Trump team prepares for sprint to November with ‘all hands on deck’ approach
CNN
Fresh off a week of daily counterprogramming events and an effort to steal the spotlight from his new opponent, Donald Trump and his campaign are seeking to harness that pace in the lead-up to November — with plans to aggressively ramp up the former president’s schedule, hone his debate skills and cultivate a new ground-game strategy tied to the early voting states, sources familiar with the strategy shift told CNN.
Fresh off a week of daily counterprogramming events and an effort to steal the spotlight from his new opponent, Donald Trump and his campaign are seeking to harness that pace in the lead-up to November — with plans to aggressively ramp up the former president’s schedule, hone his debate skills and cultivate a new ground-game strategy tied to the early voting states, sources familiar with the strategy shift told CNN. The new approach is itself an acknowledgment that Trump’s campaign has struggled to adapt to the fast-changing political landscape after President Joe Biden ended his campaign less than four months before Election Day. Trump’s schedule going forward will look a lot more like the past week — when the Republican nominee visited a different battleground each day — than the 20 months that preceded it. Through November, Trump is expected to hold “several events each week, if not daily,” one adviser said, while another predicted the former president will regularly visit two states in a day. “Think Trump on steroids,” one said. “It’ll be all hands on deck.” The stepped-up schedule comes as Trump is also preparing for his September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president is quietly meeting with Republican lawmakers, policy experts and outside allies in advance of the high-stakes showdown. The “policy discussions” — the Trump campaign’s version of debate prep — largely mirror the sessions the former president held in the weeks leading up to his June 27 debate with Biden, sources familiar with the meetings 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.
Honduras’ former President Juan Orlando Hernández thanked US President Donald Trump for pardoning his US drug trafficking conviction amid criticism from lawmakers that the pardon undermines the White House’s efforts to stop drug trafficking.