Alert – Michigan judge rules Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must remain on the ballot

The U.S. is close to a deal to provide long-range cruise missiles that could strike deep inside Russia to Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.

The powerful Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM), which each carry a 1,000 pound warhead, cost about $1 million each and could be included in a ‘draw-down’ package of assistance this fall, according to sources, Reuters reported.

They could provide Ukraine, which has been consistently clamoring for more weapons, to strike inside Russia to hit areas where it stages supplies to keep up its invasion in eastern Ukraine. Delivery could take months, even amid continued Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure.

The report comes on a day Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said more than 50 people were killed when two Russian ballistic missiles struck a military training institute and a hospital in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia are demanding Donald Trump answer to a new report that he accepted a $10 million campaign contribution from Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in 2016.

A new Washington Post report makes the new allegations and claims Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice covered up the contribution.

The lawmakers wrote to Trump:

Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator.  Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian President or Government.

Raskin is Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Garcia is Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.

President Joe Biden on Monday complained about tightened Secret Service restrictions that are keeping him away from voters.

‘I’m not able to go out into crowds anymore, the Secret Service doesn’t let me,’ he told reporters at the White House.

‘They said it’s too dangerous. No one gets to go out,’ he noted.

Biden was just back from Pittsburgh, where he held his first campaign event with Kamala Harris since she replaced him as the Democratic presidential nominee.

It’s going to be a full sprint to the finish line for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as the presidential nominees face just two months to Election Day.

With just 63 days left of the 2024 election season, the vice president is seeing a growing advantage when it comes to one group of voters.

Harris now leads Trump by thirteen points among women, according to the latest polling by ABC/Ipsos. It found Harris at 54 percent while Trump was at 41 percent.

It also comes as the issue of reproductive rights has been front and center on the campaign trail.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

The Harris-Walz campaign on Tuesday released a new ad titled ‘Focused’ as part of its pitch of the vice president’s economic agenda to voters.

It is one of several ads released since the Democratic National Convention by the campaign that economic ad and attempts to draw contrast between Harris and rival Donald Trump.

The ad is part of the campaign’s $370 million reservation for TV and digital ads running between Labor Day and November 5.

The ad includes a clip of Harris talking about building up the middle class and a narrator laying out her economic plan which includes efforts to address housing affordability as well as a controversial plan to take on price gouging.

‘This election, the choice comes down to a simple question: Which candidate is focused on the American people? Vice President Harris knows costs are still too high for Americans and has a plan to bring them down and build up the middle class,’ said campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak in a statement.

‘Donald Trump either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care, which may explain why his ‘economic plan’ is to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,’ he continued.

From Rob Crilly, Chief U.S. Political Correspondent

The Trump campaign says it won the first round of the debate battle, with rules that include no notes, no audience and no open mics ‘so Harris can’t interrupt,’ as a source put it.

Harris caved just like I said they would.

Now they face the next contest.

The source tells DailyMail.com that the order of closing statements and lectern position will be decided with a virtual coin toss at 12:30pm eastern today.

Six weeks after an assassin’s bullet tore through his ear, Donald Trump said the attack had left no mental scars and he had not felt the need for any counseling.

‘A couple of people have asked me that, and I have had no impact,’ he told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. ‘It’s just amazing.’

He went on to describe in spiritual terms how the moment had crystallized in his mind the importance of his political mission.

Trump, 78, said he had suffered no flashbacks or bad dreams of the sort associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and had felt no need for counseling.

‘But I have not had any, I must tell you, I don’t think about it a lot,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to think about it a lot, but I’ve had … no it’s had no impact. It healed up.’

Republican Voters against Trump put $11.5 million into a swing state ad blitz targeting the former president.

The ads will run through September in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district.

It includes videos of previous Trump voters who have flipped to support Kamala Harris.

It also includes nearly 80 billboards that read: ‘I’m a former Trump voter. I’m voting for Harris.’

The ad blitz comes after former Republicans spoke in support of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the DNC in Chicago.

The Harris campaign has been making a concerted effort to engage Republican and Independent voters ready to reject the former Republican president and have recruited Republicans to help.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

Kamala Harris’ campaign has launched a ‘Fighting for Reproductive Freedom’ bus tour in Donald Trump’s backyard.

The Democratic candidate is sending a flurry of surrogates on the road to keep reproductive rights in the spotlight, an issue that has proven a winning one in motivating Democratic voters, especially women.

The first stop will be Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump’s presidential campaign is headquartered and where his Mar-a-Lago home is located.

Harris’ campaign has hammered Trump for the crackdown in reproductive rights across the nation after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

From Palm Beach, the bus will travel to Jacksonville and then make at least 50 stops in key states throughout the fall.

Tuesday’s tour stops will feature Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Republican TV personality Ana Navarro, and reproductive rights storyteller Anya Cook.

Trump said last week he would vote to support Florida’s ballot measure that would outlaw abortions after the six-week mark. At that point many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign head is now telling Vice President Kamala Harris what she needs to do to win in November – and it’s not by promising four more years of the same administration as Joe Biden.

James Carville, who now consults with a Democratic Super PAC and hosts Politics War Room, told Harris her biggest ‘political advantage’ is that the public has already made up their mind about Donald Trump.

In a New York Times opinion essay published on Tuesday, Carville wrote:

Trump’s approval rating has never much strayed from the mid- to low 40s for nearly a decade. No matter his divisive policies, Covid, the indictments, who his No. 2 was or whatever bile he spewed on social media, the jury of public opinion on Donald Trump is settled.

He noted that Clinton won in 1992 with a ‘message of change versus more of the same’ and Barack Obama won in 2008 with the ‘audacity of hope.’

Even Trump, Carville noted, won in 2016 ‘on a blank promise to revive a relic of America.’

2024 will be won by who is fresh and who is rotten. It’s quite simple: The shepherd of tomorrow wins the sheep.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will face questioning from Congress over his disastrous handling of nursing homes during the COVID pandemic.

House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, told DailyMail.com:

Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On September 10, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from the former governor about New York’s potentially fatal nursing home policies.

During closed-door testimony, Mr. Cuomo was shockingly callous when pressed to explain discrepancies in nursing home death counts, repeatedly deflected responsibility for the nursing home directive, and most egregiously, showed little remorse for the thousands of lives lost. A true leader owns up to his mistakes and takes responsibility for wrongdoing.

That is not what we saw from Mr. Cuomo during his term as governor nor during his transcribed interview. We hope that during his public hearing next week, Mr. Cuomo will stop dodging accountability and honestly answer the American people.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Kamala Harris is five points ahead of Donald Trump in a post-Democratic National Convention poll.

With just a week until the candidates’ first televised debate, Harris leads Trump 48 percent to 43 percent, according to the new survey from USA Today/Suffolk Poll.

And only one in 10 voters say they are either undecided or might change their mind before Election Day in November.

In the same polling in May, when Joe Biden was still the Democratic candidate, Trump and the president were tied at 37 percent.

The latest polling was conducted among 1,000 likely voters August 25-28, the week after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago resulted in Harris’ nomination for president.

ABC News is hosting the first debate between Harris and Trump on September 10 in Philadelphia. The CNN debate between Trump and Biden earlier this summer is what sunk the president’s reelection bid.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Kamala Harris is facing more allegations of flip-flopping, but this time it’s with her voice.

Critics claim the vice president nominee used a ‘fake accent’ when speaking to a teachers union during a swing state campaign push in Michigan on Monday.

Social media erupted with accusations the Democratic presidential candidate altered her voice during the remarks praising teachers union members at a Detroit high school.

Harris has faced allegations and mockery of allegedly using different accents before, and the claims, and they are now emerging with just two months until election day.

‘New Kamala accent just dropped,’ one X user wrote in response to a clip of Harris speaking to a teacher’s union at a high school in Detroit on Monday.

In her remarks, social media users claim that Harris adopted an urban accent to relate to the working class crowd.

‘You may not be a union member but you better thank a union member for the five day work week,’ Harris said in a tone of voice atypical of the one she uses in her usual stump speeches.

Donald Trump has opened up a lead over Kamala Harris in the betting markets after the vice president had been gaining momentum on her Republican rival.

Trump now has a 49.7% chance of winning, leading Harris by 0.9 percentage points, according to Real Clear Polling, which aggregates half a dozen gambling sources on the election. It is Trump’s first lead in the betting odds since August 22 – and comes despite polling that largely backs Harris to take the White House.

The pair were tied as recently as August 31, after Harris had come from just a 29% chance on July 21, the day Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Harris later surged to an 8.8 percentage point lead over Trump in the betting average on August 15 before the pair slipped back to neck and neck. Harris’ last clear lead over Trump was following the Democratic convention in Chicago when she opened up a 2.3 percentage point gap.

That momentum has since been stifled, with gamblers apparently unmoved by Harris’ performance during her CNN interview last week, which did little to impress her naysayers and even earned criticism from Democrat voters.