Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to face off in their first debate of the 2024 election next week, moderated by ABC News.

With only weeks until Election Day, the debate is a crucial opportunity for both candidates to work to sway undecided voters in what’s expected to be a close contest.

The debate is a chance for Harris — who became the Democratic candidate after President Joe Biden left the race following his lackluster June debate performance — and Trump to explain their policies on key issues. It’s the first time the pair will meet in person.

Likewise, the debate is Trump’s first opportunity to attack Harris while laying out some of his own positions.

Here’s what to know about the debate and how to tune in.

How to watch or livestream the debate

There are several ways to watch the ABC News presidential debate, which is being produced in conjunction with the ABC-owned Philadelphia news station WPVI-TV.

It will air on ABC and stream on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. Viewers can also stream the debate on the ABC app on a smartphone or tablet, on ABC.com and connected devices.

ABC News Digital and 538 will live blog the latest from the debate stage as it happens and provide analysis, fact checks and coverage of the biggest takeaways from the night.

When and where is the presidential debate?

The debate will take place in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m. EDT.

Who is moderating the ABC News presidential debate?

“World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis will serve as moderators.

The prime-time pre-debate special, “Race for the White House,” will be 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. It will air at 8 p.m. EDT and stream on ABC’s platforms.

What are the ground rules?

Both Harris and Trump accepted the debate rules, which include that their microphones will be muted when the time belongs to another candidate.

The agreed-upon rules include:

• The debate will be 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.
• The two seated moderators will be the only people asking questions.
• A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday, Sept. 3, to determine podium placement and order of closing statements; former 
• President Donald 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 (stage left).
• Candidates will be introduced by the moderators.
• The candidates enter upon introduction from opposite sides of the stage; the incumbent party will be introduced first.
• No opening statements; closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.
• Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate.
• Props or prewritten notes are not allowed onstage.
• No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.
• Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.
• Candidates will have two-minute answers to questions, two-minute rebuttals, and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications, or responses.
• Candidates’ microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate.
• Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other.
• Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.
• Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion.
• There will be no audience in the room.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — After a sweeping victory over Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 5, President-elect Donald Trump is now set to become just the second ever to serve nonconsecutive terms in office.

Trump has wasted no time in moving to assemble his team for a second term in the White House — naming Susie Wiles as his chief of staff and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as U.N. ambassador, among other positions.

 

November 11, 2024, 7:00 PM EST – Trump asks Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser: Sources

Trump has asked Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., to be his national security adviser, multiple sources said.

Waltz was at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, sources said.

Waltz is a former Green Beret and China hawk who emerged as a key surrogate for Trump, criticizing the Biden-Harris foreign policy record during the campaign.

The Florida Republican sits on the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

He has supported aid to Ukraine in the past but has demanded “conditions,” including increased spending from European allies, additional oversight of funds and pairing the aid with border security measures.

Waltz, who has visited Ukraine, was a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s policy towards Ukraine, criticizing the White House and allies for not providing Ukraine with more lethal aid — such as MiG fighter planes — earlier in the conflict.

Before running for elected office, Waltz served in various national security policy roles in the Bush administration, Pentagon and White House.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Benjamin Siegel, John Santucci and Katherine Faulders

November 11, 2024, 6:06 PM EST – Volunteer-run effort on RFK Jr.’s website crowd-sourcing ideas for Trump admin appointments

A volunteer-run effort on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s website has begun crowd-sourcing ideas for appointments in Trump’s administration.

A website titled “Nominees for the People” gives anyone the chance to submit names of people they’d like to see join the administration.

“President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. want your help nominating people of integrity and courage for over 4,000 appointments across the future Trump administration,” the website reads.

Stefanie Spear, a Kennedy spokeswoman, told ABC News that the crowd-sourcing effort is “a grassroots initiative run by volunteers,” and is not actually spearheaded by Kennedy, although the page uses the “mahanow.org” URL that Kennedy’s official campaign website adopted after he exited the race.

“We’ve always offered space on our website to our grassroots movement,” Spear said.

This post has been updated to reflect that the crowd-sourcing effort is a volunteer-run effort.

-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik

November 11, 2024, 5:55 PM EST – Trump’s ‘border czar’ says mass deportation strategy will be a main priority

Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan, Trump’s newly announced “border czar,” said his main priority will be overseeing and formulating Trump’s long-vowed mass deportation strategy while consolidating decisions related to border security.

“Everybody talks about this mass deportation operation. President Trump talks about. I’ll oversee that and come up with a strategy for that,” Homan said during a lengthy interview with his hometown television station WWNY on Monday.

Homan said Trump’s mass deportations is “going to be a targeted enforcement operation, concentrating on criminals and national security threats first.”

He acknowledged that the deportations would be costly but argued the policy would “save the taxpayers a lot of money.”

Homan said he does not plan to “separate women and children” but acknowledged that deporting alleged criminals would result in breaking up families.

“When we arrest parents here, guess what? We separate them. The illegal aliens should be no different,” Homan said.

Homan also said worksite enforcement — an aspect of immigration policy focused on unauthorized workers and employers who knowingly hire them — is “going to get fired back up.”

“Under President Trump, we’re going to work it and we’re going to work it hard,” he said.

-ABC News’ Peter Charalambous

November 11, 2024, 5:46 PM EST – Melania Trump skipping meeting with Jill Biden: Sources

Melania Trump is not expected to travel to Washington with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, two sources told ABC News.

First lady Jill Biden had extended an invite to Melania Trump for a meeting, according to the sources. In 2016, Michelle Obama had hosted Melania Trump at the White House.

The Trump campaign declined to comment. The first lady’s office confirmed to ABC News that a joint invitation was extended to the Trumps to meet at the White House though declined to comment beyond that.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, John Santucci and Molly Nagle

November 11, 2024, 4:26 PM EST – RFK Jr. advising Trump transition on health decisions: Sources

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has continued to broadly advise Trump and the transition team on health-related appointments and has been in discussions to possibly fill a major role in the next administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

While sources caution that a role has not been finalized, RFK Jr. has been discussed as a potential candidate for the next secretary of Health and Human Services. But other roles are also on the table, including a broad “czar”-like position that would advise on policy and personnel decisions in other health arenas, the sources said.

RFK Jr. has been in active discussions with the transition team since Trump’s election victory last week. He’s been spotted at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club multiple times and has been engaging in presentations which include candidates for specific Cabinet and health-related jobs, sources said.

He has spent hours with the co-heads of Trump’s transition team — billionaire Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon — in addition to others at Mar-a-Lago such as Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.; investor and donor Omeed Malik; Tucker Carlson; and Del Bigtree, RFK Jr.’s former campaign spokesperson who produced a documentary called “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.”

-ABC News’ Katherine Faulders, Olivia Rubin and Will McDuffie

November 11, 2024, 3:30 PM EST – Lee Zeldin named to be EPA administrator

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies,” Trump said in a statement. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet. He will set new standards on environmental review and maintenance, that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.

Zeldin, who also ran for New York governor against Andrew Cuomo in 2022, confirmed he had been offered the job via a post on X.

“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” he wrote. “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

-ABC News’ John Santucci, Rachel Scott and Katherine Faulders

November 11, 2024, 3:06 PM EST -RFK Jr. suggests he’ll gut NIH, replace 600 employees

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated over the weekend that he would fire 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health, replacing them with a new cohort of workers as he seeks to dramatically reshape America’s health agencies.

Speaking at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Arizona, Kennedy described his role vetting people for Donald Trump’s new administration.

“We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20, so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave,” Kennedy said, according to a video of his remarks posted on YouTube.

November 11, 2024, 3:06 PM EST- Trump expected to announce Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to announce Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner and one of his senior advisers, will become his deputy chief of staff for policy, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

It’s not clear when Trump plans to formally announce the job, the sources said.

Miller worked in the first Trump administration and played a key role in crafting immigration policies — including those that resulted in thousands of families being separated at the border.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, John Santucci and Katherine Faulders

November 11, 2024, 3:00 PM EST – Trump picks Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador

President-elect Donald Trump selected Rep. Elise Stefanik to be his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, multiple Trump officials told ABC News.

“I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement to ABC News.

Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York’s 21st District, was elected last week to her sixth term in the House. She will inherit a role Nikki Haley held for two years in the first Trump administration.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Katherine Faulders and John Santucci

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Democrats for years have struggled with working-class, populist voters, ceding precious political territory to Republicans. This year, a slate of congressional races could help reverse the tide — or intensify it, even beyond Election Day.

Democratic lawmakers like Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana, and Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp of Washington, represent working-class areas who are running tough reelection campaigns this year. With Republicans’ tissue-thin House majority and Democrats’ one-seat Senate majority, their races are among those at the heart of both parties’ paths to congressional control.

But with Republicans cleaning up with working-class voters and Democrats featuring fewer and fewer national leaders with brands that appeal to them, keeping those remaining lawmakers in office is also crucial to the party’s hopes of maintaining a bench of national spokespeople in the long-term fight over blue-collar populism.

Populist fervor among working-class voters is “definitely a major driving force,” said John LaBombard, a former Senate aide to red-state Democrats. “I tend to think that my party has at times been slow on the uptake in terms of what a winning message and a winning candidate means to working-class voters, and as a result of factors both in our control and out of our control, to a degree, we’ve been losing that fight big time.”

LaBombard emphasized “the importance of having go-to figures in the national party where those folks can stay to their constituents, ‘we’re not just another national Democrat. We understand working people. We understand and can speak to these issues.’ And it helps the Democratic Party to be a bigger tent and be more appealing and less toxic to winnable voters.”

Democrats have been on their back foot with white voters without college degrees since former President Donald Trump burst onto the political scene in 2015, using his brash brand of politics to appeal to voters frustrated with a government they felt had left them behind. That slippage, Democrats fear and polls suggest, is expanding with Black and Latino voters without a college degree.

(WASHINGTON) — Voters without college degrees are far from the only sought-after demographic — Vice President Kamala Harris is also working to gin up support among women and seniors with appeals to issues like abortion and entitlements, and Trump is working to expand backing from younger men, leaning on male-oriented podcasts to underscore a bravado his campaign believes is appealing.

But voters without college degrees are particularly coveted as one of the anchors of today’s politics. And they lean toward Republicans — backing Trump by a 50-48 margin in 2020 but a 53-42 margin in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll — risking Democrats’ path to the White House and congressional majorities this year.

“It’s the biggest engine that there is in Republican politics, and it is the biggest area of recovery that the Democrats are focused on in this election cycle in particular,” said former Wisconsin GOP strategist Brian Reisinger, the author of “Land Rich, Cash Poor,” which explores the economic struggles of farmers. “Republicans are doing everything they can to maximize it as their primary path to victory, and you’ve got Democrats who have recognized it.”

Democrats insist that their policies are more suited for working-class voters, pointing to their support for unions and tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, among other things. But, lawmakers and operatives said, there’s a more emotional hurdle Democrats have failed to pass before engaging in a policy discussion — recognizing voters’ frustrations.

“People communicate on an emotional level first and you do not talk people out of their feelings with a spreadsheet. You have to understand what they’re saying to you,” said Gluesenkamp Perez. “Rural communities like mine, we don’t like we don’t like it when a politician says, ‘hey, sorry, your economy’s collapsed, fill out this 200-page grant application, and maybe I’ll help you.'”

It’s a strategy that a shrinking handful of lawmakers have deployed effectively to remain in office, representing what on paper would appear to be hostile territory.

Golden, a tattooed combat veteran whose district is anticipated to once again back Trump this year, described populism in a speech in July as “the public’s disdain of an elite consensus that seems stacked in favor of the powerful and wealthy — regardless of party or ideology — at the expense of everyone else — regardless of party or ideology.”

Voters “trust that when necessary, I’ll stand up for them against elites who don’t care about them, or where they’re from, or how they’ve lived, even when that means standing up to my own party,” he said.

To persuade voters of that, though, Democratic lawmakers and candidates have to have a shared lived experience with the voters whose backing they want.

“You have to have candidates who are driving a s—box, who have struggled to get a home loan, who are working multiple jobs. You have to have different candidates,” said Gluesenkamp Perez, who ran an auto-repair shop before winning her seat in 2022. “The model that you need to be somebody with a J.D. and a trust fund and no kids does not deliver the nuance.”

Democrats are trying to create an opening.

Harris elevated Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a military veteran, hunter and former public schoolteacher, to be her running mate. Gluesenkamp Perez name checked Rebecca Cooke, who grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, and Whitney Fox, the daughter of a nurse and single mother, as examples of congressional challengers who can expand the party’s appeal.

And the party still counts a coterie of lawmakers already in Congress — for now.

“There’s a lot of voters in rural areas who might be very conservative, they might be really leaning Republican, but they’re not all that ideological. What I mean by that is, if they think that you’re fighting for them, and they hear the right issues, they’re willing to vote for you,” Reisinger said.

Democrats’ ability, or lack thereof, to pull that off is crucial this year.

Brown and Tester’s races will likely decide the Senate majority, and there are enough Democratic populists who can make a difference in which party controls the House of Representatives.

And beyond fighting for congressional majorities, Democrats who are desperate to make up ground, particularly in rural America, said they need those lawmakers in office to make a strong case and show that rhetoric of a big tent party isn’t just talk.

But standing in their way is a Republican Party that under Trump has swallowed up support in rural America, clinching a longtime GOP goal.

“Twenty years ago, I said the Republican party should become the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club. Ironically, Donald Trump did more to advance that goal than any Republican candidate in a long time,” said former Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

And, some Democrats warned, prolonging existing perceptions of Democrats could morph into a political reality that could make it hard for candidates to defy.

“There’s still a lot of ground to make up in terms of credibility,” LaBombard said.

“Depending on how this election goes, we have the opportunity for some perhaps limited but significant steps in the right direction in terms of the Democratic Party appealing to working-class, populist-type voters. Or we also have the opportunity to lose a ton of ground in terms of the voices we have and have elevated up to this point.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.