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    ‘Oh thank God’: Democratic swing state voters feel relief after Biden drops out

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    For many Democratic swing state voters, Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election came as a relief.“Oh thank God,” said Cathy Gramze, a retired nurse who lives in the suburbs of Detroit. “My diagnosis has for a long time been that he cannot run again and I am not entirely sure that he should finish his term in office.”Gramze had worried about Biden’s fitness long before the debate. His 27 June performance merely confirmed what she had long feared. “A lot of the time he is the president we need, but some of the time he isn’t.”Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed on Sunday and who has earned the endorsement of most prominent Democratic elected officials, “needs to be the presidential nominee”, Gramze said.For more than a year, voters across the political spectrum have been saying they feel Biden, who is 81 years old, is too old to run for re-election. Those anxieties crescendoed in the wake of his first debate with Donald Trump, in which Trump lied repeatedly about a range of issues and Biden struggled to push back or even answer questions coherently. Following the debate, more than 30 Democrats in Congress called on Biden to end his presidential campaign, with the powerful former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly ratcheting up the pressure on Biden to drop out of the race last week.In the last few weeks, polling has increasingly shown Biden lagging in critical swing states, with large majorities of Democratic party voters indicating they believe he should not renew his campaign. Recent national polls also show Trump losing to the vice-president, whose path to victory, like Biden’s, will involve winning the critical states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.Not only Democrats welcomed the announcement. Dan Rose, who has long supported Trump, said he was glad Biden pulled out of the race.“He doesn’t have the caliber we need in a president,” said Rose, who said he worries about the economy. Rose, who is from De Pere, Wisconsin, said he will still support Trump but felt Biden had made the right choice in ending his campaign. “The Democrats might be in a pickle now,” he added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the Democrats are in a pickle, few grassroots party members expressed concern following Biden’s announcement.“How courageous and brave of him to do that,” said Chris Fleming, who is retired and volunteers for a group organizing rural Democratic voters in Wisconsin. This year, Fleming’s husband had $15,000 in student debt cancelled by the Biden administration – which she said left her feeling grateful for Biden. “I have nothing but respect for him,” she said.Jake Knashishu, an attorney from Decatur, Georgia, said Biden’s departure from the race “relieved, for the most part, concerns about him being able to really present himself as an effective alternative to Trump”. Biden’s withdrawal gives Democrats a better shot at Georgia, Knanishu said.He had spoken with a neighbor on Sunday who “saw Joe Biden as kind of Ruth Bader Ginsburg 2.0 – holding on and refusing to pass the torch and maintain stability”, said Knashishu. “She just feels relieved, because she knows that at least we’re not going to have that happen again.” More

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      Hundreds mourn Pennsylvania man killed in Trump assassination attempt

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      Hundreds of people who gathered to remember the former fire chief fatally shot at a weekend rally for former president Donald Trump were urged to find “unity” as the area in rural Pennsylvania sought to recover from the assassination attempt.Wednesday’s public event was the first of two to memorialize and celebrate Corey Comperatore’s life. The second, a visitation for friends, was planned for Thursday at Laube Hall in Freeport.Outside the Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, where the vigil was held for Comperatore, a sign read “Rest in Peace Corey, Thank You For Your Service” with the logo of his fire company.On the rural road to the auto racing track – lined with cornfields, churches and industrial plants – a sign outside a local credit union read: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Comperatore family.”View image in fullscreenComperatore, 50, had worked as a project and tooling engineer, was an army reservist and had spent many years as a volunteer firefighter after serving as chief, according to his obituary.He died on Saturday during the attempt on Trump’s life at the rally in Butler. Comperatore spent the final moments of his life shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, officials said.A statement issued on Thursday by Comperatore’s family described him as “our beloved father and husband, and a friend to so many throughout the Butler region”.“Our family is finding comfort and peace through the heartfelt messages of encouragement from people around the world, through the support of our church and community, and most of all through the strength of God,” the statement said.Vigil organizer Kelly McCollough told the crowd on Wednesday that the event was not political in nature, adding that there was no room for hate or personal opinions other than an outpouring of support for the Comperatore family.“Tonight is about unity,” McCollough said. “We need each other. We need to feel love. We need to feel safe. We need clarity in this chaos. We need strength. We need healing.”Dan Ritter, who gave a eulogy, said he bought Comperatore’s childhood home in 1993, sparking a friendship that grew with their shared values of family, Christian faith and politics.“Corey loved his family and was always spending time with them,” Ritter said. “This past Saturday was supposed to be one of those days for him. He did what a good father would do. He protected those he loved. He’s a true hero for us all.”Jeff Lowers of the Freeport fire department trained with Comperatore and said at the vigil that he always had a smile on his face.Afterward, Heidi Powell, a family friend, read remarks from Comperatore’s high school economics teacher, who could not attend the vigil.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What made Corey truly extraordinary was his indomitable spirit, unyielding courage, his unflappable optimism,” the teacher, Mark Wyant, wrote.Comperatore’s pastor, Jonathan Fehl of the Cabot Methodist church, said the family “has been humbled by the way this community has rallied around them”, and by the support they have received from people around the world.The vigil concluded with people in the crowd lighting candles and raising cellphones, glow sticks and lighters as Comperatore’s favorite song – I Can Only Imagine, by the Christian rock band MercyMe – played while pictures of him and his family were shown on a screen.Two other people were injured at the rally: David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township. As of Wednesday night, both had been upgraded to serious but stable condition, according to a spokesperson with Allegheny Health Network.Joseph Feldman, an attorney for Copenhaver, said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Copenhaver by phone.“He seems to be in good spirits, but he also understands the gravity of the situation,” Feldman said. “And he’s deeply saddened about what has occurred, and he’s deeply sympathetic” to the other victims and their families.Feldman said Copenhaver suffered “life-altering injuries”, declining to go into detail. He said Copenhaver’s priority is to “keep up with the medical treatment he’s receiving and hopefully be released at some point”.In a statement, Dutch’s family thanked the “greater western Pennsylvania community and countless others across the country and world” for the incredible outpouring of prayers and well wishes.Trump suffered an ear injury but was not seriously hurt and has been participating this week in the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. More

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      in US Politics

      Focus on Bethel Park as classmates describe suspected Trump gunman

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      In Bethel Park, where the man who is suspected of opening fire at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Saturday lived with his mother and sister, the houses are small and built of brick, Walmart and Target form central social hubs, and moms watch over their children at a junior league baseball park next to a tributary of the Allegheny River.The attempted assassination of the Republican former president just 45 miles north has put a focus on Bethel Park, as investigators attempt to establish the motivations of the 20-year-old shooter.Authorities on Sunday identified the suspect as Thomas Matthew Crooks. Officials said they believe Crooks acted alone. But so far, they have not been able to uncover a motivation that drove the young man to unleash a hail of bullets at Trump, wounding the former president and killing a former fire chief who was shielding his daughters.The FBI said it would continue to investigate the attack as an attempted assassination and an act of domestic terrorism.“The information that we have indicates that the shooter acted alone,” said Kevin Rojek, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “At present, we have not identified an ideology associated with the subject, but I want to remind everyone that we’re still very early in this investigation.”The FBI said Crook had not been on their radar. Since his identification, a fragmentary portrait has emerged, almost by virtue of its omissions. He was employed as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The nursing home’s administrator Marcie Grimm said Crooks “performed his job without concern and his background check was clean”.View image in fullscreenNor have there been significant clues found in his political affiliations. He had registered Republican but had also donated $15 to the liberal ActBlue political action committee on Joe Biden’s inauguration day. He had no past criminal cases against him, according to public court records.Claire, a young woman who had known Crooks through his elder sister and who did not provide a last name, said she could not quite believe the boy she had once knew had attempted to assassinate a US president.“He’s so young to want to go do that,” she said.She said Crooks had had a difficult time socially. “He wasn’t the most attractive-looking and I don’t think he did sports that can add appeal,’” she said.Former classmates who spoke to other news outlets filled in other memories. Some described Crooks as smart and shy. Others spoke of a long history of being bullied. An unnamed former classmate told the New York Post that Crooks was “a loner”. He said: “He probably had a friend group, but not many friends.”View image in fullscreenJameson Myers said that Crooks had tried out for the school rifle team but had not made the roster. “He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered, like, dangerous,” Myers told ABC News. Jameson Murphy told the Post that Crooks was “a comically bad shot”.Max R Smith said to the Philadelphia Inquirer that Crooks “definitely was conservative”. “It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate,” Smith said.With a nation on edge, establishing Crook’s motives is seen as a key to unlocking larger issues of deep political discord.“We’re looking into his background, his day-to-day activities, any writings and social media posts that might help us identify what led to this shooting,”, the FBI’s Rojek said. “We have not seen anything threatening at this time”. More

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      Biden urges US to reject ‘extremism and fury’ after Trump assassination attempt

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      Joe Biden on Sunday forcefully condemned political violence and appealed to a nation still reeling from the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to reject “extremism and fury”.In a primetime address from the Oval Office, Biden said Americans must strive for “national unity,” warning that the political rhetoric in the US had gotten “too heated” as passions rise in the final months before the November presidential election.“There is no place in America for this kind of violence – for any violence. Ever. Period. No exception,” the president said. “We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”Biden’s plea for Americans to “cool it down” came as Trump said that he would use his speech at the Republican national convention to bring “the whole country, even the whole world, together.”“The speech will be a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner, adding that the reality of what had happened was “just setting in.”Biden ordered an independent review into how a gunman was able to get on to a roof overlooking a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, and fire multiple shots at the former president from an “elevated position” outside of the venue. The FBI warned on Sunday that online threats of political violence, already heightened, had spiked since the shooting.The attack, which is being investigated as an attempted assassination and a potential act of domestic terrorism, left Trump injured at the ear, but it killed a spectator, identified as a former fire chief, and critically injured two others.“We cannot, we must not go down this road in America,” Biden added, citing a rising tide of political violence that included the assault on the US Capitol, the attack on the husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan.Biden also praised Corey Comperatore, the 50-year-old former fire chief who was killed as he dove to shield his wife and daughter. Comperatore, Biden said, was a “hero” and extended his “deepest condolences” to his family.Investigators were still searching for the motive of the 20-year-old suspect, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.More than 24 hours after the attack, the investigation into how Crooks managed to open fire, reportedly using a AR-15 bought legally by his father, at the rally remained fluid. Investigators have seized several of Crooks’s devices and are starting to piece together his communications before the event. Authorities said they had discovered potential explosive devices in Crooks’s car.Meanwhile, details have begun to emerge about the suspect, who was shot and killed by Secret Service counter-snipers.As a junior in high school, Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee aligned with the Democratic party, but eight months later he registered to vote as a member of the Republican party.Former classmates described the man as a smart, and quiet student. One former classmate told Reuters that Crooks had not shown a particular interest in politics in high school, and would rather would discuss computers and games.“He was super smart. That’s what really kind of threw me off was, this was, like, a really, really smart kid, like he excelled,” the classmate told Reuters. “Nothing crazy ever came up in any conversation.”Another young man who described himself as a former classmate of Crooks at Bethel Park high school spoke with reporters on Sunday, recalling how his ex-companion “was bullied almost every day” on campus.View image in fullscreenThe president, who was at church in Delaware during the time of the shooting, cut short his weekend and returned to Washington to confront the situation, arriving at the White House after midnight. He and Trump spoke late on Saturday.Biden spoke briefly from the White House earlier on Sunday, delivering a similar message from the Roosevelt room after receiving a briefing on the investigation in the Situation Room.In those comments, Biden asked the public not to “make assumptions” about the shooter’s motives or affiliations, as conspiracy theories and misinformation swirl online.The Republican national convention will begin on Monday in Milwaukee, where Trump is expected to receive a hero’s welcome by the party’s rank and file, rattled but defiant. Trump, who arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday evening, is not scheduled to address the convention until Thursday evening, after he is formally nominated as the party’s nominee.Speaking to the New York Post while en route to Milwaukee, Trump said he was “supposed to be dead”, adding: “The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle.”Biden’s remarks came at a fragile moment in the election, a re-match between the president and Trump already defined by exceptional tumult and deep political polarization.For weeks, the president has been fighting calls from elected officials in his own party to abandon his re-election campaign after a disastrous debate performance last month that underscored concerns about his age and fitness for office. The 81-year-old Biden has insisted he will not be pushed out as the party’s nominee, but has done little to quell the swirl of doubt that he is the best candidate to defeat Trump in November.Trump earlier this year became the first former president to be convicted of felonies, and faces several more legal challenges related to his role in the 6 January Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the results of a lost election. At least one Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, has called for the criminal cases against Trump to be dropped in light of the assassination attempt.In his remarks on Sunday evening, Biden was realistic about the challenge of heeding his words, accepting that national unity was “the most elusive of goals” in an America deeply divided into camps. Already, Republicans were blaming the violence on the president, arguing that Biden’s attempts to portray Trump as a threat to American democracy helped fuel a toxic political environment.Yet the attack has drawn condemnation from Republican and Democratic officials across the country as well as world leaders.“We need to turn the temperature down,” House speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday, in an interview on CNN.The president acknowledged that he and Trump offer drastically competing visions, and that their supporters diverged sharply. In Milwaukee, Republicans would offer sustained critiques of Biden’s record, the president said, while he planned to travel on Monday to Nevada, where he would rally supporters around his agenda. Because of the attack, he postponed a trip to Texas, where he was scheduled to speak at the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B Johnson presidential library.“We debate and disagree. We compare and contrast the character of the candidates, the records, the issues, the agenda, the vision for America,” he said, arguing that the contest should be settled at the “ballot box” and “not with bullets”.After the attack on Saturday night, the Biden campaign reportedly moved to pull down its television ads “as quickly as possible” and pause all “outbound communications”.“Politics must never be a literal battlefield or, god forbid, a literal killing field,” Biden emphasized in his address on Sunday night. He urged Americans to “get out of our silos” and echo chambers where misinformation is rampant.“Remember: though we may disagree,” he said, “we are not enemies.” More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump shooting: authorities attempt to determine motive as suspect’s devices seized

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      FBI officials said on Sunday they were assessing the shooting of Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday as a possible domestic terrorism attack and assassination attempt, as federal investigators executed a flurry of warrants in trying to determine a motive.The officials said there was no evidence that the 20-year-old suspected gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was operating as part of a larger group. But his reasons for scaling the roof of a building overlooking the rally to shoot at Trump remained unclear.By Sunday evening, dozens of federal investigators with the FBI, the ATF and all three US attorney’s offices in Pennsylvania were involved in an expanding investigation that had seized several of Crooks’ devices and started to piece together some of his communications before the rally.The other major development was the discovery of potential explosive devices in Crooks’ car. Former prosecutors suggested that those could indicate Crooks expected to survive the shooting.The devices and the AR-15-style rifle, which officials said was bought legally, were sent to the bureau’s lab in Quantico, Virginia.The ATF identified the owner of the gun through its national tracing center and using business records from a gun dealer. The results of the trace were provided to the FBI within 30 minutes, the agency’s spokesperson Katrina Mastropasqua said.The shooting at the campaign rally has raised the stakes and the significance of Trump’s appearance at the Republican national convention starting Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he will formally accept the GOP nomination for president and will unveil his running-mate.It also cast the 2024 presidential race into uncertainty. The campaigns for both Trump and Joe Biden pulled back on political functions over the weekend, as they moved to grapple with the immediate fallout of the situation.View image in fullscreenIn Washington, Biden spoke with Trump on a call described by a source familiar as “brief and very respectful” before receiving a briefing from top US officials including the attorney general, Merrick Garland, the FBI director Christopher Wray, the Secretary for Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.In brief remarks to the nation from the White House, Biden called the assassination attempt “contrary to everything we stand for us as a nation, everything. It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not American. And we cannot allow this to happen”.Biden said he had demanded a national security review that he would share publicly, and that he had directed the US secret service to review security arrangements for the Republican convention.Later, in a primetime address, the president called for unity. The shooting “calls on all of us to take a step back,” Biden said. “We stand for an America of decency and grace … politics must never be a killing field.”Trump, for his part, huddled with senior advisers at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, keeping to his planned schedule as he prepared for the Republican convention, The Guardian previously reported. Trump’s next appearance is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday in Milwaukee, where he arrived on Sunday evening.“Based on yesterday’s terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or a potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else,” Trump wrote.The assassination attempt placed the secret service under intense scrutiny, with lawmakers from both parties moving to open investigations into the security arrangements and calling for the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to account for the decisions.At issue remains how a single man with a semi-automatic rifle managed to access a roof 140 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.The House homeland security committee ordered the secret service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to produce documents and communications related to the security apparatus for the rally and whether any requests for more resources had been rebuffed. More

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      in Elections

      What We Know About the Trump Rally Shooting Victims So Far

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      The Trump rally shooting that sent shock waves across the nation killed a father of two and critically wounded two other men on Saturday evening.The victims, all adult men, include a longtime volunteer firefighter and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. All were from the Pittsburgh area, according to the Pennsylvania State Police. One died at the scene, while the two critically wounded victims were transported to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and were in critical but stable condition, officials said. As more details began to emerge on Sunday, tributes and prayers for the victims and their families were pouring in, including from officials such as Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh, and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.Here’s what we know so far about the victims.Corey ComperatoreCorey Comperatore, 50, was fatally shot in the head after he dove to cover family members who accompanied him to the rally, according to the governor. Governor Shapiro said on Sunday that Mr. Comperatore “died a hero.” He added, “Corey was the very best of us.”Mr. Comperatore was a father of two from Sarver, Pa., who worked at a plastic manufacturing company and loved fishing. He spent several years as a volunteer firefighter, at one point serving as the chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company. He attended nearby Cabot Church, where he was selected as a future trustee in 2021, helping oversee issues like church property and insurance.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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      Trump rally shooting: what we know about the suspected gunman

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      The early portrait that has emerged of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who authorities say tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the state on Saturday before secret service agents shot him to death is a complicated and so far sparse one.Thomas Matthew Crooks resided in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white, generally affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. Public records show he shared a home with parents who were licensed behavioral care counselors. Those same records contain no mention of any criminal or traffic citations – as well as any financial problems such as foreclosures.Actions that Crooks took late in his time as a student at Bethel Park high school offered virtually no hint of his political leanings. He was a junior at the school, and it was the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency, when Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee aligned with the president’s Democratic party. Public records show his father is a registered Republican and his mother a registered Democrat.Yet eight months later, early in his senior year, Crooks registered to vote as a member of the Republican party, led by Trump since 2016. And he had left his affiliation unchanged when he voted in the November 2022 midterm elections, which took place months after he graduated from Bethel Park high, where he was among a group of students to receive a $500 National Math and Science Initiative “star award”.A former classmate of Crooks’ said he had not shown any particular interest in politics in high school, but they would discuss computers and games. “He was super smart. That’s what really kind of threw me off was, this was, like, a really, really smart kid, like he excelled,” the classmate told Reuters. “Nothing crazy ever came up in any conversation.”Another young man who described himself as a former schoolmate of Crooks at Bethel Park high school spoke with reporters Sunday, recalling how his ex-companion “was bullied almost every day” on campus.The man told NBC News and other outlets that Crooks’ penchant for wearing “hunting” and “military” clothes – and eating alone at lunch – drew derision from his peers, who considered him a “loner” and an “outcast”.“You know how kids are these days – they’re going to see someone like that and they’re going to target him because they think it’s funny or whatever,” the man said to journalists.While the man made clear he wasn’t saying any of those experiences fueled Saturday’s assassination attempt, he added: “It’s honestly kind of sad … He was bullied so much.”ABC News reported that two former classmates of Crooks told the outlet that he was rejected from their school’s rifle club because he wasn’t a very skilled shot. School officials had not immediately confirmed those recollections.Crooks reportedly had an account on Discord, an online chat app that began as a space for gamers but gained notoriety in part because the white supremacist who fatally shot 10 people at grocery in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo posted on the platform about his plans to attack the store.Discord told the gaming news outlet Kotaku that the account that appeared to be linked to Crooks “was rarely utilized”.“We have no evidence that it was used to plan this incident or discuss his political views,” said the company’s statement to Kotaku. In addition to pledging to cooperate with law enforcement, the statement continued: “Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence.”Crooks thrust himself into the center of the political world on Saturday when he went about an hour north of Bethel Park and got atop the roof of a bottle manufacturing plant in Butler county, Pennsylvania. Nearby, the former US president was speaking at a supporters’ rally as he pursues a return to the White House in November.Multiple people who were listening to Trump’s speech outside the rally venue said they spotted Crooks as he brought an AR-style rifle to the plant rooftop and took aim in the direction of the former president. But they said officers did not immediately react to their warnings – assertions that prompted the local district attorney, Richard Goldinger, to tell CNN that it was urgent for investigators to figure out how Crooks “would’ve gotten to the location where he was”.Crooks ultimately managed to fire several shots toward the stage where Trump was speaking, which was less than 500ft away (152.4 meters) away. One spectator was killed, and two others were critically wounded. Trump reported that a bullet “pierced the upper part” of his right ear, which was visibly bloodied – but he was otherwise “fine”, he said after Secret Service agents whisked him away from the scene.Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Secret Service said, agents returned fire at Crooks and killed him.View image in fullscreenABC News cited multiple law enforcement sources who told the outlet that the rifle the gunman fired on Saturday had been purchased legally by the suspect’s father, Matthew Crooks. Investigators arrived at that conclusion after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted an urgent trace on the weapon, according to the network.Separately, the Associated Press reported that authorities had discovered bomb-making materials in Crooks’ home and car, which was parked near the site of Saturday’s Trump rally.The Wall Street Journal added that police received multiple reports of suspicious packages near where Crooks was, prompting officials to dispatch bomb technicians.Graphic pictures of the scene circulating on social media showed Crooks had been clad in a T-shirt branded with the name of a YouTube channel dedicated to providing content on guns and demolition.Late Saturday, the channel’s host reposted a picture on Instagram of law enforcement officers standing over Crooks’ body – with part of the T-shirt’s wording visible – and wrote: “What the hell”.The FBI identified Crooks as Trump’s would-be assassin late on Saturday. On Sunday, the bureau said all available information suggested Crooks “acted alone” and there were no immediate “public safety concerns” about a larger plot.The FBI said it had not yet uncovered a motive for the apparent assassination attempt, or whether Crooks adhered to any specific ideologies. Crooks’ social media profile does not contain threatening language, authorities said on Sunday. Investigators have not found evidence of mental health issues.FBI officials told the AP that Crooks’ family was cooperating with their investigation – part of which also hoped to determine how he took the rifle he fired Saturday.Bethel Park skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, where Crooks was employed as a dietary aide, said it was “shocked and saddened” to hear he was responsible for Saturday’s shooting.“His background check was clean,” said a statement from the facility, which also condemned “all acts of violence”. More

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      Pennsylvania town reckons with Trump rally shooting: ‘The rhetoric has to stop’

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      Amid tight security and blocked-off roads, the small town of Butler, Pennsylvania, was attempting to come to terms with becoming the site of a major attempted US political assassination on Sunday.Many went to church to make sense of events. At one, Father Kevin Fazio called on the congregation packed into pews to “pray for our nation”, but most of his flock seemed subdued by the violence that had come to town.Less than a quarter of a mile away, the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds remains a crime scene, the gantries that hang massive stars and stripes and concert-sized speakers over Donald Trump’s rallies still erect, and the roof of AGR Industries, from where a gunman took aim at the former president, was clearly visible.Many inhabitants of Butler said they were deeply shaken. A farming town 20 miles north of Pittsburgh is typical of rural Trump country. Farms are being sold off for new housing developments, but the roads into town are still dotted with farm stands and signs urging Christian values: “In a world where you can be anything – be kind,” read one.But Butler is now a marker of America’s periodic turns to political violence.Trump’s rallies have long been carnivals, part politics and an expression of shared rightwing values and entertainment. That changed on Saturday evening, when shots rang out. The former US president reached to his ear, ducked behind the podium and was engulfed by a scrum of Secret Service agents, only to emerge seconds later, bloodied, with his fist in the air and mouthing: “Fight! Fight!”View image in fullscreenOutside a Sunoco gas station near the fairgrounds, an older man come for coffee and a breakfast sandwich and said he believed his son-in-law Greg Smith – the man who described seeing the shooter doing a bear-crawl along the rooftop, rifle in hand, to the BBC – had saved Trump’s life.“He was yelling at the shooter, causing him to fire sooner and miss his mark while the police were doing nothing,” he said, recounting his experience as a deer hunter, where presence of mind was required to aim and fire accurately.Another man at the store, who had been at the rally, said it was not the shooting itself that caused panic in the crowds, as many believed the gunshots were merely fire-crackers going off. But panic began to take hold when a section of the crowd, unaware of the shooting, pushed back on those at the front trying to flee.“People were falling on top of each other,” he said. “The elders who fell couldn’t get up, the kids were screaming. My family is all shook up.”Another man, Randy, said but it was a blessing that a summer heatwave had many kept people away from the fair and there hadn’t been a stampede. But the political temperature in the country, he said, had made it almost inevitable that “you’re going to get a crazy doing something crazy”.“The rhetoric in this country is sad, it’s terrible. It has to stop,” he said.The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, travelled to Butler to express condolences for the family of Corey Comperatore, former fire-chief a nearby township, who was killed in the shooting as he tried to protect his daughters from the gunfire.Shapiro called on Americans to “be firm” and to “advocate for” their beliefs but peacefully. “Every day when I’m out in Pennsylvania, I see the best of Pennsylvanians,” he said. “Those who love their neighbors even if they have differences.”Richard Goldinger, district attorney of Butler county, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “it’s embarrassing that this would happen here. This hasn’t happened in more than 40 years – to have an attempt on a president’s life.”View image in fullscreenOthers pointed to the security failings ahead of Trump’s appearance on stage. Evan, a young man who said he was not a Trump supporter, said security at the fairgrounds had been talked about in the town for days before the event – particularly the vulnerability of the surrounding buildings.“The Secret Service dropped the ball big time,” he said.Bobbie Barbary, passing though from South Bend, Indiana, had another perspective: “America has a disease – resentment, hatred and racism,” he said.Butler may mark an end to the freewheeling Trump roadshow and his campaign rallies will need to be reined in for his safety and that of others. But that’s not how it looked 12 hours earlier, when the Butler Eagle newspaper predicted Trump’s campaign stop was “an opportunity to put a small town on the map in a contentious presidential election”.By coming to Butler, the paper said, the rally – two days before the Republican convention kicks off in Milwaukee – would be a return to a different, older style of campaigning of going to where the voters are, in this case a farm show, that focused on increasing support among undecided people that Trump needs to carry the state in November.But for some in the wake of the shooting, Saturday’s events were now a sign that some aspects of modern American political life were better kept at a distance. The suspected shooter, from an affluent neighborhood just 30 miles (48km) away, had brought not only a rifle to kill Trump but explosives too were found in his car and his home.Yet an exact motive remains a mystery. Crooks was both a registered Republican and a very minor donor to a progressive cause. His social media footprint was negligible and betrayed little of his beliefs.“It’s America,” said a checkout worker at the town farmers’ market. “All kinds of crazy people out there.” More