Vice-Chairman Kamala Harris will join President Joe Biden in announcing price cuts for popular Medicare drugs. Federal officials have reached agreements with pharmaceutical companies to lower the price for 10 of Medicare insurance most popular and expensive medications. The drugs include the blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia. Medicare spent $50 billion for the drugs last year. It is a milestone for the Medicare program, which provides health care to more than 67 million older and disabled Americans.
Former President Donald Trumphas meanwhile invited reporters to a news conference at his New Jersey golf club, the second in as many weeks. Trump will meet with the press as he ramps up his criticism of Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for interviews since becoming president Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed her to replace him. The vice president has barely interacted with reporters since becoming the Democratic nominee.
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Harris previews her economic policy speech in North Carolina on Friday, focusing on corporate profiteering.
Her campaign says Harris plans to push for a federal ban on overpricing of food and groceries, with a particular focus on rising meat prices, which she says account for a large portion of rising grocery bills.
Year-on-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years. But many Americans are still struggling with food prices, which are still 21% higher than they were three years ago. Trump has pointed to inflation as a key failure of the Biden-Trump administration and its energy policies.
Donald Trump lost his last bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as the case heads toward a key verdict and possible sentencing next month.
In a decision posted WednesdayJudge Juan M. Merchan refused to step aside, saying Trump’s demand was a repetition of “rife falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial.
It is the third time Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican candidate. They argue that the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.
The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never developed “an individual relationship” with her, consulting firm founder Mike Nellis told U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not done work for Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-defunct reelection campaign or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.
The Democratic National Committee will offer a schedule of trainings, panels and other programming it calls “DemPalooza” during the party’s convention in Chicago next week. The name is a play on the Lollapalooza music festival that Chicago hosts each year.
“DemPalooza” events will range from trainings on how to use organizing tools to polling briefings and skills workshops. The DNC says these programs are part of its and the Harris campaign’s efforts to organize and reach voters in a changing media environment and to offer Democrats an opportunity to take what they’ve learned back to the communities that will determine the presidential election in November.
Vice President Kamala Harris was never the “border czar” her critics claim.
Biden administration officials say they were tasked with addressing the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which accounted for a large share of the border crossers.
A review of Harris’s work on immigration reveals a record more nuanced than that of her critics or allies. It also offers insight into how Harris — who became the Democratic standard-bearer when Biden dropped out of last month’s presidential election — could address one of the country’s most pressing concerns.
Read more about Harris’ work on immigration
Whatever motivated Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to stir up debate about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to grammar nerds enthusiastic.
“The lower the stakes, the bigger the battle,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who joined the fray on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to offer his take on possessive proper nouns.
The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.
While there is broad agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion remains over Harris’ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ‘s.
Read more about the political world last grammar debate
In his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz cheering union members warned on Tuesday that Donald Trump would wage war on working people and threaten Medicare and Social Security while launching a fundraising campaign in five states.
He spoke of a bleak future for unions if Trump and Senator Ohio… JD Vance be elected, describing a country where bargaining rights, overtime pay and other protections would be stripped. He said Trump and Vance “have waged war on working people.”
Trump has also sought the support of unions, however. When he accepted the Republican nomination, he said he would save the auto industry from what he called “complete destruction.”
Read more about Walz’s Fundraising campaign in 5 states