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      Activist with far right ties fronts Marco Rubio-linked anti-immigration effort

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      The rightwing activist Nate Hochman, who was fired last year by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for employing neo-Nazi imagery in a campaign video, is now the face of a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank’s efforts to spread anti-immigrant panic from Ohio to Pennsylvania.Videos featuring Hochman recorded in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, have been boosted on X by a range of rightwing figures including the platform’s owner, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.In recent days Hochman, 26, has recorded several videos on location in Charleroi for America 2100, a rightwing thinktank where he is an adviser, according to his biographies on X and at websites where he has published articles. Hochman is also a staff writer and podcaster at the rightwing website the American Spectator, where his recent output has mostly consisted of anti-immigrant messaging.Like Springfield in Ohio, Charleroi has attracted a community of Haitian migrants.The borough manager, Jim Manning, told CBS News on Wednesday that immigrants including Haitians “have been a benefit to the town”.He added: “They come here. They buy property. They open businesses. They work here. They pay taxes. So for us, at the end of the day, it has been a benefit.”At the time of reporting, Hochman had only published interviews with older white residents of the town, who have variously complained that the newcomers do not speak English and that migrants have taken “American jobs”.One interviewee appears to concede that the Haitians are in Charleroi legally but dismisses the importance of that fact.“The perception is that it’s not legal,” the interviewee says at one point. “Now, you get a lot of people saying they’re illegals and everyone wants to fight about that term, but it doesn’t really matter.”In an email sent after publication, Mike Needham, America 2100’s founder and president, pointed to an interview with a Black resident that had been published on the organization’s X account on Friday afternoon.Needham added in the same email: “Nate also recorded interviews with multiple Haitian workers in the course of his week-long investigation.” As of noon on Saturday, no interviews with Haitian immigrants had been published on the X account.Most have not been shared extensively, although one of the videos was reposted by far-right account End Wokeness, and reposted in turn by Musk to his nearly 200 million followers along with a nugget of political analysis. “Pennsylvania is a swing state,” Musk wrote. His repost was shared in turn by the America 2100 account.America 2100 is ostensibly a thinktank, launched by Needham, Rubio’s one-time chief of staff, in June 2023. Rubio is a Republican senator from Florida. Coverage of the launch presented it as a project with Rubio’s blessing, whose mission was to “begin the work of codifying and institutionalizing the ideas Rubio helped pioneer”.In July, however, Needham was also appointed as chairman of another thinktank, American Compass, which is led by a former Mitt Romney aide, Oren Cass.Cass and American Compass have drawn attention by promoting interventionist economic policies. Those policy ideas overlap with those of JD Vance: in reporting on the Needham hire, Politico called American Compass a “Vance-aligned think tank”, and Vance “an ally whose own staff has deep ties to the organization”.American Compass’s policy director, Chris Griswold, meanwhile, is another former Rubio staffer.After being dubbed “Little Marco” by Trump in a 2016 primary in which he, in turn, mocked the size of Trump’s hands, Rubio moved closer to Trump politically over the succeeding eight years, and in May even refused to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election.At that time, Rubio was under consideration as Trump’s running mate but was eventually passed over for JD Vance.Although there was reporting on America 2100 at launch, there is little information on the site about its current personnel or the nature of the entity underlying its activities.America 2100 was registered as a non-stock corporation in Virginia in June 2023.Officers listed in filings include Needham and another former Rubio staffer, Albert Martinez, along with Lisa Lisker, a lawyer who was reportedly previously involved in an organization that spread misinformation about solar power in 12 states, and was also secretary for JD Vance’s campaign committee during his run for Senate in the 2022 election.The Guardian emailed America 2100 for comment via an email address designated for “press”, and emailed Needham and Lisker. The Guardian also contacted Rubio’s office.Only Needham responded, writing that: “I know this article will be bad-faith political hit job.”Needham added: “Nate did a great job reporting on the tragic story playing out in Charleroi.”In mid-2022, Hochman appeared poised for a high-profile career in conservative media, having been rewarded with blue ribbon fellowships and a staff job at the home of mainstream conservative opinion, National Review.His status as a representative of the emerging, harder-edged “national conservative” movement made him “the leftwing media’s go-to voice for insight into this crowd”, according to a story on rising rightwing influencers published at that time by the Dispatch, a “never Trump” conservative website.Hochman’s appearance in that story, however, was the start of his undoing.The Dispatch reported on a recording of Hochman in a Twitter spaces conversation with the white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes.In that conversation, Hochman reportedly disagreed with Fuentes on some topics, but also appeared to compliment the “America First” far-right activist, telling Fuentes: “You’ve gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect that for sure,” and “I think Nick’s probably a better influence than [the conservative commentator] Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservatives.”Amid the furore that followed, Hochman was stripped of his fellowships. In March 2023 he left the National Review to work for DeSantis’s abortive presidential campaign. He was fired by the campaign that July, however, after he retweeted a meme-drenched pro-DeSantis video on his personal account that embraced the aesthetics of the online far right.As the Guardian reported at the time, the video portrayed “a ‘Wojak” meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.Then finally it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported that Hochman had made the video, but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.Since then, Hochman has more fully embraced the more extreme actors of the so-called “new right”.A week ago, he published an essay at the far-right magazine IM–1776, which appeared to embed conspiratorial claims about the media in a jeremiad against democracy.Hochman claims at one point in the piece: “The US constitution was conceived to thwart tyranny; but it did so, in part, by limiting mass democracy. Once those limits were removed, power was no longer dispersed across a system of checks and balances, but centralized in the hands of whoever controlled the machinery of opinion formation.”Another recent essay published at IM–1776 characterized critics of Darryl Cooper – the “Holocaust revisionist” who recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s webcast – as adherents of “Hitlerian Satanism”.IM–1776 also gave space for the alt-right influencer Douglass Mackey to characterize his prosecution under Klan-era election laws as the government “prosecuting people [for] posting election jokes”.The Guardian previously reported on IM–1776’s close links to the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, who has spent much of the last week trying in vain to substantiate Donald Trump’s false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating “dogs” “cats” and “pets”.In his essay, Hochman praises Rufo, saying that he “has won an impressive string of culture war victories by actively crafting news cycles rather than responding to them”.In May, in the American Mind, Hochman began a glowing review of The Unprotected Class, a book by the Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl that claims America is racked by anti-white racism, with the line: “Ethnic discrimination is as old as human civilization itself,” and goes on to argue: “Racial revenge is the germ of the sustained campaign to defame, attack, and disenfranchise white Americans on behalf of their country’s most powerful institutions.” More

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      21 Juveniles Charged With Making School Threats in South Carolina

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      The charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since a mass shooting on Sept. 4 in Georgia in which four people were killed at a high school.Nearly two dozen juveniles have been charged in connection with online threats made against schools in South Carolina since early September, the authorities said on Tuesday.The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a news release that 21 people had been charged for making what it called “extremely serious” threats targeting schools. Many of the threats were shared on social media, the agency said.“School threats are not a joke,” Chief Mark Keel of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a statement. “Law enforcement takes every threat seriously, and everyone needs to understand that there are serious consequences.”According to the news release, the charges are part of a sprawling investigation into more than 60 threats targeting schools in 23 counties since Sept. 4, when the authorities say a 14-year-old gunman fatally shot two students and two teachers at his high school in Georgia.Threats of mass violence have proliferated on social media since the Georgia shooting and have left law enforcement officials, who traditionally have been limited in their response to threats of possible violence, feeling exasperated. In Central California, several teens have been arrested in connection with threats. In Broward County, Fla., where 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland in 2018, officials said last week that they had arrested nine students since August in connection with threats of violence.And in an unusual step, Sheriff Mike Chitwood of Volusia County, Fla., this week posted pictures and videos of an 11-year-old who was charged in a fake school shooting threat, part of a pledge to take a tough stance on the wave of threats.The police in South Carolina have worked to secure schools “and find those responsible,” the agency said in the news release. The agency’s behavioral science unit, which provides psychological profiling and threat assessments, has been called in to assist with six school threat investigations stretched across different counties.Details about the threats, the charges and the identities and ages of those arrested in South Carolina were not immediately available. Renée Wunderlich, a spokeswoman for the agency, said additional information was not available.WCNC-TV, an NBC affiliate station in Charlotte, reported that the threats included an alleged shooting threat at Lancaster High School in Lancaster, S.C., on Sept. 11. WMBF-TV, another NBC affiliate station, reported that Horry County Schools, in the southeastern part of the state, was the subject of rumored threats that circulated on social media. More

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      Secret Service Scrambled After Trump’s Short Notice on Golf Outing

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      Former President Donald J. Trump gave his Secret Service detail short notice that he would be golfing at his course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday, causing agents to forgo a scan of the perimeter, according to two people familiar with the events.The decision not to survey the course at Trump International Golf Club, because of a lack of time, before Mr. Trump’s outing allowed a man with a gun to sit concealed in bushes for almost 12 hours. The barrel of the gun was noticed by an agent ahead of Mr. Trump on the course. The agent shot at the man, who fled. A suspect was later captured.That swift action was praised by the acting Secret Service director, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., in remarks to reporters on Monday.But the missed opportunity to find the gunman, identified by the authorities as Ryan W. Routh, as he lurked near the golf course has raised questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect Mr. Trump, who enjoys his freedom and being around adoring fans.It also heightens pressure on the agency to add resources to protect Mr. Trump in the final months of the presidential campaign, even as the Secret Service is straining under its workload in a time of threatened violence. But some lawmakers have questioned whether more money will bring about better protection.Just two months after a different gunman fired on Mr. Trump at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pa., grazing the former president’s ear and killing an attendee, the agency once again must examine why it was unable to more decisively forestall an event that could have led to the death of the Republican nominee for president — and a national catastrophe.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 face campaign dilemma after second apparent Trump assassination plot

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      In comments to Fox News Digital on Monday, Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the repeated attempts on his life. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” he said.Also on Monday, the former president released a list of quotes that the campaign described as incendiary. At the top of that list was a quote from Kamala Harris saying: “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”The election is seven weeks away. Though Democrats want to place the threat of a repeat of political violence such as the January 6 attacks at the center of their political argument, Trump can adopt the language of victimhood, because he is a victim in this case – the target of a second apparent assassination attempt in less than two months. Democrats face a dilemma about how to effectively campaign against a candidate who has been the target of violence and who continues to claim that the other side’s rhetoric is inciting that violence.Democrats still talk about Trump as a threat to democracy. But they don’t lead with it any more. Instead, Trump is “weird”. Project 2025 is nightmarish and unpopular. Abortion will be illegal. It’s harder for Trump to allege that Democrats are inciting violence when they’re talking about unpopular policies.Leaders can also effectively reinforce social norms against violence, said Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University, who studies political violence in the US electorate. “It can be pretty simple. You can just say ‘political violence has no place in a democratic election,’” she said. “Make it very clear, and often a very simple rejection of violence will make people step back.”Joe Biden delivered just that message Monday, condemning political violence in remarks in Philadelphia at the National HBCU Week Conference.There is “no place for political violence in America – none. Zero,” Biden said. “In America, we resolve our difference peacefully at the ballot box, not at the end of a gun.” Violence “solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”Anti-violence political messaging is most effective when it comes from the political perspective of those who have committed violence, Mason said. “The problem with these attempts on Trump is that it’s really perpetrators who are not clearly from one side or the other.”Such is the apparent case with Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old entrepreneur from Hawaii who had donated to Democrats and supported Ukraine’s war against Russia, but also voted for Trump in 2016 and advocated for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy to win the Republican nomination.Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg remembers how people reacted when a gunman shot at him in his campaign headquarters as he was running for office two years ago. There was an outpouring of support from both Democrats and Republicans, he said.“I think extremists on all sides need to turn down the heat of their rhetoric,” Greenberg said. “I think antisemites and racists have no place in political discourse.”Quintez Brown, a social justice activist running for the Louisville metro council, walked into Greenberg’s office on Valentine’s Day and shot at him six times. One bullet passed through Greenberg’s sweater before staffers could barricade the door. Support for Greenberg was bipartisan, though the rhetoric wasn’t always nonpartisan.“I think candidates and elected officials should be held to the highest standards and encourage civil discourse that does not fan the flames of hatred and violence,” Greenberg said. “This often happens, sometimes directly, more often indirectly, with dog whistles and metaphors and tweets.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStill, some see the need for Democrats to tread carefully as unnecessary, given Trump’s history of inciting violence.The idea that Trump – after the events of January 6 and recent fabrications about the conduct of Haitian refugees that have led to school closures amid threats – could offer criticism on incitement raised the rancor of David Brand, a Democratic activist and operative in Atlanta.“We have strongly condemned in the strongest possible term what he did, what this individual did and called for swift justice,” Brand said. “It is ironic also that he is being prosecuted by a Haitian American immigrant who will be protecting Donald Trump’s civil rights. Donald Trump never gave Paul Pelosi the same respect that we are giving again, and the same respect for the rule of law.”But Trump’s campaign described criticism of this contradiction as itself an incitement.But concerns among Democrats about how to effectively campaign may be short-lived. The most surprising thing about political violence right now is how quickly people move on, Greenberg said.“Whether it’s with the assassination attempts now on President Trump or other acts of political violence or violence in general,” he said. “I mean, just look at Georgia two weeks ago. [A] horrible school shooting. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but how quickly people seem to forget how much gun violence is impacting our country.” More

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      Trump recounts apparent assassination attempt as new details emerge

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      Donald Trump has given his first detailed account of what he experienced on Sunday during what the FBI has said “appears to be an attempted assassination of the former president”, as authorities revealed new details about the incident at his West Palm Beach golf club.Trump said he was playing golf with friends, including businessman Steve Witkoff, when he heard gunshots.“Everything was beautiful, nice place to be, and all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air, and – I guess probably four or five – and it sounded like bullets but what do I know about that? But Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets,” Trump told cryptocurrency personality Farokh Sarmad during a livestream on X.In his first public event since the apparent assassination attempt, Trump thanked the Secret Service, saying that soon after the shots were heard: “We got into the carts and we moved along pretty good. I was with an agent and the agent did a fantastic job, there was no question that we were off that course.”“The secret service did a great job, everybody did a great job,” he said later.Trump said the gunshots were the sound of another agent firing at the barrel of a gun he had seen pointing out of bushes at the golf course, and that “the other one never got a shot off”, appearing to refer to the suspected shooter.Cellphone records show that the alleged gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, camped out near the golf course for about 12 hours with food before being confronted by a Secret Service agent. In court documents unsealed on Monday, officials said Routh’s phone was shown near the tree line at Trump’s golf course from 1.59am until 1.31pm on Sunday, around which point a Secret Service agent shot at him after seeing his rifle through the foliage, reported the Associated Press.Trump’s account – given on X during the launch of a cryptocurrency platform owned by his sons, broadly matched what authorities said on Monday. Ronald Rowe Jr, the US Secret Service acting director, said earlier that the alleged attacker did not fire any shots but that an agent discharged their firearm after spotting a rifle poking through the fence on the golf course perimeter.“He [the suspect] did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe Jr said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.Trump also praised the civilian who captured the suspect’s license plate, which helped authorities to track his car down. “The civilian did a phenomenal job”, he said.Where Trump differed from authorities was in his description of the political views of Routh and Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman killed in the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania on 13 July.Asked what he made of this being a potential second attempt on his life, he said: “Well there’s a lot of rhetoric going on, a lot of people think that the Democrats when they talk about ‘a threat to democracy’ and all of this, and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts.”Routh, the man suspected of carrying out the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, has professed a variety of political convictions that elude partisan definition.Although records show the 58-year-old former roofing contractor making small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has acknowledged voting for Trump in his 2016 election before subsequently embarking on a ideological odyssey the aims of which appear incoherent and confused.Thomas Matthew Crooks’s motivation remains unclear. In July, investigators said they were examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspected might be connected to Crooks, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Earlier on Monday, Trump sought to blame president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris for the shooting. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” Trump told Fox News Digital.“These are people that want to destroy our country,” he added. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”Harris, her campaign, her running mate Tim Walz and the Biden administration have condemned political violence. The White House said earlier Biden had called Trump, “and conveyed his relief that he is safe. The two shared a cordial conversation and former president Trump expressed his thanks for the call.”Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection on 6 January 2021 but was later acquitted when he secured enough Republican support in the senate.In the X event on Monday evening, Trump repeated his complaints about Biden choosing to drop out of the presidential race. He said he had spoken to Biden on Monday, saying “he couldn’t have been nicer”.However, Trump went on to attack his rival presidential candidate, Harris, saying: “We can’t have a Marxist Communist president”. More

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      Suspect never had sight of Trump and didn’t fire shots at agent, Secret Service chief says after apparent assassination attempt – live

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      Ronald Rowe Jr, acting director of the Secret Service, said that once an agent detected Routh armed with a rifle, he discharged his firearm before the 58-year-old fled.“He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.“The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” Rowe added.Shortly after Donald Trump became president, authorities tried to warn him about the risks of golfing at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads, according to The Washington Post.The agents told him that if photographers with long-range lenses could capture images of the president on the course, potential gunmen could do the same.Despite these warnings, Trump reportedly insisted that his clubs were safe and decided to keep golfing in them.Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in what the FBI has called an “attempted assassination”, previously made a series of donations to Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 elections, according to Federal Election Commission records.The documents show that Routh donated to campaigns supporting Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Beto O’Rourke, and Tom Steyer.The donations, which did not exceed $25, were made between September 2019 and March 2020, according to the records.Ronald Rowe from the Secret Service said he has “ordered a paradigm shift”.He said that the current methodologies work and described them as “sound”, but called on a reevaluation amid the current “dynamic threat environment”.Earlier, he said that the Secret Service constantly evaluates their methodologies “based on threat.”Ronald Rowe said that former president Donald Trump was not scheduled to be at the golf course on Sunday.When reporters asked if Routh knew whether Trump was going to be at the golf course at that time, Rowe responded: “It’s an active investigation. I don’t have any information on that subject.”Ronald Rowe Jr, acting director of the Secret Service, said that once an agent detected Routh armed with a rifle, he discharged his firearm before the 58-year-old fled.“He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent,” Rowe said. “With reports of gunfire, the former president’s close protection detail immediately evacuated the president to a safe location.”Rowe also told reporters that Trump was “out of sight of the gunman” during his unscheduled visit to the golf club.“The protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” Rowe added.Jeffrey B Veltri, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, took the stage, stating that the agency is investigating the event as “an apparent assassination attempt of former president Trump”.“We view this as extremely serious and are determined to provide as to what led up to the events that took place,” he said.Veltri stated that Routh was the subject of an investigation in 2019 by the FBI based on a tip that he was in possession of a firearm.“In the area of the tree line from where Routh fled, agents found a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a black plastic bag containing food,” Lapointe said.He also said Routh was convicted of felonies in North Carolina in December 2002 and March 2010. Routh was prohibited from carrying a firearm amid these felonies, according to Lapointe.US attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the southern district of Florida is providing an update about the apparent assassination attempt on former Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.Lapointe confirmed that Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was charged with gun-related offenses. He had an appearance in court this morning in West Palm Beach.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky, issued a statement regarding the potential assassination attempt against Donald Trump, describing this week as “a time to reflect on the ways that our political process has been infected by reprehensible violence”.“For the second time in as many months, law enforcement faces an even more urgent task: completing a thorough, swift and transparent investigation into the circumstances of yesterday’s close call,” he said.“The American people deserve answers. They deserve assurance that a former President who tens of millions of Americans have nominated once again will receive every appropriate measure of security,” he added.Federal prosecutors have brought gun charges against Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday in Florida after what investigators believe may have been a potential assassination attempt against Donald Trump. In charging documents, an FBI special agent said that Routh’s cellphone spent nearly 12 hours in the vicinity of the tree line at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, and that he had previously been convicted in North Carolina on a felony charge of possessing “a weapon of mass death and destruction” after being found with a fully automatic gun. Trump sought to use the incident, in which he was not injured, to his advantage, telling Fox News that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were to blame because they’ve described him as a threat to democracy for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.Here’s what else has happened today:

      The sheriff’s office in Martin county, Florida, shared footage of the moment that Routh was arrested yesterday.

      Biden spoke briefly to reporters about the incident, saying the Secret Service should be given more resources, perhaps personnel.

      Harris said she was “deeply disturbed by the possible assassination attempt” targeting Trump.

      In addition to blaming Democrats, Trump is fundraising off the potential assassination attempt.

      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, said more funding for the Secret Service could be included in a spending bill under negotiation with House Republicans.
      Reuters reports that Ryan Wesley Routh, who was arrested yesterday for potentially trying to assassinate Donald Trump, was charged for possessing “a weapon of mass death and destruction” in North Carolina in 2002 after being found with a fully automatic gun.Reuters also found that Routh has a criminal history in the state that goes back to at least 1990, including for writing bad checks, traffic violations and possessing stolen goods.Amid calls from across the political spectrum to give the Secret Service more resources after a potential second assassination attempt yesterday targeting Donald Trump, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer has hinted that the funds could be allocated as part of the latest round of spending negotiations.“We all must do our part to ensure an incident like this does not happen again. This means that Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Secret Service and all law enforcement have the resources they need to do their jobs,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.“So, as we continue the appropriations process, if the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them, possibly in the upcoming funding agreement.”Congressional leaders are trying to pass some kind of funding agreement to keep the government running beyond 30 September, when the current authorizations expire. Democrats, who control the Senate, and Republicans, who hold a majority in the House, have not yet reached an agreement, with one of the sticking points being calls from Trump and some GOP lawmakers to also pass a bill that makes voting by non-citizens a federal crime. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump is returning to X Spaces this evening for a broadcast on the social media platform’s live audio feature:About a month ago, he held a nearly three-hour-long talk on Spaces with X’s chairman, Elon Musk, which was surprisingly light on news:Before news of a potential second assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump broke, the New York Times reported on Sunday that John Roberts, the conservative chief justice of the supreme court, to encourage his colleagues to rule in favor of the former president on the question of his immunity that came before them earlier this year. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Anna Betts:John Roberts Jr used his position as the US supreme court’s chief justice to urge his colleagues to rule quickly – and in favor – of Donald Trump ahead of the decision that granted him and other presidents immunity for official acts, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday.The new report provides details about what was happening behind the scenes in the country’s highest court during the three recent supreme court decisions centering on – and generally favoring – the Republican former president.Based on leaked memos, documentation of the proceedings and interviews with court insiders, the Times report suggests that Roberts – who was appointed to the supreme court during Republican George W Bush’s presidency – took an unusually active role in the three cases in question. And he wrote the majority opinions on all three.In addition to the presidential immunity ruling, the decisions collectively barred states from removing any official – including Trump – from a federal ballot as well as declaring the government had overstepped with respect to obstruction of justice charges filed against participants of the 6 January 2021 attack that the former president’s supporters aimed at Congress.The Times reported that last February, Roberts sent a memo to his fellow supreme court justices regarding the criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden.Merrick Garland, the attorney general, issued a statement where he promised to “work tirelessly” and use “every available resource” in the investigation into the apparent attempted assassination on Donald Trump.“We are grateful the former president is safe,” Garland’s statement reads.
      The entire justice department – including the FBI, the US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida, and the national security division – is coordinating closely with our law enforcement partners on the ground.
      “We will work tirelessly to ensure accountability, and we will bring every available resource to bear in this investigation,” he added.Here’s more from Joe Biden’s address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, during which he decried the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump and urged Americans to work together to stop the scourge of political violence.The Secret Service’s acting director, Ronald Rowe Jr, was in Florida “assessing what happened and determining whether any further adjustments need to be made to ensure” Trump’s safety, AP quoted Biden as saying. He added:
      America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet. It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at a conference of historically Black colleges and universities in Philadelphia, during which he addressed the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.Biden commended the Secret Service for their “expert handling of the situation”, per pool report. He said:
      Let me just say there is no – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, and those of you who know me know this – in America, there is no place for political violence.
      A video posted to Facebook on Monday shows the arrest of the man suspected in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump.The body camera footage shared by the Martin county sheriff’s office shows Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, walking backward with his hands over his head on the side of a road before being handcuffed and led away by law enforcement.The White House described a now-deleted post by Elon Musk on X as “irresponsible” after the tech mogul questioned why Donald Trump has faced two apparent assassination attempts while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not encountered any.In a Sunday night post, Musk wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” He later the deleted the post after intense backlash, claiming his comments were intended as a joke.In a statement, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said:
      As President Biden and Vice President Harris said after yesterday’s disturbing news, ‘there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,’ and ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.’
      “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible,” the statement added. More

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      Political violence and fearmongering bigotry have become too normalized | Robert Reich

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      The second apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life – on Sunday at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida – occurred just over two months after he was wounded during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” the former president said after the first attempt. “I’m just standing in the way.”“They” should not be coming after anyone. There is no place in a democracy for violence, nor for threats of violence.Which brings me to Trump’s claim in last week’s debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”It quickly became a vast internet joke, fueling thousands of hilarious memes and songs. But it’s no laughing matter. Trump’s claim has already provoked threats of violence.Last weekend, two hospitals in Springfield were locked down after bomb threats, police said. Other threats received by Springfield officials have forced government buildings to close, two elementary schools to be evacuated and the students moved to a different location, and a middle school to shut down altogether.After Republican VP nominee JD Vance first began spreading baseless rumors about Haitians in Springfield, members of the neo-Nazi group “Blood Tribe” marched into the city carrying guns, wearing body armor, and carrying Neo-Nazi flags. At a 27 August town hall meeting, one claimed that the city had been taken over by “degenerate third worlders”, blamed Jewish people for the influx, and warned “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you allow in.”Springfield’s Haitian immigrants say they are afraid. Some have kept their children home from school, fearing violence. Others have reported harassment on the street, in their cars, and at stores.A Springfield family whose son died last year when a car driven by a Haitian immigrant accidentally collided with a school bus has pleaded for Trump and Vance to stop using their deceased son for political purposes.Yet Trump and Vance are doubling down. On Sunday, before the attempt on Trump’s life, Vance said on CNN that the claims about Haitians eating the pets of Springfield residents came from “firsthand accounts from my constituents”. When interviewer Dana Bash suggested that the claims had caused bomb threats, Vance called her a “Democratic propagandist”. But the connection is indisputable.Rather than offhand comments, Trump’s and Vance’s claims are calculated. Trump’s last two posts on Truth Social before the debate were AI images of cats – one depicting cats in military fatigues carrying assault rifles and wearing Maga hats, the other showing the candidate himself sitting on a plane amid a crowd of ducks and cats.Trump is now talking about holding a rally in Springfield. “We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said in a Friday news conference. Although Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are in the United States legally, he promised to stage “the largest deportation in the history of our country” if re-elected.Trump’s and Vance’s claims are completely bogus. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, told CBS News on Wednesday: “These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs. And if you talk to employers, they’ve done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard.”Another of Trump’s bogus claims is now threatening legal immigrants in Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb that Trump has repeatedly asserted is being “taken over” by Venezuelan criminals. “Simply not true”, Aurora’s Republican mayor and city council member wrote in a joint statement.As in Springfield, Trump’s baseless claims are harming innocent people in Aurora. Immigrants there say they have been told their nationality makes them ineligible for jobs or housing. Trump’s claims have led to threats and drawn armed groups to the city, claiming to offer vigilante-style protection.Trump and Vance are using the oldest of tyrannical ploys – fueling deep-seated fears by creating an “other”, depicted as subhuman, who “take over” towns and “devour” loved ones.In Springfield, the loved ones are peoples’ pets. But how far is this bogus claim from vicious Nazi claims of Jewish people devouring children? Substitute “Jew” for “Haitian” in Springfield or for “Venezuelan” in Aurora, and you’re back to the Nazis of the 1930s.In demonizing and dehumanizing migrants, Trump and Vance are not just seeking to win over a few wavering voters across the nation or making a play for control of the Senate. They are trying to scare America into becoming a more fearsome, more racist nation.“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said of immigrants at a rally in New Hampshire eight months ago – virtually quoting Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”In a last-ditch effort to prevail in their campaign, Trump and Vance are encouraging the haters. On 10 September, Vance told his followers to “keep the cat memes flowing”, notwithstanding that they were endangering people in his own state.Meanwhile, members of Trump’s social media war room – including Trump confidante Laura Loomer, known for sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim, and antisemitic posts – are busily spreading AI-generated images of dogs and cats being protected by Trump, along with other content promoting the claim that pets are being eaten by Haitians.Let me repeat: there no justification whatsoever for violence or threats of violence in our democracy. While utterly despicable, Sunday’s second apparent assassination attempt on Trump can be seen as a symptom of the hate-filled politics that he and Vance are peddling.This must stop.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Suspect said he knew why he was being arrested after Trump golf club incident, officials say

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      Cellphone records associated with the man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida on Sunday suggest he had been lying in wait nearby for nearly 12 hours before he was fired on by a Secret Service agent protecting the former president.Then, after authorities captured him as he made his hasty retreat, he allegedly told them he knew exactly why they were arresting him.Those details surfaced in a criminal complaint that was unsealed after the man alleged to have plotted the attempt on Trump’s life appeared in front of a preliminary federal court hearing Monday.The new records alleged that the suspect in the case, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, had previously asked his social media followers to contact him at a specific cellphone number. Investigators later determined that particular number was located at or near a tree line along Trump International golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, from about 1.59am to 1.31pm on Sunday, an FBI agent wrote in the unsealed papers.At the end of that time frame, a Secret Service agent walking the perimeter of the course while Trump golfed there noticed “what appeared to be a rifle poking out of the tree line”, the complaint said.The agent drew a gun and fired in the direction of the rifle. A bystander then saw a man later identified as Routh emerge from the tree line and flee in a Nissan SUV.Authorities said they soon found an SKS-style rifle equipped with a scope, a digital camera and at least three bags – including one containing food – in the area from which Routh fled. The serial number on the 7.62mm rifle had been “obliterated and [was] unreadable”, the FBI agent who wrote the complaint said.Deputies from two local sheriff’s offices later stopped Routh as he speeded northbound on Interstate 95 at about 2.15pm. “Routh was asked if he knew why he was being stopped,” the complaint said. “He responded in the affirmative.”The complaint noted that the license plate on the Nissan was not meant to be on the vehicle. Rather, it was registered to a white Ford truck that had been reported stolen.Authorities did not immediately charge Routh with attempting to assassinate the president. Instead, they charged him with possessing a firearm despite having prior felony conviction prohibiting him from legally doing so – as well as with illicitly having a gun with an obliterated serial.The first of those charges stemmed from Routh’s having been convicted in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2002 of illegally possessing what a media report referred to at the time as a “fully automatic machine gun”. According to the Greensboro News & Record, in that instance Routh barricaded himself at his roofing company during a three-hour standoff before he led police on a car chase and ultimately surrendered.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA second felony conviction mentioned in Monday’s criminal complaint was for multiple counts of possession of stolen goods.The complaint does not address what may have motivated Routh to stick the barrel of a rifle into Trump’s golf course while the Republican presidential candidate played there. Routh’s son, Oran, told the Guardian on Sunday that Ukraine’s cause in its war against Russia was dear to him.Trump, as he seeks a second presidency in November, recently declined to answer a question at a televised debate about whether he wanted Ukraine to win that war, renewing fears that he might suspend American military aid to Ukrainian troops if voters return him to the White House. The former president also successfully lobbied lawmakers who are loyal to him to delay authorizing additional military support to Ukraine for months earlier this year.Routh’s hearing on Monday lasted eight minutes and saw federal prosecutors announce the initial charges against him. He could face 15 years in prison if convicted of possessing a firearm as a felon and five years in connection with the other charge.Trump survived a separate assassination attempt on 13 July at a political rally in Pennsylvania. The gunman shot one spectator dead and badly wounded two other rallygoers before he was killed by Secret Service snipers. More