Republican Party’s 2024 Platform Exposes Full Trump Takeover

Donald Trump helped draft a 2024 Republican Party platform that was adopted Monday, effectively cementing his extreme views as the de facto stance of the party.  According to Maggie Haberman with The New York Times, the policy platform was “overwhelmingly” adopted on Monday, despite initially scheduled meetings on Tuesday.

According to The Washington Post, Trump’s policy platform makes mass deportations the party’s official platform, calls to “deport pro-Hamas radicals,” seeks to build a “great Iron Dome” over the United States, and calls to “end the weaponization of the Department of Justice”—by which Trump likely means preventing the DOJ from prosecuting him and instead converting it into his personal attack dog.

The platform also targets transgender people, who make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population, promising to “keep men out of women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, [stop] taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX education regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.” As the Post notes, the proposal doesn’t seek to ban gender-affirming care for minors. However, the threats toward schools “promoting gender transition” and “protections for women and girls” hint at policies akin to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” ban on classroom discussions of LGBTQ issues and appears to promise a reversal of the Biden administration rule that prohibits transphobic bathroom bans in schools.

The platform takes a much less extreme approach to abortion than Trump’s anti-abortion supporters would like, opting instead to support access to IVF and birth control while opposing late-term abortion and leaving abortion access up to the states. It also avoids taking a stance on same-sex marriage, which the Post notes scales back the party’s 2016 platform, which condemned the legalization of same-sex marriage and endorsed conversion therapy.

“Republicans will promote a culture that values the sanctity of marriage, the blessings of childhood, and the foundational role of families, and supports working parents,” the proposed platform says instead. “We will end policies that punish families.”

The 16-page platform was allegedly largely written by Vincent Haley, anonymous sources told the Post, with revisions and some portions written by Trump himself, according to Politico. Haley is a Trump campaign speechwriter who worked under Stephen Miller during Trump’s presidency and was Newt Gingrich’s policy director and campaign manager during his 2012 presidential campaign, according to Axios. The draft proposal circulated on Monday and was intended to be discussed on Tuesday night by members of the RNC’s platform committee, all of whom were handpicked by Trump, according to The Washington Post. According to Haberman, the policy “passed overwhelmingly.” It’s unclear whether any amendments or revisions were made.

Donald Trump doesn’t think Fox News is doing enough to help him.

The former president and convicted felon raged against the conservative news network on Truth Social on Monday, demanding that Fox “STOP PUTTING ON THE ENEMY!”

The post follows two posts on Sunday, where Trump gave more detailed complaints. It’s odd that Trump would take shots at Fox, especially just hours before Sean Hannity is set to air a major interview with him. The network has gone to great lengths to help Trump’s presidency and candidacy, even boosting his false claims of 2020 election fraud and having to pay a hefty legal settlement as a result. But Trump is apparently upset at Fox’s guests, whom he feels aren’t defending him or his claims strongly enough.

For example, he complained on Saturday about Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey, claiming that the journalist “refuses to say, even though he knows it to be true, that everything I got accused of is a Biden inspired HOAX for purposes of Election Interference.” Late last month, Trump was angry that a Fox poll showed Biden narrowly leading him by two points.

In short, Trump demands total loyalty from everyone around him, no matter what they’ve done for him in the past. Fox has a long record of going above and beyond to support Trump, whether it’s editing interviews to make him look better, pushing his blatant lie about the FBI plotting to kill him, and covering up whatever makes him look bad. The network has always pushed Republican goals and messages, throwing its weight behind Trump once he captured the GOP electorate, and is putting its thumb on the scale for Trump in this election.

Trump can continue to take shots at Fox without worrying about their support, as the network doesn’t want to risk angering his supporters. But ultimately, the voters he has to convince may not be hanging on the network’s every word.

France’s New Popular Front Coalition pulled off a stunning parliamentary election victory on Sunday, blocking Marine Le Pen’s far-right ultranationalist party, the National Rally, from overtaking the country’s government.

After a strong showing from a coalition made up of the Republican right-wing party and the National Rally in the first round of voting last week, France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called upon candidates from President Emmanuel Macron’s party who were caught in three-way races to begin dropping out—and, quite amazingly, they did.

As a result, the New Popular Front, a four-party left-green alliance, came in first with 192 seats. Macron’s center-right alliance came in second, winning 163 seats, and Le Pen’s far-right movement came in third, winning only 143 seats. While the New Popular Front did not achieve an absolute majority, and the way forward for the government remains unclear, the surprise victory marked a rare instance of the traditional democratic alliance winning against fascism.

Across France, members of the far-right coalition were left dumbfounded as the results of the election rolled in.

A video posted to X by France 3 Rhône-Alpes showed a crowd at the National Rally headquarters in Rhône, where onlookers eagerly counted down to the results—and then couldn’t hide their abject disappointment when they realized they had lost. In the murmur of the crowd, a word favored by the French, “impossible!” can be heard.

At an election-night party in Bois de Vincennes, journalist Alison Tassin captured far-right activists who looked more than a little displeased to see the shocking election results.

Meanwhile, at the headquarters of the far-left La France Insoumise party in Paris’s Place Stalingrad, journalist Maxime Dubernet captured the inverse of far-right distress: leftist triumph.

French television network BMFTV put reactions from the two camps side by side: the overjoyed La France Insoumise on the left and the dejected National Rally on the right.

Online, far-right conservatives have decried the election results as the death of France. But many are rejoicing that the National Rally, with its history of antisemitism and Holocaust denialism and vehemently racist, anti-immigration rhetoric and platform, has been kept out of power for now.

Voters may be concerned by President Joe Biden’s age, but one Republican lawmaker appears to have taken the story a little too far.

Speaking with Fox Business’s Cheryl Casone on Monday, Senator Roger Marshall suggested that Biden’s choice of footwear could be a sign that the chief executive has developed Parkinson’s disease, a nervous system disorder that results in tremors in a person’s hands and feet.

“People have taken a good look at the fact that he used to wear dress shoes,” said Casone. “Now he wears those tennis shoes. Does this all factor into what you’re hearing and seeing?”

Marshall quickly agreed. “Exactly, first of all, there’s several different types of Parkinson’s,” he said. “Some of them have a bigger impact on his cognitive abilities than other types of Parkinson’s do. So, again, if there’s nothing to hide, then the president should do a cognitive test.”

“My guess is he has done one. Certainly, they’ve done a neurological examination. That would be part of an annual examination.… I guarantee you that this Parkinson’s disease doctor that showed up did an in-depth neurological exam—and America deserves to know,” Marshall continued. “Again, I don’t know if the president has Parkinson’s or not, but we’re concerned about it. And four years is a long time.”

To make the argument, the Kansas senator fell back on his medical expertise as a former ob-gyn, a specialty that has practically zero medical crossover with diagnosing a neurological illness such as Parkinson’s.

Marshall’s theory may have been sparked by reports from over the weekend that a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders was seen at the White House eight times between last summer through the spring. It is unclear whether the doctor was attending routine White House medical team meetings or if he was there specifically to consult on Biden’s health. The White House says Biden is not exhibiting signs of Parkinson’s.

Biden, meanwhile, has rejected the notion that he should be subject to a cognitive test during his high-profile one-on-one interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday, arguing instead that the daily grind of the presidency is testing enough.

“I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden said. “Everything I do. Not only am I campaigning, I am running the world.”

But Marshall did let one detail slip in his closing comments on Biden’s health: The conservative lawmaker believes that Vice President Kamala Harris has a future running the Oval Office.

“Any way you look at this, I think we end up with Kamala Harris as the president, either going into the future or the nominee now,” Marshall said.

Biden released a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday warning that discussions about him stepping aside need to come to an end as calls for him to leave the race continue to dog him more than a week after his disastrous debate performance sent Democrats into a massive tailspin.

The letter, first published by Axios reporter Stephen Neukam on X (formerly Twitter), appeared on a personalized letterhead for Biden, not the White House. In the letter, Biden noted “extensive conversations” he has had with “the leadership of the party, elected officials, rank and file members, and most importantly, Democratic voters over these past 10 days or so.” He briefly acknowledged that he is well-aware of the “good faith fears and worries about what is at stake” but ultimately warned that he will not step aside.

“I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” Biden wrote.

Biden made the case for himself by noting that he’s already the presumptive nominee by a wide margin after primary voters largely chose him in a re-election campaign he reportedly told aides in 2019 he would not pursue. “I received over 14 million votes, 87% of the votes cast across the entire nominating process. I have nearly 3,900 delegates, making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin,” Biden noted before detailing some wins the Democratic Party has secured during his presidency, such as student debt relief and lowering the cost of insulin for seniors, and casting his campaign in stark contrast to Trump’s.

“We have an economic vision to run on that soundly beats Trump and the MAGA Republicans. They are siding with the wealthy and the big corporations and we are siding with the working people of America,” Biden wrote. “It wasn’t an isolated moment for Trump to stand at Mar-A-Lago and tell the oil industry they should give him $1 billion and he will do whatever they want. That’s whose side Trump and the MAGA Republicans are on.”

Biden’s letter concluded with a call to end discussions around him leaving the race and focus on unifying behind him to defeat Trump, a sticking point leading Democrats, influential donors, editorial boards of numerous media and news outlets, and voters have struggled to embrace.

“The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end,” Biden warned. “We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”

Biden’s letter was issued at the start of a week described by CNN as “the most critical days of his 50-year career” and a day before the Congressional Black Caucus is slated to meet, which some members anticipate will be incredibly consequential, according to CNN.