September 6, 2024, presidential campaign news

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Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley at the Republican National Convention in July.

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley refused to say if she believed former President Donald Trump was a “good candidate” when pressed in a CBS News interview.

The former South Carolina governor, who served under Trump as US ambassador to the United Nations, was a tough critic of her onetime boss during their primary fight but has since endorsed Trump in a show of party unity.

Haley also said during the interview that she is “on standby” to campaign for Trump though she has not been officially asked.

Haley also said she is not advising Trump at all on his debate preparation, adding, “That’s his choice.”

Earlier today, Trump lashed out at E. Jean Carroll and several other women who have accused him of sexual assault following a hearing where the former president’s attorneys tried to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the onetime columnist.

Asked if this is the best use of his time and what the message is to female voters, Haley said her focus has always been on policy, but she acknowledged she wouldn’t have run in the primary if she thought President Joe Biden or Trump were “great candidates.”

“I’ve always said, look, if I thought Biden or Trump were great candidates, I wouldn’t have run for president. I ran because I thought I could do a better job.”

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling which required the state to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot. 

Ballots were supposed to start going out in North Carolina on Friday, but the appeals court order earlier in the day froze that process. 

In a brief to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the state board wrote that the decision to remove Kennedy at this late stage “has thrown our State’s elections process into chaos.” 

While the board says thatit has begun the process of recoding ballots without Kennedy’s name, its lawyers argue that a quick reversal from the Supreme Court would “avoid most of the irreparable harm” caused by the lower court ruling.

Trump’s reaction: Former President Donald Trump has welcomed the decision, saying in remarks to a police union in the state earlier today that Kennedy’s request to be removed was part of their strategy to send Kennedy’s supporters to Trump.

“He’s an incredible team player, and he didn’t want anybody to be voting his name, because, as you know, he fully endorsed us,” Trump said.

If it wasn’t clear, Kamala Harris’ campaign is very unhappy about the muted mics rule at next week’s presidential debate with Donald Trump.

For weeks, the vice president’s team has raised a fuss about one of the proposed debate rules that the candidates’ mics be muted when it is not their respective turns to speak. Her campaign finally and begrudgingly relented and accepted the rules earlier this week, but not without once again complaining that the muted mics rule would hurt Harris.  

As the vice president hunkers down in Pittsburgh for the next stretch of days with advisers to prepare to face off against Trump, a source familiar tells CNN that remedying for the muted mics is a significant part of their mission. 

Harris allies have pointed to some of her moments in committee hearings as a senator grilling the likes of Brett Kavanaugh or Bill Barr as exemplifying one of the vice president’s biggest political strengths. The campaign had hoped that she could display that in next week’s debate — responding to, interrupting and questioning the former president in real-time in what is expected to be a closely watched and highly anticipated debate.

Her team had also hoped that the mics being on would hurt Trump by showing his more unhinged moments.

“People forget how crazy and unhinged he is,” the source said, adding that they hope the muted mics would not have the effect of making the former president look more “restrained and disciplined” than he actually is.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the fall meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police on September 6 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Former President Donald Trump echoed past falsehoods about the integrity of US elections and asked police officers to “watch for voter fraud” while addressing the nation’s largest law enforcement union on Friday in North Carolina. 

After receiving the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, Trump encouraged the officers gathered for his address in Charlotte to monitor for voter fraud because “they’re afraid of you people.”

The comments are the latest instance of Trump warning of potential widespread voter fraud in the 2024 presidential election. He has repeatedly suggested without evidence that Democrats will commit voter fraud to swing the results of November’s election, tying the claims to his false conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

Trump repeated the baseless accusations at another moment during his remarks, suggesting that he would win the election if an “honest” vote tabulator “came down from on high” to determine the results of the presidential election in each state. 

Trump on crime: In accepting the endorsement from the police organization, the former president reiterated his support for local police departments to adopt “stop-and-frisk” policies, the controversial law enforcement tactic that has been linked with increased reports of racial profiling when utilized. He also expressed support for “broken windows policing,” a controversial crime reduction policy that strictly penalizes minor crimes.

Trump suggested those policies have helped reduce crime rates when implemented in the past.

Tim Walz’s financial disclosure form highlights one of the things that makes him unusual as a modern political candidate: the relative simplicity of his financial life.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s finances are straightforward and modest relative to the standards of many of those who have made their wealth in the private sector, according to his disclosure, released by the Federal Election Commission on Friday. Many recent political candidates for high office, by contrast, report millions in income and assets from multiple sources.

Walz reported a $210,287 income from his job as governor of Minnesota from January of 2023 through August of this year, and a bank account with between $15,000 and $50,000 in cash.

He no longer owns a home or rental properties, which had been reflected on his tax returns in prior years. And he doesn’t report owning any individual stocks or bonds.

But Walz does have a few retirement savings accounts, and he reported pension income that he will earn as a result of his years as a public school teacher. His six terms in Congress and his 24 years in the National Guard may also earn him pension income, although that is not required to be reported on the FEC form.

Read more about Walz’s finances here.

Former President Donald Trump reacted to the decision by a North Carolina appeals court that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name must be removed from the state’s ballot. 

While speaking to the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, Trump welcomed the decision and said Kennedy pushed to withdraw from the ballot as part of their strategy to send Kennedy’s supporters to Trump.

Trump expressed confidence that all of Kennedy’s supporters will vote for him in the state.

“It means that all of those who love Bobby — and there’s a lot of them — and all that he stands for, especially regarding the health and well-being of us, can vote,” Trump said. “They vote for me now.”

The North Carolina appeals court decision further delayed the start of early voting in the state, which was originally slated to begin today.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney makes a speech at the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2019.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has released a statement confirming he will vote for Kamala Harris.

The statement comes shortly after the former vice president’s daughter, Liz Cheney, said her father would back Harris during a lengthy interview in Texas, in which she called Trump “depraved” and urged Republicans to abandon the party’s nominee for the sake of democracy.

Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement that Harris is “proud” to receive Dick Cheney’s support, writing that she “deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”

“[Cheney] joins hundreds of Republicans who are backing the Vice President and her patriotic vision of America over former President Trump, because, as Vice President Cheney said, the very future of our republic is at stake in this election,” O’Malley Dillon said.

Trump’s response: Trump attacked the former vice president on his social media platform Truth Social, writing “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter.”

“He’s the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said of Dick Cheney while again attacking former Rep. Liz Cheney’s work on the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

This post has been updated with comments from Donald Trump and the Harris campaign.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Economic Club of New York on September 5.

Former President Donald Trump was asked how he would bring down the cost of child care — which is a barrier to people having children and a major drain on parents — at a talk with the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

His response could accurately be described as a ramble without an answer, and it’s worth looking closer at an issue that affects so many Americans.

Trump got off to a good start, referencing a provision in his tax cut law that doubled the child tax credit to $2,000 per child for millions of Americans, according to a CNN fact check. Trump’s doubling of the credit is set to expire next year, so this will be a key issue for whoever wins the White House.

Then things stopped making much sense. He dismissed the issue as ultimately not a very big problem, and not that expensive to fix compared with the money he will raise with his plan to place taxes, also known as tariffs, on all imports coming into the US:

Hear that, parents? The cost of child care is small change compared with all the money the US is going to be bringing in from Trump’s tariffs.

CNN’s Tami Luhby looked at the broad strokes of this claim and found it is not at all clear how that would work. Some economists fear higher tariffs could raise prices, hurt the economy and set off an international trade war.

And what you didn’t hear from Trump is a concrete proposal for a tax credit or a program to transform those tariff dollars into help for affording child care.

Read a breakdown of Trump’s response line-by-line

Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney on Friday unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Republican presidential ticket — calling former President Donald Trump a “depraved human being” and labeling him and running mate JD Vance “misogynistic pigs.”

Cheney, who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, said she will campaign against Trump in key battleground states, though not as an official surrogate of Harris.

The former House Republican called Trump and Vance “misogynistic pigs” and suggested that Vance has a “real women problem” based on his previous comments.

She called the idea that Trump would willingly leave office a “fantasy.”

Cheney argued that Trump and Vance are driving away Reagan-era Republicans by abandoning the “philosophy of peace through strength and a strong national defense.”

She also criticized Vance over saying he would’ve stopped Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, and for still planning to sit down with Tucker Carlson in the wake of the former Fox host platforming a guest who suggested the Holocaust happened by accident.

Cheney announced earlier in the festival interview that her father, the former Vice President Dick Cheney, would also vote for Harris — a stunning move for the staunch conservative and one of the most prominent figures in former President George W. Bush’s administration.

This post has been updated to reflect Cheney’s plans to campaign against Trump.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance speaks at a campaign event in Phoenix on September 5.

Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee are seizing on Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s comments in the wake of Wednesday’s school shooting in Winder, Georgia. 

Vance in Phoenix said Thursday in response to a question from CNN on what policies he supports to end school shootings: 

“We’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to,” he said.  

Harris criticized the remarks in a post on X: “School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children—and we will.”

The DNC also slammed Vance in a statement, writing: “Let’s be clear: no matter what Donald Trump and JD Vance say, tragedies like this do not need to be a ‘fact of life,’ and we don’t just have to ‘get over it’ when Americans, including young children, are violently murdered.”

Vance, defending what he said in Phoenix, replied in a post that “Kamala wants to take security out of our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said. More desperation from the biggest fraud in American politics.”

Dr. Ben Carson prays during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s "God & Country Breakfast" at the Pfister Hotel, on July 18, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Former President Donald Trump announced that Dr. Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, will serve as the national faith chairman for his 2024 presidential campaign.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, served as the 17th US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021 under Trump’s administration. Both Carson and Trump competed in the 2016 Republican primaries.

In October 2023, Carson endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid during a speech in Iowa.

Rep. Liz Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney on Friday said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is voting for Vice President Kamala Harris over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November. 

“If you think about the moment that we’re in and you think about how serious this moment is. You know my dad believes and he said publicly that there’s never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is,” Liz Cheney added.

Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris is a stunning move for the staunch conservative Republican who was vice president to George W. Bush and a former House member, holding several leadership roles in the GOP caucus.

The former vice president was critical of the GOP and Trump in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. In campaign ads for his daughter’s 2022 reelection, Cheney called Trump a “threat to our republic” and a “coward.”

“He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” Dick Cheney said of Trump.

Cheney and her father are among the ranks of high-profile Republicans saying they will not back another Trump term. Jimmy McCain — the youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain — told CNN he changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Harris in November.

This post has been updated with more details of Cheney’s endorsement.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance visited the US-Mexico border wall in San Diego on Friday in a previously unannounced stop, where he railed against Vice President Kamala Harris’ policies and claimed she wants to “give all the benefits of American citizenship to people who shouldn’t even be here” at the expense of US citizens. 

Donald Trump’s running mate also defended his opposition to the bipartisan border deal, which Harris said she would sign as president. He said it was “not a real border bill” and “would not have secured the southern border.” 

Vance claimed that executive action from Biden and Harris on the border negates their argument that the bipartisan border bill was necessary to do their job. He also dismissed lower reported border crossings, claiming the Biden-Harris administration is redirecting migrants to ports of entry and airports so the numbers look lower than they are.  

Other immigration issues: Vance was asked several more questions by reporters, including whether a Trump-Vance administration would reinstate its policy of separating families who cross the southern border illegally and to what degree he supports authorizing the use of deadly force at the border.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during the Republican primary he supported authorizing deadly force against migrants cutting the border wall or bringing drugs across the border.  

Standing in front of border officials, Vance urged Harris to visit the border before the November election. He also wouldn’t directly say if a second Trump administration would separate families, but he didn’t rule it out, saying that “if a guy commits gun violence and is taken to prison, that’s family separation, which, of course, is tragic for the children, but you’ve got to prosecute criminals, and you have to enforce the law.”

Trump has made immigration and the border a central campaign issue, successfully pressuring Republicans to reject a major bipartisan border deal earlier this year. This week, he vowed to ban mortgages for undocumented immigrants.

President Joe Biden does plan to watch next week’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the White House confirmed Friday. 

While Jean-Pierre reiterated Friday that Biden is “proud” of Harris and declined to say if any West Wing officials would join Harris, either remotely or in person in Pittsburgh, for debate prep.

“From our side of things, not anyone that I know, but it’s a campaign debate,” she said. “But not anyone that I know of.”  

Ahead of Biden’s disastrous June debate with Trump, CNN’s MJ Lee reported the president huddled with an array of campaign and administration officials at Camp David, including White House officials Ron Klain, Bruce Reed, Anita Dunn, Steve Richetti, Annie Tomasini, Ben LaBolt, Jake Sullivan, and others. 

A Michigan appeals court has ordered state election officials to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot.

The court found that officials had improperly denied Kennedy’s request to remove his name after he suspended his presidential campaign last month. 

In Michigan, Kennedy was on the ballot as the nominee of the Natural Law Party, and the state had relied on a section of law which prohibits minor party candidates from withdrawing. But the appeals court found that the section applied only to candidates for state office, not to presidential candidates.

A spokesperson for the Michigan secretary of state told CNN they will appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Absentee voting in Michigan is scheduled to start September 26, although ballots for overseas and military voters are required to go out by September 21. 

Why this matters: Kennedy has been trying to remove his name from the ballot in battleground states after suspending his campaign and endorsing former President Donald Trump. Kennedy has encouraged his supporters to back Trump “no matter what state you live in.”

Other states: The Michigan decision is the second victory for Kennedy on Friday, after an appeals court in North Carolina ordered that state to remove his name from the ballot as well. Ballots were supposed to start going out Friday, but the process is frozen as the state decides whether to appeal that ruling. If the decision holds, counties will need to restart the ballot printing process without Kennedy’s name.

Kennedy is also challenging the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot there.

CNN’s Aaron Pellish and Eva McKend contributed reporting to this post.

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) on Friday announced it was endorsing former president Donald Trump ahead of Trump’s scheduled speech later in the day to the group’s board in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The group, which describes itself as the nation’s oldest and largest police labor organization, endorsed Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Yoes said the group considered Trump’s responses to a FOP questionnaire and a letter from the Harris campaign “describing some of their positions on criminal justice and police labor issues.” He said a FOP committee member met with Trump but that “no similar meeting was granted by the Harris-Walz campaign.”

“During his first term, President Trump made it clear he supported law enforcement and border security. In the summer of 2020, he stood with us when very few would. With his help, we defeated the ‘defund the police’ movement and, finally, we are seeing crime rates decrease. If we want to maintain these lower crime rates, we must re-elect Donald Trump,” Yoes said.

Earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign sought to undercut Trump’s remarks the group, touting a letter from more than 100 law enforcement officials across the country backing her campaign while framing Trump as a convicted felon who urged an unruly mob of supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6.

The nation’s largest machinists’ union formally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president after her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz virtually addressed the union at its annual convention on Friday. 

Walz, who is spending his Friday in Minnesota, spoke virtually to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) gathering in New York City, where he reiterated his commitment to supporting unions, the campaign announced on Friday. After Walz’s remarks, the union voted to formally endorse the Harris-Walz campaign.

IAM president Brian Bryant credited Harris for her role in creating “the most union-friendly administration in American history,” and portrayed Trump as hostile to unions, saying he “broke promise after promise to our members.”

The machinists’ union endorsement is latest major union to back Harris’ White House bid, and comes after Walz made a direct appeal to another union group. Walz has previously addressed the government employees union at their gathering in Los Angeles and the firefighters’ union convention in Boston before speaking at a labor event in Milwaukee on Labor Day.

JD Vance speaks during a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Friday he will still appear with Tucker Carlson in Pennsylvania later this month, after the far-right personality hosted a guest this week who suggested the Holocaust happened by accident.

Touting how he and former president Donald Trump stand for free speech and “anti-censorship,” Vance argued the best way to ensure a Holocaust isn’t repeated is to “push back against bad ideas” rather than “suppress them.”

“The best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to debate and push back against bad ideas. It’s not to try to censor and suppress them. I really believe that the more you censor ideas instead of fight back against them, the more you give those ideas power,” Vance said. 

As CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Thursday, Darryl Cooper, a podcaster whom Carlson said “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” claimed that Nazi Germany’s mass murder of Jews was an unintended consequence – something akin to poor planning instead of the methodical extermination that it actually was – during an two-hour sit down with Carlson.

Vance denied that the interview has become a distraction for the campaign this close to an election.

Carlson spoke at the Republican National Convention and is a prominent figure in conservative media.

Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City on Friday.

Former President Donald Trump will not be sentenced in his New York criminal case until after the 2024 presidential election, following another delay announced by Judge Juan Merchan on Friday.

Merchan wrote in a new letter that he would sentence Trump on November 26 — if necessary — in response to a request from Trump’s lawyers to push back the sentencing.

Merchan noted the upcoming presidential election in his decision to delay sentencing, saying that part of his reason for doing so was to avoid the appearance that the sentencing was intended to influence the November election.

In addition to pushing back the sentencing until November 26, Merchan wrote that he would decide on Trump’s motion to vacate the verdict because of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision on November 12, which is also after the election.

The Manhattan DA’s office said it “stands ready for sentencing on the new date.”

While they maintain the case should be thrown out, Trump’s legal team is pleased with Merchan’s decision to delay his sentencing, a source familiar with the reaction tells CNN. Trump was with his lawyers when he found out. 

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the decision, saying, “there should be no sentencing in the Manhattan DA’s election interference witch hunt.”

Trump later echoed that message in a post on Truth Social, repeating his baseless claim that the case was a “political attack” orchestrated by his rivals and saying the case “should have never been brought.”

More on the case: The former president was scheduled to be sentenced on September 18. Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 charges of falsifying business records, stemming from his hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

It is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing while running again for president.

This post has been updated with more details from the judge’s decision Friday and reactions from Trump, his team and the Manhattan DA.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed reporting to this post.

County election officials are in a “holding pattern” right now as they wait to see if the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) appeals an order to remove former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot. 

More than 130,000 absentee ballots have already been requested, according to state data, and were set to start going out Friday. 

The state board previously denied Kennedy’s and the We The People party’s request to have his name removed, arguing it was not “practical” because ballots had already been printed and a state statute requires them to be sent out 60 days before the election. 

A Wake County Superior Court judge also denied his request on Thursday, but issued a 24-hour temporary pause on sending out ballots so Kennedy could appeal. 

The NCSBE stated that removing his name and reprinting ballots would come at a high cost to individual counties and create unnecessary delays in the process of getting ballots to voters. 

That state board has not indicated if it plans to appeal the order just yet. If the Court of Appeals order stands, counties would need to go through the full process with ballots before any could be sent out. 

An election worker displays a test ballot listing the US presidential candidates, including Robert F Kennedy Jr., on the day a judge allowed him 24 hours to appeal her decision rejecting his removal from the state’s printed ballots, at Wake County Board of Elections headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 5.

The start of voting in North Carolina, which was scheduled to begin Friday, will be further delayed to let legal proceedings play out after an appeals court ordered the state to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the ballot.

In an email obtained by CNN, North Carolina Board of Elections General Counsel Paul Cox told county boards of elections to hold outgoing ballots. 

“Our attorneys are reviewing the order and determining how to move forward,” Cox wrote. “No decision has been made on whether this ruling will be appealed.” 

Kennedy dropped out of the race last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, but North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections voted along party lines last week to reject Kennedy’s request to remove his name from the ballot, saying that it wouldn’t be practical to reprint ballots and delay the start of voting. 

He challenged the decision in court and a judge ruled Thursday that his name should remain on the ballot but ordered the state to delay sending ballots out until noon on Friday to give Kennedy time to appeal, leading to the new order by the appeals court Friday morning.

Clarification: This post has been updated to note that the appeals court ordered the state to remove RFK Jr.’s name from the ballot.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris’ campaign has accepted the terms of Tuesday’s presidential debate with former President Donald Trump, including the fact that the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to a person familiar with the debate negotiations.

However, in a letter to ABC News Wednesday afternoon agreeing to the rules, the Harris campaign again laid out their objections to the muted mics condition, insisting that they believe the vice president will be “disadvantaged” by the format.

The network, according to the source familiar, has offered assurances to the Harris campaign that if there is significant cross talk between Harris and Trump, it may choose to turn on the mics so that the public can understand what is happening, the moderator would discourage either candidate from interrupting constantly and the moderator would also work to explain to viewers what is being said.

ABC News officially announced the rules later Wednesday, noting that both candidates had agreed to the format. ABC’s rules, first shared with the campaigns last month, largely mirror the format of CNN’s presidential debate in June between Trump and President Joe Biden.

Here are the rules of the face off:

Trump, according to ABC News, won a virtual coin flip held earlier in the week to determine podium placement and order of closing statements during the debate. Trump chose to offer the last closing statement, and Harris chose the right podium position on screen.

You will be able to watch the ABC debate on CNN Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET.

Former President Donald Trump during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City on September 6.

Former President Donald Trump railed against the E. Jean Carroll sex abuse case and denied the allegations against him during remarks to reporters Friday following his appearance in a New York courtroom this morning to appeal the verdict.

“I feel sad that I have to come up here and explain it. I have all this legal talent, but legal talent cannot overcome rigged judges. They can’t overcome a 4% Republican area. And I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you. They’re good, they’re good people, they’re talented people,” Trump said.

Carroll’s attorney said “all options are on the table” in response to today’s comments from Trump, implying they could sue him again for defamation.

The brief oral arguments Friday focused on evidence admitted at trial, which Trump’s lawyers say was improperly shown to the jury. No decision was issued Friday.

A nine-member jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages following a two-week trial last year. Trump did not attend the trial or call any witnesses, but both the former president and Carroll were in court for Friday’s oral arguments.

Carroll sued Trump a second time for defamation after he repeated similar comments about Carroll in 2022. That case went to trial earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll.

Trump has repeatedly made the multiple legal challenges he faces a key part of his campaign.

This post has been updated with comments from Carroll’s attorney. CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed reporting to this post.

Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a reply to the Manhattan District Attorney’s opposition brief late Thursday night doubling down on his request to a federal appeals court to intervene and pause a federal district judge’s order rejecting Trump’s attempt to move the state hush money to federal court — a decision that would send the case back to Judge Juan Merchan in state court if Trump’s appeal is rejected. 

Trump’s lawyers again say a stay is necessary to stop his September 18 sentencing, so it does not infringe on the upcoming Presidential election. 

Trump’s lawyers acknowledge in the filing that Judge Merchan has already signaled he will likely deny Trump’s pending motion in state court to toss his conviction over presidential immunity.  

They also say a stay of the order would send a message to Merchan.

An NYPD officer stands guard before former President Donald Trump is expected to arrive at a federal appeals court in New York on Friday.

A three-judge appeals court panel heard arguments Friday from Donald Trump’s lawyer as the former president seeks a new trial in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the one-time columnist.

The brief oral arguments Friday, attended by the former president, focused on evidence admitted at trial, which Trump’s lawyers say was improperly shown to the jury. No decision was issued Friday.

Trump attorney John Sauer argued that it was a “quintessential he-said-she-said case” that involves a plaintiff with a political motive to bring a story. Carroll is encouraged by Trump’s political enemies, he says.

But the judges were skeptical of Sauer’s evidentiary arguments, cutting him off at one point and asking him to focus on the legal arguments on appeal. The arguments were very in the weeds during the roughly 25-minute hearing, getting into the admissibility of the testimony from Jessica Leeds, who said Trump groped her on an airplane in the 1970s.

“It was a crime then to grope someone on a plane, it is a crime now to grope someone on a plane,” said Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan.

On the Access Hollywood video, Kaplan said it would’ve been better admitted as a confession. She noted that Trump was in court today, but he also had every chance to show up in court during the trial to take the stand in his own defense, which he did not do.

She said the Access Hollywood tape and excerpts from Trump’s deposition were appropriately admitted at trial especially in the absence of Trump’s own testimony.

More about the case: The sexual abuse and defamation trial in 2023 was the first of several cases against Trump and marked the first time he was found liable for sexually abusing a woman. The jury returned the verdict within three hours of deliberating, finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll but that she had not proven that Trump raped her. Trump does not face jail time in the case.

The case is separate from a related defamation trial that was held earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll.

This post has been updated with more details from today’s hearing.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is seeking to undercut former President Donald Trump’s remarks to the nation’s largest law enforcement union Friday, touting a letter from more than 100 law enforcement officials across the country backing her campaign while framing Trump as a convicted felon who urged an unruly mob of supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6.

On a call with reporters organized by the Harris campaign ahead of Trump’s Friday remarks to the National Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, retired Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn sought to cast Trump as “an existential threat to our democracy.” 

Last month Dunn joined fellow Capitol Police officer Aquilino Gonell and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, both of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of Trump’s handling of January 6th, to campaign for Harris in Michigan.  

Durham County North Carolina Sheriff Clarence Birkhead also joined the campaign call Thursday—ahead of Trump’s visit to the state, Birkhead issued a stark warning of what a second Trump term would look like, including possibly “weaponizing the FBI and Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies.”

The National Fraternal Order of Police has yet to endorse in the 2024 race—but in 2020, it backed Trump over President Joe Biden, writing, “During his first four years, President Trump has made it crystal clear that he has our backs.” The FOP endorsed Trump in 2016 as well.

Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two prior to departure from Savannah Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah, Georgia, on August 29. 

Former President Donald Trump is expected to appear at a New York City court hearing this morning to appeal the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll sex abuse case. Trump will then hold a news conference at Trump Tower at noon ET before traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina, to deliver remarks to the nation’s largest law enforcement union.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to remain in Pennsylvania and does not have any public events scheduled for Friday. CNN previously reported that Harris is expected to stay in Pittsburgh as she prepares for the presidential debate on Tuesday. She has two pre-taped interviews expected to be released, including on “The Rickey Smiley Show” and Uforia’s Amor 106.3 FM.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, is expected to be in California today. Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, does not have any public events scheduled for Friday following his campaign swing this week in Pennsylvania. He taped two radio interviews airing today in “The Morning News with Nancy Kman and Jason Barsky” and “The Chad Holmes Show.”

Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with Uforia’s Amor 106.3 FM, a Spanish-language radio station in Arizona, where she continued to make the case for why she is running in the presidential race while emphasizing her vision for moving the country forward.

The interview comes as the vice president continues to court a key demographic ahead of the November election. The latest CNN polls across six battlegrounds showed that in Arizona, former President Donald Trump holds a narrow lead overall, which stood out in these polls as the one state where Harris appears not to have restored support among several key Democratic groups — notably Latino voters, younger voters and White voters with college degrees.

According to a news release announcing the interview, the vice president also discussed the current state of the economy, her plan to bolster the middle class with new housing initiatives, business incentives and the stakes of a second Trump term.

The full interview will air Friday at 1 p.m. ET on Uforia stations nationwide.

Former President Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll.

Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll will square off Friday in lower Manhattan as the former president tries to convince a federal appeals court that he should get a new trial after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the one-time columnist.

A nine-member jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages following a two-week trial last year. Trump did not attend the trial or call any witnesses, but people familiar with his plans say he is expected to attend Friday’s oral arguments in person. Carroll is also expected to appear. The court will not issue a decision on Friday and one is unlikely before November’s presidential election.

The court hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m. ET, will bring Trump, the Republican nominee for president, back to what had become a familiar stop during the campaign — the corridors of a courthouse. Unlike the New York civil fraud trial and criminal trial related to hush money payments — where Trump spoke to cameras in the hallways claiming he was unfairly prosecuted and using the opportunity to campaign — there are no cameras inside federal court, though media will be outside tracking his motorcade.

The sexual abuse and defamation trial in 2023 was the first of several cases against Trump and marked the first time he was found liable for sexually abusing a woman. Carroll testified in vivid detail that Trump raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her in 2019 when he denied the attack, said she wasn’t his type and suggested Carroll made up the story to sell copies of a new book. The jury returned the verdict within three hours of deliberating, finding that Trump sexually abused Carroll but that she had not proven that Trump raped her. Trump does not face jail time in the case.

The case is separate from a related defamation trial that was held earlier this year. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages after finding Trump defamed her in 2022 when he repeated similar statements about Carroll.

Keep reading here about the case.

Candidates are investing an enormous amount of money working to get their message out on television in crucial states like Pennsylvania. Democrats have reserved more than 78 million dollars, while Republicans have reserved more than 72 million.

And Pennsylvania voters are taking notice. 

“How can anybody be swayed by this BS?” Mercurio’s partner, Tammy Ryan, 63, chimed in, dismissing the ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Ryan says she’s excited Harris is using Pittsburgh as her home base to prep for next week’s crucial debate.

The couple describe the Democratic nominee as more qualified, compassionate and prepared than former President Donald Trump, though Mercurio said he hasn’t always voted solely for Democratic candidates. 

Some of the college students walking just off Forbes Avenue on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh were not aware the vice president was in town, but all of them told CNN they were registered to vote.  

They cited issues like reproductive rights and the economy as the issues of most concern to them but some didn’t want to disclose who they were voting for in the fall. 

Sabina Kadariya, a freshman, said she wasn’t sure if she was informed enough to make a “proper vote,” but said the economy was her number one issue and that she’d consider voting for Trump.

Rishi Wadgaonkar, a 23-year-old grad student at Carnegie Mellon studying mechanical engineering, said he’s most worried about LGBTQ rights and women’s rights and that Harris best reflects his values. He recently changed his voter registration from New York to Pennsylvania. 

“Pennsylvania is really a state that really could go either way,” he told CNN.

On the last Saturday of July, with the presidential race in flux from an unthinkable month of turmoil, Donald Trump looked out at an overflowing St. Cloud, Minnesota, crowd and predicted he could accomplish what no Republican presidential candidate had managed in nearly half a century.

But since that bold declaration, Trump hasn’t returned to the Gopher State. His running mate JD Vance, on stage with him that evening, hasn’t either. Nor have Minnesotans seen Trump campaign ads on their televisions recently, and they likely won’t this fall.

Trump and his advisers once envisioned an ambitious electoral map that would take the presidential race through blue-tinted states and provide the Republican nominee more paths to the White House. In May, surrounded by donors at his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump presented his plans to compete for Minnesota and Virginia. His campaign maintained an office in New Hampshire and even held a rally on the Jersey Shore.

The final stretch of the race for the White House, though, is setting up to be fought over much more familiar ground. Trump’s campaign and his allies have reserved about $160 million in airtime this fall with nearly all of it planned for the same states that proved pivotal in the 2020 election: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.

Read more on Trump’s campaign here.

Former President Donald Trump is expected to hold a press conference in New York on Friday around noon ET. The campaign did not announce the topic of the press conference.

The former president is expected to appear this morning at a New York City court hearing, where his lawyers will attempt to overturn the civil court verdict ordering him to pay $5 million to E. Jean Carroll. 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign increased its already blistering fundraising pace last month, bringing in $361 million in August — easily swamping the $130 million raised by her Republican rival last month and giving the Democrat a whopping $404 million in cash reserves for the final, two-month sprint to Election Day, her campaign aides announced Friday.

The cash stockpiled across Harris’ affiliated committees tops the $295 million that Trump’s political operation said it had available in its bank accounts and underscores how much Harris’ historic and late-breaking candidacy has energized donors and transformed the 2024 race. The $361 million is by far the best monthly haul for either party this cycle.

If this rate continues, Harris is poised to collect more than $1 billion in the condensed campaign window between becoming the party’s de facto nominee in late July and Election Day. She’s already raised more than $615 million since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid on July 21, her campaign noted Friday.

Last month’s haul topped the $310 million that Harris and Democrats raised in July and came amid the fanfare of her announcing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and formally accepting her party’s nomination at last month’s celebrity-studded Chicago convention, which also included appearances from Biden and two of his White House predecessors.

Continue reading.

The judge overseeing the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump informed both Trump and the Manhattan district attorney that he will render his decision Friday on whether to delay the Republican presidential nominee’s sentencing date, according to a Thursday court filing.

The former president is currently scheduled to be sentenced on September 18, but Trump asked to delay the sentencing until after Election Day, a request Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office did not oppose.

An attorney for Bragg’s office reported the timing of Judge Juan Merchan’s decision in a letter filed with a federal court in New York where Trump is fighting to move the state case to federal court.

Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 charges of falsifying business records, stemming from hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that while he isn’t helping former President Donald Trump prepare for next week’s debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, he and his running mate are “constantly trading ideas.”

Vance also added that Harris is hoping for a debate moment where she can tell Trump, “I’m speaking,” as she did at the 2020 vice-presidential debate with then-candidate Mike Pence.

“She doesn’t want to be the vice president. She wants to be the vice principal,” Vance said. “She really likes, she really likes to just tell people what to do.”