016 campaign, Trump canceled a rally in Chicago over safety concerns after protesters packed the arena where he was scheduled to speak.
Harris gives Democrats a jolt in a critical part of Wisconsin
Kamala Harris has put a charge in Wisconsin’s most powerful Democratic stronghold, Dane County, where enthusiasm and volunteer support for President Joe Biden had been slipping.
Voters in Madison, the county’s famously liberal heart, pointed to what they described in interviews as Harris’ more vocal attention to specific Democratic priorities, in addition to her younger age and livelier style, in helping to restore their enthusiasm in a place where the party must post overwhelming margins to carry the swing state.
Biden won 75% of the vote in the county, Wisconsin’s fastest-growing, in 2020, beating Trump by 181,000 votes there while carrying the state by fewer than 21,000.
Harris calibrates policy pitch; Trump invited to address Black journalists
With less than 100 days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris faces challenges in pitching her policy ideas.
Republicans are trying to drag her down by reminding voters of her liberal positions from her unsuccessful 2020 primary campaign, as well as tag her with controversies from President Joe Biden’s administration.
At the same time, Harris wants to harness Biden-era accomplishments while charting her own course to maximize her chances of defeating Republican Donald Trump. It’s a delicate dance that she’ll need to perform at high speeds in an unprecedented political situation.
Meanwhile, Trump’s invitation to address the National Association of Black Journalists has sparked an intense debate within the organization and a flurry of arguments online.
Trump’s acceptance of the invitation has led at least one high-profile group member to step down as a convention co-chair and others to argue their convention may become a platform for Trump to make false claims or be seen as winning NABJ’s endorsement.
Public interest in the presidential election is perking up
News executives were worried in the first half of the year about consumers expressing relatively little interest in the upcoming election. That has now changed.
There’s evidence that interest has started to perk up following an extraordinary run of news. That includes the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek reelection and the rapid ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.
Taboola says its measurement of news sites shows interest going up. Fox News was the most obvious beneficiary of the boost in attention, with July being its most-watched month since November 2020.
AP-NORC poll: About 8 in 10 Democrats satisfied with Harris as nominee
Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have energized Democrats in the early days of her candidacy, with the surge in warm feelings extending across multiple groups, including some key Democratic constituencies that had been tepid about President Joe Biden, according to a new poll.
About 8 in 10 Democrats say they would be very or somewhat satisfied if Harris became the Democratic nominee for president. The survey from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted after Biden withdrew from the race.
The rapidly changing views among Democrats in such a short time span underscore how swiftly the party has coalesced behind Harris as its standard-bearer.
Kari Lake wins GOP primary in closely watched Arizona Senate race
Kari Lake has won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Arizona, setting up a fierce battle against Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego for a seat that could be crucial to deciding Senate control.
Lake on Tuesday defeated Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who had contended he was more electable and the best candidate to secure the border. But Lamb ultimately struggled to raise the money needed to make his case to voters.
Gallego ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for Senate. Lake, a former local news anchor, built a national profile in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement with an unsuccessful 2022 bid for Arizona governor.
Harris rallies, plans tour next week with running mate
Vice President Kamala Harris told a cheering, boisterous, packed Atlanta arena Tuesday that the next 98 days will be a fight, but that she will win come November.
She taunted Donald Trump for wavering on whether he would show up for their upcoming debate. In Georgia, the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, Harris mocked her rival and Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “just plain weird,” and derided their policies as backward, outdated and dangerous.
Harris will travel to battleground states next week with her yet-to-be-named running mate, according to an itinerary from the campaign. Campaign officials stress that the vice president has not yet made her decision, but the schedule confirms her plans to announce it soon.
The newly announced Democratic ticket will appear together in Philadelphia; western Wisconsin; Detroit; Raleigh, North Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Phoenix and Las Vegas.