Walz debate prep underway with Pete Buttigieg as Vance stand-in
(WASHINGTON) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s preparation for the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate with Sen. JD Vance is well underway, sources familiar with the process have confirmed to ABC News.
He’s already held some mock debates, sources said, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in his personal capacity, acting as a Vance stand-in, and held policy sessions with his own longtime aides, Biden White House alumni and members of the Harris-Walz campaign team.
Buttigieg was in Minneapolis as recently as Wednesday to help him prepare. Walz has also been practicing on the road as he campaigns.
Biden White House alumni Rob Friedlander and Zayn Siddique are running the preparations. Siddique, who is currently an attorney at the firm Paul Weiss and served as senior adviser to Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff under President Joe Biden, has also been part of the vice president’s debate preparations.
Friedlander was chief of staff for the White House National Economic Council and senior adviser for communications.
Friedlander and Siddique are being supported by a larger team that includes Liz Allen, a veteran political operative who stepped down from her role as head the State Department’s public diplomacy office in August to become chief of staff on Harris’ running mate team. Chris Schmitter, Walz’s longtime aide who led his gubernatorial races and debate, is also helping along with Harris-Walz communications director Michael Tyler, sources say.
The vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News is set to be in New York City, the network has announced, with both Walz and Vance agreeing to participate. The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan.
The sources stress that the vice presidential debate won’t be the “end all be all” for Walz, who has acknowledged himself that he’s “working hard” to “try and learn the issues” but is up against Vance, who “as a United States senator, a Yale Law guy” will come prepared.
“You’ll hear me talk like I have about things that impact Americans, making sure they have the opportunity to thrive, making sure that we’re being factual in how we talk about that. And so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll work hard. That’s what I do,” Walz said about the VP debate on MSNBC in the aftermath of the presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump. “I fully expect that Senator Vance, as a United States Senator, a Yale Law guy, he’ll come well prepared.”
“Debates and VP Debates don’t matter all that much in polling — this will be one of many data points for voters,” sources said about the significance of the debate, also stressing that “Vance is a skilled debater.”
The campaign sees the debate as one of “many” opportunities for Walz to present Harris’ agenda to Americans. He’ll also use the debate to introduce himself and highlight the Democratic ticket’s vision for the future.
“This debate will serve as another clear opportunity for Governor Walz to present Vice President Harris’ winning vision of a New Way Forward to the American people who are ready to turn the page on Donald Trump,” Emily Soong, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement to ABC News.
Vance’s team has not commented to ABC News on how he’s preparing for the debate. The Washington Post was first to report the details of Walz’s preparations.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Every election cycle, political observers speculate about the power and prevalence of ticket-splitters: voters who support one party for president and another on down-ballot races. This year, their influence is unquestioned: they hold the House and Senate majorities in their hands.
Given the congressional maps and margins, both chambers are set for flips. In the Republican-controlled House, if Democratic House candidates win every district that President Joe Biden won in 2020, the party will regain control there. And if states with Senate races follow the expected presidential results, Republicans will retake the Democratic-controlled upper chamber in November.
That leaves the already influential but dwindling tribe of voters willing to split their tickets with a particularly uncommon amount of sway this November, underscoring the unsteady footing Democrats and Republicans hold in Washington and the vast importance of candidates’ ability to reach beyond partisan loyalties.
“I don’t recall any time in our history where it’s been this way, especially not in my lifetime,” said former Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Bishop, who was swept out of office in the 2018 blue wave. “It’s going to be razor thin.”
Republicans are defending their tissue-thin majority in the House, with 17 Republicans holding the line in districts that Biden took four years ago — 10 of which are in sapphire blue California and New York. And Democrats can afford to suffer only one loss in the Senate — and with a surefire defeat in West Virginia’s open Senate race, they’ll need battle-tested incumbents to hang on in ruby red Montana and Ohio.
That’ll leave both parties leaning on a trend that has precipitously dropped in recent years.
In 1988, the first of a series of consecutive, competitive election years, half the states with Senate races supported the same party for president and Senate, a number that grew to around 70% by 2000. By 2016, there was no difference between the Senate and presidential map, and in 2020, only Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, bucked her state’s presidential results, winning reelection on the back of a longstanding brand of pragmatism.
The trend has bucked the historic mantra that “all politics is local,” leaving national politics to rule the day and margins in statewide and House races to more closely track presidential election results.
“With ticket-splitting, you’re dancing on the head of a pin,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist based in California, which is home to several House Republicans in Biden-won districts.
The key to winning over enough of the remaining ticket-splitters, Democrats and Republicans said, is establishing a candidate’s unique brand, which lawmakers this year are hard at work trying to accomplish.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, makes a concerted effort at bolstering his just-like-you reputation as a farmer, while Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown doubled down on his blue-collar appeal as a pre-Trump era populist.
And in California, Republican Reps. David Valadao and Mike Duarte have highlighted their own experience as farmers, for instance, while Republican Rep. Mike Garcia has promoted his time as a naval combat pilot.
All the while, the lawmakers have avoided hammering away at the other party, instead focusing on flaws specifically with their leaders, while working to push bipartisan measures in Congress that could address local issues and constituents’ concerns.
“It’s the way you act and the way you speak,” said New York GOP strategist Tom Doherty. “Work with the other side. Everything you do can’t be, ‘they’re bad people because they’re Democrats,’ or ‘they’re bad people because they’re Republicans.'”
“It’s incredibly important that the brand is built on authenticity, and that’s really why people split tickets,” added one Democratic strategist working on Senate races. “Partisanship tells us a lot, but ultimately, people tend to vote for the candidate who they think is A, on their side, and B, giving it to them straight.”
For some lawmakers in particularly hostile political territory, having a high-profile break with your party or staking out a big claim on an unconventional issue given a candidate’s partisanship could also prove beneficial.
New York Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro used his opening ad to discuss abortion, saying that “I believe health decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor, not Washington.” Tester stayed away from his party’s national convention in Chicago this month. And Brown is out with an ad featuring a Republican sheriff highlighting efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.
“You need to have something that people don’t expect,” said former Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, a former chair of House Republicans’ campaign arm. “It doesn’t need to be a giant disagreement, but it needs to be unexpected, I think, to really catch people’s attention and build an independent brand.”
“You have to have those disagreements,” agreed former Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, whose opposition to abortion and A+ rating from the National Rifle Association helped protect him in a red district in Ohio until Republicans finally unseated him in 2014. But, he warned, “it’s not a guarantee.”
Already, the country saw some candidates defy political gravity.
Despite having a disappointing 2022 cycle overall, Republicans were able to win and flip several Biden-won House districts in California and New York — the same seats that make up the path to the House majority — on messages on crime and the border while keeping former President Donald Trump at arm’s length.
But that was then. This year, the matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump will be the gravitational force in elections.
“Republicans in Biden districts found an issue that resonated with persuadable voters,” said former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chaired House Democrats’ campaign arm for two cycles.
Replicating that success, though, will be “more difficult in a presidential year for Republicans,” Israel said.
This year’s presidential election is shaping up as another test of how much the rubber band between presidential and down-ballot margins can stretch — before it snaps.
“There are elections where the top the ticket is so overwhelming that everybody gets washed away. That is certainly something that can happen. But the only defense is to control your own persona and your own message,” said William O’Reilly, a GOP strategist who has worked on down-ballot races in New York. “You have to swim the tide, do the best you can and hope it’s not too overwhelming.”
There’s no way to know precisely how far a candidate can run ahead of the top of the ticket, but Madrid, who is also a senior fellow at the University of California, Irvine, studying the state’s competitive Orange County, said, “anything over 5-7 points is stretching the rubber band pretty tight.”
That’s on top of the increasing tribalism of modern politics.
Bishop, the former Michigan congressman who lost in 2018, said more and more people are less eager to split tickets and more than willing to simply pull a lever against a party they dislike — and there’s virtually nothing a candidate can do to reach those voters.
“There was nothing that I could say,” Bishop said of his 2018 race. “It didn’t matter who I was, what I stood for, whether or not they had confidence in my ability to represent them. It was an absolute protest vote, and for the first time I almost lost my hometown that I used to drag through at 60%, 70%.”
When asked if there’s anything down-ballot candidates can do to distance themselves from the party standard bearers, Bishop sounded a pessimistic tone.
“I just think the current is so strong at the top of the ticket that they’re getting pulled along,” Bishop said of the presidential candidates’ pull. “These personalities are bigger than life.”
(WASHINGTON) — Three of the five 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo Bay — including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.
Gary B. Sowards, the lead attorney Mohammed, confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday evening that the agreement does not include the death penalty but means his client will essentially serve life in prison.
The trial of the five 9/11 conspirators had been stuck in legal delays for almost a decade. No details about the specific terms and conditions of the pre-trial agreement were made public by the DOD. The other two conspirators who have agreed to the agreement aside from Mohammed are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.
The families of 9/11 victims were the first to be notified of the plea deal earlier on Wednesday in a letter from Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh, the chief prosecutor in the case.
A copy of the letter, obtained by ABC News, said that in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, the three will plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of 2,976 people. They will be sentenced by a panel of military officers.
They also agreed to respond to questions from the verified 9/11 family members “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting” the attacks. The defendants will submit their responses within 90 days.
Patrick White, cousin of Louis Nacke II who was a passenger on United 93 — the flight where passengers attempted to retake the plane from hijackers, and in the struggle, the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania — told ABC News, “I’ve made my peace with it.”
He added that he believes “life in prison along with an admission of guilt that they were complicit in [the] murder of loved ones” was what he was hoping would result from the plea talks.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News that the White House learned that the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements with Mohammed and the other two 9/11 defendants on Wednesday.
The spokesperson also said that the president and White House played no role in the process.
Two other 9/11 defendants did not participate in the trial agreement, though only one of them, Ammar al Baluchi, could actually face trial proceedings at Guantanamo.
Last September a military judge ruled that Ramzi bin al Shibh, the other defendant not participating in the plea agreement, was mentally incompetent to stand trial.
In a statement about the plea agreement, Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice, said, “We are deeply troubled by these plea deals.”
He added that the group acknowledged the decision to avoid the death penalty but wants more access “to these individuals for information.”
“These plea deals should not perpetuate a system of closed-door agreements, where crucial information is hidden without giving the families of the victims the chance to learn the full truth,” he said.
The ACLU issued a statement saying the DOD’s decision was the “right call.”
“The government’s decision to settle for life imprisonment instead of seeking the death penalty in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the right call,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement. “It’s also the only practical solution after nearly two decades of litigation. For too long, the U.S. has repeatedly defended its use of torture and unconstitutional military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. The military commissions were doomed from the start and the government’s torture of these defendants makes this plea both necessary and just. Finally, closing the chapter on these cases with a plea agreement will also provide a measure of transparency and justice for 9/11 family members.”
Last September, ABC News reported that President Joe Biden rejected a set of demands to form a basis for plea negotiations offered by the five defendants.
Biden agreed with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recommendation not to accept their demands, known as “joint policy principles,” that they wanted prior to entering into plea agreement talks with prosecutors. According to the New York Times, those demands included avoiding solitary confinement and receiving health treatment for injuries the detainees claim were a result of CIA interrogation methods when they were in the CIA’s “black prisons.”
“The 9/11 attacks were the single worst assault on the United States since Pearl Harbor,” a National Security Council spokesperson told ABC News in a statement in September 2023. “The President does not believe that accepting the joint policy principles as a basis for a pre-trial agreement would be appropriate in these circumstances. The Administration is committed to ensuring that the military commissions process is fair and delivers justice to the victims, survivors, families, and those accused of crimes.”
The five detainees were transferred to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. Their case has been held up by legal proceedings for years, with no trial date set.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, marking the start of a series of coordinated attacks that day against the United States by the Afghanistan-based terrorist group al-Qaida. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and thousands more were injured.
(WASHINGTON) — After the supreme leader of Iran signaled a willingness to return to nuclear negotiations with the United States, the Biden administration cast doubt on the likelihood of resuming talks in the near future.
“We will judge Iran’s leadership by their actions, not their words,” a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
“If Iran wants to demonstrate seriousness or a new approach, they should stop nuclear escalations and start meaningfully cooperating with the IAEA,” they added, referencing the International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental watchdog that Tehran has often subverted.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave Iran’s newly installed president, reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, the go-ahead to relaunch talks with the U.S. on Tuesday while warning the country’s government against putting any trust in Washington.
“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations,” Khamenei said, according to the official transcript of his remarks. “There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them.”
The State Department spokesperson said the administration still saw a negotiated solution as the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear program, but that Iran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA and its escalatory actions made diplomacy impossible.
“We are far away from anything like that right now,” they said.
Members of the administration also largely view the prospect of returning to indirect talks with Iran as a politically unfavorable step that could prove detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’ and other Democrats’ chances at winning in November, several officials told ABC News.
The doubtful outlook for resuscitating negotiations in the coming months further diminishes the already low odds of securing a deal with Iran before President Joe Biden’s time in the White House comes to an end, all but pushing his promise to negotiate a “longer and stronger” agreement out of reach.
Khamenei’s comments Tuesday echo the position he took around the time Tehran signed off on the 2015 nuclear pact known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA — a landmark accord that granted Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear program.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” and reimposing financial restrictions on Iran.
In the years since, Khamenei’s public comments on the matter have oscillated between encouraging negotiations with the U.S. and outright dismissing the possibility of a renewed pact.
Foreign policy observers say the upcoming U.S. presidential election is injecting even more uncertainty into the prospects of reaching another nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump has previously made unsubstantiated claims that Iran was ready to accept conditions that were highly favorable to the U.S. at the end of his term and that he was “ready to make a deal.” But on the campaign trail, Trump — a sworn enemy of the Iranian regime — has taken an increasingly hawkish stance against the country, which reportedly carried out a cyberattack targeting his campaign and has plotted against him and his former Cabinet officials.
Harris has also promised to take an aggressive approach to curbing Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East, but she supported the JCPOA, as well as the current administration’s efforts to cut a new deal. However, she has not clearly said whether she would attempt to pick up where Biden left off.
Indirect talks with Iran under the Biden administration officially kicked off in April 2021. Despite mediators’ initial optimism, talks eventually sputtered out after multiple rounds of stop-start diplomacy failed to move both sides toward an agreement.
So far, Biden has made good on another of his major promises regarding Iran: his declaration that the country would “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”
However, officials within his administration say Tehran has made substantial progress toward that goal in recent years.
In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Iran was likely only “one or two weeks away” from having breakout capacity to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, and that the U.S. was watching “very, very carefully” to see whether the country would move toward weaponizing its nuclear program, a step the administration says the regime has not yet taken.
The U.S. shutting down the possibility of any renewed talks with Iran right now comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s preemptive strike Saturday night on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.