Trump campaign managers in memo outline plans to cut GOP platform
CNN
Top advisers to Donald Trump are plotting an overhaul of the Republican Party platform that will dramatically slash its size and refocus the GOP around the former president’s agenda for a second term.
Top advisers to Donald Trump are plotting an overhaul of the Republican Party platform that will dramatically slash its size and refocus the GOP around the former president’s agenda for a second term. A memo from Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles dated Thursday criticized past platforms as too long and too heavily influenced by special interests and outside groups. A “clear, concise and easily digestible” platform will be easier for voters to understand and harder for political opponents to attack, they wrote. “Publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters,” the memo said. “It is with that recognition that we will present a streamlined platform in line with President Trump’s principled and popular vision for America’s future.” The memo, obtained Saturday by CNN, was first reported by The New York Times. The party’s most recent platform, crafted in 2016 and reapproved in 2020, spans 66 pages. A person familiar with the planning said the goal for the upcoming platform is a concise document that is “a couple dozen pages,” written in clearer language and likely reflecting Trump’s top priorities. That person went on to say that when platform committees convened ahead of previous conventions, their meetings were attended by lobbyists and special interest groups trying to insert specific line items for their clients into the party platform. LaCivita and Wiles wrote they want a platform that will “free our Party from the constraints of Washington jargon and the shackles of lobbyist influence.”
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.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.
The murder trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing and dismembering his wife in 2023 continues. Follow for live updates.
The FBI arrested a person Thursday who investigators believe planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office are expected to appear in federal court in Albany on Thursday to try to disqualify a US attorney from investigating the state’s civil case against President Donald Trump.
A new poll shows more than 70% of Republicans with Obamacare coverage don’t want their enhanced premium subsidies to expire.
A safety volunteer accused of fatally shooting a man taking part in a “No Kings” protest last June in Salt Lake City while firing at another man he believed to be a potential mass shooter has been charged with manslaughter, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The specter of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown looms over the Somali diaspora in the Twin Cities – home to the nation’s largest Somali population.