The Republican Party is gearing up to hash out its official platform ahead of its national convention later this month, with highly unusual plans to shift negotiations behind closed doors firmly in place just as Donald Trump’s campaign advisers push to significantly simplify this year’s document.
The party’s platform committee is set for three days of negotiations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week before the convention kicks off on July 15. The choice to bar C-SPAN from televising the proceedings, which breaks with decades of precedent, was first reported last week by The New York Times, which noted that officials are hoping to keep any potential squabbling out of the public eye.
The platform has not been revised since 2016, when the party published a tome of more than 60 pages laying out its stance on everything from the tax code to abortion. It opted not to adopt a new platform in 2020, blaming the chaos brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
