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    Kamala Harris Expected to Blast Trump at Party Dinner in Michigan

    In one of her first campaign appearances since former President Donald J. Trump was convicted of falsifying business records, Vice President Kamala Harris sharply criticized him on Saturday as a “cheater” who believes himself above the law and argued that he should be disqualified for the presidency.Ms. Harris, who headlined a state Democratic Party dinner in downtown Detroit, rebuffed Mr. Trump’s false claims that his trial, like the 2020 presidential election, was “rigged” and defended the judicial process behind his felony conviction.“Simply put, Donald Trump thinks he is above the law,” she said. “This should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be president of the United States.”The speech on Saturday evening capped a day of campaigning across Michigan, a crucial battleground state. Ms. Harris was accompanied by the actress Octavia Spencer, attending a fund-raiser in Ann Arbor and stopping at a Black-owned bookstore in Ypsilanti.In Detroit, the vice president opened her speech with remarks about the war in Gaza. As she tried to describe the Biden administration’s monthslong efforts to negotiate a cease-fire deal, a protester stood up and shouted at her and was quickly removed from the ballroom. Ms. Harris’s response was stern: “I value and respect your voice, but I’m speaking right now.”She then continued her speech. “We have been working every day to bring an end to this conflict in a way that ensures Israel is secure, brings home all hostages, ends ongoing suffering for Palestinian people and ensures that Palestinians can enjoy their right to self-determination, dignity and freedom,” she said. “As President Biden said last week, it is time for this war to end.”Turning to the election, Ms. Harris, the former top prosecutor of California, accused Mr. Trump of attacking “the foundations of our justice system.” She said that the former president was convicted by a jury of 12 Americans who were selected in part by his defense team, and that his lawyers had a chance to present their side of the evidence.“You know why he complains? Because the reality is cheaters don’t like getting caught,” she said.A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The event took place in a key swing state with heightened stakes. President Biden won Michigan’s primary in February, 81 percent to 13 percent, prevailing over a movement that urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” on the ballot in protest of his support for Israel. But more than 100,000 voters took that stance against him, among them progressives, young people and many in the state’s large and politically active Arab American community. Mr. Biden’s campaign has also been seeking to shore up its support among Black voters in cities like Detroit.Mr. Trump won Michigan by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, and lost it to Mr. Biden by more than 150,000 votes in his 2020 re-election bid. Mr. Trump focused on the voting in Michigan in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. More

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    Former Trump Official Meets With Arab and Muslim American Leaders

    As President Biden’s support among Arab and Muslim Americans withers over his backing of Israel in the war in Gaza, former President Donald J. Trump is making a long-shot push to take advantage.On Tuesday, Richard Grenell, a former high-ranking official in the Trump administration, met for more than two hours with a group of about 40 Arab and Muslim American leaders at an Italian restaurant outside Detroit. Mr. Grenell was joined by the former president’s son-in-law Michael Boulos, who is married to Tiffany Trump and is Lebanese American, though the Trump campaign said it had not organized the meeting.Many Arab and Muslim American voters have said they are so angry with Mr. Biden over his Israel policy that they will sit out the election, despite supporting him in large numbers in 2020. But Mr. Grenell told the group that it had the chance to exercise extraordinary political power by backing Mr. Trump instead, according to six people who attended the meeting.Mr. Grenell argued that if Muslim and Arab Americans publicly swung their support to the former president — and helped him win Michigan, a key battleground state — they would demonstrate to both Republicans and Democrats that they could not be ignored.“The door is open to start to explore,” said Yahya Basha, a Syrian American radiologist from Royal Oak, Mich., who helped organize the meeting. “Let’s go approach and see what Trump has to offer.”Dr. Basha and others present described the meeting as light on policy details and said they needed to hear more before committing to support Mr. Trump. Several others who attended were already Trump supporters, but some had cast their ballots for Mr. Biden in 2020.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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    After Oakland University Upset Kentucky, Students Bask in the NCAA Spotlight

    Supporters of the little-known college on Friday celebrated its moment of fame after a shocking first-round win.Before Thursday night, if you were not familiar with Oakland University, you were not alone. Not far from the campus, even locals at a Detroit bar, who were watching the team shock No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament, were asking if “that Oakland was in California” or the Michigan suburb of Rochester. (It’s the latter.)On Friday, after Oakland’s 80-76 upset victory as a No. 14 seed, students and graduates reveled in the university’s moment in the March Madness sun. They include John Hendley, class of 2005, who watched the game from Florida with his wife, Melissa, also a graduate.“If people didn’t know who the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies were before last night, they surely know now,” Mr. Hendley said.For all but perhaps close followers of the university, a brief introduction may be in order: It was created in 1957 through a donation to establish a satellite location for Michigan State University. At first, the campus was known as Michigan State University-Oakland, but in 1970, Oakland became an independent university.In 1997, Oakland University moved its athletic program from N.C.A.A. Division II to Division I. A year later, it changed its mascot from the Pioneers to Golden Grizzlies, according to the university’s website.The campus of Oakland University feels more like a sprawling corporate park, which makes sense. There are a lot of them nearby, like the world headquarters for Stellantis (formerly known as Chrysler) and other automotive suppliers.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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    Michigan Judge Orders Kristina Karamo to Stand Down in G.O.P. Leadership Fight

    A circuit court judge on Tuesday ordered Kristina Karamo, the deposed leader of the Michigan Republicans, to abandon her efforts to cling to power. But what that means for Saturday, when Ms. Karamo had pledged to hold a dueling presidential nominating convention, remains unclear.“I have to comply with the judge’s orders,” she told reporters after the court hearing, according to The Detroit Free Press.She also called the ruling “egregious,” and said “I’m not going to jail.” But she did not say when asked if she would abandon her plans for the convention on Saturday in Detroit.In a two-page order, Judge J. Joseph Rossi of the 17th Circuit Court in Grand Rapids, Mich., granted a preliminary injunction to the group of Republicans that voted in January to oust her. He barred Ms. Karamo from presenting herself as the party’s leader and conducting business in its name, including organizing meetings.The judge determined that a group of state G.O.P. leaders, disillusioned over transparency issues and money problems in the party, had followed the party’s bylaws when they voted on Jan. 6 to remove Ms. Karamo as chairwoman and later elected Pete Hoekstra, whom the Republican National Committee recognized as the rightful chairman earlier this month.Mr. Hoekstra, whom Ms. Karamo had denied access to the party’s bank and email accounts, said in an interview that he was “thrilled” by the ruling.“When Michigan opens for business tomorrow, we will be going to the banks,” said Mr. Hoekstra. He had a warning for Ms. Karamo’s holdouts: “If there’s individuals that are not cooperative, as we’ve done so far, we will seek compliance through the courts.”Ms. Karamo did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.The judge also forbade her from accessing the party’s bank accounts and postal boxes, and from engaging in communication on social media on behalf of the party. In recent days, she had used the party’s social media accounts to promote her “convention” in Detroit on Saturday.The gathering had been scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time, the same time that the convention organized by Mr. Hoekstra is scheduled to take place across the state in Grand Rapids.Both sides are loyal to former President Donald J. Trump, who weighed in on the leadership fight, backing Mr. Hoekstra, his former ambassador to the Netherlands and a former House member.Mr. Hoekstra said that he was not ruling out a situation where Ms. Karamo goes ahead with her competing gathering on Saturday.“They have shown themselves to be unpredictable,” he said. More

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    Michigan’s G.O.P. Nominating Process Appears Headed For Chaos

    As early in-person voting began on Saturday in Michigan, a fight for control of the G.O.P. in the crucial battleground state plunged Republicans there deeper into a political maelstrom, with rival factions potentially barreling toward hosting dueling nominating conventions.As if things weren’t already confusing.In a little over a week, the state will host a traditional primary on one day, and then a caucus-style convention a few days later. Now, it seems, there could actually be two conventions, in different parts of the state, each claiming legitimacy.Former President Donald J. Trump is headed to Michigan on Saturday night, with a campaign rally in Waterford Township, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit. While he has made it clear which faction he is supporting, and so has the national party, that has done little to dissuade the Trump-styled election denier attempting to hold on to power.The feud, already being waged in state court, appears to be only gaining intensity.Pete Hoekstra, whom the Republican National Committee recognized on Wednesday as the state party’s rightful chairman after his election last month, said he was moving forward with plans to hold a statewide nominating convention on March 2 in Western Michigan.But Kristina Karamo, defying the R.N.C.’s determination that she had properly been removed as party chairwoman earlier in January and Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Hoekstra, has also indicated that she will continue hosting a convention on the same day, for the same purpose, but in Detroit.At stake at the convention will be 39 of Michigan’s 55 Republican presidential delegates. The other 16 will be decided during the state’s Feb. 27 primary, which includes at least nine days of early voting. The hybrid process, new this year, was adopted by Republicans in order to comply with R.N.C. rules after Michigan’s Democratic governor moved up the primary date.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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    Wayne Kramer, Influential MC5 Guitarist, Dies at 75

    Mr. Kramer was one half of the twin-guitar attack that drove the Detroit band’s incendiary live performances, helping to set the stage for punk rock.Wayne Kramer, whose explosive guitar playing with the influential Detroit band the MC5 in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped to set the template for punk rock, died on Friday. He was 75.The death was confirmed in a post on his official Instagram account, which said the cause was pancreatic cancer. It did not say where he died.The MC5 (short for Motor City Five) formed in Lincoln Park, Mich., in 1965.Mr. Kramer and Fred (Sonic) Smith teamed to provide the twin-guitar attack that was at the heart of the band’s sound, and the centerpiece of its notoriously loud and frenetic live performances.In ranking Mr. Kramer and Mr. Smith, together, at No. 225 last year on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, Rolling Stone said the two “worked together like the pistons of a powerful engine” to “kick their band’s legendarily high-energy jams deep into space while simultaneously keeping one foot in the groove.”Mr. Kramer performing with the MC5 in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1969.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs Archive, via Getty ImagesThe band, which also featured the vocalist Rob Tyner, the bassist Michael Davis and the drummer Dennis Thompson, splintered in the early 1970s after just two studio albums.Its debut, “Kick Out the Jams,” a live set recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in 1968, is considered one of the most influential albums of its era, and inspired generations of musicians, including the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Queens of the Stone Age.Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said on Instagram on Friday that Mr. Kramer and the MC5 “basically invented punk rock music.”Mr. Kramer was arrested on drug charges in 1975 and was sentenced to four years in prison.In 2009, after he returned to performing and recording as a solo artist, he established Jail Guitar Doors U.S.A., a nonprofit that donates musical instruments to inmates and offers songwriting workshops in prisons, in partnership with his wife, Margaret, and the British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.The name comes from “Jail Guitar Doors,” a song by the Clash that opens with a line about Mr. Kramer’s struggles with substance abuse and the law: “Let me tell you about Wayne and his deals of cocaine.”“The guitar can be the key that unlocks the cell,” Mr. Kramer told High Times in 2015. “It can be the key that unlocks the prison gate, and it could be the key that unlocks the rest of your life to give you an alternative way to deal with things.”A full obituary will follow. More

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    Why Biden and Trump Are Courting Striking Autoworkers

    The president and his leading Republican rival are heading to Michigan to address members of the U.A.W., whose political clout is growing.The political stakes grow as the U.A.W. strike drags on.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBiden and Trump bid for blue collar votes In an extraordinary show of support, President Biden plans to join striking autoworkers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. It comes a day before Donald Trump is expected to speak to union members in Detroit instead of participating in the second Republican primary debate.The competing visits come as the two home in on battleground states ahead of next year’s election. But their appearances also reveal a political battle to become the voice of blue collar workers at a time when both candidates are struggling to win over mainstream voters and even some within their own parties.Bidenomics is a conundrum for the president. Biden says he is “the most pro-union president in American history” and has overseen one of the biggest industrial policy shifts in decades through the Inflation Reduction Act, offering billions of dollars in subsidies to create new manufacturing jobs in a push to greenify the economy.But the president is getting little credit from voters. Approval ratings for his economic management are at career lows. And the I.R.A. is somewhat troublesome for him: It includes incentives for automakers to make more electric vehicles, which labor leaders say will depend on non-union jobs and require fewer workers.The United Automobile Workers union has held back from endorsing Biden. The group was an early supporter of his economic road map but broke with other big unions. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president, wrote to members in May.Trump sees an opportunity to hammer Biden and the U.A.W. Trump, whose track record as a businessman and president often backed business over labor, will speak directly to workers, aiming to project himself as a protector of jobs. He has called the federal push for electric vehicles a “catastrophe for Michigan” that would cost American jobs, benefit China and raise prices for consumers.Fain has said Trump would be a “disaster” if re-elected. But the former president’s rhetoric and policies like rewriting trade agreements have appealed to some union members.Union votes could prove decisive in 2024. Trump won Michigan in 2016, but Biden took the state by more than 150,000 votes in 2020. In crucial swing states, even wooing a relatively small portion could be crucial. “In a strike situation, they’re all going out because they’re supporting their own economic interests,” said Alexander Colvin, the dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “That doesn’t mean they all think the same thing politically.”HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The F.C.C. is reportedly set to reinstate net neutrality rules. The regulator will revive Obama-era limits on broadband providers’ ability to unfairly interfere with internet traffic, after Democrats finally gained a majority among its commissioners, according to Bloomberg. Companies including AT&T and Comcast are likely to push back, arguing that such rules would be a big burden.All eyes are on striking actors as screenwriters prepare for a vote on their labor deal. Leaders of the Writers Guild of America are to vote on their tentative pact with studios on Tuesday, with members set to weigh in soon. But there are few signs that an agreement with the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union is close, meaning that Hollywood will remain largely shut for now. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA members voted to authorize a strike against video game companies.Fossil fuel use needs to fall more quickly to contain global warming, the International Energy Agency says. Adoption of cleaner energy technologies like electric vehicles and solar is growing, but the use of fossil fuels must shrink faster to avoid a climate catastrophe, the agency said in its latest report. Some industry watchers said that the I.E.A. is still too optimistic about the decline in demand for oil and coal.Senator Bob Menendez says he won’t resign. The New Jersey Democrat, accused of taking bribes, said he’d fight the corruption charges leveled by federal prosecutors. He didn’t address questions about bars of gold found on his property, but asserted that the $550,000 in cash found stuffed around his home was merely part of an emergency fund.Growth concerns hit the bond market Alarm bells are ringing for markets on both sides of the Atlantic. Investors have again sold off their sovereign bond holdings, especially Treasury notes and German bunds, pushing yields to highs last seen in 2007 just before the housing crisis and in 2011 during the European debt crisis.Growth concerns appear to be the culprit. Global trade fell in July at its fastest pace since the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic snarled global markets. According to the newest World Trade Monitor report, the decline is the latest signal that global demand for goods is deteriorating, as inflation and high interest rates remain at multi-decade highs.Jamie Dimon added fuel to the pessimistic outlook. The C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase warned of a kind of worst-case scenario in which the Fed is forced to keep raising its benchmark lending rate to combat inflation, further blunting growth. “I am not sure if the world is prepared for 7 percent,” he said in an interview with The Times of India, referring to the federal funds rate.Fed policymakers themselves don’t see such a scenario playing out. They released a forecast last week suggesting that one more interest rate increase was in the cards this year, and possibly two cuts next year, which would keep interest rates at around 5 percent by the end of 2024. But since the Fed meeting, the futures market has been pricing in higher policy rates for longer, and that’s adding volatility to the bond market.A potential U.S. government shutdown is also unnerving investors. The prospect that lawmakers will fail to reach a deal by Saturday’s deadline to fund the government is weighing on stocks, with U.S. futures in the red this morning. On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, said a shutdown could lead it to downgrade the country’s credit rating — a warning that the White House seized upon in hopes of compelling the warring Republican factions to break their impasse on spending cuts.The good news: The uncertainty has put a lid on the oil rally, with Brent crude falling below $91 a barrel this morning, a two-week low.1.5 trillion — Gallons of water used in fracking by oil and gas companies in the U.S. since 2011. That’s equivalent to the amount of tap water used by the state of Texas each year, according to a Times investigation. The boom in fracking to meet growing energy demand poses a threat to the country’s aquifers, researchers say.ChatGPT, can you take on Alexa? Hours after Amazon announced a big bet on an artificial intelligence start-up — and days after it revealed plans to make its Alexa digital assistant smarter — one of the most prominent names in the A.I. race unveiled its plan to surpass those advancements.OpenAI said its ChatGPT chatbot can now listen to users’ spoken requests and respond vocally, among other new capabilities. It’s a reminder of how fast the race to advance A.I. is moving — and how high the stakes are.Voice is a more natural way of interacting with ChatGPT, according to OpenAI executives, who also said that their chatbot will feature voices that sound more natural than those of existing digital assistants. (The Times says that the voices sound better, but still come across as a little robotic.)OpenAI is adding other features to ChatGPT, including image recognition. One example that OpenAI demonstrated: Share an image of a bicycle with the chatbot and it will instruct the user how to lower the seat.Amazon seems aware of the risks of being outpaced by rivals. Unlike Alexa or Siri, which require users to ask specific commands, the latest version of ChatGPT is capable of more conversational interactions, including follow-up questions and clarifications. Wider adoption of that chatbot could risk Amazon losing its longtime dominance in the market for personal assistants.The Alexa announcement last week, in which Amazon said that it was incorporating the large language model technology into its assistant, is meant to address that eventuality — though ChatGPT’s new capability will be available sooner.With new capabilities come worries about new dangers. OpenAI executives said that they won’t let ChatGPT identify faces, though the software will be able to talk at length about other pictures it’s asked to analyze. There’s also the risk that greater use of ChatGPT will lead to potential mishaps involving the well-known A.I. weakness of inventing facts, known as hallucinating.And Amazon, perhaps leery of the well-publicized hitches that Microsoft and Google suffered in rolling out advanced A.I. features to the wider public, is making the new Alexa features available initially only to some users in the U.S.In other A.I. news: Meet the human workers training A.I. systems. Spotify says it won’t ban A.I.-produced music, but it will work with OpenAI to clone podcasters’ voices to produce versions of their shows in other languages. And New York Magazine asks whether Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O., is the Robert Oppenheimer of the digital age.THE SPEED READ DealsAmerican Airlines appealed a federal court ruling that blocked its planned alliance with JetBlue. (Reuters)Vista Equity Partners now oversees more than $100 billion in assets, reflecting investor interest in the big tech deals that are the firm’s stock in trade. (Axios)What’s at stake as Disney and Comcast prepare to negotiate over the value of the streaming service Hulu, which they jointly own. (FT)PolicyTesla is reportedly a focus of European regulators’ inquiry into state subsidies for electric vehicles made in China. (Bloomberg)The Commerce Department has hired veterans of Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and KKR to help run its semiconductor funding program. (Bloomberg)Best of the restSan Francisco residents say that their city is being unfairly pilloried as a decaying, crime-ridden metropolis. (NYT)Microsoft is looking to power its A.I. and cloud data centers with small nuclear reactors. (CNBC)How companies are pulling off four-day workweeks. (WSJ)“The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech” (404 Media)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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    Trump Planning Detroit Visit During Second GOP Debate

    Looking past the Republican primary, Donald Trump and his campaign are already gearing up for a possible rematch with President Biden.Former President Donald J. Trump is planning to travel to Detroit on the day of the next Republican primary debate, according to two Trump advisers with knowledge of the plans, injecting himself into the labor dispute between striking autoworkers and the nation’s leading auto manufacturers.The trip, which will include a prime-time speech before current and former union members, is the second consecutive primary debate that Mr. Trump is skipping to instead hold his own counterprogramming. He sat for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that posted online during the first G.O.P. presidential debate in August.The decision to go to Michigan just days after the United Auto Workers went on strike shows the extent to which Mr. Trump wants to be seen as looking past his primary rivals — and the reality that both he and his political apparatus are already focused on the possibility of a rematch with President Biden.So instead of attending the next G.O.P. debate — on Sept. 27 in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum — Mr. Trump intends to speak to over 500 workers, with his campaign planning to fill the room with plumbers, pipe-fitters, electricians, as well as autoworkers, according to one of the Trump advisers familiar with the planning. Mr. Trump has not directly addressed the wage demands of striking workers and has attacked the union leadership, but he has tried to more broadly cast himself on the side of autoworkers.The campaign is also considering the possibility of having Mr. Trump make an appearance at the picket line, although the adviser said such a visit, which could involve difficult logistics given the former president’s security protections, is unlikely.The former president has long prided himself on his appeal to rank-and-file union workers — even as most union leaders have remained hostile to him, and as Mr. Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history. In the 2016 campaign, an adviser to Mr. Trump, Paul Manafort, sought to establish a back channel with organized labor in Michigan and Wisconsin in the hopes the A.F.L.-C.I.O. would scale back its efforts to help the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. It did not appear to go anywhere, but underscored the areas that Mr. Trump considered vital in the general election.Mr. Trump won Michigan in the 2016 election, one of the states in the so-called blue wall that crumbled for Democrats that year. But Mr. Biden carried Michigan by more than 150,000 votes in 2020, and it is seen as a critical state for Democrats in 2024.The Trump campaign has produced a radio ad that will begin running on Tuesday in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, trying to cast Mr. Trump as aligned with autoworkers. The same Trump adviser said the ad targeted union workers and men, and will air on sports and rock-themed stations.“All they’ve ever wanted is to compete fairly worldwide and get their fair share of the American dream,” the narrator says in the ad. “Donald Trump calls them great Americans and has always had their backs.”Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized the transition to electric vehicles, and in a post on his social media site Truth Social over the weekend, he called it an “Electric Car SCAM.” The radio ad also uses the Biden administration’s support for the transition to electric vehicles to attack Mr. Biden.The ad does not specifically mention the strike, which began last week against all big three Detroit automakers, and in which the union is seeking a 40 percent wage increase over four years.Ammar Moussa, a press officer for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement, “Donald Trump is going to Michigan next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn.”Mr. Biden has sided with the striking workers, sending two top aides to Detroit and saying at the White House hours after the strike began that “workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”The United Auto Workers pointedly decided not to endorse Mr. Biden this spring ahead of the current labor clash, with the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, expressing concern about the labor elements of the transition to electric vehicles. At the same time, in a memo, Mr. Fain said Mr. Trump would be a “disaster” if he returned to the White House.In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast over the weekend, Mr. Trump was critical of Mr. Fain, saying workers had been “sold down the river by their leadership.”“I don’t know the gentleman, but I know his name very well, and I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union,” Mr. Trump said. “Because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China.”In a statement after The New York Times reported on Mr. Trump’s Detroit plans, Mr. Fain said that “every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”“We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class,” he said. More