Biden announced that he would participate in two debates against his rival, former President Donald Trump, instead of those moderated by the Commission on Presidential Debates, including one at VSU on Oct. 1. It was meant to be the second of three presidential debates in a series that the commission chose, including two other debates in Texas and Utah. VSU would have been the first historically black university to host such an event.

“The Biden campaign is refusing to participate in a historic general election presidential debate at VSU a great university and HBCU. Joe Biden is turning his back on students, Virginians and the nation because he can’t defend his failing policies,” Youngkin wrote on X Thursday. “Huge snub to VSU and the citizens of the Commonwealth.”

Before the president announced he would not participate in the commission’s debates, his campaign chairwoman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, reportedly penned a letter listing gripes with the timing of the debates, among them noting that it was too late in the election year to hold debates. As a result, the commission issued its response at the beginning of this month.

“The CPD purposefully chose September 16 after a comprehensive study of early voting rules in every state,” it wrote in a statement. “In-person early voting in North Carolina does not begin until October 17. On September 16, the day of the first debate, Pennsylvania voters can receive, complete and return ballots at their county boards of elections. Every other state starts early voting later, as of the most recently published information.”

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However the letter also accused the CPD of being “unable or unwilling to enforce the rules,” pointing to the 2020 elections, claiming Trump broke debate rules with no consequences and wasn’t tested properly for COVID-19 before the debate, as he was positive during the event. Over 73 million viewers tuned into that debate.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Biden campaign, the CPD, and VSU for comment.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), surrounded by fellow Republican lawmakers, said they were there to protest the gag order preventing Trump from speaking.

“We are here of our own volition because there are things we can say that President Trump is unjustly not allowed to say,” Gaetz said. “This is a corrupt judge, these are corrupted witnesses, this is a corrupt prosecution that belies any sense of the facts or the law, and so we are going to keep speaking out against this.”

The move by House Republicans to forgo their responsibilities on Capitol Hill garnered the criticism of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). 

“You’re paid to be here in Washington legislating, it’s the middle of a work week,” Crockett wrote on x. “I guess we’ll hold down the fort for you while you’re tapdancing on Broadway.”

With nearly a dozen Republicans missing session on Thursday, the GOP lost its slim majority over Democrats, thus jeopardizing control of the floor. A vote was scheduled by Republicans on Thursday afternoon on a bill to rebuke President Joe Biden for pausing an arms shipment to Israel and mandating that he quickly deliver the weapons. However, the bill passed, with 16 Democrats joining in advancing the measure. 

The Republican House members’ excursion to New York led to the Oversight Committee postponing a meeting scheduled to vote on holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Five of the panel’s members, Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Mike Waltz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), stood in solidarity with Trump outside of the courthouse.

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) visited New York to show his support for the former president. 

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Johnson’s visit prompted Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to share with NBC News that he believes Democrats made a mistake by killing the motion to oust him, arguing Johnson’s visit to Trump’s trial in Manhattan has exposed the House speaker’s “true colors.”

“It showed his true colors and why, with good intentions, we made a mistake in strategically saving his job,” Connolly said. “Because now we have enabled him to act with impunity like he did.”

The former president called parental rights the “civil rights issue of our time” in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, a conviction that has formed the cornerstone of Scott’s political career.

During his unsuccessful run for the GOP’s presidential nomination, voters became familiar with Scott’s belief that education is the gateway to the American dream. The South Carolina senator based his political campaign around his life story, often recounting the power a good education had on lifting him out of generations of poverty.

After receiving a rousing endorsement from his onetime rival in January, Trump has repeatedly indicated Scott is on his short list for vice president.

Scott, Congressional School Choice Caucus co-chairman, said in January that “quality education” is the “greatest civil rights issue of our time.” He made the statement during a National School Choice Week rally.

Some polls show a growing number of African American voters are disenchanted with the Democratic Party and are migrating to Trump. As the only black Republican in the Senate, Scott might be a unique opportunity to expand for Trump to expand his base.

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Scott recently launched a new roundtable video series, bringing together a coalition of black Republican members of Congress who offer a conservative viewpoint on minority issues. The launch mirrors Republicans’ wider efforts to court African American voters away from the Democratic Party and win the 2024 election for the GOP.

In an appearance on Meet the Press at the beginning of May, Scott said he expected Trump to declare his pick for running mate by early July.

Following former Rep. Mike Gallagher’s sudden resignation from Congress last month, Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District has remained vacant. Under Wisconsin law, if Gallagher had resigned before April 9, a special election could have been held sooner, but he left office on April 24. The move required Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) to call a special election for the same day as the Aug. 13 primary, as well as the general election in November.

Voters in the 8th District, which encompasses northeastern Wisconsin, including Green Bay and Appleton, will pick someone to take his place until the term ends on Jan. 3, as well as additionally vote for someone to take on the two-year term in the House after Jan. 3. 

“There is a source for confusion present here, and it will be very difficult to avoid any voter confusion,” Wisconsin Elections Commission attorney Brandon Hunzicker said.

The nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission has voted to include wording about the length of time served in both the special election and the two-year term. Voters will also be given an explanatory sheet about why the same congressional seat is on the ballot twice. 

“If we’re not clarifying that for the voter, we have done the voters a disservice,” WEC Commissioner Ann Jacobs said.

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Both the special election and the election for the two-year termed position will take place on Nov. 5, the day of the general election. This will give Wisconsin’s 8th District a vote in the House for about two months. 

Former gas station owner Tony Wied, state Sen. André Jacque, and former state Sen. Roger Roth are running for the solidly Republican district. Kristin Lyerly is the only Democrat to have declared her candidacy. Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Wied in the race. 

Doug Skaff, originally a Democrat in the state’s House of Delegates who switched his affiliation to Republican to run, finished second in the Republican primary and is currently in a Charleston, West Virginia, hospital.

Venomous copperhead snakes, one of the most venomous in the United States, bit Skaff in the left leg and right foot Wednesday, according to multiple reports, and he had to be helped by passersby who called for help.

“I just felt like something sharp, and then I grabbed my sign and it knocked me back,” Skaff said. “It may take couple days till they get all this venom out to relieve the pressure on my muscle. Left leg from knees down completely swollen — can’t touch it.”

“It hurts more than I’ve had anything hurt me in my life,” he said.

Democratic Senate candidate Glenn Eliott, who won his primary and will face Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) in the West Virginia Senate general election, tweeted his well wishes for Skaff.

West Virginia Democratic House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty joked about the occurrence, saying he “tried to warn him about the snakes in the grass when he joined the WV GOP.” He later said he is friends with Skaff and that he is doing well as of about 11:30 a.m. Thursday.

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Skaff told WV MetroNews that he needed to be treated in an ICU and will need more venom reversal medicine. 

Kris Warner, who beat Skaff in the primary 46% to 21%, will face Thornton Cooper in the West Virginia secretary of state general election.

The polling released on Thursday by Democratic-aligned public opinion research group Blueprint found most young voters trust Biden over Trump to handle most things, except for two concerns that “may be the defining issues of the 2024 election.” The poll found 52% trust Trump more when it comes to lowering prices and that 53% trust Trump more to secure the border, statistics that gave pollsters pause.

“As we’ve already talked about, young voters are much closer ideologically to Joe Biden than they are to Donald Trump,” Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, said. “But, the two biggest issues of this election, inflation and immigration, it’s very notable that with young voters — those are the only places Donald Trump has an advantage, and it’s particularly concerning.”

The polling found that nearly every young voter answered that economic concern was a top issue and as a whole, inflation and the economy were the most frequently prioritized issues, chosen by 73% and 70% of young voters. 

According to the data, just 13% of voters think Biden is most focused on lowering prices. Forty percent of those voters say the Biden administration is most focused on creating more jobs. Meanwhile, 32% of voters said Trump is focused on lowering prices, and the same share, 32%, say Trump is most focused on creating more jobs.

“It’s troubling that one of the things where they’re closest to Donald Trump is on his economic policy,” Roth Smith added. “That’s worrying; that’s very concerning.”

According to the poll, among the lowest-priority issues in the survey are LGBT issues and student loans, which were chosen 38% of the time. Climate change, Israel and Palestinian issues, race relations, and democracy were chosen about half the time. The most prioritized issues were inflation, healthcare, and jobs and the economy, which were chosen 70% or more of the time. 

Experts reviewing the polling results are suggesting Democrats work to get out the word about Biden’s work to address inflation and improve the economy to increase young voter awareness. 

Ashley Aylward, a senior researcher at the Democratic polling firm HIT Strategies, said she’s found the economy and cost of living continues to be young voters’ top issues.

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“They consistently tell us they aren’t able to reach the economic milestones that their parent’s generation or grandparent’s generation were able to, so they are increasingly frustrated,” Aylward said during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. 

Young voters helped deliver Biden his first White House victory in 2020, winning 61% of voters under 30 and 55% between 30 and 44, according to the AP VoteCast survey of the electorate.

In an interview with Scripps News on Thursday, the former president dismissed perceptions that Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., posed a serious threat to his reelection campaign.

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“Well, she got very few voters relatively, I mean, I got almost, I guess, close to 90%,” Trump told Charles Benson about Haley’s success in Wisconsin. “She got very few voters. And those voters are all coming to me. And you may have a lot of Democrats in there because they have a very tricky little system.”

“We just did a poll where we’re leading Biden by a lot in Wisconsin,” Trump continued.

Although Trump handily won Wisconsin’s primary last month at 79.2%, Haley showed a decent standing by pulling 76,841 votes or nearly 13% of the vote despite no longer running for president.

Haley’s votes were far more than the nearly 21,000 votes that propelled Biden to defeat Trump in Wisconsin during the 2020 election.

She has continued to get double digits in other state primaries, including in this week’s races in Nebraska, West Virginia, and Maryland.

Haley won 20% of the GOP primary in Maryland, compared to Trump’s 80%. In the reliably red state of Nebraska, Haley won nearly 18% of the vote, while Trump won 80.2% of the vote. In West Virginia, Haley won a little over 9% of the vote as Trump won 88.4%.

In other battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Haley pulled in more than 158,000 votes, or 16.6% of the vote, a sign that her supporters could cost Trump the 2024 race if he doesn’t bring them into the GOP tent.

Trump’s quotes on Haley are notable given President Joe Biden’s attempts to persuade Haley voters to back his campaign.

In late April, the Biden campaign announced a 30-second “If You Voted For Nikki Haley…” ad, part of a six-figure ad buy to court Haley supporters.

“Our campaign has been clear from the beginning that we welcome anyone who knows that four more years of Trump would destroy our freedoms and devastate our country,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement at the time.

After this week’s primaries, the Biden campaign again taunted Trump’s problem with protest voters.

“Donald Trump, his barely existent campaign, failed record, and toxic agenda lost tens of thousands of Republican voters to Nikki Haley — who dropped out 69 days ago,” Biden spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement Tuesday night. “Trump enters the general election as a weak candidate, unable to build the coalition needed to win 270 electoral votes.”

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Trump and Haley have not spoken since she exited the race one day after Super Tuesday. Haley has also not endorsed her former boss and Trump does seem eager to welcome Haley into his good graces after he nixed a report that she was being considered as his running mate.

Haley “is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well! DJT,” he posted on Truth Social over the weekend.

Between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023, Detroit gained 1,852 residents, which brought its total population to 633,366. It was the fastest-growing city of any in Michigan.

“We have known for some time that Detroit’s population has been growing, but this is the first time the U.S. Census Bureau has confirmed it in its official estimate,” Mayor Mike Duggan said. “This day is for the Detroiters who stayed and for everyone who has put in the hard work to make Detroit a great place to live.”

Duggan previously challenged the Census Bureau in a 2022 lawsuit, claiming it overestimated the number of people who moved from the city. The move followed the Census Bureau previously acknowledging that a higher percentage of African Americans and Hispanics were undercounted than the decade prior. It was worrisome for Detroit, as 77.5% of the city is black.

In 2024, Duggan reinforced his claim that Detroit was a growing city and said much of the growth was through the rehabilitation of vacant homes, not new builds. Rehabilitating vacant homes is not accounted for by the Census Bureau. 

“This is the first time since 1957 that the Census Bureau has put Detroit in the category of a growing city in population, so it probably means more to our national brand than the NFL draft did,” Duggan said.

In a push for more tourism, Detroit hosted the 2024 NFL draft last month and had 775,000 fans attend, breaking the overall record set in 2019. Duggan said the event was a chance for Detroit to “reintroduce ourselves to America.”

“Of course, this is not just about three days in April,” Christopher Moyer, spokesman for Visit Detroit, said. “The success of this event will help accelerate Detroit and Michigan’s growth for the next 30 years. Success this week will help us attract more visitors, events, and billions of dollars in investment.”

In the 1950s, Detroit had a population of 1.8 million people. White residents flocked to the suburbs, and black middle-class families followed. In recent years, many Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee have seen their populations continue to decline as cities in the Sun Belt grow rapidly in popularity and population. 

“This is the first time since 1957 that the Census Bureau has put Detroit in the category of a growing city in population, so it probably means more to our national brand than the NFL draft did,” Duggan said.

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Michigan is also at the center of the 2024 election as one of seven key swing states, viewed as a “must-win” state for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In 2016, Trump won by about 10,000 votes, the narrowest presidential margin in Michigan history. Biden flipped the state blue in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes.

Early polling shows Trump with a 3-point lead in the state. In the Michigan House, Senate, and office of the governor, Democrats are in control. 

Biden and Trump agreed to two debates on Wednesday after Biden issued guidelines that he would accept to face off against the former president. Psaki told the Pod Save America podcast on Wednesday that she is “still a skeptic” that the pair will debate and predicted how she thinks Trump could back out.

“Trump could certainly say, ‘I never agreed to those specifics in the letter,’ and he probably will, and that’s how this all falls apart, even though he’s basically said, ‘I would debate him anytime,'” Psaki said.

She also said the move to be forthright with guidelines for the conditions Biden would accept and to challenge Trump with a video was an “interesting play” but also put the Trump campaign “on their back feet” in having to agree to the stipulations quickly.

“I think, internally, they knew that at some point, this is going to hit a head, and they were either going to be ahead of it or be responding to Trump,” Psaki said.

“So it was smart in that sense. I think it was also smart that they put out this letter of their criteria, which basically — I mean, none of this is on the level, this entire election in many ways, in terms of how Trump is operating — but it did put the Trump team on their back feet where they had to just agree to that. If they tried to litigate things on there, they would have looked a little weak,” she added.

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The first debate between Biden and Trump is scheduled for June 27 on CNN, while the second debate is scheduled for Sept. 10 on ABC. The Biden campaign agreed to a vice presidential debate in either July or August on CBS, but the Trump campaign has not said whether it agrees.

The debates are scheduled to be the earliest televised debates for a presidential election, which is on Nov. 5 this year.

Hogan called himself “pro-choice” in an interview with the New York Times, marking a stark departure from his previous position of deflecting on proposals to protect the procedure while opposing laws that restrict it.

“I support restoring Roe as the law of the land,” the former two-term governor said, a reference to federal abortion rights under Roe v. Wade that were overturned last year. “I’ll continue to protect the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices just like I did as governor for eight years. I think Marylanders know and trust that when I give them my word, I’m going to keep it, and I’ve protected these rights before. And I’ll do it again in the Senate by supporting a bipartisan compromise to restore Roe as the law of the land.”

As governor, Hogan vetoed expanded abortion access in Maryland but said he will vote for a ballot initiative this fall to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Hogan foreshadowed the policy stance during a Tuesday night speech to supporters after gliding to victory in the Republican Senate primary.

“To the women of Maryland, you have my word that I will continue to protect your right to make your own reproductive health decisions just like I did for eight years when I had the honor and privilege to serve as your governor,” he said.

The contentious issue has the potential to galvanize Democratic voters for Hogan’s opponent, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, and present a roadblock for Hogan as he attempts to make inroads with centrists.

Alsobrooks and other Democrats who once praised his bipartisanship and anti-Trump views have painted the Republican as a “MAGA” stooge who would give Senate control to the GOP and pave the way for further abortion restrictions.

“Larry Hogan is no moderate,” Alsobrooks said in a campaign video posted Thursday prior to Hogan’s announcement. “Time and again, Larry Hogan has refused to support federal protections for abortions rights.”

In her victory speech following a primary upset Tuesday night against Rep. David Trone (D-MD), Alsobrooks insisted that Hogan “will not oppose anti-choice judges, including nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court — even in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

“I’ve never had a litmus test beyond a respect for the law and judicial temperament to make the right decisions, according to the law,” Hogan said in response during the New York Times interview. “I don’t think anybody should be gaming the system or having a litmus test on either side.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) downplayed the significance of Hogan’s position, arguing his vote is not enough to counter the anti-abortion views of his party should it win the majority in November.

“And he’s going to get his whole party there, right? Is that the deal?” Warren told the Washington Examiner of his remarks. “If he thinks that Republican control means we’re going to make Roe v. Wade law of the land, I don’t know what that guy’s smoking, but I bet it’s not legal.”

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The Maryland Democratic Party also slammed Hogan.

“He’s not fooling anyone with this weak attempt to cover up the threat he poses to a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” spokesperson Lindsay Reilly said.