The Latest: Harris begins policy rollout; material from Trump campaign leaked to news outlets

Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address old vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she starts to fill in how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have policy portfolios of their own. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision in her own right.

Meanwhile, at least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the Latest:

Biden announces $150 million in research grants as part of his ‘moonshot’ push to fight cancer

President Joe Biden is zeroing in on the policy goals closest to his heart now that he’s no longer seeking a second term, visiting New Orleans on Tuesday to promote his administration’s “moonshot” initiative aiming to dramatically reduce cancer deaths.

The president and first lady Jill Biden toured medical facilities that receive federal funding to investigate cancer treatments at Tulane University. Researchers used a piece of raw meat to demonstrate how they are working to improve scanning technology to quickly distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells during surgeries.

The Bidens then championed the announcement of $150 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Those will support eight teams of researchers around the country working on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors from people with cancer. It brings the total amount awarded by the agency to develop breakthrough treatments for cancers to $400 million.

Cancer surgery “takes the best surgeons and takes its toll on families,” Biden said. He said the demonstration of cutting-edge technology he witnessed would offer doctors a way to visualize tumors in real time, reducing the need for follow-on surgeries.

Georgia's secretary of state says 3 independent and third-party candidates qualify for the state ballot

Three independent and third-party candidates got one step closer to appearing on Georgia’s presidential ballot on Tuesday, but legal challenges still loom.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation each collected more than the 7,500 signatures needed to qualify. While Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians have secure places on the Georgia ballot, others can qualify by petition.

But Georgia Democrats are legally challenging efforts to place the three candidates and Green Party nominee Jill Stein on Georgia’s ballots. It is part of a nationwide effort to block candidates who could siphon votes from Vice President Kamala Harris and could be important to the outcome in closely-divided Georgia, the South’s premier swing state.

Hearings on the Georgia challenges are scheduled to begin Monday.

Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, former House Democratic leader, is recovering from mild stroke

Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the former House Democratic leader, is recovering after experiencing a mild stroke on Sunday, his office said.

Hoyer’s spokesperson Margaret Mulkerrin said in a statement that Hoyer, who is 85, experienced a “mild ischemic stroke” on Sunday night and sought medical help. Hoyer responded well to treatment and has not had any lasting symptoms from the stroke, according to Mulkerrin. He is planning to go back to his normal schedule next week.

Hoyer, who has represented a Maryland district since 1981, held the No. 2 spot in House Democratic leadership for over a decade before stepping down in 2022 to make way for a new generation of leaders.

Walz launches 5-state fundraising blitz in LA, warns Trump will wage ‘war’ on working people

Taking the stage in his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz warned cheering union members Tuesday that Donald Trump would wage war on working people while threatening Medicare and Social Security as he kicked off a five-state fundraising swing.

Speaking in a cavernous, dimly lit ballroom to thousands of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Walz said he and Vice President Kamala Harris want to spread collective bargaining and other worker protections to “every state in the union.”

“When unions are strong, America is strong,” Walz, a former school teacher and union member, said.

Trump also has courted union support. When he accepted the Republican nomination, he said that he would rescue the auto industry from what he called “complete obliteration.”

The Democratic campaign chose to kick off Walz’s national swing on the safest of political terrain — heavily Democratic California, home to Vice President Harris and where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans about 2-1.

Auto workers union seeks NLRB investigation of Trump and Musk comments about firing striking workers

The United Auto Workers union has filed unfair labor practice charges against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk after the two discussed on social media about Musk supposedly firing striking workers.

In documents filed Tuesday with the National Labor Relations Board, the union alleges that both men interfered with workers who may want to exercise their right to join a union. The NLRB said it would look into the charges, which are a request for the agency to investigate.

Trump praised Musk for firing workers who went on strike. The UAW contends this could intimidate workers for the Trump campaign or at Tesla who might want to join a union.

“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk during a discussion on X, formerly Twitter. “I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone.’”

Musk said, “Yeah,” and laughed while Trump was talking. It wasn’t clear what employees Trump was referring to.

UAW President Shawn Fain, whose union has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, said in a statement that Trump is anti-labor. “Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly,” Fain said.

Brian Hughes, a senior advisor with the Trump campaign, called the allegations “frivolous” and a “shameless political stunt” designed to erode Trump’s strong support among American workers.

US approves $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel amid threat of wider Middle East war

The U.S. has approved $20 billion in arms sales to Israel, including scores of fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles, the State Department announced Tuesday.

Congress was notified of the impending sale, which includes more than 50 F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120 mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles and comes at a time of intense concern that Israel may become involved in a wider Middle East war. However, the weapons are not expected to get to Israel anytime soon, they are contracts that will take years to fulfill. Much of what is being sold is to help Israel increase its military capability in the long term.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives,” the State Department said in a release on the sale.

The Biden administration has had to balance its continued support for Israel with a growing number of calls from lawmakers and the U.S. public to curb military support there due to the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza. It has curbed one delivery of 2,000-pound weapons amid continued airstrikes by Israel in densely populated civilian areas in Gaza.

▶ Read more about the U.S.'s weapons sale to Israel.

There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to offer his take on possessive proper nouns.

The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear position. A news release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote about “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

▶ Read more about the Harris grammar wars.

Initiative to enshrine abortion rights in Missouri constitution qualifies for November ballot

Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.

Missouri will join at least a half-dozen states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election. Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota. While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.

A year later, sprawling Georgia election interference case against Trump has stalled

A year after a Georgia grand jury accused Donald Trump and others of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, the case has stalled with no chance of going to trial before the end of this year.

When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secured the indictment a year ago Thursday, it was the fourth and most sprawling of the criminal cases against the former president. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden, and Willis used Georgia’s anti-racketeering law to allege that he and 18 others had participated in a wide-ranging scheme to subvert the will of the state’s voters.

Willis’ team notched some early victories in the case, but explosive allegations raised by one of Trump’s co-defendants early this year have caused a delay and could even derail the prosecution.

A conservative gathering provides a safe space for Republicans who aren’t on board with Trump

At the Republican National Convention and multiple rallies since, former President Donald Trump has been greeted as a hero who narrowly escaped assassination and is destined to lead a new American golden age.

At a recent conservative conference in Georgia, there was a different vibe.

There were few, if any, red hats at “The Gathering,” the annual confab hosted by influential syndicated radio host Erick Erickson, and no rousing promises to “Make America Great Again.” Instead, Erickson’s guests, from rank-and-file voters up to Trump’s onetime vice president, spent two days critiquing the GOP’s path in the Trump era.

And when it came to the November election, many of them spent more time hand-wringing over a Kamala Harris presidency than celebrating the promise of another Trump administration.

The dynamics are particularly problematic for the former president’s chances in Georgia, a longtime Republican stronghold that has shifted into a genuine two-party state, and a handful of other tossup states. They also serve as a reminder that despite his near-complete takeover of the GOP, Trump still has detractors and skeptics among conservatives.

A burglary is reported at a Trump campaign office in Virginia

A burglary was reported over the weekend at a Virginia campaign office for former President Donald Trump, and authorities are investigating whether anything was stolen.

It happened Sunday at an office in Ashburn being leased by the Trump for President 2024 campaign that also serves as the headquarters of the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee, according to a news release from Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office was contacted around 9 p.m. Sunday. The office said it has surveillance video that shows someone wearing dark clothing with a dark cap and carrying a backpack. An investigation continues.

News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.

Harris cautiously rolls out policy, aiming to outmaneuver Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address old vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she starts to fill in how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have policy portfolios of their own — and almost always set aside any views that differ from those of the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision in her own right.

But her ascendance to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped his reelection bid also means her policy platform is being pulled together just as quickly.

When Harris inherited Biden’s political operation in late July, the campaign’s website was quietly scrubbed of the six-point “issues” page that framed the race against Trump, from expanding voting protections to restoring nationwide access to abortion. Instead, Harris has peppered her speeches with broad goals like “building up the middle class.” She has called for federal laws to provide abortion access and ban assault-style weapons, but has been thin on the details of what specifically they would entail or how she would convince Congress to make progress on some of the most hot-button political issues.