Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is introducing legislation that would prevent Donald Trump from ending his criminal prosecutions if re-elected to another term as president.
The new bill was shared exclusively with Time Magazine, which reported that Schiff's legislation would prohibit presidents from quashing a criminal case against them, although Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges and would be the first sitting president to be prosecuted.
“This is about protecting our democracy and ensuring a president can’t place themselves above the law,” Schiff said “There is every indication that Donald Trump will use the Justice Department to do away with any effort to hold him accountable.”
“The need for swift passage of this bill could become even more pressing,” Schiff added, “depending on the outcome of the election.”
Schiff's bill would require a sworn statement from the attorney general whether a dismissal was ordered by the president or anyone acting on their behalf, and any request for dismissal would be evaluated by a three-judge panel to ensure the decision was not made unilaterally.
The panel could impose sanctions if a motion to dismiss was found lacking in good cause, and any finding that a dismissal was requested by the president would be reported to Congress by the Department of Justice's inspector general.
The bill, called the Investigative Integrity Protection Act, has the backing of seven other Democratic lawmakers but would almost certainly stall in the Republican-led House.
“The rule of law is a core foundation of our nation,” Schiff said. “No one, not even the President, is above it.”
In interviews with AzCentral's Laurie Roberts, Republican Party campaign consultants in the state not only see former TV personality Kari Lake on the verge of suffering a humiliating defeat in November as she runs for a Senate seat, but also the end of any future in politics.
In her column, Roberts noted that Lake's unfavorable numbers have been increasing at an alarming rate to the point that a stunning number of conservatives who plan to vote for Donald Trump have indicated they have no desire to cast their vote for one of his most avid followers.
With a Marist poll showing former president Donald Trump holding a slim lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, that same poll shows the controversial Lake is ten points behind progressive Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).
As columnist Roberts wrote, "Another day, another heaping helping of disaster for Arizona’s reigning queen of the Make America Great Again movement. When this election is over, Republicans really should begin asking themselves when and if they ever want to win again — because if it wasn’t clear after already losing two Senate seats and every key statewide office, it’s about to become undeniably clear to all but the fiercest MAGA diehards."
That led GOP campaign consultant Chuck Coughlin to tell Roberts, "As Al McCoy would have said, ‘You can put that one in the deep freeze,’" with GOP colleague Barrett Marson adding, "She is probably beyond help by now."
Republican consultant Tyler Montague painted a darker picture of Lake's future, telling Roberts, "I don’t think there’s enough money and time for Lake to rehabilitate her image."
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris hammered former President Donald Trump's manufacturing record ahead of his visit to the battleground state of Michigan on Friday, pointing out that offshoring of U.S. jobs increased during the Republican nominee's first White House term despite his grand promises to revitalize the nation's industrial base.
"Donald Trump is one of the biggest losers of manufacturing in American history," Harris, who outlined her own domestic manufacturing priorities earlier this week, said in a statement Thursday. "He makes empty promise after empty promise to American workers, but never delivers. As president, he cut taxes for corporations, encouraged outsourcing, and lost nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs, including auto jobs. He has joked about firing workers, supported state anti-union laws, and suggested companies move jobs out of Michigan."
"Yet it was Trump's trade deal that made it far too easy for a major auto company like Stellantis to break their word to workers by outsourcing American jobs," Harris continued, pointing to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). "As one of only 10 senators to vote against USMCA, I knew it was not sufficient to protect our country and its workers. Many who voted for this deal conditioned their support on a review process, which as president I will use."
"On his watch, a Warren car plant closed and the auto industry bled thousands of jobs."
Trump has two campaign events scheduled in Michigan on Friday as recent polling shows him narrowly behind Harris in the key state, which President Joe Biden won in 2020.
Despite his starkly anti-worker record, Trump has sought to appeal to members of the United Auto Workers (UAW)—which has endorsed Harris—and other unions in Michigan and elsewhere during his bid for another term, issuing sweeping promises and dire warnings about the future of U.S. manufacturing if he loses in November.
If he doesn't prevail, Trump said during a town hall in Flint, Michigan last week, "there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs."
"It will all be out of here," he added.
Democrats have countered such claims by pointing to the fact that offshoring accelerated under Trump, particularly due to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—a law that delivered massive tax breaks to the rich and incentivized corporate offshoring.
A Public Citizenanalysis published in the final months of Trump's presidency found that the Republican nominee's administration "awarded more than $425 billion in federal contracts to corporations listed among those responsible for offshoring 200,000 American jobs" during his first term.
One of those factories was a General Motors plant in Warren, Michigan—a closure that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) highlighted with a billboard display in the city ahead of Trump's visit Friday.
“Donald Trump broke his promises to Michigan's working families," said Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson. "On his watch, a Warren car plant closed and the auto industry bled thousands of jobs."
In a video released earlier this week as part of its 2024 election efforts, UAW president Shawn Fain called Trump a "con man" who is merely posturing as an ally of the working class while pushing policy changes that would primarily benefit those of his own class, the ultra-wealthy.
"We can't get fooled or distracted by a con man like Donald Trump. That's why I'm voting for Kamala Harris," said Fain. "That's why our union has endorsed Kamala Harris, and that's why our country needs Kamala Harris as our next president."
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump has proposed aggressive tariffs to help protect and restore U.S. manufacturing. Earlier this week, the former president singled out John Deere, a federal contractor that has announced plans to lay off roughly 2,000 workers and shift some of its production to Mexico.
"I am just notifying John Deere right now that if you do that, we are putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States," Trump said during a campaign event in Pennsylvania earlier this week.
In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Thursday, Labor Institute executive director Les Leopold implored the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party more broadly to do more to counter Trump's messaging, specifically by calling out and moving to penalize companies that carry out mass layoffs while rewarding their rich investors with stock buybacks and dividends.
"Because Trump has difficulty focusing on a coherent message, the field is still open for the Democrats to put forth a new policy that directly affects the jobs of millions of workers," wrote Leopold. "Harris should give a primetime talk and focus on the $700 billion in taxpayer money that now goes to private corporations for goods, services, and subsidies."
"Here's the line she should stress: No taxpayer money shall go to corporations that lay off taxpayers or conduct stock buybacks," he continued. "The Democrats must decide, and soon, whether they really are the party of the working class. If they are, then they must fight hard to save worker jobs from unabated corporate greed."
The opposition research dossier compiled by Donald Trump's campaign on J.D. Vance was published online after hackers – allegedly from Iran – apparently stole data and shared it with media outlets, but a veteran journalist is curious why it took so long.
The 271-page oppo file was published online by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who was suspended from X shortly afterward, and The Bulwark's Marc Caputo examined the contents and commented on some of the noteworthy items he found.
"Vance’s infamous 'childless cat ladies' comment was not listed among the liabilities that the Trump campaign assessed about the then-prospective running mate," Caputo wrote.
"As to why the Trump campaign’s researchers didn’t include that the cat lady remarks, aides aren’t saying," he added. "The campaign has inveighed against news outlets publishing material that was allegedly obtained by a foreign adversary while declining to confirm the validity of the content. Two other people who independently obtained the Vance dossier, however, both told The Bulwark that the cat lady comments were not in it."
The exclusion suggests that Trump's team either missed the remarks that have come to define the Republican vice presidential candidate or simply didn't think they merited attention, although the document includes dozens of other references to Vance's appearances on Tucker Carlson's show.
"Vance comes across as a right-leaning classical liberal who became a Trump era conservative populist," Caputo wrote. "There was nothing obviously disqualifying in it, which explains, in part, how he got selected for the post."
Caputo said he had not independently verified the document, which could potentially include disinformation planted by the hackers, and he said the material he viewed was not the final version of the oppo file.
"It’s also unclear why the mainstream media outlets that were first given the document two months ago didn’t report on its omission of the cat lady comment — or on the dossier in general," Caputo wrote. "The disparity in treatment between this dossier and the hacked Democratic materials in 2016 is striking, as I noted last month. When a story doesn’t get covered, it needlessly looks like a coverup."
A smiling Stephanie Ruhle slapped aside complaints and whining from Fox News personnel who spent the greater part of Thursday seemingly obsessed with her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. She then made an offer to Donald Trump.
Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-host Joe Scarborough joked that Mika Brzezinski spends an inordinate amount of time watching Fox News and then pointed out that Ruhle and her Harris interview dominated their version of the news for the entire day.
"I noticed [Fox personality] Howie Kurtz was saying you launched a softball interview with Kamala Karris, and you seem to be the running banner for about 30 minutes," Scarborough prompted his guest as Brzezinski exclaimed, "30 minutes? All day!" as her co-host continued and joked, "What a softball interview this interview was. Of course, nothing, nothing like Donald Trump and Sean Hannity, I'm sure. But I'm just curious what your thoughts were about Fox News desperately suggesting that she bombed a softball interview."
"Well to Fox News, I would say 'thank you,' because, as I learned from Donald Trump, all press is good press, so I am thrilled to be all over their air waves all day long," Ruhle joked.
After some snarky banter about Trump selling $100,000 watches, coins, trading cards and Bibles, Ruhle pushed back, calling complaints about the interview a bunch of hot air.
"That's nonsense," she told the co-hosts. "Anybody who watched the interview I did with Vice President Harris, we sat down for 25 minutes and talked about one single topic, the economy. It is the number one issue for voters. If Donald Trump would like to sit down and have that same conversation, I'm ready for you."
'I think it's hugely important," she added. "It's a vulnerability for both candidates. It's tricky, Joe, because you obviously want to cover all of these topics, but to just do it with one candidate, it's hard, because many people feel like she's speaking in platitudes; she's speaking about an economic vision, and she's not giving details. She's got an 80-page detailed policy proposal."
"Do I think that she answers every single question and gives people exactly what they want?" she asked. "She doesn't. You know why? Because she's a politician, and none of them do."
In the comments to an unidentified individual, Vance argued that Trump "has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy)" and months later predicted to the same individual that Trump would lose the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Hours after the remarks were revealed, Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa put out a statement that hammered Trump's economic record.
"It is hard to conceive of a more scathing and definitive rejection of Donald Trump's economic record than his own running mate stating categorically that Trump 'failed' on the economy," Moussa said. "J.D. Vance himself was crystal clear: Donald Trump 'thoroughly failed' to deliver on his economic promises, and is only looking out for himself and his rich donors, not the American people."
The campaign's statement also pointed back to remarks Harris made earlier this week where she described Trump as "one of the biggest losers ever" when it comes to creating manufacturing jobs, as she notes that an estimated 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during his tenure.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell broke with Donald Trump on the centerpiece of his economic policy proposals.
The former president has pledged to impose massive tariffs and influence interest rates if re-elected, which economists say would weaken economic growth and increase inflation for a decade or more, and McConnell said he's "not a fan" of those proposals, reported Semafor.
“Take the bourbon industry, for example," McConnell said. "In Kentucky, it’s really been adversely impacted by European tariffs. I represent Kentucky, in addition to having this job. We’ve had a very bad experience in our signature industry with tariffs.”
The GOP minority leader typically sidesteps direct questions about Trump, and he didn't say he would prevent the ex-president from implementing tariffs if re-elected, but he made clear he doesn't agree they would help.
“I just differ with President Trump," McConnell said.
The 82-year-old McConnell will step down as the Republican leader after November's election, in which he says his party has a "good chance" of retaking the Senate majority, but he pledged to hold firm in another policy dispute with Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).
“I’m confident that I’m going to be arguing that it’s in America’s interest, our interest, for Ukraine to beat the Russians,” McConnell said. “No matter which administration.”
During an MSNBC "Morning Joe" segment on how closely the future of Ukraine is tied to the election of either Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in November, co-host Joe Scarborough accused the former president of being in the pocket of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
After sharing clips of Trump disparaging Ukraine for fighting back against the Russian invasion and claiming the war "didn't need to happen," The MSNBC host took his shot at the former president by citing a secretive and controversial meeting between Trump and Putin in 2018.
With Trump reportedly planning on meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday at Trump Tower, Scarborough told his panel, "Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia in 2008; a Republican president did nothing. Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea and Ukraine in 2014; a Democratic president did nothing. Vladimir Putin in 2018 basically got Donald Trump to pledge his fealty to him in Helsinki."
"One president after another has shown weakness and what has that led to?" he asked. "Well, it led to another invasion. The United States is finally pushing back after 15 years of invasion — it's just very obvious. If Donald Trump is elected and surrenders Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, Poland is next. "Moldova is next. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — those states are going to fall in no time."
"And yes, when they're invading NATO countries, it's going to be U.S. troops on the ground fighting and dying," he pointed out. "Right now, a million Russian casualties without one American casualty. I don't understand what Donald Trump does not get about this."
"As someone who served in the Trump administration, I experienced the chaos firsthand," she wrote. "I dealt with the fallout of his lack of self-control and poor decisions. I watched his dehumanizing rhetoric lead to increases in hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism. I watched as my bosses respectfully explained why he could not do certain things, because it was illegal or unconstitutional -- until they were fired for saying 'no' too often."
She then went on to talk about the way that Trump "praised our enemies and undermined our allies" while at the same time disparaging American military veterans.
After this, she warned that much worse is to come should Trump win a second term.
"My colleagues and I held the guard rails as long as we could, until we were pushed out," she said. "There will not be anyone in a second Trump administration that will say 'no' to him. There will be no guard rails. A second term will look nothing like the first."
Because of this, Neumann said that she was shifting her support to Harris, whom she said "possesses the essential qualities to serve as President" and "has demonstrated a commitment to upholding the ideals that define our nation — freedom, democracy, and rule of law."
A lot's riding on the vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, including the possibility of another presidential debate.
Kamala Harris has accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Donald Trump on Oct. 23, which the former president claims is "too late" because many voters will have already cast their ballots, but CNN's Michael Smerconish argued that he might be forced to take part if Vance flops in his Oct. 1 face-off with Walz.
"I think that the training that he received at the Yale Law School has put him in a position to be strong in that posture, but the styles are different," Smerconish said. "You know, it's interesting because I've already interviewed Tim Ryan. I've already interviewed [former Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate] Scott Jensen – they say the same thing about their opponents. Jensen says about Walz and Ryan says about Vance, each is very slippery, each is very hard to pin down. Each is going to come across with a Middle America tight message, but it's hard to hold their feet to the fire. It's almost as if both well, not almost as if it's as if they each have regrets about not doing something different in the debate opportunities that they had."
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states shows Harris with a 7-point lead among likely voters in Nevada and a 5-point lead in Pennsylvania, while she's up 3 points in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin and 2 points in North Carolina, and the pair are tied in Georgia.
"I think today you'd rather be Harris than Trump, and Tuesday night, given the closeness of this race, I think is really significant," Smerconish said. "If I'm Donald Trump, despite what I've told the media so far about whether there there'll be a future debate, I think I've got my eyes on how J.D. Vance performs, and if it doesn't go well for Vance I think it increases the odds that Trump desires to get back in the ring with the vice president."
Early Friday morning, the entire panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" expressed a combination of amusement, shock and disgust at Donald Trump's latest venture: selling Trump-branded "Fight, fight, fight" watches — including one for $100,000.
After sharing clips of the former president hawking the timepieces which elicited one "Oh, my gosh," comment and a "wow," co-host Wille Geist offered to laughter, "You know, it is getting very expensive to be a supporter of Donald Trump. You have to get the digital NFTs. You have to buy the sneakers. You have to buy the bible, of course — the Trump bible. Now, you have to buy a watch."
"I mean, this guy is really asking a lot of his supporters," he continued. "Did you love, too, when he called himself a 'beautiful man,' then pretended he was kidding?"
J.D. Vance is being criticized for being a featured guest at a Town Hall that is part of an event hosted by Lance Wallnau, a Christian nationalist pastor who organized the "Courage Tour," a revival-style political rally in seven key swing states.
Donald Trump's campaign website reported that Vance "will be a featured guest at a Town Hall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, September 28, 2024, at 1:00 PM EDT."
"This Town Hall event, part of the Courage Tour, is hosted by The Lance Wallnau Show," it says.
Matthew D. Taylor, an expert in religious extremism, flagged the news on social media.
"Very important news: J.D. Vance is planning a town hall on Saturday, hosted by the Lance Wallnau Show at the Courage Tour," Taylor wrote late Thursday night. "This is Vance's endorsement of one of the worst, most conspiratorial, Christian supremacist spectacles in the country."
Taylor continued, saying that "the Courage Tour is a 2020-election-denying, Christian nationalist, conspiracy propagation machine masquerading as a Pentecostal-style Christian revival."
"I witnessed this reality distortion field up close at their Eau Claire, WI stop," the expert added.
"At the helm is Donald Trump's most servile theologian and spiritual propagandist, Lance Wallnau," he said. "Wallnau was a key player in galvanizing and mobilizing Christians to be in DC for [January 6th] and was there himself."
Taylor had an additional warning about Wallnau's work with the Trump campaign.
"Even more ominous, Wallnau's Courage Tour is operating hand-in-glove as a functional Trump campaign tour under the guise of a Christian ministry," he added. "Trumpist think tank America First Policy Institute is feeding Wallnau county-by-county voter data."
Finally, Taylor said, "This Pennsylvania stop of the Courage Tour has had extra build-up and hype, because they're staging it just a few miles from Butler, PA, the site of Trump's 1st assassination attempt. They believe Trump's survival is a miracle presaging his divinely mandated electoral victory."
"If we pay [attention] to the ramp-up of rhetoric and protests that led to January 6th, the Courage Tour very much fits the pattern of partisan-spiritual-warfare, conspiratorial prophesying, and demonization of opponents that fed directly into the Capitol Riot," the scholar then concluded.
Two of the women who've accused Donald Trump of sexual assault have recalled their allegations in political ads that will air through the rest of the presidential campaign.
The ad campaign features two 60-second spots with stockbroker Jessica Leeds recounting her experience with the Republican nominee in one and former People Magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff sharing hers in another, but they are part of a "strange sorority" of women who have accused the former president of abusing them, wrote New York Times columnist Jessica Bennett.
"Depending on how you count them, 19 or 26 or 67 women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct," Bennett wrote. "Women who have said he 'squeezed my butt,' 'eyed me like a piece of meat,' 'stuck his hand up my skirt,' 'thrust his genitals,' 'forced his tongue in my mouth,' was 'rummaging around my vagina,' and so on."
Trump denies any misconduct and accuses the women of plotting a “conspiracy against you, the American people,” although he was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a lawsuit filed by journalist E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars by a New York jury.
"The women are not looking for revenge, exactly," Bennett wrote. "They simply want an acknowledgment and an apology. An admission, from the man himself, that they aren’t crazy or hysterical or gold diggers or liars, that he really did what they say he did to them, even as he told the world they were too old, too ugly, too haggard to possibly be his type."
The women have been telling their stories since Trump first entered politics, but it seems the sheer number of accusers blurred into background noise, and they've been trying to find ways to remind voters of the former president's misdeeds.
"Enter George Conway," Bennett wrote. "Yes, that George Conway: professional Trump loather, ex of the Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway and perhaps the most visible Never Trump conservative around. Mr. Conway wears many hats: attorney, political strategist, co-founder of the Lincoln Project. But he is also a man with a penchant for stirring up political trouble, particularly at the intersection of women, sex and power."
Conway worked behind the scenes in the 1990s on behalf of Bill Clinton accuser Paula Jones and helped set up Monica Lewinsky confidante Linda Tripp with a lawyer who leaked details of their affair to reporters, and he more recently introduced Carroll to lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who helped win her lawsuits against Trump.
"The goal is to get Mr. Trump to react, Mr. Conway said, to trigger him, so to speak, into lashing out — a tactic not dissimilar to what [Kamala] Harris did in the last debate," Bennett wrote in the Times piece. "There may indeed be political wisdom in that."
