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      Democrats Use Gas Station Kiosks to Say Trump Will Make Life More Expensive

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      Americans bagging up their purchases at hundreds of gas stations and convenience stores across the Midwest will hear a message from Democrats that former President Donald J. Trump’s policies will increase the price of fuel and add thousands of dollars to the cost of raising a family.The Democratic National Committee is paying for short, 15-second video advertisements to play on digital kiosks at checkout counters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The six-figure ad blitz, which starts on Monday, is meant to emphasize an argument that Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently made on the campaign trail: Mr. Trump is no ally of middle-class and working people, and his economic policies will badly hurt their wallets.“Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would spike gas prices by 75 cents a gallon, on top of the $7,600 more families could be paying each year,” the ad’s narrator says. “Billionaires like Trump can afford it.”With Election Day now just eight days away, political advertisements have become inescapable for voters in battleground states, with text messages pinging on phones and attacks reverberating across television, the radio and social media. The D.N.C. is hoping that catching voters as they pay for gas and snacks is a new way to break through. The ads will run at roughly 1,600 gas stations and convenience stores, it said, with many located in communities with a large number of union households or on or near college campuses. Union members and young people are key Democratic constituencies.The ad’s message is based on studies of the potential effect of Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods, including an analysis from the website GasBuddy and research by the Budget Lab at Yale, which found that households could see their costs rise between $1,900 and $7,600 per year. Inflation was a persistent problem for much of the Biden administration but has slowed significantly. Voters consistently rate the economy as their top concern of the 2024 election.The D.N.C. chose to air the ads in two of the top presidential battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Nebraska, where Ms. Harris is leading in the race to pick up an electoral vote that is up for grabs in the state’s Second Congressional district. (Nebraska does not have a winner-take-all system like most states.) It is also investing in Minnesota, which is a light blue state, and Iowa, where there are competitive House races.“Donald Trump might’ve been handed a fortune on a silver platter by his daddy, but most of us have to work for a living,” Jaime Harrison, the chair of the D.N.C., said in a statement. “Vice President Harris is the only candidate in this race who understands the struggles working families face and will fight every day to make life more affordable.” More

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      Tim Walz and AOC Play Madden and Crazy Taxi and Talk Politics

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      Wearing a camouflage Vikings hat, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, on Sunday to play Madden NFL 25 and talk about the election.“Are we going to play some ball? Are we ready to do it?” Mr. Walz said to the audience watching via the streaming platform Twitch, cautioning that he was prepared to lose. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, played as the Buffalo Bills, while Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, went with the Vikings.He and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez talked about the politics of Congress, where Mr. Walz served before he became governor and the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee. They compared the House to “public school,” with the Senate being more like “private school.” The House, they agreed, is where policy for the nation is shaped, and Mr. Walz said he would have been proud to have voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a signature achievement of President Biden’s administration.As the talk turned to the Senate and its procedures, Mr. Walz said knowingly to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: “I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster.”“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an early proponent of removing the filibuster several years ago. Vice President Kamala Harris said in September that she would support ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. After the stream ended, a Walz campaign official said that Mr. Walz “shares the vice president’s position.”In their Bills-Vikings Madden matchup on Sunday, which Mr. Walz and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez played for just a scoreless first half, they discussed housing policy and she asked him about voters who might be frustrated by the huge sums of money in politics or by the Biden administration’s positions about the war in Gaza. Twitch showed that about 12,500 people were watching on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s channel.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

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      Mayor Adams Bucks Harris and Democrats on Calling Trump a ‘Fascist’

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      Mayor Eric Adams of New York said on Saturday that former President Donald J. Trump should not be called a “fascist” or compared to Adolf Hitler, a rejection of Democrats’ closing focus in the final days of the 2024 campaign on the eve of Mr. Trump’s rally in Midtown Manhattan.The embattled mayor, who has been indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, made the comments at a time when Mr. Trump has been trying to make inroads with Black voters, and especially Black men, in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.Ms. Harris has said in recent days that she agrees with Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly, that the former president meets the definition of a fascist. Mr. Kelly also described Mr. Trump as offering praise for Hitler.Mr. Adams, mayor of America’s largest city and one of the country’s most prominent Black elected officials, was briefing reporters about security plans ahead of Mr. Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden when he was asked if he believed the former president was a fascist.“I have had those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city, using terms like Hitler and fascist,” said Mr. Adams, a former police officer. “My answer is no. I know what Hitler has done and I know what a fascist regime looks like.”He added, “I think we could all dial down the temperature.”Mr. Adams said that he had heard people say “that the former president should not be able to have a rally in Madison Square Garden.”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

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      Late Lawsuit Could Shape Political Ad Wars in Final Days of Campaign

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      House Democrats are suing to stop Republicans from using a legal loophole to bolster their Senate candidates.A legal battle is playing out in D.C. federal court that could determine how much money the Democratic and Republican Parties can pump into advertising in pivotal congressional races in the final week of the 2024 campaign and beyond.At issue is what Democrats say is a potentially illegal political advertising strategy that Republicans have used in recent weeks to try to overcome a significant fund-raising deficit in states with critical Senate races, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania.With less than two weeks until Election Day, House Democrats’ campaign arm has sued the Federal Election Commission for failing to stop the Republicans and are seeking a ruling to either bar the practice or clear the way to use it themselves.A hearing on the matter is set for Monday, and both parties expect a ruling as soon as Tuesday, either blocking or allowing the practice in the critical last stretch before Election Day.Here’s what to know:Democrats have been dominating Republicans in fund-raising in key Senate races.Continuing a recent trend, Democratic Senate candidates have been trouncing their Republican rivals in fund-raising battles in pivotal races across the country.In Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown has raised about four times as much money as his Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno. In Montana, Senator Jon Tester has raised about three times as much as Tim Sheehy. And in Arizona, Representative Ruben Gallego has raised more than twice as much as Kari Lake.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

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      A Wisconsin Mayor, a Former Republican, Endorses Harris

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      Shawn Reilly, the mayor of Waukesha, Wis., said he had never thrown his support behind a Democrat before.Mayor Shawn Reilly of Waukesha, Wis., an independent who was a Republican for most of his life, said in an interview on Wednesday that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.The endorsement is a key one for Ms. Harris, whose campaign has lavished attention on the suburbs of Milwaukee, which lean Republican but are so densely populated that they deliver a pivotal number of Democratic votes in the swing state.Mr. Reilly, 63, said that he had never endorsed a Democrat before. But this election is different, he said, describing his own evolution from loyal Republican for decades to an independent in 2021.“It’s very easy to not even stick your nose in this — that’s the easiest way to go about it,” he said. “But the reason I’m doing it is because I think we’re at a crossroads. I’m very afraid of the direction our country will head in if Donald Trump becomes president. I think we’ll be heading down a road of authoritarianism and fascism.”The Harris campaign has poured considerable energy and resources into Waukesha County, which includes the city of Waukesha, hoping that Ms. Harris will be able to cut into Mr. Trump’s margins there. In 2020, Mr. Trump won the county with just under 60 percent of the vote. More than 400,000 people live in Waukesha County, the third-most populous county in Wisconsin, behind Milwaukee and Dane.Since 2014, Mr. Reilly has been the mayor, a nonpartisan role. When asked during his initial mayoral campaign if he was a Republican, he always answered yes, he said.When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016, Mr. Reilly did not vote for him, but did not vote for Hillary Clinton, the Democrat, either. After the attack on the Capitol in 2021, Mr. Reilly disavowed the Republican Party, saying he no longer considered himself a member.He attended a rally in Waukesha County on Monday, where Ms. Harris appeared with former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, in an appeal to conservative women in the Milwaukee suburbs.On Tuesday, early voting began in Wisconsin. From Mr. Reilly’s perch in City Hall in Waukesha, he could see a line of voters snaking down the sidewalk. About 800 people were voting in person each day, he said.Mr. Reilly said he was concerned about whether Ms. Harris would win Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state that President Biden won by less than 21,000 votes in 2020.He probably should have endorsed Mr. Harris sooner, he said.“But it’s one of those things where I’d much rather do it now, even if it doesn’t have as much of an effect,” he said. More

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      Early In-Person Voting Begins in Nevada, With Obama Set to Rally Democrats

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      Tony Chavez and his wife, Elizabeth, came to Cardenas Market in East Las Vegas on Saturday to pick up a few essentials — bread, three dozen eggs and ingredients for tamales.Mr. Chavez did not expect to check something else off his list. But when he saw poll workers and signs saying that he could vote, well, why not?“I already made my decision, and it’s better to be early to beat that line as well,” said Mr. Chavez, 38, with a prominent “I Voted” sticker on his all-black Las Vegas Raiders letterman jacket.“I saw the signs and was like, ‘Is that the voting?’” he added. “‘Let me just do it right now.’”Mr. Chavez, who works as a cook, was part of a steady stream of people who took advantage of that particular polling location in Las Vegas on what was the first day of in-person early voting in Nevada, which runs through Nov. 1.He declined to say whom he was supporting for president, but he said that rights for migrants and for women were important to him and that this choice “would affect my kids’ future.”Another voter, James Still, also marveled at the convenience. His wife, Jennifer, wore a shirt supporting Ms. Harris, and Mr. Still said they had both voted for her because “politicians shouldn’t tell women what to do with their bodies.” For them, as for Mr. Chavez, voting was an added benefit of coming to the store.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

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      Harris Sticks Up for Detroit Against Trump

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      Vice President Kamala Harris let her T-shirt do the talking in Detroit on Saturday.The black shirt — which she wore under a gray blazer as she addressed several hundred campaign volunteers in a gym at Western International High School — bore the words “Detroit vs. Everybody.” The attire was a clear response to former President Donald J. Trump, who last week disparaged what is one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities, portraying Detroit as a decaying harbinger of America’s future under Ms. Harris.In brief remarks to the crowd on the inaugural day of early voting in the city, Ms. Harris urged her supporters to reject Mr. Trump’s division and insults.“We stand for the idea that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s on who you lift up,” she said, saying that her campaign was seeking the kind of “grit” and “excellence” possessed by “the people of Detroit.”“He spends full time talking about himself and mythical characters, not talking about the working people, not talking about you, not talking about lifting you up,” Ms. Harris added.Mr. Trump had attacked Detroit while giving remarks at an economic forum in the city on Oct. 10, earning widespread scorn from Democrats and offering fodder for a Harris campaign ad. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he had warned of Ms. Harris.Black voters, especially Black men, are supporting Ms. Harris with less enthusiasm than they had for the Democratic nominee in previous elections, and Mr. Trump has tried to take advantage. The Harris campaign has lately ramped up outreach efforts to Black voters, including by releasing an economic policy agenda designed for Black men. Turnout in Detroit could help decide the race in Michigan, one of the nation’s top battleground states, where polls show an even contest.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

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      Democrats’ Report Calls Trump Hotel Business Unethical and Unconstitutional

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      Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the former president overcharged the Secret Service and accepted money from officials and people who were seeking pardons and appointments.House Democrats on Friday accused former President Donald J. Trump of accepting “hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments” through the Trump International Hotel in 2017 and 2018, moving weeks before the election to remind voters of the ethical issues raised by his refusal to divest from his businesses while in office.The 58-page report from Democrats on the Oversight Committee includes their final findings in a yearslong investigation digging into the Trump Organization’s management of the hotel. It accuses Mr. Trump of ripping off the Secret Service by charging the agency exorbitant rates and of inappropriately accepting payments from clients who worked for state governments or were seeking appointments and pardons from him.“Mr. Trump has made clear that he will not only refuse to divest from his businesses in a possible future presidency, but he will seek to multiply opportunities to commodify the Oval Office for his personal enrichment by turning thousands of civil service jobs into patronage positions — all with the attendant payoff possibilities from supplicant job-seekers and the prospective blessing of his handpicked Supreme Court justices,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee.House Republicans dismissed the report as old news and accused Democrats of hypocrisy for investigating Mr. Trump but not members of President Biden’s family, including his son Hunter.“Unlike the Bidens, the Trumps actually have businesses and made money from the services they provided,” said Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. “Today’s report is more recycled garbage from the Democrats’ fruitless and close to a decadelong investigation of President Trump.”The committee has already documented how officials from other countries spent lavishly at Mr. Trump’s hotel in Washington while he was president and how the Secret Service was charged hefty prices for rooms.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