Grand Rapids (Mich)

Subterms

    Latest story

    175 Shares159 Views

    Walz Spoke of Gun Violence Affecting His Son. Here’s an Account of the Shooting.

    by

    At Tuesday’s debate, Gov. Tim Walz said that his son, Gus Walz, witnessed a shooting at a community center. A volleyball coach said Gus helped other young players to safety.Gov. Tim Walz has spoken before of a shooting last year at a recreation center in St. Paul, Minn., that he said had an impact on his teenage son, Gus. But in the vice-presidential debate with Senator JD Vance of Ohio on Tuesday night, Mr. Walz went further in saying that his son witnessed the shooting, which left one teenager seriously wounded.On Wednesday, a volleyball coach who played a central role in the response that day described what he, Gus and others experienced in the frightening moments after they had heard gunfire outside.The coach, David Albornoz, said he ran to investigate, while Gus, a team captain and an assistant coach on a boys’ volleyball team, helped guide young people in the gym to a safe location when many thought a mass shooting was occurring.“We heard the gunshots,” Mr. Albornoz said. “You hear the screaming. I had no more information than what I gathered.”The shooting, which was propelled into the national spotlight when Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance discussed how they would address gun violence in the country, was widely reported in St. Paul at the time. It took place in January 2023 outside the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center, part of the Oxford Community Center, one of the largest and busiest facilities in the city’s parks and recreation system. It is also across the street from Central High School, where Gus is a student.According to several court documents, the 16-year-old victim, JuVaughn Turner, and some of his friends were outside when a young woman got into a dispute with an employee at the recreation center, Exavir Binford.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

    More stories

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      A Week After Shooting, Trump Leaves Unity Behind and Returns to Insults and Election Denial

      by

      At his first campaign rally since he survived an assassination attempt last week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday launched a litany of attacks that suggested his call for national unity in the wake of the shooting had faded entirely into the background.Over the course of an almost two-hour speech in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Trump insulted President Biden’s intelligence repeatedly, calling him “stupid” more than once. He said Vice President Kamala Harris was “crazy” and gleefully jeered the Democratic Party’s infighting over Mr. Biden’s political future.Even as Mr. Trump made numerous false claims accusing his political opponents of widespread election fraud, he presented the continuing push by some Democrats to replace Mr. Biden on their ticket as an anti-democratic effort.By contrast, Mr. Trump — who falsely insisted he won the 2020 election and whose effort to overturn it spurred a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the peaceful transfer of power — presented himself as an almost martyr trying to protect the United States from its downfall.“They keep saying, ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’” Mr. Trump told the crowd of thousands inside the Van Andel Arena. “I’m saying, ‘What the hell did I do with democracy’? Last week, I took a bullet for democracy.”The line — one of the few additions to a speech that culled from Mr. Trump’s standard rally repertoire — came as Mr. Trump was trying to rebut Democrats’ claims that he was an extremist and distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a potential second term that would overhaul the federal government.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

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump to Focus on Border as Democrats Eye Boost From Florida Abortion Ruling

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump will campaign on immigration and border policy today with events planned in Michigan and Wisconsin, two crucial battleground states in the Midwest.Mr. Trump and other Republicans are trying to keep voters’ attention on the border as President Biden and Democrats, bolstered by a pair of court rulings out of Florida on Monday, grow more optimistic about their ability to center the campaign on abortion.On Monday afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent in ruling that the State Constitution did not protect abortion rights, allowing a six-week ban to take effect. But it simultaneously ruled that a proposed constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion rights until fetal viability could go on the ballot in November.That means Floridians will be voting directly on abortion after living with a near-total ban for several months — which Democrats hope will increase turnout and give them a fighting chance in a state that has become increasingly favorable to Republicans.Wisconsin is one of several states with presidential primaries on Tuesday, and its voters will also decide on two ballot measures after the state’s Republican-led Legislature proposed changing the State Constitution to restrict private funding and staffing of election offices.Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York are also voting. Mr. Trump and President Biden have already clinched their nominations, though, so the outcomes of today’s primaries are not in doubt. Delaware even canceled primaries it would have otherwise held today.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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Dominates Michigan G.O.P. Convention Amid Party Turmoil

      by

      The former president won all 39 delegates against Nikki Haley during the caucus-style event in Grand Rapids.Former President Donald J. Trump capped off a clean sweep of Republican delegates in Michigan on Saturday during a raucous convention, which further exposed a deep fissure in the state party that threatens to fester in one of the most important battleground states.Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, amassed at least 90 percent of the vote in all but one of the state’s 13 congressional districts against former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who was ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump.A simple majority was needed in each district to win its share of delegates at the caucus-style event, giving Mr. Trump 39, to go along with the 12 that he won in Michigan’s primary, which was held on Tuesday. Ms. Haley emerged from that contest with four delegates.Mr. Trump’s dominance earlier in the week left little doubt about the outcome of the convention on Saturday at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids, Mich.A check-in table at the convention in Grand Rapids. An estimated 200 Republican stalwarts were denied credentials during the convention.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut a protracted fight over the state party’s rightful leader spilled over into the proceedings, where an estimated 200 Republican stalwarts from about 20 of Michigan’s 83 counties were denied credentials. Two other groups boycotted the event and held breakaway conventions, one more than 100 miles to the north in Houghton Lake, Mich., and another more than 50 miles southeast in Battle Creek, Mich.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

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Michigan Judge Orders Kristina Karamo to Stand Down in G.O.P. Leadership Fight

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Gretchen Whitmer Rejected False Choices. All Democrats Should.

      by

      For years, the so-called Blue Wall states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have been not just politically but also emotionally important for Democrats. With the party poised to enact a new primary lineup that includes Michigan in an early slot, the state has grown even more important for Democrats.In many ways, Michigan offers a microcosm of American politics. It includes a diverse population of over 10 million people and a mix of big, medium and smaller urban areas, along with diverse suburbs and rural areas.For Democrats, much of the debate about running in and winning big northern industrial states is that we have to choose a style of campaign. Either we talk to blue-collar voters about issues like economics and manufacturing, or we talk to suburban women about abortion. Either we use progressive issues to turn out our base, or we take moderate positions on issues to persuade people in the middle.There is a model for running an effective campaign in Michigan and states like it — and it involves rejecting many of these false choices.Gretchen Whitmer illustrated that model in Michigan this year. With her midterm victory, she has now had two decisive general-election wins in a critical Blue Wall state. Last month, she won by 10.6 points (a margin bested by only two Democratic presidential candidates in the last 50 years, Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1996).She ran on economics and abortion, increased Democratic turnout and persuaded swing voters, all while connecting with the party’s largest base: Black voters. She embodied the way smart campaigns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and around the country operated this cycle, and she gave a blueprint for Democrats in 2024.The first lesson of Ms. Whitmer’s campaign is that economic good news and development — especially building things — really make a difference. Democrats should run on American manufacturing: Whether it was a new semiconductor plant (to help ease the chip shortage facing the auto industry) or generational-level investments from G.M. in electric-vehicle battery plants (to make sure the critical supply chains for electric cars will be based in Michigan, not China, where many E.V. batteries are currently built), Ms. Whitmer fought to bring them to Michigan.In in multiple TV ads, she told voters, “I can’t solve the inflation problem, but we’re doing things — right now — to help.” She listed tangible benefits that she proposed or got done, like more affordable community college, insurance refunds and tax cuts for seniors. She passed four balanced, bipartisan budgets with no tax increases, and she let voters know about that.A lot of Democrats talked about economics across the country, but few did so as consistently and effectively as Ms. Whitmer. And it wasn’t just talk: When businesses opened, she was often there to celebrate them.This was paired with a pocketbook attack. Her opponent, Tudor Dixon, took millions of dollars from the wildly unpopular (in Michigan) billionaire Betsy DeVos and her family. For months her campaign highlighted Ms. Dixon’s connections to Ms. DeVos and how Ms. Dixon’s tax plan would benefit Ms. DeVos and hurt the middle class — working-class tax hikes, cuts to schools and the like. Ms. Whitmer also highlighted abortion rights as a vote-deciding issue for swing voters. Again, this was not just talk. Through a ballot initiative, Michigan voters faced the decision on whether to place abortion protections in the state Constitution. Voters approved changing the state Constitution with strong support (57 percent).Months before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and could have effectively banned abortion in Michigan (because of a dormant law from the 1930s), Ms. Whitmer sued and got courts to block enforcement of that law. No doubt the issue helped Michigan Democrats and progressives to catalyze turnout. Estimates from the U.S. Elections Project show overall turnout in 2022 was down about 6 percent from the 2018 midterm, but in Michigan, turnout was up nearly 5 percent.Ms. Whitmer also developed a deep connection with Black voters well before she picked as her running mate and governing partner the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist. After winning Black voters decisively with high turnout in 2018, she deepened that connection. The “Big Gretch” song (“We ain’t even about to stress/we got Big Gretch”) and memes that came out of Black Michigan spoke to a deep appreciation Black voters had for her decisiveness in the pandemic to keep people safe.This was on top of a lot of other work to help Black voters, things like bringing the first new auto plant to Detroit in 30 years and making sure Detroiters had a first crack at the plant’s jobs.This did not come at the expense of talking to white voters: She won Macomb County, ground zero for voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama, then switched to Donald Trump, by about 60 percent more in 2022 from 2018.What Ms. Whitmer has done in Michigan can be done by Democrats across the country. We can talk about economics and abortion, we can invest in turnout and persuasion, and we can strengthen our appeal to voters of color while winning over white voters.Brian Stryker (@BrianStryker) is a partner at Impact Research and a strategist for Gretchen Whitmer, Tim Ryan and Mandela Barnes, among others.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Group Wanted to Kidnap Michigan Governor and Block Biden’s Election, Plotter Says

      by

      By abducting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, one man who pleaded guilty said, he hoped to disrupt the 2020 election and perhaps start a civil war.GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — To hear Ty Garbin tell it, the kidnapping of Michigan’s Democratic governor would have been just the beginning.By abducting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Mr. Garbin and other plotters hoped, he said, to set off a chain of events that would prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being elected president and perhaps foment a civil war.“The plan was for us to basically be the ignition to it, and hopefully other states or other groups would follow,” said Mr. Garbin, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to kidnap the governor and who testified this week at the federal trial of four other men accused of participating in the plot.Since Mr. Garbin and the others were arrested in October 2020, before there was any attempt to carry out a plan, prosecutors have portrayed the group as a menace to democracy and a vivid example of the dangers of domestic extremism. Lawyers for the four men now standing trial have described the case instead as an F.B.I. trap, in which their clients were targeted for their political views, pushed toward a far-fetched plot by government informants and undercover agents, then prosecuted for their speech.That made the testimony of Mr. Garbin, a militia leader who was neither an informant nor a federal agent, pivotal to the prosecutors’ case against the men on trial. The defendants, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft, Adam Fox and Daniel Harris, are charged with kidnapping conspiracy and could face life in prison if convicted. Mr. Croft, Mr. Fox and Mr. Harris are also accused of planning to blow up a bridge and were charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, his hands cuffed in front of his waist, Mr. Garbin testified for hours this week at the federal courthouse in downtown Grand Rapids. Looking straight ahead, and speaking in even tones, Mr. Garbin told jurors that he had wanted to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, and that he had been prepared for a gunfight with her security detail. Mr. Garbin testified that he had not been pushed into his planning by an F.B.I. informant whom defense lawyers have tried to portray as the architect of the plot.Ty GarbinKent County Sheriff, via Associated PressUnder questioning by prosecutors, Mr. Garbin pointed out to jurors an AR-15 rifle and a pistol that he said he was prepared to use against the governor’s security detail, as well as a bulletproof vest where he planned to store extra bullets. He recounted a nighttime “recon” mission in which he and other members of the group tried to scope out Ms. Whitmer’s vacation cottage, outside the northern Michigan town of Elk Rapids, but ended up driving aimlessly on her street because they had the wrong address. And he described a training outing where he and others went through a makeshift “shoot house” as practice for storming Ms. Whitmer’s vacation home.“The purpose of the training was furthering our skills to prepare for kidnapping the governor of Michigan,” said Mr. Garbin, 26, who until his arrest worked as an airplane mechanic at Detroit’s international airport. He received a prison sentence of just over six years after pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors.Another prosecution witness who also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping conspiracy, Kaleb Franks, testified on Thursday that he also intended to kidnap the governor and had not been forced into the plot by the F.BI. Mr. Franks, who has not yet been sentenced, said he had hoped to die during the attack on the governor. Mr. Franks, 27, said he had been in despair after the deaths of three close family members.Prosecutors said in the months before the arrests, the men, many of whom were militia members, attended meetings and what they described as “field training exercises” to practice shooting and first-aid. In one exercise, they videotaped themselves jumping out of Mr. Franks’s bright-blue PT Cruiser and taking cover behind its doors while they fired rifles.Secretly recorded audio and private messages also showed members of the group repeatedly airing grievances about the government, especially about Covid-19 restrictions, and expressing openness to a range of possible attacks. But there has been vast disagreement in court about how close they were to carrying out any attack, and about what their exact plan even was.Dan Chappel, a military veteran who signed on as an F.B.I. informant in early 2020 after becoming worried about the goals of one militia, the Wolverine Watchmen, pretended to befriend the men who were charged and recorded their interactions for months. As the group began to develop a plan, some of the defendants mused about storming the State Capitol in Lansing or taking Ms. Whitmer in a boat across Lake Michigan or blowing up a bridge to make it harder for police to respond to the kidnapping.But defense lawyers, who are pursuing an entrapment defense, questioned Mr. Chappel’s role in the plot, pointing out that he helped lead militia training and made suggestions about attack plans. The implication was that, if not for Mr. Chappel, who was receiving instructions from the F.B.I., the plan to kidnap Ms. Whitmer would probably not have moved forward.Mr. Chappel, who spent parts of several days on the witness stand, said he believed the men intended to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, kill members of her security detail and eventually kill the governor herself after staging a fake trial. But the exact plans for the kidnapping, a date for which had not seen set, seemed to have still been in flux at the time of the arrests, a fact that defense lawyers have seized on.Mr. Garbin, who had expressed hope of setting off a civil war, testified that he thought they would kidnap Ms. Whitmer, take her out on Lake Michigan, strand her in a boat, drop the motor and leave her there alone. Under cross-examination, Mr. Garbin conceded that no boat had been selected for that mission, and that he did not know how the kidnappers planned to get themselves back to shore.“How were you going to drop this nonspecific motor from this nonspecific boat into the lake?” Joshua Blanchard, a lawyer for Mr. Croft, asked.The trial, now in its third week, is expected to continue into April. More