The Latest: Harris begins policy rollout; material from Trump campaign leaked to news outlets

Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address old vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she starts to fill in how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have policy portfolios of their own. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision in her own right.

Meanwhile, at least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

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

Here’s the Latest:

There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up.

“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to offer his take 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.

Debate about possessive proper names ending in S started soon after President Joe Biden cleared the way for Harris to run last month. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear position. A news release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote about “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

Initiative to enshrine abortion rights in Missouri constitution qualifies for November ballot

Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.

Missouri will join at least a half-dozen states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election. Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota. While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.

A year later, sprawling Georgia election interference case against Trump has stalled

A year after a Georgia grand jury accused Donald Trump and others of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, the case has stalled with no chance of going to trial before the end of this year.

When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secured the indictment a year ago Thursday, it was the fourth and most sprawling of the criminal cases against the former president. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden, and Willis used Georgia’s anti-racketeering law to allege that he and 18 others had participated in a wide-ranging scheme to subvert the will of the state’s voters.

Willis’ team notched some early victories in the case, but explosive allegations raised by one of Trump’s co-defendants early this year have caused a delay and could even derail the prosecution.

A conservative gathering provides a safe space for Republicans who aren’t on board with Trump

At the Republican National Convention and multiple rallies since, former President Donald Trump has been greeted as a hero who narrowly escaped assassination and is destined to lead a new American golden age.

At a recent conservative conference in Georgia, there was a different vibe.

There were few, if any, red hats at “The Gathering,” the annual confab hosted by influential syndicated radio host Erick Erickson, and no rousing promises to “Make America Great Again.” Instead, Erickson’s guests, from rank-and-file voters up to Trump’s onetime vice president, spent two days critiquing the GOP’s path in the Trump era.

And when it came to the November election, many of them spent more time hand-wringing over a Kamala Harris presidency than celebrating the promise of another Trump administration.

The dynamics are particularly problematic for the former president’s chances in Georgia, a longtime Republican stronghold that has shifted into a genuine two-party state, and a handful of other tossup states. They also serve as a reminder that despite his near-complete takeover of the GOP, Trump still has detractors and skeptics among conservatives.

A burglary is reported at a Trump campaign office in Virginia

A burglary was reported over the weekend at a Virginia campaign office for former President Donald Trump, and authorities are investigating whether anything was stolen.

It happened Sunday at an office in Ashburn being leased by the Trump for President 2024 campaign that also serves as the headquarters of the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee, according to a news release from Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office was contacted around 9 p.m. Sunday. The office said it has surveillance video that shows someone wearing dark clothing with a dark cap and carrying a backpack. An investigation continues.

News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.

Harris cautiously rolls out policy, aiming to outmaneuver Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address old vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she starts to fill in how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have policy portfolios of their own — and almost always set aside any views that differ from those of the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision in her own right.

But her ascendance to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped his reelection bid also means her policy platform is being pulled together just as quickly.

When Harris inherited Biden’s political operation in late July, the campaign’s website was quietly scrubbed of the six-point “issues” page that framed the race against Trump, from expanding voting protections to restoring nationwide access to abortion. Instead, Harris has peppered her speeches with broad goals like “building up the middle class.” She has called for federal laws to provide abortion access and ban assault-style weapons, but has been thin on the details of what specifically they would entail or how she would convince Congress to make progress on some of the most hot-button political issues.