Harris poised to pick Tim Walz as vice presidential running mate
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate to help her challenge Donald Trump and JD Vance in November.
(WASHINGTON) — With less than a week until the Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump hosted by ABC News, the network on Wednesday released the set of rules that will govern the matchup.
The debate, which will be moderated by World News Tonight anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis, will mark the first in-person debate between Harris and Trump and will feature 90 minutes of debate time, with two commercial breaks.
The debate will be held in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center and will have no audience in the room.
Microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate. Only the moderators will be permitted to ask questions.
A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday to determine the podium placement and the order of closing statements; former President Trump won the coin toss and chose to select the order of statements. The former president will offer the last closing statement, and Vice President Harris selected the right podium position on screen, i.e., stage left.
There will be no opening statements, and closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.
Each candidate will be allotted two minutes to answer each question with a two-minute rebuttal, and an additional minute for a follow-up, clarification, or response.
Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate and no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on stage. Each candidate will be given a pen, a pad of paper, and a bottle of water.
Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.
The debate will be produced in conjunction with ABC station WPVI-TV and will air live at 9 p.m. ET on the network and on the ABC News Live 24/7 streaming network, Disney+ and Hulu.
ABC News will also air a pre-debate special, “Race for the White House,” at 8 p.m. ET, anchored by chief global affairs correspondent and This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz, chief Washington correspondent and This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce and senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott.
As previously announced by ABC News, to formally qualify for the debate, the participants had to meet various qualification requirements, including polling thresholds and appearing on enough state ballots to theoretically be able to get a majority of electoral votes in the presidential election.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is railing against FBI director Christopher Wray for testifying earlier this week that it was still unclear whether Trump was hit with a bullet — or something else — at his Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
“FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday that he wasn’t sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass, or a bullet (the FBI never even checked!) … ” Trump posted in part Thursday night on his Truth Social account.
Trump was reacting to Wray telling House lawmakers on Wednesday that the bureau still hasn’t reached a determination as to whether Trump’s ear was hit by an actual bullet.
“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray said in response to a question from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan asking whether the FBI has accounted for all bullets fired by the shooter.
“It’s conceivable — although as I sit here right now I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing could have also landed somewhere else,” Wray said.
As he indicated, the FBI is still examining bullet fragments found at the rally site in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to a source familiar with the investigation, to determine what actually hit the former president.
On Friday, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician who served while Trump was president, disputed Wray’s testimony in a letter on his congressional letterhead.
“There was no evidence it was anything other than a bullet,” Jackson wrote in the letter posted to X by Trump’s adviser Jason Miller. “Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
Jackson writes that he has been treating Trump in the aftermath of the assassination attempt and concurs with the assessment made by the doctors at the Butler Memorial Hospital the day of the shooting.
The hospital has not released any medical reports about Trump’s injury, the cause or any treatment Trump received. Nor is there an official account yet from the state or federal government or the Trump campaign, other than two letters from Jackson, an outspoken supporter.
A statement released by the FBI on Thursday said the attempted assassination resulted in Trump’s injury, but the exact manner how is still under investigation.
“The FBI’s Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing.”
In his post on Truth Social, Trump insisted it was a bullet that struck him.
“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard,” Trump wrote. “There was no glass, there was no shrapnel. The hospital called it a ‘bullet wound to the ear,’ and that is what it was.”
At his campaign rallies, Trump now says he “took a bullet for democracy.”
In the same social media post Thursday, Trump also said Wray “knows nothing” and has promised to fire him if he wins a second term.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is investigating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after the resurfacing of a decades-old incident in which Kennedy allegedly drove a dead whale’s head across state lines, a representative for the agency told ABC News.
Kate Silverstein, a spokeswoman for NOAA Fisheries, told ABC News Monday that the agency was investigating Kennedy, confirming what the former independent presidential candidate told a crowd in Arizona over the weekend.
“I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago,” Kennedy said at the event, where he was campaigning for former President Donald Trump, whom he endorsed after suspending his own campaign.
In a 2012 Town and Country article, Kennedy’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, told an anecdote about her father’s handling of a dead whale that washed up on a Massachusetts beach.
Robert Kennedy used a chainsaw to cut off the head of the whale and strapped it to the roof of his minivan roughly three decades ago, Kick Kennedy recounted.
The story resurfaced last month and drew condemnation from at least one environmental group, which called for the NOAA to investigate.
Silverstein did not respond to a question seeking confirmation that NOAA’s investigation was related to the incident Kick Kennedy described.
She said the agency does not comment on ongoing investigations.