Polls close in Tennessee primary
Polls have closed in Tennessee, which is holding primaries today. The main race to watch is in the GOP-leaning 5th District, where Rep. Andy Ogles is looking to fend off a well-funded primary challenger, Nashville Metropolitan Council member Courtney Johnston.
Ogles is a Trump-backed member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus. But Johnston has sought to cast him as a “do-nothing” politician, and he could be plagued by some negative headlines involving fabricating parts of his résumé.
The primary will also set the matchup in the state’s Senate race, with GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn running for a second term.
State Rep. Gloria Johnson is the top Democrat in the primary. She has garnered national attention as one of the so-called “Tennessee Three,” referring to the Democratic state lawmakers who launched a gun violence protest on the state House floor last year.
Environmentalist and activist Marquita Bradshaw, who won an upset victory in the Democratic Senate primary in 2020 but lost the general election, is also running.
Blackburn may remember all too well that Taylor Swift urged Tennesseans to vote against her back in 2018. And while it’s not clear whether the pop star will once again leverage her reputation against Blackburn, the senator was able to shake it off six years ago and win her first term by 11 points.
Trump team says it raised $138.7 million last month
Trump and authorized committees made a fundraising haul of $138.7 million in July, bringing the campaign's cash on hand total to $327 million, the Trump campaign said in a news release today. The figure is an increase from the roughly $112 million his campaign said it raised in June.
NBC News cannot verify the figures as Federal Election Commission reports for July have not yet been released.
The Harris campaign said that it raked in $81 million within the first 24 hours of Biden's dropping out of the race last month and that it had raised $200 million during the first week of her campaign.
Vance takes attacks on Harris’ record to the southern border
Vance brought his fiery campaign rhetoric on immigration to the U.S.-Mexico border today as the Trump campaign drubs Harris over the Biden administration’s approach to border security.
Sharpening his attacks on Harris on the stump in recent days, Vance visited an unfinished part of the border wall in Arizona — a stark visual to drive home the campaign’s juxtaposition of Harris’ and Trump’s records.
“It is not hard to secure the southern border. You just have to reimplement some commonsense policies,” Vance said after he received a briefing from border patrol union members, a representative from the sheriff’s department and a local rancher.
Vance joins TikTok
Vance, Trump's running mate, joined TikTok today. He follows Trump's and the Trump campaign's accounts on the social media platform.
Vance collaborated with the Nelk Boys, prominent YouTubers, who welcomed him to the video sharing app in his first video post.
Harris joined TikTok last week and has posted a series of campaign videos.
Harris ‘momentum’ can help Democrats secure 52 Senate seats, DSCC chair says
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told NBC News today that it’s “very possible” that Democrats will hold as many as 52 Senate seats after this election cycle.
The path to 52 would include defending Democratic-held seats in two red states and a slew of purple states and flipping seats in Republican-leaning Texas and Florida, where GOP incumbents are favored. Peters said that the “candidate-to-candidate” matchups favor Democrats over “flawed” Republicans” — and that Harris has energized voters.
“With Vice President Harris now at the top of the ticket, it’s just been remarkable to see the outpouring of support for her. It’s certainly been great. The amount of energy that is on the ground is something I haven’t seen for a long, long time. And that’s going to bode very well for all of our Senate races across the country,” said Peters, who heads the campaign arm for Senate Democrats. “Having the energy on the ground with the Harris campaign just gives momentum to each of the candidates to make sure that they win in the end.
“We’re looking at both Texas and Florida. Those numbers are strong. And we’re expecting big turnout to help our Democratic candidates,” he added. “I’m very optimistic for both Texas and Florida.”
Harris joins call with Biden and Netanyahu
Harris joined Biden's call today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House said in a readout of the conversation.
Biden discussed "efforts to support Israel’s defense," and he "stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region."
The readout did not disclose what Harris discussed in the call.
Harris met with Netanyahu last Thursday when he visited the White House. She said she expressed her concerns over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
New York court denies Trump gag order appeal in hush money case
A New York appeals court today denied Trump's bid to dismiss the partial gag order against him in his criminal case.
Trump had argued the gag order was unnecessary and should be dismissed after he was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign.
A five-judge panel of the state Appellate Division, a midlevel appeals court, disagreed. It backed a ruling by Judge Juan Merchan that the order should remain in place until sentencing, which the judges called “a critical stage of the criminal proceeding,” or until the case is otherwise disposed of.
In op-ed, Chris Sununu says GOP won't win in November 'through character attacks or personal insults'
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu cautioned fellow Republicans to change their tactics against Harris, arguing that winning in November "is not through character attacks or personal insults" in an op-ed published today.
"In fact, those attacks are unlikely to bring a single new voter on board," Sununu wrote in The New York Times. "Catchy one-liners — calling Vice President Kamala Harris a 'bum,' 'not a serious person' and 'bottom of the barrel' — might rile up the base, but they do little to connect with independent voters needed to close the deal in November."
Sununu referred to several instances of Trump and other Republicans' name-calling, but he notably did not directly comment on Trump's appearance at a convention of Black journalists yesterday in Chicago, where he questioned Harris' racial identity and suggested she "happened to turn Black."
Sununu has been a frequent critic of Trump, and he endorsed Nikki Haley in December before she suspended her presidential bid.
Trump: ‘We’re not weird people’
Trump sought to combat Harris and her allies’ labeling him and his running mate as “weird,” saying in an interview with conservative media personalities Clay Travis and Buck Sexton today that he isn't weird.
“Well, they’re the weird ones,” Trump said. “And if you’ve ever seen her with a laugh and everything else, that’s a weird deal going on there. They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things. But weird I’m not.”
Trump went on to describe himself as “upfront” and said Vance is “not at all” weird.
“And he’s not, either,” Trump continued. “I will tell you JD is not at all. They are.”
Trump railed against undocumented immigration into the U.S., saying it’s “weird” to “have open borders."
“That’s weird,” he said before pointing to allowing trans women to participate in women’s sports and tax increases as “weird.”
“The whole thing is weird,” he said. “And the way they do elections is weird. ... But you know what it is? It’s a sound bite. You’ve been watching it. 'Russia, Russia, Russia,' 'Ukraine, Ukraine.' It’s always sound bites."
"And the press picks it up," he continued. "You notice the evening news? Every one of them talks … they introduced the word 'weird.' And all of a sudden they’re talking about 'weird' now. We’re not weird people. We’re actually just the opposite. Put it right down the middle.”
Harris and her allies sought to promote “weird” messaging around Trump and Vance soon after Biden departed the presidential race last month.
Schumer responds to Trump calling him 'a proud member of Hamas'
Schumer told NBC News today that Trump and Vance are "ludicrous" and "unhinged" after Trump called Schumer "a proud member of Hamas” yesterday.
“We have to respond in two ways. One, we have to make it clear to the American people how ludicrous, how unhinged, this group, the Trump/Vance ticket, is,” Schumer said. “But at the same time, the high road remains. We have to show the American people what we want to do for them.”
“Every day either Donald Trump or Vance make some kind of crazy statement, and it’s catching up with the American people," Schumer added.