Trump campaign office burglarized in Virginia; officials release photo of suspect
(NEW YORK) — Authorities are looking for a man in connection to a burglary at the Trump for President 2024 campaign office in Ashburn, Virginia, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday.
Sheriff’s deputies said they were alerted to the break-in at approximately 9:00 p.m. ET, but the suspect was gone before officials arrived on the scene.
Surveillance video provided by officials showed the suspect — an adult male — wearing dark clothing, a dark cap and a backpack.
The investigation is ongoing and the sheriff’s office did not indicate if anything was taken or left at the scene.
“It is rare to have the office of any political campaign or party broken into,” Sheriff Mike Chapman said in a news release. “We are determined to identify the suspect, investigate why it happened, and determine what may have been taken as well as what may have been left behind.”
The campaign office, which is leased, also serves as the headquarters of the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee, officials said.
(WASHINGTON) — South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace moved to force a full House vote to impeach United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Mace filed the impeachment resolution as privileged on the House floor late Monday at 8:26 p.m. ET.
Director Cheatle “has been derelict in her duty to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office to which she holds,” Mace said on the floor.
Mace also highlighted Cheatle’s testimony from Monday morning’s Oversight Committee hearing, saying the director “acknowledged on July 22, 2024, that the events of July 13, 2024, were the most significant operation failure of the Secret Service in decades.”
This move by the congresswoman forces the House to take up the measure within two legislative days.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic support has quickly coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
In the days since the president withdrew and backed his running mate for the top of the ticket, Harris has received an unprecedented flood of donations and backing from most party leaders, rank-and-file members and even a slate of Democrats floated as could-be Biden replacements.
On Monday night, Harris secured commitments from enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee if they all honor their commitment when voting, according to ABC News reporting.
But her formal nomination, the Democratic National Committee says, will still come as part of its previously announced plan to run a “virtual roll call” that will formally determine the Democratic nominee for president.
A DNC memo obtained by ABC News, along with a press briefing from party leadership on Monday night, provided additional details on how this virtual nomination — ahead of the in-person convention starting Aug. 19 — will move forward. Virtual voting could start as soon as Aug. 1 and the DNC hopes to have it “wrapped up” by Aug. 7.
How does nominating a presidential candidate normally work for Democratic candidates?
When voters cast ballots for their preferred candidate in a Democratic presidential primary, they are not actually voting directly for the candidate — but for pledged delegates, who are individuals who have promised to support a candidate at a later party convention. A candidate nets delegates both based on the percentage of the vote the candidate gets statewide and by congressional district (in most states; some states use different divisions).
Those Democratic delegates are not formally bound to the candidate and are able to change their vote without penalty, but are pledged to follow the will of the people who elected them and are meant to reflect the will of the primary voters. The delegates formally vote for the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in a roll call vote. There are nearly 4,000 pledged delegates this cycle.
Automatic delegates — also known as superdelegates — are not pledged, but only vote if no candidate gets a majority of the delegates in a first round of voting at the convention. There are more than 700 automatic delegates this cycle. This type of delegate is usually composed of local party leaders.
Why are Democrats holding a virtual roll call in the first place? And what changed when Biden left the race?
The DNC announced in May — before Biden’s decision to step away from the presidential race — that it would hold a virtual roll call vote ahead of the convention.
This is because in April, Ohio’s secretary of state alerted Democrats that the state’s ballot certification deadline would come before the party’s convention in August, meaning Biden wouldn’t be the official nominee by their cutoff and thus was ineligible. The Ohio legislature later rectified the issue, passing legislation that extended their deadline and led to Biden’s qualification.
Still, the DNC has argued that GOP-controlled Ohio leaders are acting in bad faith and that Biden’s qualification is not assured, and that they want to avoid any legal challenges. The office of the Ohio Secretary of State has disputed this and said there would be no issue.
The virtual roll call faced increased scrutiny in recent weeks as Democratic voters called on Biden to withdraw. They argued that Biden would be confirmed as the official nominee without any real opportunity for opposition when delegates are in-person together in Chicago on the convention floor.
When Biden left the race, his delegates — who were never legally or formally obligated to vote for him as pledged delegates — became completely “up for grabs” and do not transfer automatically by any means over to Harris.
Still, DNC leaders told reporters on Monday that the truncated virtual process will still “ensure” that their nominees are on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The DNC has held back on formally endorsing Harris — letting the planned process still play out. The party has also said voting will be conducted similar to how party voting was done in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the planned in-person convention.
Technically, other candidates can still run in the virtual roll call. They must meet the party and legal qualifications to be president, file their candidacy formally with the DNC and secure the signatures of supporting delegates before the nomination vote. They also must be Democrats, not registered as independents or with another party.
Automatic delegates will not vote in any first round of voting in the virtual roll call, a DNC official said Monday.
Does Harris need to announce her vice presidential pick before the roll call?
According to the DNC, technically, no. During a Monday briefing, a DNC official indicated that candidates do not need to have selected a vice presidential pick by Aug. 7, and that the DNC is leaving that timeframe (and any concerns with ballot access in states that need a running mate) up to the candidate — although they give the candidate the option to have running mates selected on that timeline. The official framed that as preserving how the candidate in every cycle have their own timeline to make the pick.
DNC Chair Jamie Harrison suggested Tuesday during an appearance on MSNBC that while the party has built into their working nomination proposal some flexibility surrounding vice presidential selection, the process should be “wrapped up” by Aug. 7 in order to guarantee getting the candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
“Well, we have built this system in terms of the nomination process so that our nominee of the party has some opportunity to go through a vetting process for their VPs … But in order to be on the ballot in all 50 states, we have to have all of this wrapped up by Aug. 7,” he said.
What does it mean for Harris to have ‘secured commitments’ from more than enough delegates? Can they still change their minds?
As of Tuesday morning, according to ABC News reporting, Harris has secured non-binding commitments from more than 2,300 delegates — a total that’s well more than the 1,975 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
That came because many state parties — including groups with large delegations such as California and New York — announced Monday, the day after Harris announced she was running, that all of their delegates would commit to supporting her. Put more simply, more than enough delegates have said they’ll vote for Harris during the roll call to put her over the threshold.
“When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination. Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee … I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon,” Harris said in a statement Monday night.
Delegates are not required — legally or otherwise — to stick to those commitments and are allowed to change their minds, which is similar to how the rules for regular nominating process would have played out.
(WASHINGTON) — In a new comments, Gwen Walz, the wife of Democratic vice presidential contender Tim Walz, for the first time discussed what she called the “incredibly personal and difficult experience” of using fertility treatments to have children, how she says the couple barely felt comfortable telling anyone at the time, and the specifics of her treatment, which was intrauterine insemination, or IUI — not IVF, as had been broadly assumed.
Her husband has often talked on the campaign trail about their struggle in general terms, connecting their experience to the bans on in vitro fertilization (IVF) put in place this past spring in Alabama and attacking Republicans over reproductive rights restrictions.
“Like millions of families across the country, for years, Tim and I tried to start a family through fertility treatments. We followed the journey that is infertility — the anxiety, the agony, and the desperation that can eat away at your soul,” Gwen Walz said in comments to Glamour and later confirmed to ABC News.
“Knowing that pain, I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need. After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country — particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments — Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience,” she said.
Her husband has frequently talked about their fertility journey generally, referring to IVF and treatments “like it,” but not using the term IUI — likely known only to a narrower audience.
While recently speaking at a rally in Detroit, Tim Walz said that it would be “dangerous” to ban “things like IVF as well as IVF,” saying “this is very personal for my family. When my wife and I decided to have children, we went through two years of fertility treatment.”
And in an interview earlier this month, grouping GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance in with Republicans who support restrictions on IVF, Walz said that if it were “up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF and the things that we need to do.”
“My kids were born through that direct, you know, that way,” Walz said.
But IUI is different from IVF, and has not come under the same levels of attack because it does not involve freezing, transferring or discarding embryos.
It’s a minor distinction in some respects — fertility advocates say the Walz family’s experience certainly gives them credibility to talk about how important access to fertility treatment is, regardless of using IVF or the lesser-known IUI — but it would’ve mattered in Alabama, for example, because the Walz family would not have lost access to their care after the state’s recent Supreme Court decision.
The decision, which put IVF into the spotlight on a national scale, determined frozen embryos qualify legally as children. It forced half of the state’s fertility clinics to put IVF treatments on hold for weeks because they didn’t want to be held liable for discarding unused embryos, a normal part of the process.
The detail that Gwen Walz did not use IVF, but rather a different treatment, quickly led to an attack from Vance, who said Tim Walz “lied” and should know the difference, having been involved in the process.
“Like, you know the difference, right? Anybody who’s had a friend or themselves gone through fertility treatments, you know the difference. So, why lie about it? I just don’t understand it,” Vance said.
In response, the Harris campaign called Vance’s attack “just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare.”
“Infertility is a deeply personal journey, but the Governor and Mrs. Walz came forward to share their story because they know that MAGA attacks on reproductive rights are putting all fertility treatments at risk,” said campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg in a statement.
Ehrenberg said Tim Walz “talks how normal people talk” and “was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.”
Gwen Walz, speaking at a Rural Council event at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, did not seem to mind her husband’s general descriptions of their treatment journey. She remarked that “they’re fact-checking us on every single little tiny thing,” and joked that she wouldn’t attempt to give the exact number of students she graduated with in her small high school class in rural southwestern Minnesota.
In the interview about her fertility treatment, she said she hadn’t wanted to be outspoken about the details of her journey until recently, because of how painful it was. Back in the early 2000s, during the process, she said she only told a neighbor who was a nurse and could help her with her regularly-needed shots.
“I’d rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track. Many of our closest family and friends were surprised when we shared these experiences so many years later,” she said.
The details of Walz’ fertility journey led some organizations to clarify their past descriptions, including the IVF advocacy group RESOLVE.
In a statement, the group said it “regrets” if the organization contributed to any confusion about the type of fertility treatments used by Walz and his wife but said they continue to welcome Walz’s advocacy and support.
“We support all paths to parenthood and have welcomed Gov. Walz’s support of our community and our advocacy issues, since our federal Advocacy Day in 2017 during his tenure in Congress,” Barbara Collura, President and CEO of RESOLVE, said in a statement.
“The ongoing conversation around the importance of IVF access and other fertility treatments has made millions of would-be parents across the country feel seen. We need our elected representatives at the state and federal level, and government officials to do everything in their power to make it easier, not harder, for people to build their families,” Collura said.