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(WASHINGTON) — With less than two weeks until the first presidential debate, CNN announced the rules agreed on by both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s campaigns.

They include microphone muting, a coin flip and more when the two candidates face off at the network’s Atlanta studio on June 27.

The debate, which is being moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will run for approximately 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. There will be no live studio audience, one major change from debates past.

Biden and Trump will stand at podiums decided by a coin flip. Their microphones will be muted unless it is their turn to speak, the network said, which is likely to limit how much the candidates can interrupt one another.

CNN said they won’t be allowed to use any props or pre-written notes but will be given paper, a pen and water.

The CNN debate is the first of two debates agreed on by the campaigns. The second will be hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10.

They were scheduled on May 15, shortly after Biden publicly challenged Trump to participate in two debates. The Trump campaign accepted but pushed for additional debates in July and August, which have not materialized.

The Biden campaign set out some conditions for the debate, including that they be conducted by news organizations, not the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, and should have no in-person audience to limit disruptions.

This month’s debate, the earliest ever in a presidential race, comes before the Republican and Democratic conventions later this summer — when both Trump and Biden will officially accept their party’s nominations.

On Monday, the Biden campaign rolled out a new ad as part of a $50 million media campaign in battleground states. The media buy includes an advertisement highlighting Trump’s historic conviction in his hush money trial.

“Trump approaches the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to prove that he will do anything and harm anyone if it means more power and vengeance for Donald Trump,” Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler said in a statement.

Trump’s team pushed back against the ad, again claiming his New York trial was a “sham.”

“The contrast between President Trump’s strength and success versus Crooked Joe Biden’s weakness, failures, and dishonesty will be made clear on the debate stage next week, ” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.

ABC News’ Gabrielle Abdul-Hakim and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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(BALTIMORE) — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is pardoning more than 175,000 convictions for marijuana, his office announced Monday.

“I am humbled to be with you in the historic Maryland State House — as we make history of our own, together,” he announced in a post on X. “This morning – with deep pride and soberness – I will pardon over 175,000 convictions related to the possession of cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia.”

In a speech Monday where he signed the executive order, Moore described it as “the most sweeping state-level pardon in any state in American history.”

Even so, Moore emphasized that the mass pardons won’t “turn back the clock on decades of harm that was caused by this war on drugs” — particularly for the Black community, which has disproportionately borne the brunt of incarcerations.

“Legalization does not erase the fact that nearly half of all drug arrests in Maryland during the early 2000s were for cannabis. It doesn’t erase the fact that Black Marylanders were three times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white Marylanders before legalization,” he said. “It doesn’t erase the fact that having a conviction on your record means a harder time with everything, everything from housing to employment to education. It doesn’t erase the fact that people who were arrested for cannabis three or four or 40 years ago still have those convictions on their records to this day.”

“We cannot celebrate the benefits of legalization if we do not address the consequences. of criminalization,” he added.

Maryland made cannabis legal for recreational use for adults on July 1, 2023.

The news of the pardons comes just a month after the Biden administration said it was officially moving forward with a proposal to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

The Justice Department submitted the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to the Office of the Federal Register last month, and if approved, the rescheduling would limit the punishment for those who are in possession of marijuana when it comes to a federal crime.

The proposal is subject to a 60-day public comment period. After that, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration can assign an administrative law judge to consider the evidence and make a final scheduling recommendation

ABC News reported in April that the Drug Enforcement Administration was planning to reschedule marijuana.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden joined former President Barack Obama, Julia Roberts and George Clooney at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles Saturday evening with celebrity surrogates like Barbra Streisand that the campaign said raised a little more than $30 million.

Biden, who flew from his trip to Italy for the G7 summit to attend the glitzy fundraiser, joked that he went through “nine time zones” to be at the West Coast event. Biden left the G7 conference early to attend the fundraiser.

Jimmy Kimmel, who moderated a conversation between Biden and Obama, asked Biden what Americans could do about the Supreme Court stepping into “personal, intimate decision” — a reference to the Supreme Court overruling Roe vs. Wade in June 2022, and the recent ruling that a group of doctors lacked legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the abortion pill mifepristone.

“Elect me,” Biden replied to Kimmel. “The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees — two more. [Trump has] already appointed two that have been very negative in terms of the rights of individuals.”

Trump has touted his appointments to the Supreme Court and has taken credit for court’s landmark decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.

“We did that — it was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement. We did that. And now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want. It’s the will of the people,” Trump said previously of the court’s vote to overrule Roe v. Wade.

Obama stressed to Kimmel that Republicans who may be unwilling to vote for Trump, but can’t imagine voting for Democrats should keep in mind that Biden stands for “core values” that Americans still have in common.

“Part of what has happened over the last several years is we’ve normalized behavior that used to be disqualified,” said Obama.

Twice the former president implored the audience not to boo or hiss at Trump but to go out and vote.

Tickets for the fundraiser ranged anywhere from $250 to $125,000, but grassroots donors could pay as little as $10 to virtually join the event.

Unlike their New York fundraiser in March, which raked in $26 million largely from grassroots donors, the first portion of the program was live-streamed, except for the portions with Roberts and Clooney, for those small-dollar contributors.

The Biden campaign told ABC News that every dollar from Saturday’s fundraising haul will be used to open offices, hire organizers and launch paid media campaigns.

The event comes on the heels of Biden’s G7 trip to Italy where a bilateral security pact was signed on Thursday between the United States and Ukraine. Biden also met with Pope Francis during his time abroad.

Kimmel joked about Biden’s visit with the pope, saying, “You did say that you are fighting to restore the soul of America and lately it seems like we might need an exorcism. Is that why you visited the pope?”

“Yeah,” Biden replied.

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(WASHINGTON) — The presidential election is taking up much of the political oxygen in 2024. But Democrats are urging voters not to forget the importance of state legislative races — and they’re spending big to make sure they don’t.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the Democrats’ campaign arm for state legislative races, launched a $10 million spending blitz Monday to boost key state legislative candidates and campaigns across the country, according to plans shared first with ABC News. Dubbed the “Summer of the States” campaign, the investment marks the first time the DLCC is launching a push of this size at this point in an election cycle.

Along with the money, the campaign also includes a microsite that will feature key races to watch and spotlight candidates running in them.

“We’ve definitely seen more interest. We’re having better conversations with folks about how important it is to care about both things, about what is happening in Washington, D.C., and also what is happening in our state houses,” DLCC President Heather Williams told ABC News. “We also know that the value of a campaign dollar at this ballot level in these races goes so much further, and that investment means it just it just means more.”

She added, “We just cannot turn all of our attention to the White House and leave the states unattended.”

Democrats’ investments in state races, which jumped during the Trump administration and have continued to climb since, are a historical shift from the Obama administration and the years before, when the party’s state legislative campaign infrastructure atrophied, leaving Republicans dominating contests for state capitals from coast to coast.

Donald Trump’s win jolted Democrats into investing more into those contests, a trend that was amplified when the Supreme Court scrapped constitutional protections for abortions, leaving state legislatures with immense power over deciding access to the procedure — on top of other Democratic priorities like voting rights and states’ roles in certifying presidential election results.

In a sign of how important the races are now, other Democratic groups are also dumping millions into state legislative races. The States Project, a group affiliated with Democrats and liberal causes, announced last week that it is planning to spend $70 million in legislative races this year. The DLCC’s $10 million summer spending spree is part of its own $60 million budget for 2024, along with the aligned group Forward Majority’s $35 million plan.

Recent spending already showed tangible dividends, with chambers in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania flipping in 2022 after Democrats outspent Republicans.

Williams said spending this year is particularly important given the risk that Republicans can flip the White House and Senate and hold onto the House, a scenario in which Democratic-controlled state legislatures could be a major buffer against a Republican federal trifecta.

“We are entering the true campaign season where voters are going to have to start making choices, and I think it’s critically important they understand that the Republican agenda, which includes rolling back so many of our rights, is going to show up in their state houses, and that caring about what is happening at the top of the ticket is not going to be enough,” she said.

The DLCC’s money will be focused on several states. Some places, like Michigan and Minnesota, have Democratic trifectas that the party is trying to protect. Others, like Arizona and New Hampshire, have a Democratic majority in at least one state legislative chamber within reach. And in others, like Kansas and North Carolina, Democrats are trying to cut into Republicans’ legislative margins enough to deny them a veto-proof supermajority and restore a Democratic governor’s veto power.

The group’s investment is less focused on specific tactics rather than funneling money to campaigns in what Williams called “winning plans.”

“Each state and each program that is going to receive these investments may apply it to different things … so it’ll be sort of across the board, everything from polling and data to paid communication to digital communication, etc.,” she said.

“Because we are a permanent presence in these programs, we are working side by side with the campaigns on the ground to develop really strong campaign plans that we believe in, that they believe in, from start to finish,” Williams added.

The Republican State Leadership Committee — the DLCC’s GOP equivalent — has not yet announced its fundraising goal for 2024. Its president, Dee Duncan, conceded that it and affiliated outside groups aren’t investing in state legislative races like their Democratic counterparts.

“While the constellation of Democrat outside groups will outspend us as usual this year, Republicans are more trusted to solve the most pressing issues facing families, such as the rising cost of living and the border crisis. Our advantage on policy coupled with our strategic early investments, including our historic mail-in voting program in Pennsylvania, have us confident that Republicans are in a strong position to stave off the massive onslaught of money pouring in from the Democrats,” Duncan said in a statement.

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