Elections

Former President Donald J. Trump crisscrossed the battleground state of Michigan on Friday, casting himself as an economic protectionist to blue-collar voters while attacking Vice President Kamala Harris over immigration on the same day she visited the southern border. Mr. Trump used a pair of events to try to blame Ms. Harris for inflation and the migrant crisis, tapping into some of the populist themes that helped him win Michigan — and the presidency — in the 2016 election. In 2020, the state flipped for President Biden.In the afternoon, the former president visited a manufacturing facility near Grand Rapids before holding a town hall event in the Detroit suburbs that started around 90 minutes late and ended after just a half-hour. At the second event, in Warren, Mich., Mr. Trump vowed, if Congress did not act, to use executive action to enact protective tariffs to limit the flow of imports from China and other countries that he said were killing jobs in the state. “The word ‘tariff’ I love,” he said at Macomb Community College, where he was joined onstage by Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, one of his staunchest allies in the Senate who served as the town hall’s moderator. Mr. Trump fielded a handful of friendly questions from his supporters that set up familiar talking points and lines of attack. He said Americans were forgoing certain comforts because they could no longer afford them under the Biden-Harris administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

On her first trip to the southern border as the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered one of her party’s toughest speeches on immigration and border policy in a generation. Even as she did, she tried to paint former President Donald J. Trump as a feckless chaos agent without the ability to deliver the hard-line results he has promised.Ms. Harris vowed to carry on President Biden’s crackdown on asylum and to impose order on the southern border, demonstrating how much the politics of immigration have shifted for Democrats. Just one presidential cycle ago, Ms. Harris and most other candidates in the party’s primary race had promised to decriminalize illegal border crossings.Ms. Harris’s remarks on Friday in the border town of Douglas, Ariz., laid out a vision that makes clear that her party — and the nation — continue to back away from the long-held American promise of protection to desperate people fleeing poverty and violence abroad no matter how they enter the United States.“The United States is a sovereign nation, and I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border and to enforce them,” Ms. Harris said. “I take that responsibility very seriously.”In political terms, her visit to Arizona — a critical battleground state where she narrowly trails Mr. Trump in polls — represented an attempt to toughen her image on immigration, an issue on which surveys show that many voters favor the former president.On Friday, she spoke at a community college on a stage adorned with signs that read “Border Security and Stability.” Before her speech, she visited U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s port of entry in Douglas, walking along a section of border wall that the Obama administration built in 2012. Border agents also briefed her on efforts to stop fentanyl smuggling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The strike came barely an hour after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered a fiery address to the U.N. General Assembly.The Israeli military bombed residential buildings south of Beirut on Friday that it said stood over the central headquarters of Hezbollah, barely an hour after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a combative address to the United Nations in which he vowed to defeat the group and other Iranian-backed militias.A huge blast shook the Dahiya, an area south of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway, and thick black smoke began rising above the skyline, in what appeared to have been the most intense bombing in the area since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last October.The strike targeted Hassan Nasrallah, the cleric who since 1992 has led Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese armed group and political party, according to Israeli and American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Nasrallah was killed, though there were growing concerns in Tehran that he was in the buildings when they were hit, three Iranian officials said.Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the bombing had caused the “complete decimation” of four to six residential buildings. At least six people were killed and more than 90 others injured, the Health Ministry said, although Mr. Abiad warned that the toll was likely to rise.“They are residential buildings. They were filled with people,” Mr. Abiad told The New York Times. “Whoever is in those buildings is now under the rubble.”An injured person being helped at the scene of the bombing.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

When Helene marched north through Georgia on Thursday and Friday, it caused flash flooding and power outages across the state, including an already soaked Atlanta. The city reported 21 water rescues in one highly affected area, and about 100,000 households overall were without electricity on Friday, with flash flood emergency alerts for the region in effect. Mayor Andre Dickens declared a state of emergency. In Buckhead and other northern Atlanta neighborhoods, a swollen Peachtree Creek, a 7.5-mile waterway that flows into the Chattahoochee River, helped fuel the flooding in some apartments and houses that forced some residents to flee, wading through the streets. Murky-brown water rushed through the Peachtree Park Apartments subdivision in a low-lying pocket of Buckhead, pooling on the street and seeping into residences. The two-story apartment complex sits in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Atlanta that once made national headlines for its effort to secede from the city. (It eventually did not.) Marcus Benson, who lives in the neighborhood, drifted off to sleep on Thursday after putting his infant son to bed. Mr. Benson said he was lulled by “the beautiful sounds of the water and rain” tapping against his windows and roof. But a harsh rap at his front door jolted him awake; his neighbor had come to warn him that Peachtree Creek was spilling over into their community — and fast.By around 10 p.m., the flooding had risen to about chest level, Mr. Benson said, and the rain wasn’t letting up. So Mr. Benson, 40, hoisted his 3-month-old son above his head, and he and his wife began to ford the deluge.He didn’t have time to consider the danger, even as the water crept up toward his chin. “You don’t think about it,” he explained in an interview on Friday. “You’re so cold; you’re fueled by adrenaline.” Temporarily relocated to a neighbor’s apartment, Mr. Benson said he was just happy they were all safe and dry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Ariel Lopez and his wife, Tiffany, thought Helene would be like Hurricane Idalia, which brought about four inches of storm surge into their home in Shore Acres, a flood-prone neighborhood of St. Petersburg.“We figured, we can handle that,” Ms. Lopez said. “But it turned out to be four feet.”The couple and their four children who live with them had prepared for the storm, putting up water barriers and buying two paddle boards that they could perhaps use to evacuate in a worst-case scenario.On Thursday night, as the storm first approached, it was eerily quiet. Then, suddenly, the water began to rise — two feet in an hour. They feared it would rise to the roof, and made a decision to swim out to safety.Outside, the water was chest-high, dark and moving fast. A few times, they both thought they would die. But they were reluctant to frame their flight as a story of heroics and survival. “I’m not going to say it was one of those things we tackled, like, ‘We got this,’” Mr. Lopez said. “The water was cold.”One of their sons worried that they would all get hypothermia.Finally, they made it to safety at a friend’s house on higher ground, one street over. Almost immediately, they turned around and went back to fetch their five pets, using the paddle boards to ferry them back.Even in the safety of their neighbor’s house, though, there were no celebrations.“We had a family disagreement at like 1 a.m.,” Ms. Lopez said, when their daughter asked why, after so many storms, they had chosen to stay.They didn’t have a good answer. After this experience, the couple said, they have decided to move inland, to higher ground. There, at least, if a hurricane comes, they only have wind, downed trees and power outages to contend with — not a terrifying surge of seawater.“I think this was the final straw,” Mr. Lopez said. More

The Israeli prime minister castigated Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself during his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly.When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, he seemed to be entering a lion’s den.Speaker after speaker at the annual gathering of world leaders had portrayed Israel as a global villain. Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who called Mr. Netanyahu a war criminal. His public rebuttal of a Biden administration plan to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raised tensions between the two governments.But Mr. Netanyahu bulldozed his way through his visit, castigating Israel’s critics and the United Nations itself, offering no diplomatic concessions, and ordering an airstrike in Beirut that may have killed Israel’s long hunted archnemesis, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.The strike landed even as Mr. Netanyahu delivered defiant remarks to a U.N. General Assembly hall — largely emptied after dozens of diplomats walked out in protest — in which he triumphantly declared of Israel’s multiple conflicts: “We are winning.”It is an assessment some U.S. officials say could reflect short-term truth while skirting past the risk of a larger conflict that could be devastating for all involved.Hours later, senior Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation, expressed remarkable confidence about their military and sabotage campaign against Hezbollah. Their blows against the group over the past two weeks and Mr. Nasrallah’s possible death could be a turning point, they said, in their ongoing struggle with Iran, which arms and funds Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy forces in what the officials portrayed as a plan to destroy Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

He uses showdowns with reporters to cast himself as a pugnacious, unscripted defender of Donald J. Trump.“We’re a little behind on time, so I won’t take as many questions as I normally do,” the senator from Ohio said, before casually inviting local reporters to ask him whatever they’d like. “If you’ve got a microphone, just shout a question and I’ll answer it.”Usually, when candidates on the campaign trail take questions from the press, they do so before or after their events, far from the crowd. Vance holds gaggles like that, but he has also developed an unusual routine that has swiftly become a trademark of his campaign events: He has taken to parrying reporters’ questions in front of his voters — turning journalists into set pieces in a performance where he casts himself as former President Donald Trump’s pugnacious, unscripted defender while his raucous supporters tilt the playing field in his favor.That night, as Nick Ochsner, a reporter with the local broadcaster WBTV, began to speak — “I want to ask you about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,” he said, referring to the state’s embattled Republican candidate for governor — the crowd began to boo, drowning out Ochsner, who implored Vance’s supporters to let him finish. With a theatrical cough, Vance turned to the people behind him, well aware that they would share his exasperation.“I knew I’d get this,” Vance said, throwing one hand up with the air of a parent allowing a troublesome child to have his say, instead of a candidate for vice president answering a reasonable question.Ochsner pressed on, pointing out that Robinson, a Trump-endorsed candidate who campaigned alongside both Trump and Vance in happier times, wasn’t by Vance’s side after CNN reported that Robinson made lewd and racist comments on a pornography website.“Is there something disqualifying about the comments uncovered by CNN that wasn’t disqualifying about any of the previous comments he made?” Ochsner asked, as the crowd jeered some more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

As Senator JD Vance of Ohio prepares for the vice-presidential debate next week, several past statements — including a private message in which he reportedly criticized former President Donald J. Trump near the end of his term and a video of him linking car-seat regulations to low birthrates — came back to haunt him on Friday.Long before he became Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Vance had a well-known history of criticizing Mr. Trump, who he once said he feared could be “America’s Hitler.” But Mr. Vance later became a supporter and ally of Mr. Trump’s, attributing his change of heart to his appreciation of Mr. Trump’s presidency.The senator’s explanation came under scrutiny on Friday after The Washington Post reported that he had said in a private message on social media in February 2020 that Mr. Trump had “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, said in a statement that it was “hard to conceive of a more scathing and definitive rejection” of Mr. Trump.The Trump campaign responded to the messages reported by The Post by noting that Mr. Vance had voted for Mr. Trump for re-election in 2020. The campaign did not dispute the accuracy or the existence of the messages, attributing them to an exchange with a consultant. (The Post did not identify the recipient.)William Martin, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, said in a statement that “it’s no secret” that Mr. Vance had been a “critic of President Trump in the past.” He said that Mr. Vance’s criticism was not directed at Mr. Trump, but at “establishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump’s populist economic agenda.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More