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    As Trump Served Up McDonald’s Fries, Vitriol Boiled Outside

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    In Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, some in weird costumes, gathered along a roadside and screamed at one another.On Sunday afternoon, former President Donald J. Trump dropped by a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pa. He had cooked up a stunt to troll Vice President Kamala Harris, who has talked about having worked at McDonald’s one summer during college. Inside the restaurant, Mr. Trump wore an apron and dropped French fries into a vat of gurgling oil. Across the street, something much unhealthier was bubbling up.A few hundred Trump supporters were lining the shoulder of the road and holding a tailgate party in the parking lot of a strip mall right where Philadelphia ends and the suburbs begin. Another group of locals — maybe 50 people — had turned up to protest Mr. Trump’s visit. People on the two sides spent the sunny autumn afternoon screaming into one another’s faces while filming the skirmishes on their iPhones.The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.The crowd near the McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pa., on Sunday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThis is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.Both campaigns are spending wildly here. You can barely turn on the television or scroll on your phone without seeing a nasty advertisement. Many ordinarily nice people seem to have gone a little mad. They’re wearing political merchandise to dive bars and posting videos of themselves fighting over yard signs. Every day, Nov. 5 creeps a little closer, and the partisan tinnitus rings a little louder.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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      Donald Trump’s McDonald’s Stint Included French Cuffs and French Fries

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      No hairnet in sight as the former president doled out meals at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.On Sunday afternoon, former President Donald J. Trump traded his blue sport coat for a yellow-trimmed apron.At a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, he manned the fry line and dispensed orders to supporters in the drive-through lane. His ketchup red tie stayed put. He did not wear a hairnet.“I could do this all day,” said Mr. Trump. “I love McDonald’s, I love jobs, I love to see good jobs.”He may love jobs, but he doesn’t have much experience with jobs like this. Nor was he really dressed the part.Beyond the apron, Mr. Trump was apparently insulated from the rest of the uniform modeled by his brief burger-flipping compatriots. He didn’t change into the pedestrian dark shirt and slip-resistant shoes like the rest of the McDonald’s staff. Mr. Trump didn’t plop on a McDonald’s branded visor.He was certainly the only man at the franchise on Sunday packing orders in a shirt with French cuffs.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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      Kamala Harris and McDonald’s: A College Job, and a Trump Attack

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      Birtherism, meet burgerism.Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.Former President Donald J. Trump is an avid eater of fast food. In 2019, as he hosted college football players at the White House, he fed them McDonald’s. Sarah Silbiger/The New York TimesMr. Trump, an avid eater of fast food who even catered a White House celebration from McDonald’s in 2019, is scheduled to visit a McDonald’s location in the Philadelphia area on Sunday. “I’m going to McDonald’s to work the French fries,” he said on Saturday in Latrobe, Pa. Asked why, an aide, Jason Miller, told reporters, “So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”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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      260 McNuggets? McDonald’s Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errors

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      Ordering mistakes frustrated customers during nearly three years of tests. But competitors like White Castle and Wendy’s say their A.I. ordering systems have been highly accurate.In the nearly three years since McDonald’s announced that it was partnering with IBM to develop a drive-through order taker powered by artificial intelligence, videos popped up on social media showing confused and frustrated customers trying to correct comically inaccurate meals.“Stop! Stop! Stop!” two friends screamed with humorous anguish on a TikTok video as an A.I. drive-through misunderstands their order, tallying up 240, 250 and then 260 Chicken McNuggets.In other videos, the A.I. rings up a customer for nine iced teas instead of one, fails to explain why a customer could not order Mountain Dew and thought another wanted to add bacon to his ice cream.So when McDonald’s announced in a June 13 internal email, obtained by the trade publication Restaurant Business, that it was ending its partnership with IBM and shutting down its A.I. tests at more than 100 U.S. drive-throughs, customers who had interacted with the service were probably not shocked.The decision to abandon the IBM deal comes as many other businesses, including its competitors, are investing in A.I. But it exemplifies some of the challenges companies are facing as they jockey to unlock the revolutionary technology’s potential.Other fast-food companies have had success with A.I. ordering. Last year, Wendy’s formed a partnership with Google Cloud to build out its A.I. drive-through system. Carl’s Jr. and Taco John’s have hired Presto, a voice A.I. firm for restaurants. Panda Express has approximately 30 automated order takers at its windows through a partnership with the voice A.I. firm SoundHound AI.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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      Companies Counter Pushback on Price Increases With Promotions

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      “The consumer was a fat pig — now there’s nothing left, and they need to feed the pig again,” one banker told DealBook.The president of McDonald’s USA, Joe Erlinger, pushed back on “inaccurate” reports this week that said the chain had more than doubled its prices on some items over the last decade. But his retort wasn’t exactly reassuring: The average price of a Big Mac is up 21 percent from 2019.Erlinger’s rebuttal underlines the heat that some companies are facing as the news media, politicians and consumers focus on steadily rising prices. Whether persistent price increases reflect price gouging, or simply companies’ own rising costs, is a matter of fierce debate. Either way, one thing is clear: Consumers are becoming fed up.McDonald’s first-quarter earnings fell short of analyst expectations on sales, as “consumers continue to be even more discriminating” with their dollars, the chain’s chief executive, Chris Kempczinski said. Starbucks, Target and Yum Brands, the parent company of Pizza Hut and KFC, also reported earnings misses, each acknowledging increasingly cautious customers among other factors like the war in the Middle East.Consumer spending remained surprisingly resilient in the face of stubbornly fast inflation, but now savings from the coronavirus pandemic have dried up, economic growth has slowed and many companies are working to counteract the belief that their prices have gotten out of control.As one banker told DealBook: “The consumer was a fat pig — now there’s nothing left, and they need to feed the pig again.”The message: Consumers have hit their limit. During periods of rapid inflation, companies tend to push to see how far they can raise prices. “We’re taking smaller, more frequent price increases because it gives us the flexibility to be able to see how consumers are reacting and then adjust if or when necessary,” Kevin Ozan, the chief financial officer of McDonald’s, told analysts in 2022.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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      Morgan Spurlock, Documentarian Known for ‘Super Size Me,’ Dies at 53

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      His 2004 film, which was nominated for an Oscar, followed Mr. Spurlock as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month.Morgan Spurlock, a documentary filmmaker best known for the Oscar-nominated 2004 film “Super Size Me,” which followed him as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days, died on Thursday. He was 53.His brother Craig Spurlock confirmed the death in a statement to The Associated Press, and said the cause was complications from cancer. The statement did not say where he died.In “Super Size Me,” Mr. Spurlock tested the broadly held idea that fast food is unhealthy by gorging on McDonald’s Super Size meals, hamburgers, fries, soda and more for weeks, as he steadily gained weight. The film, which grossed more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget, contributed to a sweeping backlash against the fast food industry.A full obituary will follow. More

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      McDonald’s to Buy Back 225 Franchised Outlets in Israel After Boycotts

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      McDonalds has said that it will buy back all of its 225 franchised restaurants in Israel, weeks after the company warned that boycotts and protests over the Israel-Hamas war had hurt its business in the Middle East.The deal, announced on Thursday, would bring all of the stores under the direct management of McDonald’s Corporation. The company did not disclose terms of the deal but said that the chain’s 5,000 workers in Israel would keep their jobs.The move highlighted the deepening political polarization that multinational corporations face during the war, including claims and counterclaims by activists and companies about what both sides say are disinformation campaigns.McDonald’s operations in the region slumped when the franchises in Israel, run by Alonyal Limited, began donating thousands of meals to Israeli soldiers after the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7.The donations, described at the time by Alonyal as a show of solidarity to support the military and hospital workers, set off boycotts in neighboring countries, and prompted McDonald’s franchises in Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to issue statements distancing themselves from the Israeli franchise.In Kuwait and Qatar, McDonald’s franchise owners also pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for relief efforts in Gaza. A hashtag, #BoycottMcDonalds, rallied consumers in the Middle East and other majority-Muslim countries to stay away from the fast-food giant’s chains, accusing it of “supporting genocide” in Gaza.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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      Newsom Faces Questions Over Panera Amid Fast Food Wage Law Exemption

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      The California governor last year said a fast-food minimum wage law didn’t apply to Panera Bread because of the “nature of negotiation.” He changed course after a scathing report suggested otherwise.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has increasingly been a national presence, flying to Washington to meet with President Biden, appearing on Sunday news shows and targeting conservative states with ads for reproductive rights.This week, however, a more local concern abruptly drew his attention to Sacramento: allegations that the Democratic governor favored a campaign donor who owns two dozen Panera Bread franchises by pushing for a carve-out in a new minimum wage law.The controversy, triggered by a report in Bloomberg, has unleashed a flurry of charges and countercharges. The State Legislature’s Republican leaders have written to the California attorney general, demanding an investigation. Editorial boards have weighed in. (“Californians knead answers,” the Los Angeles Times opinion page declared.) A spokesman for the governor’s office dismissed the accusation of favoritism as “absurd.” Political analysts compared the furor to another restaurant-related pickle involving Mr. Newsom.“It’s hard not to think of the French Laundry,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, alluding to the 2020 haute cuisine dinner the governor had during pandemic lockdown that helped fuel an unsuccessful but still troublesome recall effort against Mr. Newsom.“It’s déjà vu all over again, although this time Newsom seems to be trying to address it before a small problem turns into a big problem,” Mr. Schnur said. “Still, his office still hasn’t provided a credible explanation for why the bill was drafted the way it was.”At issue is legislation signed by the governor in September that will increase the minimum wage for more than a half-million fast-food workers to $20 per hour starting next month. 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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      Restaurants and Unions Agree to Raise Pay to $20 an Hour in California

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      The deal will avoid a ballot fight over a law passed last year that could have resulted in higher pay and other changes opposed by restaurant companies and franchisees.Labor groups and fast-food companies in California reached an agreement over the weekend that will pave the way for workers in the industry to receive a minimum wage of $20 per hour.The deal, which will result in changes to Assembly Bill 1228, was announced by the Service Employees International Union on Monday, and will mean an increase to the minimum wage for California fast-food workers by April. In exchange, labor groups and their allies in the Legislature will agree to the fast-food industry’s demands to remove a provision from the bill that could have made restaurant companies liable for workplace violations committed by their franchisees.The agreement is contingent on the withdrawal of a referendum proposal by restaurant companies in California that would have challenged the proposed legislation in the 2024 ballot. Businesses, labor groups and others have often used ballot measures in California to block legislation or advance their causes. The proposed legislation would also create a council for overseeing future increases to the minimum wage and enact workplace regulations.“With these important changes, A.B. 1228 clears the path for us to start making much-needed improvements to the policies that affect our workplaces and the lives of more than half a million fast-food workers in our state,” Ingrid Vilorio, a fast-food worker and union member, said in a statement released by the S.E.I.U.Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association, said the deal also benefited restaurants. “This agreement protects local restaurant owners from significant threats that would have made it difficult to continue to operate in California,” he said. “It provides a more predictable and stable future for restaurants, workers and consumers.”Last year, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 257, which would have created a council with the authority to raise the minimum wage to $22 per hour for restaurant workers. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it on Labor Day last year.But the bill met fierce opposition from business interests and restaurant companies, and a petition received enough signatures to put a measure on the November 2024 ballot to stop the law from going into effect.Other business groups in California have successfully used that tactic to change or reverse legislation they opposed.In 2020, ride-sharing and delivery companies like Uber and Instacart campaigned for and received an exemption from a key provision of Assembly Bill 5, which was signed by Mr. Newsom and would have made it much harder for the companies to classify drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.Those companies collected enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot as Proposition 22, which passed in November 2020. More than $200 million was spent on that measure, making it the costliest ballot initiative in the state at the time.And in February, oil companies received enough signatures for a measure that aims to block legislation banning new drilling projects near homes and schools. That initiative will be on the 2024 ballot.In response to calls from advocacy groups who have said the referendum process unfairly benefits wealthy special-interest groups, and in an effort to demystify a system that many Californians say is confusing, Mr. Newsom signed legislation on Sept. 8 that aims to simplify the referendum process. More