The latest on the 2024 presidential race Details here👇

What we’re covering
Countdown to Election Day: The unpredictable 2024 presidential race is entering its final stretch, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump readying for the contest’s remaining weeks.
Swing states: Trump will campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan later this week, while Harris and running mate Tim Walz will tour the key battleground of Georgia. Those states and a handful of others will determine the race to 270 electoral votes in November.
Debate looms: With party conventions over, the September 10 presidential debate is the next race-defining moment on the calendar. Harris will look to build on momentum from reenergized Democrats, as Trump continues to hone his attacks against her.

With each party trying to one-up the other on its family friendliness, the popular child tax credit has become a major point of rivalry in this year’s presidential election.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has made boosting the child tax credit a central piece of her recently released four-part platform to lower costs for American families, which also included measures to make housing, groceries and prescription drugs more affordable. She wants to restore the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act’s enhanced credit of up to $3,600 per child, which was only in effect for one year, as well as create a $6,000 credit for newborns.

Meanwhile, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential pick who has repeatedly claimed Democrats are anti-family, told CBS News earlier this month that he’d like to see the child tax credit beefed up to $5,000 per child — though he’d have to see how “viable” that would be in Congress. Former President Donald Trump, who is at the top of the ticket and whose daughter Ivanka successfully pushed to expand the credit during his first term, indicated in a separate CBS News interview this month that he supports a generous child tax credit.

Vance and Democrats have also traded barbs over the credit, with the GOP vice presidential nominee falsely claiming that Harris wants to end the benefit, and Democrats attacking him for missing a recent vote that would have temporarily broadened the credit.

Whoever wins the White House will have to deal with the child tax credit next year, since it is scheduled to revert back to a maximum of $1,000 in 2026, down from the current ceiling of $2,000 put in place by the Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The credit is one of many individual income tax provisions in the law that lapse at the end of next year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspending his presidential campaign has not yet put an end to the anecdotes about his personal life.

The latest story, originally shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a recently resurfaced 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan, according to the interview.

“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy told the magazine. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”
The interview has seen renewed attention following tabloid reports romantically linking Kick Kennedy with actor Ben Affleck.

Kennedy suspended his independent White House bid and endorsed former President Donald Trump on Friday after he failed to make gains on Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris in recent weeks. In recent months, his campaign was beset by a string of reports about his personal life that drew national headlines.

In May, he said that in 2010 a parasitic worm had crawled into his brain and died, causing health problems. Weeks later, Vanity Fair published an article featuring a former part-time babysitter accusing him of sexual assault. The same article also featured a photo he sent to a friend which he implied depicted him eating a dog. Earlier this month, he said he placed a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park in 2014, an incident that drew international media attention at the time.

A Michigan judge on Saturday overruled the state elections office’s decision to block independent presidential candidate Cornel West from appearing on the state’s ballot in November, forcing the state to continue its review of his petition.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections had declared West ineligible for the state’s ballot following an objection from Clear Choice PAC, a Democratic-aligned group combatting third-party candidates, because his affidavit of identity was not properly notarized.

But on Saturday, Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford ruled that West was not required by state law to submit an affidavit to qualify for the state’s presidential ballot and said the state’s elections office “misapplied the law in finding otherwise.”

Redford ruled the Michigan Bureau of Elections must qualify West for the ballot if he is determined to have submitted enough valid signatures.