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    Yelp Disables Comments for McDonald’s Where Trump Donned Apron

    The consumer review site temporarily disabled comments on the franchise’s page after the former president’s appearance prompted a flurry of reviews.Yelp has temporarily disabled reviews for the McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where former President Donald J. Trump held a campaign photo op because of a flood of phony write-ups and ratings.On Sunday, Mr. Trump donned an apron and briefly worked the fryer at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pa., where he distributed orders to preselected customers in the drive-through and spoke with reporters.But his customer service led to a flurry of mocking reviews that were not based on customers’ firsthand experiences, as required. Instead, the reviews on the restaurant’s Yelp page criticized Mr. Trump and also took aim at the franchise, while some celebrated the former president.“Don’t let convicted felons who tried to overturn an election stage campaign stunts,” one reviewer wrote.“This was an awful thing that was done and McDonald’s is now the new chick filet , and will get ZERO of my money and my business , hope it was worth alienating EVERY Woman in the USA,” another reviewer wrote.“There was a giant orange rat in the kitchen. The operator let it in to roam around and even posted pictures of it. Pretty weird,” another wrote.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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    Walz Rallies Supporters on Wisconsin’s First Day of Voting, Alongside Obama

    Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota raced across battleground Wisconsin on Tuesday, exhorting voters to get to the polls on the state’s first day of early voting and just two weeks before Election Day.At a rally in Madison, Mr. Walz appeared alongside former President Barack Obama for the first time on the campaign trail, giving Mr. Obama a bro hug onstage. The two took turns, in successive speeches, laying into former President Donald J. Trump and stressing the urgency of the moment to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, who leads the Democratic presidential ticket with Mr. Walz.“Our team is running like everything is on the line, because everything’s on the line,” Mr. Walz told the crowd of thousands at an event center. He urged voters to avoid complacency, suggesting that a second term for Mr. Trump would be even more chaotic than the first and that he was “far more dangerous” now.“He is not the 2016 Donald Trump — this is a brand-new version,” Mr. Walz said. “The consequences of putting him back into office are deadly serious.”In Racine on Tuesday night, he addressed comments from John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff, who said recently that Mr. Trump had told him during his presidency that he wished he had generals like Adolf Hitler’s. “As a 24-year veteran of our military, that makes me sick as hell,” Mr. Walz said. “The guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness.”In Madison, Mr. Obama was lighthearted as he began, making jokes and telling the audience that Mr. Walz was “the kind of person who should be in politics.”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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    How ‘Gilded Age’ Star Christine Baranski Is Helping Harris Sway Polish American Voters

    Voters with Eastern European backgrounds could be crucial in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Christine Baranski, star of stage and screen, was watching the presidential debate in September when a lightbulb went off.Vice President Kamala Harris made a pointed reference to “the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania” as she castigated former President Donald Trump for his warm relationship with Vladimir Putin. Baranski, an actress who is among the country’s more famous Polish Americans, wondered if she could help sway any of them to Harris.This is how Baranski, a Buffalo native who plays a socialite in “The Gilded Age,” found herself on a modest street corner in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., last week, knocking on doors and talking to me.“I just thought, ‘Well, if there’s a way of making Polish Americans feel that heroic thing that they have,’” Baranski said, after stepping off a doorstep decorated for Halloween. “This election is so important that actually they could make a difference.”As Election Day nears, Polish American voters — as well as other Eastern European ethnic groups — have become as hot a commodity, electorally speaking, as kielbasa at Christmastime.In a dead-heat race, both Trump and Harris have made direct appeals to the group, which happens to be well-represented in the so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While Polish Americans are often seen as fairly conservative because of their Catholic roots, Democrats are hoping to gain the support of those who are concerned about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and apprehensive about Trump’s ties to the Russian president. Harris’s campaign is working to reach to those voters on the ground, while her allies say they have spent more than $1 million on digital advertisements micro-targeted at Polish and Ukrainian Americans in Pennsylvania.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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    Exploring the Failures in the Mideast

    More from our inbox:Disgusted by Trump’s Lewd Comments at RallyLessons From BaseballQueen Esther’s Legacy Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Biden’s Moral Failure on Israel,” by Peter Beinart (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 11):There is much about Israel’s behavior toward Arabs to be condemned, but the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, cannot be ignored. Israel had a right to retaliate, and the fact that Hamas refuses to stop fighting gives Israel the right to continue fighting.Hamas could have just stopped sending missiles toward Israel but it has not. Hamas killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7. The nightmare of Gaza was started by Hamas and can be finished by Hamas.The nightmare of the West Bank is another story, and there is much blame to be placed on Israel. Until the Israeli government is changed there will be no solution.The politics of the United States is in the middle of this problem, and there is no easy way to deal with it. I believe that if Kamala Harris wins she will be able to be more forceful with the Israelis, but unfortunately, she will have no ability to force Hamas to come to the table.President Biden has not been able to take Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, out of the picture. Only the Israelis can do that, and perhaps once our election is over, they might be able to effect a solution.Leonard ZivitzFullerton, Calif.To the Editor:I am so grateful to Peter Beinart for calling out President Biden’s failure to stand in the way of the sprawling, ethnocentric ambitions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris Will Campaign in Texas to Call Attention to Abortion Rights

    Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Texas on Friday to campaign on abortion rights, an issue that has energized Democrats and that she hopes she can use to peel moderate voters away from former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Harris plans to hold a rally in Houston and also sit for an interview with the popular podcaster Brené Brown, a researcher who studies vulnerability. The interview will give the vice president access to a broad, nonpolitical audience that most likely includes many undecided voters.Mr. Trump is almost certain to win Texas, which bans abortion in almost all circumstances, making the state among the most restrictive in the nation. In Houston, Ms. Harris will have a ready-made platform to castigate Mr. Trump — who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade — and to warn that a second Trump administration could threaten abortion access nationwide. She also has the chance to amplify the campaign of Representative Colin Allred, a Democrat challenging Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, in a race that has shown signs of being competitive.“We think this will obviously be a setting and a message that will reach a national audience,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign. Her goal, he said, would be to “paint the picture of what could happen in this country — in the rest of the states — if Donald Trump is elected president.”Ms. Harris’s decision to spend a day outside one of the top battleground states this close to Election Day reflects just how important reproductive rights have become in the race, which is breaking down along gender lines. Ms. Harris is receiving substantial support from women, while men favor Mr. Trump. She has campaigned hard on the issue in an effort to win over moderate Republican and independent women, especially in the suburbs. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has tied himself in knots trying to avoid taking a firm position on the degree to which abortion should be restricted.The Harris campaign has shared the stories of several Texas women who were denied medical care because of their state’s abortion ban, including Amanda Zurawski and Kate Cox.On Friday, Ms. Harris will be joined by Mr. Allred. The race represents perhaps the Democrats’ best opportunity to pick up a Senate seat on a challenging map. But Mr. Allred is four points behind Mr. Cruz in the reliably Republican state, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, and he is being outspent, both worrying signs for his prospects. More

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    Passed Up for the Ticket, Josh Shapiro Tries to Deliver Pennsylvania for Harris

    Pennsylvania’s governor may not be on the verge of the vice presidency, but he says he has everything — including his “heart and soul” — riding on a Kamala Harris victory.Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania bounded off a big blue bus on Saturday afternoon with the other two governors of the critical “blue wall” states — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin — and headed down a steep hill to greet a gathering of Democratic canvassers in a park outside Pittsburgh.It was the third of four stops that unseasonably warm, clear day for their Blue Wall bus tour. Though all three governors lead political battlegrounds critical to Vice President Kamala Harris’s chance at winning the presidency, only Mr. Shapiro came within a whisper of being on the ticket that they are now trying to elect.But if there were any lingering resentments, or even disappointment, it was not obvious that day, nor is it evident in his punishing schedule of campaign appearances, interviews, advertising shoots, fund-raisers and behind-the-scenes outreach efforts for Ms. Harris and fellow Democrats.Mr. Shapiro, his voice straining for emphasis, stressed what he sees as at stake in the election, for the nation, for his state and for him personally.“I want to be really clear about something: This is not just about the politics of winning a race,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in Baldwin Township, a suburb nestled in the wooded hills just south of Pittsburgh.Speaking of his own experience repeatedly suing the Trump administration as the commonwealth’s attorney general and then battling the Trump campaign as it tried to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Shapiro called former President Donald J. Trump “a dangerous guy.”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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    With Election Day 2 Weeks Away, 15 Million Voters Have Already Cast a Ballot

    Since the pandemic, early voting has become a broadly accepted part of American elections. But it is difficult to glean partisan advantage.With two weeks until Election Day, more than 15 million people have already cast their ballots, the clearest sign yet that voting habits were forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic and that early voting has become a permanent feature of the American democratic process.While many people cast a mail-in ballot or voted early in the 2020 election out of necessity amid a dangerous pandemic, a lot of voters are choosing to vote early in this election, too. Some are taking advantage of new laws that expanded early voting options; others simply favor the process that exploded in popularity four years ago.Many states have set records for the first day of early voting. On Thursday, more than 353,000 ballots were cast in North Carolina, a record for the swing state still reeling from Hurricane Helene. On Friday, nearly 177,000 voters cast a ballot in Louisiana, a record for the deep-red state.The shift has been starkest in Georgia, where voters have set a daily record for in-person early voting nearly every day since polls opened last Tuesday. More than 1.5 million voters have already cast an early ballot in the critical battleground state.The persistent preference of many Americans to vote early — both by mail and in person — comes after the 2020 election prompted a sea change in voting habits for the country. With many fearful of voting in person during the pandemic, 65.6 million people voted by mail that year, and another 35.8 million voted early in person in an attempt to avoid large crowds.Yet as people flood early voting centers this time around, distilling a partisan advantage or what the early vote presages for overall turnout is difficult.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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    In Trump Ad, ‘Not a Thing That Comes to Mind’ Ties Harris to Biden’s Liabilities

    Kamala Harris’s hesitancy to put daylight between her and President Biden gave Donald Trump’s campaign a big opening.Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign is running this 30-second ad on television stations across the battleground states, spending more than $10 million on it over the past six days, according to AdImpact.Here’s a look at the ad, its accuracy and its major takeaway.On the ScreenThe ad opens with a shot of what appears to be migrants running near a border wall, beneath a headline blaring, “Illegal crossings surge,” citing an Associated Press article from last December. It then shows a man shopping in the produce section of a grocery store, under the words “Prices still rising,” citing CNBC last May. A clip of a missile strike emphasizes the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, under the headline “Global chaos,” attributed to The Wall Street Journal in March. Vice President Kamala Harris is then shown smiling as if in satisfaction, her hands folded at her chin.A clip plays from Ms. Harris’s Oct. 8 appearance on the ABC show “The View,” in which she is asked if she would have done something differently from President Biden, then responds, after blinking several times: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”The screen freezes on that frame, as new all-caps headlines reflect the narration: “What would change with Kamala? Nothing.” As a split screen seems to show Ms. Harris nodding along on the right, a clip of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 plays under the headline “More weakness.” An aerial view of a ground explosion plays under the headline “More war.” A crowd of what appear to be migrants is headlined “Welfare for illegals.” And a machine counting $100 bills is shown under a last headline: “Harris would raise taxes.”Mr. Trump is then shown, shot from below as he strides across an airport tarmac, waving to a rally crowd, shaking a blue-collar worker’s hand and showing off his signature on a piece of legislation, as more optimistic headlines flash by: “Middle-class tax cuts” and “Prices were lower.”Trump for President 2024We 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