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Harris vs. Trump: 100 days from election, it’s a dramatically altered presidential race

Harris vs. Trump: 100 days from election, it’s a dramatically altered presidential race

Sunday marks 100 days until Election Day 2024. It also marks one week since President Biden’s political landscape-altering announcement that he was suspending his re-election rematch against former President Trump. Biden made his move amid mounting pressure from within the Democratic Party for him to drop out after a disastrous performance in last month’s first presidential debate with Trump. 2024 SHOWDOWN: TRUMP QUICKLY MOVES TO TRY AND DEFINE HARRIS  The embattled president’s immediate backing of Vice President Kamala Harris last Sunday ignited a surge of endorsements for the vice president by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders. Within 36 hours, Harris announced that she had locked up her party’s nomination by landing the verbal backing of a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention.  ICING ON THE DEMOCRATS’ 2024 CAKE – THE OBAMAS ENDORSE HARRIS Former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama on Friday became the final major party leaders to endorse the vice president. Harris also hauled in a staggering $129 million in fundraising following Biden’s announcement, which her campaign touted on Thursday morning. “It’s go-time for both sides,” longtime Republican consultant David Kochel told Fox News. Besides uniting and exciting Democrats, the replacement of Biden by his vice president as the party’s standard-bearer – which is expected to become official during a virtual roll call of convention delegates that starts on Aug. 1 – has given Harris a bump in public opinion polling. What was once a margin-of-error race between Biden and Trump had turned into a clear edge for the former president in the weeks after their June 27 debate showdown in Atlanta. However, with Harris now at the top of the ticket and Biden out of the race, surveys indicate it is back to a margin-of-error race. “Instead of what was shaping up to be a Trump win, America has a real, bona fide race on its hands,” veteran political scientist and New England College President Wayne Lesperance said. “Game on.” While Harris faces the monumental task of going from zero to 60 in an extremely condensed timeline, she is not starting from scratch, as she immediately inherited Biden’s large campaign apparatus with its vast ground-game resources in the key swing states. However, Harris does face a crucial immediate task – choosing a running mate – which could come as early as the next week or two. Biden and Trump are both well-known commodities to American voters. However, Kochel, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns who remained neutral in the 2024 Republican primary, emphasized that most Americans know so little about the vice president’s record and that both the Trump and Harris campaigns are “in a race to define” Harris. In his first campaign rally since the presidential race was upended, Trump did not waste any time in trying to define his new opponent. At a rally in the crucial battleground state of North Carolina, the Republican presidential nominee repeatedly took aim at Harris, whom he derogatorily called “lying Kamala Harris.” Trump aimed to paint Harris as the “most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history.” The former president charged that Harris “has been the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe. She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country if she ever gets the chance to get into office.”  Additionally, pointing to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent, a far-left champion and two-time runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, Trump argued that Harris is “more liberal than Bernie Sanders. Can you believe it?” Throughout his more than an hour and a half stream of comments, Trump repeatedly slammed the vice president over border security and crime, two top issues in the 2024 election. Trump campaign spokesman and senior adviser Steven Cheung said that the former president’s team was ready to go on offense the moment Harris succeeded Biden as the Democrats’ standard-bearer. “There wasn’t any surprise. We were prepared for it. We had all our assets ready. We had all our content ready. It didn’t surprise anyone,” Cheung told reporters ahead of the Trump rally. Harris, pushing back, is pointing to her hefty law enforcement résumé as she spotlights Trump’s numerous legal controversies, including his 34 felony convictions two months ago in the first criminal trial of a former or current president. “As many of you know, before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as a United States senator, I was the elected attorney general of California. Before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said Monday at an event at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she emphasized as she pointed to Trump’s multiple lawsuits and criminal cases, many of which are ongoing. Harris repeated the line of attack the next day at a rally in Milwaukee. With 100 days to go until Election Day, the rhetoric this past week on the campaign trail is just an appetizer of things to come. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

House lawmakers leave DC until September with government shutdown deadline looming

House lawmakers leave DC until September with government shutdown deadline looming

The House of Representatives is officially off to an early start for its summer recess – a five-week period when lawmakers are back home in their districts focusing on local issues and their own re-election bids. They will return on Sept. 9 – exactly three weeks from the deadline to fund the government in the next fiscal year. That means the GOP-run House will have to compromise with the Democrat-controlled Senate or risk a partial government shutdown, with some federal offices shuttered and potentially thousands of government employees furloughed. It’s all but certain at this point that a short-term extension of the current year’s funding, known as a “continuing resolution” (CR), will be needed to avoid a partial shutdown. BIDEN ENDS BID FOR SECOND TERM IN WHITE HOUSE AS HE DROPS OUT OF HIS 2024 REMATCH WITH TRUMP “I’ve always said we’d have to do a CR,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters earlier this week. “And then whoever wins the election will make the decision. Do you want a deal by the end of the year, or do you want to kick them to the next Congress? I hope, my advice to whoever wins, would be do it by the end of the year.”  House GOP leaders had laid out an ambitious plan to finish their 12 individual appropriations bills before the current recess, momentum that was derailed by intraparty disagreements about where Republicans’ starting point should be. GOP rebels pushed for spending bills rife with culture war amendments on issues like transgender surgeries and abortion, arguing that it was the Republicans’ right as a majority to leverage from the most conservative starting point. Rank-and-file Republicans, however, were uneasy about being forced to take politically unpopular votes on measures that would not become law anyway, with no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate. So far, six of 12 bills have passed the House floor, while the Senate has not passed any. TRUMP SAYS BIDEN ‘IS NOT FIT TO SERVE’: ‘WHO IS GOING TO BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY FOR THE NEXT 5 MONTHS?’ The main discussion when lawmakers return in September will likely surround what a CR would look like in terms of length and what, if any, riders are attached. Allies of former President Trump have pushed for a CR to extend into the new year in the hopes that Republicans will take back the White House and Senate. But senior GOP lawmakers expressed concern that it would add unnecessary drama to what’s already expected to be an action-packed first 100 days of the new administration.  Some Trump allies are now also pushing for any CR to be paired with the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), a GOP-backed bill that would add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the voter registration process. “We have been in session week after week for months after Speaker Johnson passed a two part omnibus, fully funding the Biden/Harris agenda in May…For what? Messaging? When the reality that we ALL know is that we will be forced to vote on a CR by Sept 30th which is the government funding deadline,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X. “And since we all know a CR is coming you would think we would be working on one that makes an impact like attaching the SAVE Act for example because our elections matter. But nope, we are up here voting at 9 pm tonight on bills that won’t see the light of day in Schumer’s Senate for nothing.” KAMALA HARRIS’ PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN RAISES NEARLY $50 MILLION WITHIN HOURS OF BIDEN ENDORSEMENT In his comments to reporters earlier this week, however, Cole signaled that he was not enthusiastic about the idea. “I haven’t really thought about it yet, it’s not a big deal to me. But again, if it can’t pass the Senate, it isn’t going to be an effective CR,” Cole said. “So a real CR, you know, I’m more interested actually in disaster relief. That’s something that I think the two sides can come together on.” When reached for comment earlier this week about GOP frustrations over the spending process, a spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Fox News Digital: “The House has made significant progress in advancing FY25 appropriations bills. The House Appropriations Committee has diligently moved all 12 bills out of committee and the House has passed 75% of government funding for the upcoming fiscal year, while the Senate has yet to even consider a single appropriations bill. The House will continue its successful effort to responsibly fund the government for FY25 when it returns from its district work period.”

Newsom urges Oakland officials to tighten ‘extreme’ policy that restricts police chases

Newsom urges Oakland officials to tighten ‘extreme’ policy that restricts police chases

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, called on Oakland officials Friday to amend an “extreme” policy that generally only allows police to chase suspected criminals in cases of “violent forcible crimes.” The governor sent a letter to Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, the Oakland City Council and the Oakland Police Commission urging them to reconsider the Oakland Police Department (OPD) policy that limits officers’ ability to pursue suspects. “Although some California jurisdictions allow vehicle pursuits for only certain crimes (e.g., felonies), Oakland is an outlier by imposing exceptional restrictions on OPD’s ability to police criminal activity, generally permitting pursuits only for ‘violent forcible crimes,’ as defined in OPD’s policy, and crimes involving firearms,” Newsom wrote.  The letter said that, unlike most other jurisdictions in the state, local police in Oakland are prohibited from pursuing people suspected of committing various felonies and any misdemeanor, including those that are violent, as well as other offenses that endanger public safety, such as reckless driving, sideshow activity and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. GOV NEWSOM ORDERS HOMELESS ENCAMPMENTS TORN DOWN ACROSS CALIFORNIA: ‘NO MORE EXCUSES’ “I am mindful of the sensitivities around vehicle pursuits, which can be dangerous to police, suspects, and innocent bystanders,” the governor wrote. “California’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training recognizes and addresses this in its standard-setting guidance. But there is also extreme danger to the public in allowing criminals to act with impunity, and the reckless driving associated with sideshows and other criminal acts is a significant threat to public safety — as witnessed regularly by the public in viral videos and news coverage.” This comes after Newsom’s recent move to increase California Highway Patrol (CHP) in Oakland to conduct surge operations targeting organized crime, sideshows, carjackings and other criminal activity. Newsom said the move quickly produced several arrests of suspects accused of committing these crimes. Two days after the governor’s announcement, the CHP used ground and airborne assets to conduct a surge operation targeting sideshows. Several vehicle pursuits through that operation led to five felony arrests, eight DUIs, the recovery of eight stolen vehicles and the seizure of two guns. “In the course of the CHP’s operations, however, they have observed, based on their professional law enforcement experience and expertise, certain dynamics that are contributing to Oakland’s public safety challenges,” Newsom wrote in the letter. “In particular, the CHP has brought to my attention that they observed criminals often fleeing with impunity because it’s common knowledge that the Oakland Police Department’s (‘OPD’) pursuit policy allows vehicle pursuits in only very limited circumstances.” Newsom said CHP observed suspects attempting to avoid arrest by using the same routes, meaning that the suspects knew where OPD would stop chasing them. But, the governor said, the suspects were unable to avoid the six pursuits initiated by CHP, which had a number of resources available to them, including air support. CA SCHOOL DISTRICT SUES NEWSOM OVER BILL BANNING SCHOOLS FROM NOTIFYING PARENTS OF CHILD’S GENDER IDENTITY CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Any policy on vehicle pursuits must be clear-eyed in balancing the risks and benefits involved,” Newsom’s letter read. “Because of Oakland’s public safety challenges and the degree to which OPD’s pursuit policy is an outlier among California law enforcement agencies, I support the recent action by the City Council to direct a review of this policy. “I urge you to reconsider whether OPD should be permitted to pursue suspects in more circumstances to improve public safety in your city and to establish a process to evaluate whether OPD is making full use of its authority, including that granted under the existing pursuit policy, to protect public safety and enforce the law,” he continued. Newsom concluded his letter by saying he is committed to improving public safety in Oakland and across California. He said there have been some recent improvements in public safety, but that officials “owe it to our communities to continue to search for solutions.”