Election 2024 Latest: Trump to appear at Moms for Liberty event, Harris campaign launches bus tour

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms

Election 2024 Latest: Trump to appear at Moms for Liberty event, Harris campaign launches bus tourBy The Associated PressThe Associated Press

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to appear Friday at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris ’ campaign is announcing that it is launching a 50-plus stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour,” as it looks to motivate voters ahead of November. The first stop will be next Tuesday with an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the Latest:

A tumultuous life, a turn toward faith and one man who wonders if it’s time to vote

Decades ago, back when he was a political science major at the University of Southern California, and later in law school, Timothy Walker would vote. Everyone in his family voted for Democrats, so he did, too.

Then his path took a different turn. Cocaine addiction took hold of him and he spent years cycling in and out of drug treatment centers. He lost his home and his job as a marketing executive at a law firm. He never passed the bar exam. Elections came and went, largely unnoticed.

This year is different. He completed a faith-based recovery program at the Los Angeles Mission, a Christian nonprofit that serves homeless people and others in need. He’s been clean now for nearly two years. He has a job again, writing thank-you cards to donors in a small office at the mission.

And for the first time in forty or so years, he’s thinking about voting.

He’s not sure he’ll vote, and won’t say if he’s leaning toward a particular presidential candidate. But he credits his faith with turning around his life, and wants to see that faith in the presidency.

“A Christian in the White House would be moral, ethical, grounded in love, and would want what’s best for humanity — not just for themselves or any particular business,” said Walker, 64.

The two major-party nominees, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, are both Christian, though neither has made their religious beliefs central to their campaigns.

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How Trump and Georgia’s Republican governor made peace, helped by allies anxious about the election

The effort to make the peace between Donald Trump and Georgia’s powerful Republican governor began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.

It was at an Aug. 7 fundraiser hosted by former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler that fellow Republican Lindsey Graham approached Gov. Brian Kemp. Graham, the South Carolina senator and longtime confidant of the former president, was already planning to attend the fundraiser.

Now, Graham had a renewed purpose: to try to ease years of tensions between Trump and Kemp that endangered the GOP’s chances in a crucial 2024 battleground.

Graham and Kemp met privately at Loeffler’s house. And over the coming weeks, say Graham and others familiar with the matter, allies of both men arranged the two-part détente that played out publicly last Thursday to the surprise of many political watchers.

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Trump seeks to activate his base at Moms for Liberty gathering but risks alienating moderate voters

In a “fireside chat” conversation in the nation’s capital, the former president will seek to shore up support and enthusiasm among a major part of his base. The bulk of the group’s 130,000-plus members are conservatives who agree with him that parents should have more say in public education and that racial equity programs and transgender accommodations don’t belong in schools.

Yet Trump also will run the risk of alienating more moderate voters, many of whom see Moms for Liberty’s activism as too extreme to be legitimized by a presidential nominee.

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The interview: Kamala Harris’ inaugural sit-down was most notable for seeming … ordinary

After avoiding a probing interview by a journalist for the first month of her sudden presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris’ first one Thursday was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.

CNN’s Dana Bash, sitting down with Harris and running mate Tim Walz in a Georgia restaurant, asked her about some issues where she had changed positions, the historical nature of her candidacy, what she would do on her first day as president and whether she’d invite a Republican to be a Cabinet member (yes, she said).

What Bash didn’t ask — and the Democratic nominee didn’t volunteer — is why it took so long to submit to an interview and whether she will do more again as a candidate.

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Veterans attending Trump’s Michigan event dismiss reports of altercation at Arlington National Cemetery

Veterans attending Donald Trump’s mid-Michigan event on Thursday largely dismissed reports of an altercation between his campaign and an Arlington National Cemetery official, citing the former president’s past as evidence of his values.

Tom Barrett, a veteran of the Iraq War and Republican candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, said that it was his “understanding that President Trump was invited there by families.”

Barrett shifted focus to criticize the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, stating, “Trump and those families would not have been there if Joe Biden hadn’t led to the absolute direct failure of leadership that allowed 13 of our service members to be killed.”

Rusty L. Smith, a Trump supporter from Albion, Michigan, was unaware of the incident at Arlington National Cemetery but said that he believes Trump “supports veterans wholeheartedly.”

Smith added that he was more offended by the claims Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, made about his service record.

“He wasn’t in the war. He wasn’t in combat. He wore the rank of command sergeant major but that was temporary, and he never completed the process. So he shouldn’t be carrying a coin that says command sergeant major. And he does. And that’s wrong,” said Smith.

Trump calls for universal coverage of IVF treatment with no specifics on how his plan would work

Former President Donald Trump says that, if he wins a second term, he wants to make IVF treatment free for women, but he did not detail how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work.

“I’m announcing today in a major statement that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for — or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for — all costs associated with IVF treatment,” he said at an event in Michigan. “Because we want more babies, to put it nicely.”

IVF treatments are notoriously expensive and can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single round. Many women require multiple rounds and there is no guarantee of success.

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Harris defends shifting from some liberal positions in first interview of presidential campaign

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended shifting away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign, but insisted her “values have not changed” even as she is “seeking consensus.”

Sitting with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris was asked specifically about her reversals on banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, positions she took during her last run for president. She confirmed she does not want to ban fracking, an energy extraction process key to the economy of swing-state Pennsylvania, and said there “should be consequence” for people who cross the border without permission.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.

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Harris’ campaign launches ‘Reproductive Freedom’ bus tour

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a 50-plus stop “Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour,” as it looks to motivate voters ahead of November.

The first stop will be Tuesday with an event near former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Palm Beach.

“Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back,” said Harris-Walz Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in a statement. “As we crisscross the country, we’ll be driving that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”