August 26, 2024

• Is This Thing On? The next (known) Big Event, as far as the Presidential campaign is concerned, is the planned debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, scheduled for September 10 on ABC. At the moment, there’s disagreement between the campaigns as to whether or not microphones will be left on or muted while the other candidate speaks. During the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27, the mics were muted, at the Biden team’s request. This time around, though, the Harris team is requesting the opposite, perhaps in an effort to have some sort of Trump-uttered impolitic outburst caught live. Trump’s campaign team is asking for the same muted-except-when-speaking setup as the last debate, but Trump himself has stated that he’d rather have it on. During the same speech, he also expressed some doubt as to whether or not he’d actually show up for the debate. We’ll see where things stand two weeks from now. LINK
• Tacking Into the Wind: Over the weekend, Trump appeared to adjust his approach to the issue of abortion. On his Truth Social website on Friday, he posted that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”. This, coupled with running mate Senator J.D. Vance’s recent statements that Trump would veto a nationwide abortion ban (LINK), show a significant shift for the Republican duo, as they’re potentially trying to shore up some of their cratering support among women. However, this shift is prone to upset some of their staunchest supporters, namely anti-abortion activists who are “understandably upset” with the changing language. LINK

• Stamps of Approval: Taking a step back from the politics of the day, a new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum (which I didn’t know was a thing until I saw this story!) focuses on the long history of voting by mail. While it definitely came to prominence during the COVID-era lockdowns of 2020, it’s been around in one form or another on a federal level since the Civil War election of 1864 — with limited examples at state and local levels since the 1700s. LINK