In a Sept. 4 letter to Gov. Wes Moore, Muñoz said she will resign Jan. 1, 2025, to “spend more time with my young family.”

“I pray that you and the legislature pass laws to keep Marylanders safe and prosperous in the coming years,” she wrote in the letter.

Muñoz, 37, has been a delegate since November 2021. Former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, appointed her to fill the remaining term of former Del. Michael E. Malone, who resigned his District 33 seat in August 2021 to become an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge.

In 2022, Muñoz ran for election to one of three District 31 seats in the House of Delegates and won.

In a text message to Fox45 News, Muñoz, a cancer survivor who is now pregnant, said her decision to resign stemmed in part from health concerns: “We’re expected a health[y] baby boy in November, and I have confidence that my replacement in the legislature will do their best to represent District 31,” she said.

Muñoz was raised in Severna Park and graduated from Severna Park High School. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Maryland in 2009 and a law degree from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She has five children, according to her state biography.

Since 2021, Muñoz has been on the House Judiciary Committee. In 2023, she began sitting on the Joint Committee on the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Critical Area.

State law requires the Anne Arundel County Republican Central Committee to nominate someone to fill the vacancy and submit their name to the governor for appointment to serve out the remainder of Muñoz’s term, which ends in January 2027.

A representative on the committee did not respond to a request for comment.

Last week, the Baltimore County Council approved a plan to use $10 million in state funds to purchase 85 acres on the former C.P. Crane coal plant site in Bowleys Quarters from North Carolina realty firm Forsite Development. The county plans to use those acres to preserve it as a park, but it’s uncertain when it will open. The Department of Parks and Recreation plans to first gather community feedback, according to agency director Bob Smith.

At a Monday news conference, elected officials including County Council members, the Baltimore County executive and U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen said the deal came together after years of advocacy by community groups in nearby Seneca Park and Bowleys Quarters.

The plant closed in 2018 after environmental regulators cited it for exceeding pollution limits and failing to test its emission levels. It changed owners multiple times, but plans to redevelop the site for housing or to reopen the plant as a natural gas facility fell through after residents pushed back. In 2022, Forsite demolished the candy cane-looking smoke stacks that served as a navigational marker for boaters and pilots from nearby Martin State Airport.

“The candy cones were good for boaters, but less so for the environment,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. “We knew that there was an opportunity to preserve the site as both open space and parkland, and also to find ways to support the transition to a more modern green economy and future.”

Local advocates began lobbying County Councilman David Marks and other officials to preserve it as a park, according to Seneca Park Improvement Association Vice President Bonny Jasinski.

“We enjoy and appreciate the natural wonder that is the Chesapeake Bay, and know the reality of its fragile ecosystem,” Jasinski said. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here. The purchase of this property will connect and extend that undeveloped land in combination with local, state and federal lands.”

“People talk a lot about how government doesn’t work these days, but here’s an example of government working together across party lines and in partnership with neighborhoods,” said Marks, an Upper Falls Republican. He described the negotiations as “complex.”

Forsite will still own 33 acres on the site and is in charge of cleaning up the site, which includes a dilapidated pier, parking lot and warehouse. The company is applying for permits to build a battery storage center, according to Chief Operating Officer Ryan Ford.

Baltimore County will receive an additional $1.7 million in federal funding to acquire right-of-way easements to connect the property via a rail trail to Marshy Point Nature Center and Eastern Regional Park, according to U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat.

“There are very limited amounts for these congressionally directed spending projects, earmarks, so the ones that rise to the top are ones that are well thought-out and have community support,” Van Hollen said.

“The 16-year-old who committed this crime, he’s going to live his life, he’s being charged as an adult, he’s going to be going through the judicial process as an adult,” Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said Monday in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. “He made a very adult decision, he should be allowed to make this decision to talk to the police, in my opinion.”

On Saturday, Jaylen Rushawn Prince, 16, of Edgewood was charged and arrested in the shooting death of 15-year-old Warren Curtis Grant during an altercation in a first-floor bathroom at Joppatowne High School on Friday.

Police are still searching for the weapon, with Gahler pointing to the Maryland Child Interrogation Protection Act as the reason for the missing firearm.

“I hope my frustration is clear that the legislature has handcuffed police,” he said at a news conference Friday. “There are families … and the parents of the shooter, who have a right to know why we stand here today why we all stand here today and why there’s a person who has been shot in one of our schools, and we are not allowed to ask the person who committed that act because of this crazy legislature we have in this state.”

The Child Interrogation Protection Act, passed in 2022, mandates that law enforcement immediately alert a child’s parent or guardian when they are taken into custody and provide minors with the opportunity to speak with an attorney who uses age-appropriate terms to explain their civil rights before they are interrogated.

If police willfully do not follow the parameters of the law, any statement made by the child in question would be inadmissible in court.

In a January opinion, Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said the Child Interrogation Protection Act was constitutional.

There were several failed attempts — largely on the part of Republican lawmakers — to reform the policy during the 2024 legislative session.

Among the cohort of Maryland Republicans who have consistently opposed the law in the past, Del. Kathy Szeliga, a Baltimore County Republican who used to represent Joppatowne in the State House, said Gahler’s frustrations are warranted. Even though the suspect is in custody, the missing weapon “is extremely troubling,” Szeliga said.

“This is a very family friendly community — lots of kids around. You just would hate for this gun to fall into the hands of a child or a criminal,” Szeliga said. “This is a perfect example of bad policy having unintended consequences.”

Szeliga said she’s hoping law enforcement officials who have lobbied in the past to repeal the interrogation law will do so again during the annual 90-day session that will begin Jan. 8 in Annapolis.

The Child Interrogation Protection Act does not prohibit law enforcement from speaking with children during the fact-finding phase of an investigation — only if the child is taken into police custody.

An investigation by The Baltimore Sun last September found that, of 77 juvenile arrests made by Baltimore police in July 2023, only one child called the Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s 24/7 Youth Access to Counsel Hotline.

By legal precedent, minors do not have the ability to waive their right to a lawyer or their right to remain silent.

David Jaros, a law professor and faculty director of the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform, said that the state law may make it more difficult for police to “persuade or inadvertently waive” constitutional rights, but nothing stops minors from talking to police after they speak with their attorney.

“All this requires is that the juvenile make an informed decision about invoking or waiving constitutional rights,” Jaros said. “Our system is built on the belief that we can have effective law enforcement and respect fundamental constitutional rights, and the right to remain silent is an essential part of the protections of the constitution.”

Gahler said he needed to consult with his detectives regarding the number of instances in which children waive or invoke their rights to remain silent, but offered that “there’s no attorney” who will tell their client to speak with the police, “and, in this instance, we have a gun that remains on the street.”

He also was unaware whether the child charged in last week’s shooting invoked his right to remain silent, because officers had “sufficient information” to charge him without interrogation.

“The big question in everyone’s mind — and I’m sure in the parents’ minds, the students who will be going back to school later this week — is where is the gun?” Gahler said. “We know we have the violator in custody, but we don’t want this weapon out there. It could be used in another crime. We searched for it. It could have been dropped. It could have been passed. But until we recover that, I won’t feel comfortable.”

State Senate Judiciary Committee Vice Chair Jeff Waldstreicher, a Montgomery County Democrat, said the law should be revisited to make sure it’s serving its proper purpose, but that there is a public safety exception in the law that allows police to interrogate children if they are seeking information to protect against a public safety threat.

“How do I know? Because I’m the one who authored the public safety exception and included it in the law,” he said Monday.

The public safety exception follows the 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case New York v. Quarles, which ruled that there is an exception to the requirement that officers issue Miranda Rights warnings to people suspected of crime in the interest of public safety.

Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a Democrat who has testified against the Child Interrogation Protection Act before the General Assembly, said the Supreme Court case is “fine and good” regarding constitutional standards, but Maryland’s Child Interrogation Protection Act “overrides constitutional rights because it’s more strict.”

He said he “would love” if Waldstreicher were able to incorporate a clearer public safety standard into a revised law, but, “at the moment, that’s not the way that’s being read.”

“The statute’s clear as a bell. The public defender says to the police, ‘Don’t talk to my client’ — that’s the end of it,” Shellenberger said. “Clearly, this case where a gun is in public missing is the most concerning example of what we’re worried about.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Sam Janesch contributed to this article. 

Open-government proponents say the use of auto-deleting messaging platforms for government matters violates the spirit of public records laws, and a recent state investigation finding that former State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury and some of his staff used the app Signal for work-related exchanges highlights those concerns once again.

The topic also became a local flashpoint in 2022, with Democratic Maryland lawmakers calling for reforms after The Washington Post reported that then-Gov. Larry Hogan, now running for U.S. Senate, was using the self-deleting messaging features of an app called Wickr to communicate with his executive team.

“Unfortunately, at all levels of government, whether federal, state or local, we see elected officials and government officials try to avoid public records laws and retention laws by using messaging apps and self-deleting messages,” said Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for the national government accountability group Common Cause.

Many exchanges among Maryland officials, such as emails about state business, are presumed open for public inspection — the general public can request them under the Maryland Public Information Act. Not all records are releasable; the law contains rules for what is exempt, and other records may be destroyed in time frames set by agency retention schedules.

“Ultimately, it just comes to down to transparency and sunlight — making sure that the public and voters can get an understanding of how their elected officials and public officials are spending their time, how they’re representing us,” Scherb said.

The situation becomes blurrier when officials use apps intended to keep those conversations private. Several apps have features that automatically delete messages, opening up the possibility of infringing upon records-retention programs and open records laws, at least in spirit. It’s hard to determine if, and how, officials are on those apps. And even if they’re using the apps, it’s difficult to tell what their conversations are about and if they should be considered public.

The Maryland Office of the Inspector General for Education said in its report last month that Choudhury had said he used Signal to communicate with members of his executive team and that “occasionally, work-related matters got ‘mixed in’ with personal issues.”

“Often, there’s a blur, a shade of gray between personal and official,” said Scherb, noting that an exchange could start as a “purely personal communication” but then “dip into their professional responsibilities.”

“We would always err on the side of open records laws capturing more of those communications,” Scherb said. “It’s all about the public having a right to know and having that transparency to ensure that the public — and especially voters — have the information that they need.”

In Choudhury’s case, the inspector general’s report said it opened its probe after receiving a complaint that the superintendent used Signal “to discuss government policy and vendor contract decisions.” It concluded that Choudhury and “key members” of the Maryland State Department of Education executive team used Signal “for communications relating to both personal and work-related matters,” and identified a “pattern” of education officials using the app to discuss “work topics.” But the report doesn’t specify what matters were discussed nor if and how Choudhury used the app’s feature that automatically deletes messages.

Choudhury was initially confronted over his use of Signal last September by FOX45, telling a reporter that he didn’t use Signal “for my job.” The television station had obtained screenshots of work-related communications, which included Choudhury discussing licensing for a data analytics program used by the state education department. The screenshots also show the former state superintendent, who stepped down from his post last October and has since been replaced, setting a timer to make his messages disappear after one hour.

The problem isn’t necessarily that officials are using Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram or any of the dozens of encrypted messaging platforms now available, said Del. Vaughn Stewart, a Montgomery County Democrat. It’s mainly how those apps have been used — especially the auto-deleting functions — without regard to records-retention schedules and open records laws, he said.

Stewart and fellow Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation in the wake of Hogan’s Wickr revelations to ensure “any written, electronic, audio or video communication” involving public business would be subject to the state’s public records laws. Although open records laws and retention schedules would cover most of those records, Stewart said that the bill, which did not pass, was mainly to make the law clearer.

The bill also stipulated that the Office of the Governor is a “unit of government” required to retain and archive certain records. Hogan’s team had said that the governor’s office was not a “unit” of government subject to such retention laws but rather the head of state government.

In the Wickr chatrooms, Hogan’s staff used the app’s “Burn-On-Read” timers to schedule messages for destruction 24 hours after they were read. Stewart noted that one could use similar tactics on basic platforms like Apple’s iMessage, though it would be slightly more tedious.

Stewart noted that deleting communications about governmental business, no matter how it’s done, goes against what records-retention schedules are intended for: transparency. The public has a right to know about how policy is made, and Hogan’s staff was using the “Burn-On-Read” chatrooms to communicate about policy with “people like Roy McGrath,” Stewart said, referring to the former Hogan aide who became a fugitive on wire fraud charges and died during an encounter with federal agents.

And at the very least, retaining communications and other records gives historians a way to look back on what led to major policy decisions, Stewart said.

The inspector general’s summary of the superintendent’s office said that “the practice continued until public scrutiny increased,” despite a former member of the executive team expressing concern about “the optics and potential implications of using such an application.”

The summary says that Choudhury considered the Signal messages to be “miscellaneous records that could be discarded as he saw fit,” apparently referring to the department’s records-retention schedule, which provides that “telephone messages” are “miscellaneous records” to be “retain[ed] until no longer needed by the office” and then destroyed. That schedule was most recently revised in 2005, according to a Maryland State Archives database.

The inspector general’s office recommended that the state education department “update its internal policies to address the use of encrypted or ephemeral messaging applications” and develop requirements for retaining work-related messaging data. A spokesperson for the department said it was working on updating those policies.

Crafting a policy to curb the use of such apps is a “tricky, challenging kind of thread,” said Scherb, but it could be as simple as a directive from the top not to use any sort of messaging apps for state business.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson banned the use of a similar app called Confide within the state’s governor’s office — his predecessor, Eric Greitens, was found to be using the app along with his staff, prompting an attorney general’s investigation that ultimately found no wrongdoing. Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer once warned his staff that using Confide and Signal was a violation of the Presidential Records Act, though his warning came during a crackdown on leaks to the press.

Ron Howard, 70, said during an interview with Deadline at the Toronto International Film Festival that politics wasn’t discussed that often while the move was being made.

“Well, we didn’t talk a lot of politics when we were making the movie because I was interested in his upbringing and that survival tale. That’s what we mostly focused on,” Howard said, adding “based on the conversations that we had during that time, I just have to say I’m very surprised and disappointed by much of the rhetoric that I’m reading and hearing. People do change, and I assume that’s the case. Well, it’s on record.

Howard said at that time, in 2020, Vance “was not involved in politics or claimed to be particularly interested. So that was then. I think the important thing is to recognize what’s going on today and to vote.”

One year later, Vance ran for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat vacated by Rob Portman. After being endorsed by Donald Trump, he went on to win the 2022 election, defeating Tim Ryan.

In another interview with Variety in Toronto, Howard added he’s “been surprised and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric” from the Trump-Vance campaign.

“There’s no version of me voting for Donald Trump to be president again, whoever the vice president was,” he said.

Glenn Close who starred in the movie as Vance’s grandmother spoke to Variety last month during the premiere of her movie “The Deliverance” and slammed Vance for flip-flopping on Trump.

“You only hope that people in our government have a moral backbone and that they don’t say one thing and then say something that’s 150 degrees different,” she said.

Content from The National Desk is provided by Sinclair, the parent company of FOX45 News.

WASHINGTON (AP) — It could be a well-rehearsed zinger, a too-loud sigh — or a full performance befuddled enough to shockingly end a sitting president’s reelection bid.

Notable moments from past presidential debates demonstrate how the candidates’ words and body language can make them look especially relatable or hopelessly out-of-touch — showcasing if a candidate is at the top of their policy game or out to sea. Will past be prologue when Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday?

“Being live television events, without a script, without any way of knowing how they are going to evolve — anything can happen,” said Alan Schroeder, author of “Presidential Debates: 50 years of High-Risk TV.”

Here’s a look at some highs, lows and curveballs from presidential debates past.

Biden blows it

Though it’s still fresh in the nation’s mind, the June debate in Atlanta pitting President Joe Biden against Trump may go down as the most impactful political faceoff in history.

Biden, 81, shuffled onto the stage, frequently cleared his throat, said $15 when he meant that his administration helped cut the price of insulin to $35 per month on his first answer and inexplicably gave Trump an early chance to pounce on the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. It got even worse for the president 12 minutes in, when Biden appeared lose his train of thought entirely.

“The, uh — excuse me, with the COVID, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh … if … Look …” Biden stammered before concluding ”we finally beat Medicare.” He meant that his administration had successfully taken on “big pharma,” some of the nation’s top prescription drug companies.

Biden at first blamed having a cold, then suggested he’d overprepared. Later, he pointed to jetlag after pre-debate travel overseas.

In the frantic hours immediately after the debate, a Biden campaign spokesperson said, “ Of course, he’s not dropping out.” That was correct until 28 days later, when the president did just that, bowing out and endorsing Harris on July 21.

The age question

Biden was asked in Atlanta about his age and got into an argument with Trump over golf. It was the opposite of knowing a sensitive question was coming and still making the answer sound spontaneous — a feat President Ronald Reagan pulled off while landing a line for the ages during 1984’s second presidential debate.

Reagan was 73 and facing 56-year-old Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. In the first debate, Reagan struggled to remember facts and occasionally looked confused. An adviser suggested afterward that aides “filled his head with so many facts and figures that he lost his spontaneity.”

So Reagan’s team took a more hands-off approach toward the second debate. When Reagan got a question about his mental and physical stamina that he had to know was coming, he was ready enough to make the response feel unplanned.

Asked whether his age might hinder his handling of major challenges, Raegan responded, “Not at all,” before smoothly continuing: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The audience, and even Mondale, cracked up.

Then, capitalizing on years of Hollywood-honed comedic training, the president took a sip of water, giving the crowd more time to laugh. Finally, he grinned and left little doubt that he’d rehearsed, adding, “It was Seneca, or it was Cicero, I don’t know which, that said, ‘If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.’”

Years later, Mondale conceded, “That was really the end of my campaign that night.”

Reagan is further remembered for using a light touch to neutralize criticisms from Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate. When Carter accused him of wanting to cut Medicare, Reagan scolded, “There you go again.”

The line worked so well that he turned it into something of a trademark rejoinder going forward.

Gaffes galore

In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford had a notable moment in a debate against Carter — and not in a good way. The president declared that there is “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

With Moscow controlling much of that part of the world, the surprised moderator asked if he’d understood correctly. Ford stood by his answer, then spent days on the campaign trail trying to explain it away. He lost that November.

Another awkward moment came in 2012, when Republican nominee Mitt Romney got a debate question about gender pay equality and recalled soliciting women’s groups’ help to find qualified female applicants for state posts: “They brought us whole binders full of women.”

Aaron Kall, director of the University of Michigan’s debate program, said key lines affect not just who a debate’s perceived winner is but also fundraising and media coverage for days, or even weeks, afterward.

“The closer the election, the more zingers and important debate lines can matter,” Kall said.

Not all slips have a devastating impact, though.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama, in a 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate, dismissively told Hillary Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” That drew backlash, but Obama recovered.

The same couldn’t be said for the short-lived 2012 Republican primary White House bid of then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Despite repeated attempts and excruciatingly long pauses, Perry could not remember the third of the three federal agencies he’d promised to shutter if elected.

Finally, he sheepishly muttered, “Oops.”

The Energy Department, which he later ran during the Trump administration, is what slipped his mind.

Getting personal

Another damaging moment opened a 1988 presidential debate, when Democrat Michael Dukakis was pressed about his opposition to capital punishment in a question that evoked his wife.

“If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked. Dukakis showed little emotion, responding, “I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent.”

Dukakis later said he wished he’d said that his wife “is the most precious thing, she and my family, that I have in this world.”

That year’s vice presidential debate featured one of the best-remembered, pre-planned one-liners.

When Republican Dan Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy while debating Lloyd Bentsen, the Democrat was ready. He’d studied Quayle’s campaigning and seen him invoke Kennedy in the past.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen began slowly and deliberately, drawing out the moment. “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

The audience erupted in applause and laughter. Quayle was left to stare straight ahead.

Wordless blunders

Quayle and George H.W. Bush still easily won the 1988 election. But they lost in 1992 after then-President Bush was caught on camera looking at his watch while Democrat Bill Clinton talked to an audience member during a town hall debate. Some thought it made Bush look bored and aloof.

In another instance of a nonverbal debate miscue, then-Democratic Vice President Al Gore was criticized for a subpar opening 2000 debate performance with Republican George W. Bush in which he repeatedly and very audibly sighed.

During their second, town hall-style debate, Gore moved so close to Bush while the Republican answered one question that Bush finally looked over and offered a confident nod, drawing laughter from the audience.

A similar moment occurred in 2016, as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced the audience to answer questions during a debate with Trump. Trump moved in close behind her, narrowed his eyes and glowered.

Clinton later wrote of the incident: “He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”

That didn’t stop Trump from claiming the presidency a few weeks later.

WASHINGTON — With the political conventions in the rearview mirror, Congress returns this week facing the traditional election year push and pull of members wanting to get out of Washington as quickly as possible while doing just enough to avoid a government shutdown.

House conservatives have been agitating about attaching a noncitizen voting bill to the September stopgap spending bill, and for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pitch a plan to punt the spending debate into 2025.

The stopgap bill released Friday night by House Republicans would combine a six-month continuing resolution with a House-passed bill that supporters say would help to ensure that noncitizens can’t vote in federal elections — something Democrats note is already against the law. If it becomes law, the continuing resolution would set a March 28 deadline to avert a partial government shutdown.

As with any spending bill in the narrowly divided House, its path to passage is far from certain. And in any case, Senate Democrats are unlikely to seriously entertain the noncitizen voting legislation — which likely would set up a scenario where the Democrat-led Senate would kick back a “clean” stopgap bill that would force a decision on Johnson’s part.

Aside from that, appropriators might rather tackle spending issues in the lame-duck session, while current members are still in office. That would set the stage for an omnibus spending package — exactly what House conservatives would like to avoid.

“Democrats support a CR to keep the government open,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a weekend letter to colleagues. “As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way. Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception. We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.”

Spending won’t be the only thing on the agenda, however.

The farm bill lapses at the end of September, meaning it will need an extension either as part of the continuing resolution or in some other legislative vehicle. And the fiscal 2025 national defense authorization measure is still awaiting action.

Schumer began the recess talking up the possibility of attaching legislation advanced by the Rules and Administration Committee intended to counter the use of deepfakes in political advertising.

“These are American bills. We are going to fight because democracy is at such risk. We’re going to fight to get these done in every way that we can, and we hope our Republican friends will relent,” Schumer told NBC News. “As I said, we do have some Republican support. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. Democracy is at risk if these deepfakes are allowed to prevail.”

The House is kicking off a week full of bills targeting China, many of which are likely to have bipartisan support because they are being considered under suspension of the rules, an expedited procedure that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

That may be the primary substance, but there’s also plenty of room for more politics.

In the Senate, Schumer could opt to call another vote on legislation intended to support access to and availability of fertility treatments like IVF. A procedural vote to advance the measure back in June only got 48 votes. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine crossed over in support. Sixty votes were needed.

Still, since then former President Donald Trump has been talking up his support for IVF and there may be a political advantage for Democrats to forcing another vote, especially if the Trump doubles down on his support during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.

House Republicans will surely have plenty of politically charged votes of their own.

There is an ongoing possibility of an effort to impeach President Joe Biden — which could be forced onto the floor agenda by conservative agitators even if Republican leaders would prefer to focus on other matters.

___

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — When Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump take the stage Tuesday for their first — and perhaps only — presidential debate, the stakes will be enormously high.

With just eight weeks to election day and early voting in Pennsylvania beginning Sept. 16, there’s little time for either candidate to recover from a bad performance.

“The debate could be another defining moment,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll. “This is the first time we get to see these two on the same stage. … Who knows what could happen given what’s happened so far?”

It will be one of the few chances Harris has to show the nation and Pennsylvania residents how she operates under pressure.

Pennsylvania is a must-win for each candidate.

The debate stage is in Philadelphia; Harris is prepping in Pittsburgh. Both sides have been campaigning regularly here and pouring unprecedented amounts of cash into the state, the most populous of the battleground states whose trove of 19 electoral votes likely will decide whether Trump or Harris takes the oath of office in January.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has the race as a dead heat in Pennsylvania after Trump led President Joe Biden by 4.5 percentage points. Harris is spending the weekend in Pittsburgh’s Omni William Penn hotel preparing for the debate after joining Biden in the city at a Labor Day rally. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, just finished a two-day barnstorming tour, while Trump picked Harrisburg for a Fox News Channel town hall meeting last week, and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, toured businesses in Erie.

Tobe Berkovitz, associate professor of advertising emeritus at Boston University, said the candidates need to “stay on message and most importantly stay under control.”

Polling shows most Americans have already made up their minds and won’t be swayed; a handful of undecideds will determine the next president. Yost estimated that 85% of the electorate is locked, with about 15% still up for grabs.

Both candidates need to play to those undecided voters, experts said.

“This election, as with the last one, will be decided on the margins,” acknowledged Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

Trump needs to appeal to the almost 1 in 5 Pennsylvania Republican voters who backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in this year’s Pennsylvania primary, even though she had ended her campaign weeks before.

Harris needs to address energy issues and thread the needle on an increasingly complicated union vote.

Her appearance at Pittsburgh’s Labor Day event was another effort to keep the union support Biden, a native of Scranton, had shored up. Biden won 56% of the votes of union households in 2020, up from the 51% who supported 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton four years earlier, according to CNN exit polls. Meanwhile, Trump’s share of the union vote fell from 46% in 2016 to 40% in 2020.

Harris joined Biden — and Trump — in siding with the United Steelworkers union and opposing the proposed sale of U.S. Steel, Pittsburgh’s iconic company, to a Japanese concern, Nippon Steel Corp.

But even as labor leadership opposed the deal, 400 steelworkers rallied Downtown last week in support of Nippon’s proposed purchase, and U.S. Steel’s CEO warned that local jobs — and possibly the company headquarters itself — could be lost if the merger failed.

That’s an issue that could affect the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania, and therefore nationally, whether or not U.S. Steel is brought up during Tuesday’s debate.

“With the intense media focus, and the social media and the 24/7, for both of these candidates this is make or break,” Berkovitz said, “Plus, we’re going into early voting. … There’s not a lot of time or events for them to recover. We’re on a tight time frame as it is.”

Vetting the VP

Harris was not vetted by voters in the presidential primaries, becoming the party’s nominee only after Biden decided not to seek reelection following a disastrous performance in the first debate. Though she has served as vice president for more than three years, her national debut as a presidential candidate came last month in Chicago when she delivered her acceptance speech to an enthusiastic crowd at the Democratic National Convention.

Her nomination has energized an electorate that was going through the motions and preparing for a rematch between Trump and Biden, meaning a larger audience on Tuesday.

The debate will be just one of her initial chances to command the attention of a nation as a candidate for the White House.

“She’s making a first impression this time around,” said Vince Galko, a Pennsylvania Republican strategist.

Harris is no stranger to debates, however. As Biden’s running mate, she faced off against then-Vice President Mike Pence four years ago. And during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, she enjoyed a short-lived burst of support after confronting Biden over his relationships with segregationist Democratic senators and his initial opposition to school busing.

In one response, she talked about a little girl who rode the bus to integrate the public schools. “That little girl was me,” she said.

Trump made the 2016 Republican debates must-watch TV as he gave his primary opponents unflattering nicknames. He skipped the primary debates in 2024, and was on stage during Biden’s dismal debate performance in June.

He’s already named his opponent “Comrade Kamala” as he falsely charged her with being a communist.

“His only hope is to drag Harris down,” said former U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., who is helping to lead a group of Pennsylvania Republicans backing Harris. “He’s going to use his usual absurd characterizations that she’s a communist, she’s a lunatic, she’s going to destroy the country. She’s probably a good enough debater that she can parry those criticisms back at him.”

Democratic consultant Glenn Totten said Harris also needs to empathize with those tuning in to the debate.

“The only hurdle she has to get over is to make people believe and make people understand that she’s on their side,” Totten said. “Almost everybody will acknowledge that Donald J. Trump is all about Donald J. Trump. As long as Vice President Harris can make people understand she’s there to protect their interests and move the country forward, she’ll walk away with all the roses.”

Still, Harris’ previous opposition to fracking and her deciding vote to spend billions of dollars for clean energy projects is a hurdle she must overcome in Western Pennsylvania, Galko said.

She’s backed off on opposing fracking, and those clean energy projects include two hubs to develop clean hydrogen in opposite ends of the state, but Galko said a lot of her positions are at odds with those of Pennsylvanians.

“Let her talk,” Galko said. “As more people get to know her, they see her positions are not within those of average Americans. … I’m curious to see how she moderates on issues that relate to Pennsylvania, whether it’s fracking or late-term abortions. Does she lead with that or wait for that to come up?”

Indeed, Trump, in a speech Thursday to the Economic Club of New York, hit hard on energy, insisting that Harris still opposed fracking and promising to ratchet up oil and gas production while ending funding for clean energy projects like the hydrogen hubs.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country, including Russia and Saudi Arabia. We will be using it,” Trump said. “We will blast through every bureaucratic hurdle to issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants and new electric plants and reactors of all types.”

Wooing Republicans

Still, many Republicans already oppose Trump, and a strong performance at the debate by Harris could encourage them to pull the lever for her in November, Greenwood said.

“What the vice president needs to do is first be herself, second be presidential,” Greenwood said. “She talked about putting a Republican in her Cabinet. I think she needs to contrast herself with Trump, who shows little interest in bipartisanship and more interest in appealing to his pretty far-right-of-center base.”

Harris’ presence atop the Democratic ticket is attracting more interest from those who previously had not been excited about this November, pollsters said.

“What the polling right now is showing is because of the enthusiasm about having a fresh face, you’re going to get significantly more voters who are not committed watching this debate who would not normally watch a debate,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “It could have more of an impact than a typical debate has when the only people paying close attention are real partisans.”

Those persuadable voters are more independent, more moderate, and less likely to show up at the polls, Yost said. He said Harris needs to address their issues, such as the economy, abortion, immigration and saving democracy.

“You’ve got to talk in a way that speaks to those people who are still truly making up their minds. You have to approach those questions in a way that is perceived as being more moderate than partisan,” he said. “Some of them are looking for credentials that you can do the job. It’s not just about these issues but it’s about talking about the issues in a way that not only appeals to these voters but gets them to vote.”

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(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PHILADELPHIA — The spotlight aimed at Pennsylvania is going to need a new bulb soon.

Tuesday’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris at 9 p.m. at the National Constitution Center will become the latest high-stakes moment in an unprecedented presidential campaign playing out in Pennsylvania.

The impact could be huge. The race is essentially tied in Pennsylvania, which could determine the whole election — and while polling shows that Harris has made up ground from where President Joe Biden was, she’s far from definitively overcoming Trump, who still enjoys substantial support in the state.

Debates can be consequential, as this election season has already shown. And Tuesday could wind up being the only debate between Harris and Trump before the November election.

So what do both candidates have to do, and what are we watching for?

Trump allies hope he keeps his cool, focuses on issues

Trump comes in with an advantage of experience, as this will be his seventh general election debate — more than any other candidate in history. His team also won the war over muting the candidates’ mics when they’re not speaking, which means he’ll have less leeway to interrupt or go on tangents.

His allies want him to stick to the issues, particularly immigration and inflation, and to tie Harris to Biden on both. He’ll also likely try to argue Harris, who is less well-known than the presidential candidates before her, is not yet ready to run the country. It’s all an opportunity to slow some of the momentum Harris enjoyed coming out of the Democratic National Convention.

“[Harris] told the world on CNN ‘my values have not changed,’ so we’re going to pin her actual record to her,” Trump senior adviser Tim Murtaugh said, previewing an attack on Harris over issues she’s pivoted on, like fracking. “Her record is what it is… She is a San Francisco liberal who is pretending not to be one and she will not be allowed to get away with that.”

Murtaugh said Trump will also emphasize Harris is part of the Biden-Harris administration Harris and Trump are readying for their first debate in Philly. Here’s what’s at stake. “She cannot run as an outsider.”

Calm and disciplined aren’t typically words used to describe Trump on stage, RNC chairman Andy Reilly acknowledged. But he said it’s the former president’s best chance at capturing undecided voters, a small but potentially crucial group in neck-and-neck swing states like Pennsylvania.

“Sure, there will be times Trump goes off message and can’t help himself. I tell him, [when it comes to] persuadable voters, that’s not gonna ring the bell for them.”

Harris looks to further define herself and let Trump be Trump

Harris, who will conduct her debate prep from — where else? — Pennsylvania, will look to hammer Trump on issues like reproductive rights and threats to democracy while laying out her priorities. It will be the first time the two have shared a room since Trump’s State of the Union addresses when Harris was a senator, and comes after Trump has unleashed racist and sexist attacks on her.

Thus far, Harris has established herself as above the often racist and sexist accusations he’s wielded at her, rarely engaging in any response — and that strategy may continue on the debate stage on Tuesday. There’s also the question of whether Trump will further alienate himself from some voters by doubling down on those attacks on stage.

Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania, said Harris’ best move is to “let Trump dig himself into a hole.”

“He has a unique talent to do that.”

Stern thinks that’s an achievable mission for Harris, even in a format without muted mics, which could restrain Trump somewhat. “She should let him take his full 60 — and then 30 and whatever — to tell us all what he really thinks,” Stern said.

Both will be making their pitch to a very small group of undecided voters

Even after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, voters expressed frustration with the political system — a sentiment that’s often especially true for undecided voters, who tend to be moderate or independent.

While both Trump and Harris have served in the White House, they have each tried to present themselves as the candidate who can bring a fresh start. Some of Trump’s campaign signs read “Let’s Save America.” Harris has been vice president for nearly a term, but frequently talks to voters about “fighting for a brighter future.” As both candidates make a pitch that they’re the change the country needs, who will do it more effectively?

“He has to remember that his target audience is a swing persuadable voter,” Reilly said. “This is when the swing voter is focusing in on the race and he has to debunk the Kamala 2.0 movement for them. He needs to remind people, with facts in a calm way, that Harris was there. Harris had a long record prior to being the vice president and as vice president, she supported views of Biden’s which have turned them off.”

For Harris’ part, Stern thinks she needs to tell voters about the specifics of her plans and how they can help working-class Americans, a key voting bloc in Pennsylvania and other “Blue Wall” states.

“I’m excited for her to talk about abortion rights and greedflation and going after corporate price gouging,” he said.

Ultimately, he thinks her best appeal to undecided voters who may be watching is an anti-Trump pitch.

“Tell them, this guy is a crook, this guy is dangerous. He has been convicted of crimes … he will not be good for you, he is dangerous.”

Look for questions about fracking, U.S. Steel, and other direct appeals to Pennsylvania

The two candidates are bound to cover a lot, but with the debate taking place in Pennsylvania — the state both Trump and Harris see as a pathway to the presidency — look for appeals on two very commonwealth-specific issues: Fracking and the sale of Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel.

“I think you might hear a thing or two about fracking,” Murtaugh, the Trump campaign adviser and a Pennsylvania native, said.

Ironically, they’re also both issues Harris and Trump agree on now. But on both, Harris has only recently solidified her stance, saying she won’t ban fracking and also opposes the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan.

Look for Trump to try to argue he’s the legitimate champion of the Rust Belt, and for Harris to double down on her positions.

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©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.