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    Trump Calls for Ending Taxes on Overtime Pay in Tucson Speech

    Although it had been billed as an event focused on housing and the economy, former President Donald J. Trump spent much of a meandering speech on Thursday in Tucson, Ariz., venting his grievances over his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.But when he eventually did turn to the section on economic issues, Mr. Trump made a new proposal as he sought to win the votes of working- and middle-class Americans: He called for eliminating taxes on overtime pay.“The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them,” Mr. Trump said. “Those are the people that really work. They’re police officers, nurses, factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers and machine operators.”Mr. Trump’s speech was his first campaign event since a debate performance on Tuesday night that some of his allies have admitted fell short. Mr. Trump insisted to around 2,000 supporters in Tucson that it was a “monumental victory” for him that rendered the need for a subsequent debate unnecessary.“Because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate,” Mr. Trump said, repeating a declaration he made earlier on his social media platform, Truth Social.Even as he maintained that he had triumphed, Mr. Trump spent significant time during his speech bashing the debate’s host, ABC News, and its moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis.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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    ‘Chaos’ Reigns!

    Is the world on the brink of chaos, or is the chaos already here? Some commentators view the presidential campaign as a referendum on chaos. “I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”— Taylor Swift, endorsing Kamala Harris Others predict that the election […] More

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    If Harris Wins North Carolina, This County Will Be the Tipping Point

    For 16 years, the state has been a heartbreaker for Democrats, and so has Mecklenburg County — a reliably blue area that just hasn’t been blue enough.Ask any Democrat knocking doors, hosting debate watch parties or making phone calls in the blue pockets of North Carolina over the last several weeks, and they’ll say 2024 feels a lot like 2008.That was the year Barack Obama became the first Democrat to win the state in more than three decades. No presidential candidate for the Democrats has managed it since, but an outpouring of excitement for Vice President Kamala Harris has gotten their hopes up.Democrats eager to avoid another disappointment point to the state’s biggest metropolitan area — and the source of the party’s biggest recent heartbreaks — as the key.Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte and its suburbs, is a reliably blue region that, in the 16 years since Mr. Obama’s first and only victory there, just hasn’t been blue enough. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. lost the state by under two percentage points, his narrowest losing margin that year, and a key culprit was low voter enthusiasm and an underfunded county party operation. Two years later, when Cheri Beasley fell short in her Senate bid, her Democratic allies pointed to Mecklenburg’s record low turnout.Ms. Harris will visit Charlotte and Greensboro on Thursday in a trip that underlines both her campaign’s increased confidence in their North Carolina prospects and serves as a soft endorsement of her party’s strategy there: run up the score on friendly turf.“To impact the state, Mecklenburg has to overperform,” said Aimy Steele, a veteran organizer who leads the New North Carolina Project aimed at mobilizing voters of color across the state. Democratic candidates in the past, she said, “have not nurtured their voters as much as they probably should or could over time and over time, some of those voters have fallen off and not voted regularly.”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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    Al debatir con Trump, las expresiones de Harris fueron un arma

    Serena y sin perder la compostura, Kamala Harris usó sus palabras, y sobre todo su lenguaje corporal, para desestabilizar a Donald Trump, provocar su ira y luego simplemente dejar que se hiciera daño a sí mismo.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Ella lo miró con una ceja arqueada. Un suspiro calmado. Una mano en la barbilla. Una risa. Una mirada compasiva. Un movimiento de cabeza desdeñoso.Desde los primeros momentos del debate contra Donald Trump, Kamala Harris explotó hábilmente la mayor debilidad de su oponente.No se centró en su historial. Tampoco en sus políticas divisivas ni en sus múltiples declaraciones incendiarias.En vez de eso, se enfocó en una parte mucho más básica de él: su ego.En sus mítines, en sus serviles redes sociales y cuando está rodeado de aduladores en Mar-a-Lago, a Trump nadie lo cuestiona, nadie le discute, nadie se burla de él.Eso cambió durante 90 minutos el martes en Filadelfia, cuando la mujer que nunca antes se había reunido con él logró, poco a poco, penetrar su seguridad y provocar su enfado y su ira.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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    Certification of Election Will Get Extra Security to Try to Prevent Another Capitol Attack

    In an effort to prevent another attack on the Capitol, the Department of Homeland Security has declared Jan. 6, 2025, to be a special event that requires added security measures when Congress meets to certify the winner of the 2024 presidential election.The designation of a National Special Security Event, announced by Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the director of homeland security, on Wednesday means that significant federal, state and local resources will be directed toward the Capitol a few months from now to increase the security protections and a comprehensive security plan will be put in place.The Secret Service will oversee the security plan.“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” Eric Ranaghan, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division, said in a statement, adding that Secret Service officials, in collaboration with federal, state and local partners, “are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”The Capitol was overrun on Jan. 6, 2021, by a pro-Trump mob that sought to halt the counting of the Electoral College votes from the 2020 election to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s victory. The Capitol Police force was caught unprepared for the mob violence, even though Mr. Trump had summoned the crowd to Washington days earlier and promised a “wild” rally.After the attack, during which more than 150 police officers were injured and several people died, the Government Accountability Office recommended consideration of the special security designation. More

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    Trump Dismisses Taylor Swift’s Harris-Walz Endorsement

    Former President Donald J. Trump was not happy that Taylor Swift endorsed his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, though perhaps he was not surprised.“She seems to always endorse a Democrat. And she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday morning on Fox News. Ms. Swift, one of the most successful musical artists in the world, endorsed President Biden in 2020. Mr. Trump said in the interview that he preferred Brittany Mahomes, a fitness entrepreneur who is married to Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and was reported to have liked a social media post supporting Mr. Trump. Ms. Swift and Ms. Mahomes are friends, as are Mr. Mahomes and his teammate, Travis Kelce, who is dating Ms. Swift.“I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s a big Trump fan. I was not a Taylor Swift fan.”“I think Brittany’s great,” he went on. “Brittany got a lot of news last week. She’s a big MAGA fan. That’s the one I like much better than Taylor Swift.”Ms. Mahomes has not endorsed Mr. Trump.Ms. Swift’s endorsement disgruntled a number of Trump supporters, including Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, who responded on X, the social media platform he owns.“Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Mr. Musk wrote.Ms. Swift had signed her endorsement on Instagram with the words “childless cat lady,” a reference to past comments by Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate. More

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    After Debate, Trump and Harris Meet Again at Sept. 11 Memorial

    Setting aside the rancor of their debate, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump met again Wednesday morning at the hallowed ground of the World Trade Center site, shaking hands and standing nearly side by side to mark the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.It was a striking tableau of political unity less than 12 hours after the end of their contentious and personal debate — potentially the only one between them before the November election. Ms. Harris stood with President Biden while Mr. Trump stood with his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg served as a human buffer.Mr. Bloomberg appeared to facilitate the handshake. Ms. Harris could be seen saying “thank you” to Mr. Trump.The moment was a throwback to the sense of national unity that emerged in the months after hijackers staged the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history. It recalled 2008, when Barack Obama and John McCain, then rivals for the presidency, came together at the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony in Lower Manhattan in the final weeks of their contest.Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance wore matching blue suits and red ties. Ms. Harris chatted amiably with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader.Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump were set to lay wreaths in Shanksville, Pa., where passengers aboard Flight 93 brought down their plane before it could reach its intended target, the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The president and vice president were also expected to participate in a similar event at the Pentagon, where hijackers crashed a fourth airliner in the 2001 attacks. More

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    Harris and Trump Bet on Their Own Sharply Contrasting Views of America

    Former President Donald J. Trump is gambling that Americans are as angry as he is, while Vice President Kamala Harris hopes voters are exhausted by the Trump era and ready to move on.Donald J. Trump’s America is a grim place, a nation awash in marauding immigrants stealing American jobs and eating American cats and dogs, a country devastated economically, humiliated internationally and perched on the cliff’s edge of an apocalyptic World War III.Kamala Harris’s America is a weary but hopeful place, a nation fed up with the chaos of the Trump years and sick of all the drama and divisiveness, a country embarrassed by a crooked stuck-in-the-past former president facing prison time and eager for a new generation of leadership.These two visions of America on display during the first and possibly only presidential debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump on Tuesday night encapsulated the gambles that each candidate is taking in this hotly contested campaign. Mr. Trump is betting on anger and Ms. Harris on exhaustion. Mr. Trump is trying to repackage and resell his “American carnage” theme eight years later, while Ms. Harris is appealing to those ready to leave that in the past.The question is who has a better read on the American psyche eight weeks before the final ballots are cast. For the past two decades, most Americans have told pollsters that they believe the country is on the wrong track, a prolonged period of national disenchantment that Mr. Trump has successfully channeled throughout his tumultuous political career. But Ms. Harris argues that Mr. Trump is the one who wants to take the nation back down a path to nowhere.“She’s destroying this country,” Mr. Trump declared at one point during the debate. It was a line he recycled in one form or another 13 times in all — she or the Democrats destroying the country, the economy, the energy industry.“Let’s turn the page and move forward,” Ms. Harris said for her part. She turned pages or moved forward at least five other times. “Frankly,” she added, “the American people are exhausted with this same old tired playbook.”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