How Biden and Trump are preparing for their first presidential debate
CNN
In some ways, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have similar goals heading into their debate in Atlanta next week. But they diverge when it comes to their preparations.
One is secluding himself at a mountainside retreat with a tight circle of advisers, poring over briefing binders, honing attack lines and bracing for personal smears. The other is workshopping responses and retorts with vice presidential hopefuls, sharpening policy lines while working to rein in his bombastic rhetoric. In some ways, aides to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump describe similar goals heading into next Thursday’s presidential debate: painting their opponent as presiding over disorder and wholly unfit for office. For two men who have been circling each other rhetorically for the past four years, the debate hosted by CNN in Atlanta amounts to a moment of high consequence. Both candidates are aware of the stakes, officials in both campaigns say, as they huddle with their teams to prepare attacks, form rebuttals and frame the choice of November’s election. Both teams have spent the past weeks working to fine-tune their message on a wide array of issues, from the economy to foreign affairs to their rival’s fitness for office. And each has found themselves distracted in some way: Trump by the criminal trial that consumed his spring and Biden by a stretch of intensive overseas travel and a painful legal saga for his family. Yet the similarities mostly end there. How each man is preparing for the debate is ultimately a microcosm of their differences as candidates, and each will enter the CNN studio with divergent objectives. In prep sessions that have already started, Biden has been focused on ways to hold Trump accountable on the debate stage – mirroring the broader political strategy that his White House and campaign have been deploying for months.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.