Negotiations over the Sept. 10 spectacle have hit an impasse over whether to leave the microphones on.

With just 15 days left until the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, negotiations between their two campaigns have hit an impasse over whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to four people familiar with the issue.

In June, President Joe Biden’s campaign came to an agreement with Trump’s: There would be two debates — CNN’s on June 27 and ABC’s on Sept. 10 — conducted by mutually negotiated rules. One of the Biden team’s demands — which the Trump team agreed to — was that microphones “will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” as CNN announced on June 15.

But Biden is no longer running for president. And Harris’ campaign wants the microphones to be hot at all times during the ABC debate — as has historically been the case at presidential debates.

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Are young American men justified in their belief of being overlooked and underrepresented in economic, political, and cultural spheres?

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Until now, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has held his fire about his stint in the Trump White House. McMaster served with distinction in key American conflicts of the past decades: the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghan War, but as McMaster recounts in his new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” in some ways, his most challenging tour as a soldier was his last one: serving as the national security adviser to a notoriously mercurial president.

In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” during which Trump’s advisers would flatter the president by saying stuff like, “Your instincts are always right” or, “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” Meanwhile, Trump would say “outlandish” things like, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” in Mexico or, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?”

McMaster’s book, which focuses on Trump’s tenure as commander-in-chief, comes at a particularly timely moment, just as many Americans start to really consider whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would make a better commander-in-chief.

It’s been called “Kamalamania,” “Kamalmentum,” and “Kamelot.” Others dismiss it as “irrational exuberance,” or a political sugar high led by a “ding dong.”

In the five weeks since Kamala Harris upended the 2024 presidential race, the commentariat has used all kinds of phrases to describe Democrats’ euphoria about her sudden White House run.

But there is another electoral force propelling Harris’ candidacy that has barely been noticed: “Black Joy.”

Democrats faced a challenging path to holding their Senate majority even before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump – and they still do. But this year’s Democratic candidates, many of them well-known incumbents, have so far been able to create some separation from the top of the ticket. The question going forward, regardless of what Biden does, is whether they can sustain it.

Nine of the top 10 seats on CNN’s latest ranking of the Senate seats most likely to flip are held by Democrats (or independents who caucus with them). And assuming Republicans flip West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring, the GOP just needs to win the White House or pick up one more Senate seat to win the majority.

That’s a tough landscape for Democrats – especially when they’re defending seats in states that either twice voted comfortably for Trump (Montana and Ohio) or are presidential battlegrounds, and when Biden is so far defying intraparty warnings that his candidacy could cause a GOP “landslide.” Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown – the two most vulnerable incumbents running for reelection – said this week that Biden should exit the race.