August 13, 2024, presidential campaign news

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Second gentleman Doug Emhoff criticized the federal judge who oversaw the classified documents case against Donald Trump at a fundraiser in Los Angeles on Tuesday, suggesting she would be a judge Trump would consider appointing to the Supreme Court to his “bidding” if he’s reelected.

At a private event benefitting Vice President Kamala Harris’ joint fundraising committee, Emhoff stressed the stakes of the election, arguing that if Trump defeats Harris, he could fill the next set of Supreme Court vacancies with judges who “don’t follow any precedent,” singling out as an example Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw the Trump classified documents case before dismissing it last month.

Emhoff’s comments come as Harris has sought to distance herself from commenting on Trump’s legal cases. At multiple rallies in battleground states last week, she quieted down chants from members of the audience to “lock him up,” referring to Trump, by insisting Democrats should focus on defeating Trump at the ballot box.

The fundraiser, hosted by investment banker Stephen Paul and his wife Nancy Paul at their Beverly Hills home, raised over $3 million, Emhoff told the crowd.

In this January 2023 photo, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar speaks at a news conference in Washington, DC.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar will beat back a primary challenge from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, CNN projects, all but guaranteeing that the four original members of the “squad” of progressive House Democrats will be on the ballot this November.

First elected in 2018, Omar, who also beat Samuels last cycle, has now defended her 5th District seat in three consecutive primary elections. Two other original “squad” members, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both eased to renomination earlier this year, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts is unopposed in her primary next month.

Omar’s victory is a salve for progressives, especially those critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, after a pair of high-profile losses to moderate Democratic primary challengers heavily backed by big-spending pro-Israel outside groups. Those organizations, which spearheaded the unseating of “squad” members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, did not invest in Omar’s Minneapolis-area district, a deep blue enclave where Democrats tend to run up the score in statewide elections.

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“Republicans for Harris” held a virtual rally Tuesday in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid.

The platform’s goal is to reach the millions of Republican voters who “continue to reject the chaos, division and violence of Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda.”

The virtual rally, which included thousands of lifelong Republicans, was hosted by Olivia Troye, a former Trump-Pence administration national security official.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz voted in person in his home state’s primary on Tuesday before traveling to California for campaign events, his spokesperson Teddy Tschann told CNN.

A crowd watches as Air Force Two, carrying Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, lands for a campaign rally at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on August 7.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz taunted former President Donald Trump at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California, for promoting a conspiracy theory that images of attendees at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan last week were created by artificial intelligence.

Walz attended the fundraiser after making his first solo campaign appearance at a government employees union in Los Angeles earlier today. Tuesday’s appearance was his first in a string of fundraisers across the country this week.

Walz slammed Trump’s policy agenda during his remarks, arguing “no one is asking for the crap he’s asking for,” and again ridiculed Trump for not campaigning in battleground states as Harris and Walz toured those states last week, suggesting his age may be a factor.

Walz acknowledged his role in coining a new Democratic talking point when he labeled Trump and other Republicans as “weird.” He stressed that the label is meant only for Republican politicians, rather than Republican voters, and offered a note of caution in using the label, suggesting that he doesn’t want to attack behaviors from Republican officials that don’t have an impact.

Walz also attacked his Republican counterpart, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, by attempting to undercut Vance’s claim to small-town roots by pointing out his Ivy League background.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested he supported eliminating federal income and payroll taxes on tips, clarifying that the proposal he first floated in June would cover both levies. 

“We’re looking at doing the full bore,” Trump said in an interview with Spectrum News 1 in North Carolina when asked if he supported eliminating both federal income and payroll taxes. 

Such a measure would require congressional approval.

Federal payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, total 15.3% — half of which is paid by employers. If both federal income and payroll taxes were eliminated, it would lower revenue by $150 billion to $250 billion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

Vice President Kamala Harris has since embraced a similar proposal. But a Harris campaign official previously told CNN that under her proposal, tips would remain subject to payroll taxes.

A larger share of workers who receive tips would benefit if payroll taxes were also eliminated since more than one-third of them don’t earn enough to owe federal income taxes, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Both Trump and Harris announced their proposals in Las Vegas, Nevada — a key swing state where many residents work in the hospitality industry.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News on Tuesday, August 13.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley urged Republicans and former President Donald Trump to “quit whining” about Vice President Kamala Harris and instead focus on the voters.

The Trump campaign has repeatedly criticized Harris for not doing a media interview since starting her White House bid.

Haley reiterated that she wants to see the Trump campaign win, “but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she is dumb. It’s not — you can’t win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.” 

Trump has attacked Harris’ racial identity and spread a false conspiracy theory about Harris’ crowd size.

“Now we’re 80-plus days to make sure that there is not a President Kamala Harris. And the way to do that is let’s focus, let’s get to work,” Haley said.

Asked if she would serve in a Trump adminstration, Haley said:

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers Union, appears on CNN on Tuesday, August 13.

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), blasted former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk for threatening to intimidate workers who go on strike during their conversation on the social media platform X on Monday night.

The UAW, which recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, filed separate charges against Trump and Musk to the National Labor Relations Board after their discussion on X. During the interview, the pair discussed a potential role for Musk in Trump’s administration should he get reelected. Trump called Musk “the cutter,” and praised Musk for his anti-union stances.

“I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone,” Trump said.

Musk could be heard laughing and replying “yeah.”

Fain noted that “it is federal law that workers have a right to strike and you cannot be fired for striking.”

He also called Trump’s campaign “completely weird” and asked, “Who takes pride in firing workers?” He said Trump “was a disaster for working class people” while president.

Fain said Harris and her running mate, Gov, Tim Walz, would “stand up for working class people.”

CNN’s David Goldman contributed to this report.

Eric Hovde speaks during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16.

Wisconsin Republicans will nominate businessman Eric Hovde to take on Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, CNN projects, in a contest seen as crucial to the battle for control of the narrowly divided Senate.

Both Hovde and Baldwin are projected to advance in their respective primaries Tuesday – with Hovde overcoming nominal opposition from two little-known candidates and Baldwin unopposed.

Their wins set up one of the year’s marquee Senate races, in a state that is also poised to be a major presidential battleground.

Recent polling has given Baldwin the edge in her quest for a third term. A New York Times/Sienna College poll from earlier this month found the senator leading Hovde 51% to 43% among registered voters.

Hovde, in Madison on Tuesday, acknowledged the surge of Democratic energy after Vice President Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket once a Joe Biden stepped down – a change that could also damage the prospects of down-ballot Republicans.

Read more about the November matchup here

In the hours after President Joe Biden’s historic decision to step aside from the 2024 presidential race last month, journalists across three major US newsrooms began receiving emails from an anonymous person claiming to have tantalizing new information about the election. 

The individual, who identified themself only as “Robert,” sent a trove of private documents from inside Donald Trump’s campaign operation to journalists at Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Beginning on July 22, Politico reported, it began receiving emails from an AOL email address that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The dossier included what the Trump campaign identified as Vance’s potential vulnerabilities. Politico was also sent portions of a research document about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who had been among the contenders to join Trump on the GOP ticket.

The Times and The Post later reported that they, too, had been sent a similar cache, including a 271-page document on Vance dated Feb. 23 and labeled “privileged & confidential,” that the outlets said was based on publicly available information.

But despite receiving the sensitive campaign files, the three outlets opted to not publish reporting on the trove they’d been handed, even as the the person suggested they still had a variety of additional documents “from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.”

Read more about the decision by news outlets here.

Imam Asad Zaman speaks to the media on May 17, 2023, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Muslim community leader who appeared alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at several events told CNN in a statement he does not have a “personal relationship” with Walz and explained previously sharing antisemitic content on Facebook by saying he sometimes shares links on social media “without fully looking at them.” 

Asad Zaman, a Minnesota imam and executive director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, echoed the Harris campaign’s statement on the nature of the relationship between him and Walz in a series of answers to questions emailed to him by CNN. 

When asked about previous social media posts in which he shared a neo-Nazi propaganda film and a Hamas news release, Zaman attributed sharing the posts to a tendency to “pass along social media items without fully looking at them.” 

When asked about his opinions on the Harris-Walz campaign’s stance toward the Israel-Hamas war, Zaman said he wasn’t familiar with its views on the conflict but expressed solidarity for those experiencing “enormous human suffering.” 

Some background: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during a campaign event in 2018 praised Zaman as a “master teacher” and briefly touched on their shared history, according to video newly revealed by the Washington Examiner. In a statement to CNN, Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said that Walz and Zaman do not have a “personal relationship.”

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had been briefed about the hack on his campaign when asked if the FBI had briefed him and what the agency had told him about the breach. 

Trump’s campaign said Saturday that it had been hacked. Politico reported earlier Saturday that it had received emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump’s campaign operation. Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social later that day that his campaign was informed by Microsoft that it had been hacked by the Iranian government. 

It is not clear whether Iran was responsible for the hack. The Iranian mission to the United Nations said it does “not accord any credence to such reports.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin speaks at an event in Green Bay with the Wisconsin Education Association Council on

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin touted Democrats’ education agenda to Wisconsin teachers on Tuesday, speaking to a round table of educators on the same day voters cast ballots in the statewide primary elections, including in the race for Baldwin’s seat. 

The senator engaged with teachers and social workers for nearly an hour, hearing their personal experiences on issues including staffing shortages, teacher pay and school funding. She asked questions and took notes by hand throughout the roundtable.

Baldwin vowed to continue to fight to increase funding for public education and protect the Department of Education from the “existential threat of Donald Trump and Eric Hovde,” referencing her likely Republican opponent in the state’s competitive Senate race.

Hovde has been endorsed by Trump in Wisconsin’s Republican Senate primary in his race against two GOP challengers. Polls close in the state at 8 p.m. central time. Baldwin, a two-term senator, is unopposed in her primary.

:Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Montana State University on August 9, in Bozeman, Montana.

Some of those most eager to quiet Donald Trump are those who want to him back in the Oval Office.

Appearing dazed and flustered by an unfamiliar and fast-changing political landscape, Trump in response has unleashed a torrent of mean-spirited missives, race-baiting insults and conspiratorial broadsides that even close allies and donors acknowledge as unproductive. Some have privately expressed serious concerns that the former president’s recent inability to stay on message has wasted an early opportunity to blunt the momentum of his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

For Trump, staying on message has rarely been easy, as illustrated by the former president’s return to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where he was once a towering figure. Ahead of his Monday interview with Elon Musk, Trump’s account posted for the first time in a year, featuring a series of slickly edited videos that articulated the case for another Trump presidency in a way that regularly eludes the candidate himself. One post asked, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”

That question strikes at the heart of his campaign’s message to voters – but Trump failed to pose it until near the end of his two-hour conversation with Musk, during which he aired familiar grievances about the 2020 election, commented on Harris’ beauty on Time Magazine’s latest cover, remained fixated on President Joe Biden and, according to a CNN tally, told at least 20 falsehoods.

Read more about the frustrations some Trump allies here.

The Harris-Walz campaign is discussing holding a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday during the Democratic National Convention, according to a source involved in the discussions. 

With Milwaukee just 90 miles from the site of the DNC, the move is seen as an opportunity to log a visit to a critical battleground state during an unscheduled portion of the convention’s programming.

The New York Times first reported news of the rally.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is digging in on his attacks against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s military record, as the Minnesota governor defended himself during a campaign event in Los Angeles today.

Earlier today, Walz said, “I am damn proud of my service to this country, and I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record.”

Walz caught heat from Vance last week for saying in 2018 that he handled assault weapons “in war.” Harris’ campaign acknowledged Saturday he “misspoke” during this event. As CNN reported, Vance also accused Walz of ducking service in Iraq.

Vance defended his comments earlier this week, telling CNN’s Dana Bash: “I’m not criticizing Tim Walz’s service; I’m criticizing the fact that he lied about his service for political gain.”

Georgia’s Secretary of State announced on Tuesday that independent presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West have submitted enough valid signatures to qualify, the next step toward appearing on the ballot in the key battleground state.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office announced it verified both Kennedy and West, along with Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate Claudia De La Cruz, have submitted more than the minimum 7,500 valid signatures needed to qualify for the state’s ballot in November. 

Both West and Kennedy face objections to their petitions backed by the Georgia Democratic Party that allege both candidates incorrectly submitted their petitions by filing under their own names, rather than their slates of electors as required by Georgia election law. The Georgia Democratic Party also alleges West did not file his petition before the state’s independent candidate filing deadline.

In the statement, Raffensperger’s office said hearings on the challenges will take place next week. An administrative law judge will determine whether Kennedy and West appear on the ballot following the hearings.

While Kennedy and West have yet to qualify for the ballot in Georgia, their presence on the ballot could alter the dynamics of the contest in a state where President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by less than 12,000 votes.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance holds a press conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 6.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is doing very well financially for someone who just turned 40, new federal disclosures reveal.

The Ohio senator, whom former President Donald Trump chose as his running mate last month, has roughly between $4 million and $11 million in assets to his name, with only $750,000 to $1.5 million in liabilities. He owns a home, has a stake in two businesses and has three 529 education savings accounts for his children.

His biggest single asset is his Schwab brokerage account, which he values between roughly $2.2 million and $7.5 million – with investments largely in passively managed exchange-traded stock and bond funds.

Outside of that, while hardly his largest holding, Vance does include among his assets $250,000 to $500,000 worth of bitcoin. With Trump promising to implement crypto-friendly policies if elected, it’s unclear how that will affect his holdings, but it does stand out in a portfolio made up largely of diversified ETFs.

Vance’s financial disclosure form was released Tuesday by the Office of Government Ethics and the Federal Election Commission. CNN has reached out to the Vance campaign for comment about the new disclosure.

CNN’s Steve Contorno, Kit Maher and David Wright contributed to this report.

Read more about what else Vance’s disclosures show here.

This November, many voters across the country could take to the polls to determine the future of abortion access in their state, with organizers working to secure a wave of measures on the 2024 ballot.

Most of the proposed ballot measures aim to enshrine the right to an abortion in state constitutions. They follow a series of restrictive trigger laws that went into effect after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, along with abortion policies that were handed down by politicians or decided by state supreme courts since the decision. Some are up against a handful of counter-measures aimed at restricting abortion access.

Here are the states with abortion measures:

Read more about the ballot measures as voters prepare to weigh in this fall