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      Pennsylvania crucial to White House hopes, Trump says at campaign rally

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      Donald Trump returned to Pennsylvania, telling his rally attendees that their state was critical to his ability to win back the White House and encouraging them to turn out to vote, though he also called early voting “stupid stuff”.“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said, soon after taking the stage more than 45 minutes later than scheduled. “It’s very simple.”Pennsylvania swung for Joe Biden in 2020, delivering its 20 electoral votes and helping Biden secure the victory in one of the few states that help decide US elections. This year, polls on average have shown Vice-President Kamala Harris with a slight lead over Trump – though the state is clearly in play, and both candidates are campaigning through it frequently in the final two months before November.Trump has held his signature rallies significantly less this year than he did in 2016, Axios recently reported, which said his campaign promises Trump will ramp up the rallies in the final stretch. Earlier in the day, Trump listened to farmers talk about the problems they’re facing and boosted his ideas about imposing tariffs on foreign countries as a way to improve economics in the US.While he’s on the road for large rallies less, he’s increasingly known for his frequent digressions, a longtime fixture of Trump’s speaking style that appear to be increasing this year. At the rally at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, he hopped around at breakneck pace and was difficult to follow. When coherent, he painted a dark vision of America under Democratic rule and starkly laid out what he would do if he won, including mass deportations.Trump has started defending his meandering rambles as a storytelling technique called “the weave” – a sign of his oratory brilliance. Critics say his tangents about bacon sales or Hannibal Lecter, and his defense of them as intentional and smart, show a salesman trying to rebrand his disarray.After starting on claims that Harris would turn the US into Venezuela at Monday’s rally, Trump then moved into “where they cure the tar”, saying: “For the environmentalists, you know where they cure the tar, where they take the tar and they make it into beautiful oil, Houston, Texas, and it all goes flying up in the air.”Trump joked that he nearly called Pennsylvania a “state” rather than a commonwealth, saving himself from a gaffe that he claimed would invite negative headlines. He caught himself before calling it a state, though, because “I’m cognitively very strong.” He also called Harris “a very dumb person”.“Winston Churchill was this great speaker – great,” he said at one point. “I get much bigger crowds than him, but nobody ever says I’m a great speaker.”Despite his nonstop verbal wandering, he bragged about his lack of a script: “Isn’t it nice to have a president that doesn’t have to use a teleprompter?”He repeated a spate of false claims, such as that crime is up. Crime is down. He alleged he won the 2020 election by millions of votes. He lost. He wove an alternate reality where wars between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas do not exist because he had won in 2020.View image in fullscreenHe lashed out at Biden and Harris. He said he was again calling Biden “sleepy Joe”, regressing back to that insult instead of “crooked Joe” because he is not smart and is not acting as president any more. Harris, for her part, is a “very dumb person”, Trump said, and cannot answer basic questions.He brought up a recent interview Harris did with Oprah Winfrey, who Trump claimed “used to love me until I decided to run for politics”. He said some people believe former president Barack Obama, who Trump called Barack Hussein Obama with an emphasis on his middle name, is leading the country instead of Biden. And he surfaced the unproven claim that Harris did not actually work at McDonald’s as a student, something that recently has irked him as rightwing accounts spread rumors questioning her fast-food work history.“I’m going to go to a McDonald’s next week,” Trump said. “I’m going to go to a McDonald’s and I’m going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is.”He brought up abortion, a key liability for Trump and other Republicans after the overturning of Roe v Wade. Several states have direct ballot measures that would protect access to abortion, and Democrats have made abortion access a major plank of the 2024 race. He praised the US supreme court for overturning Roe, saying the decision took “courage”. He added that there should be unspecified “exceptions” to abortion bans.“That’s all they talk about. The country is falling apart. We’re going to end up in world war three, and all they can talk about is abortion,” he said.The stop in the critical swing state comes after two assassination attempts, including one in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. Trump will be returning to Butler in early October, some news outlets reported Monday. He displayed the immigration chart that he says saved his life from the Butler shooter during Monday’s rally, joking that he “sleeps with that page” at night. “Immigration saved my life,” he said.Later in the speech, he again railed against immigration and migrants, bringing up towns that have received increases of people in recent years and saying those places are “lawless”, full of gangs and irreparably damaged. He promised that all migrant flights to Pennsylvania and elsewhere would be ended if he wins.“You have to get them the hell out,” Trump said of migrants. More

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      in Elections

      College Investigating Report of a Student Scratching a Racial Slur on Another

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      A family says their son, a member of the swim team at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, was victimized when a teammate etched the slur across his chest with a box cutter. School administrators at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania are investigating a report of a student scratching a racial slur onto another student’s chest at an on-campus residence this month.Both the student who wrote the slur and the student who was scratched were on the swim team at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa. The school and the family of the targeted student said in a joint statement on Sunday that the investigation was almost finished and that the student who scratched the slur was no longer enrolled at the college. It was not immediately clear whether the student was expelled or had decided to leave.The names of the students have not been made public. The family of the targeted student had said in a statement published on Friday in The Gettysburgian, the college newspaper, that their son became “the victim of a hate crime” when a teammate used a box cutter to etch a slur against Black people across their son’s chest at an informal swim team gathering on Sept. 6. They said that their son had been the only person of color at the gathering and that the teammate had been a “trusted” friend. Their son was later interviewed by members of the swim team’s coaching staff and then dismissed from the team, according to their statement. It was unclear on Sunday whether his status had changed. The school and the family are now having conversations about “how most constructively to move forward,” they said on Sunday. “The college and the family both recognize the gravity and seriousness of this situation and hope it can serve as a transformative moment for our community and beyond,” the statement read.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 lidera en el promedio de encuestas en Pensilvania y empata a nivel nacional

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      Aunque este escenario inesperado podría reflejar una variación usual en los resultados de las encuestas, también podría señalar una ventaja cada vez menor de Trump en el Colegio Electoral.Kamala Harris lidera por cuatro puntos en nuestro nuevo sondeo de Pensilvania.Kenny Holston/The New York Times[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Tenemos nuestras dos primeras encuestas desde el debate presidencial de la semana pasada: una a nivel nacional y otra sobre Pensilvania.Combinadas, son un pequeño enigma.En la encuesta nacional, Kamala Harris y Donald Trump están empatados entre los votantes probables, ambos con un 47 por ciento, un ligero avance para Harris desde nuestra encuesta nacional más reciente, realizada inmediatamente antes del debate.Al mismo tiempo, Harris tenía una ventaja de cuatro puntos en una encuesta de The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College de Pensilvania, 50 por ciento a 46 por ciento.Antes de entrar en detalles, empecemos por el panorama general:No ha cambiado mucho tras el debate. A pesar de su buena actuación, la vicepresidenta Harris no ganó mucho terreno en comparación con nuestras encuestas más recientes a nivel nacional y en Pensilvania. La encuesta está llena de señales de que nuestros encuestados pensaron que Harris tuvo un buen debate —y que Trump uno malo— pero no ha hecho una gran diferencia, al menos por ahora y al menos en nuestro sondeo.Pensilvania, Pensilvania, Pensilvania. Es posible que Harris no haya ganado mucho, pero su campaña seguramente estará contenta con las cifras en Pensilvania. El resultado nacional, por otra parte, es bastante favorable para Trump (esa es la parte que nos desconcierta y que estamos a punto de analizar). Pero nuestras elecciones se deciden en el Colegio Electoral, y ningún estado tiene un lugar más relevante en las matemáticas electorales que Pensilvania.Ahora vayamos a nuestro enigma: ¿una clara ventaja para Harris en Pensilvania, pero un empate a nivel nacional? Esto es inesperado. Hace cuatro años, el presidente Joe Biden ganó el voto nacional por 4,5 puntos porcentuales, pero ganó Pensilvania por solo 1,2 puntos. Del mismo modo, nuestros promedios de encuestas han mostrado que Harris obtiene mejores resultados a nivel nacional que en Pensilvania. Esta encuesta es casi lo contrario.Por lo general diría que se trata de ruido estadístico, la inevitable variación en los resultados de las encuestas que es inherente al muestreo aleatorio. Y puede que lo sea, como veremos. Pero creo que es difícil suponer que se trata simplemente de ruido, por dos razones:Es lo que hemos señalado antes. Es fácil descartar cualquier resultado de una encuesta como una casualidad estadística. Pero hemos encontrado resultados similares en nuestras dos encuestas más recientes a nivel nacional y en Pensilvania.Esto se está convirtiendo en una tendencia para los encuestadores de alta calidad. Sí, el promedio de nuestras encuestas revela que Harris obtiene mejores resultados a nivel nacional que en Pensilvania, pero la historia es un poco diferente si nos centramos solo en las encuestas de mayor calidad (a las que llamamos “encuestadoras selectas” en nuestra tabla). En el último mes, muchos de estos sondeos muestran que a Harris le va relativamente mal a nivel nacional, pero le va bien en los estados disputados del norte de Estados Unidos.Nota sobre los encuestadores “selectos”: para ser considerados selectos en nuestro promedio de encuestas, los encuestadores deben cumplir dos de los tres criterios siguientes: un historial de resultados superiores a los de otros encuestadores, una metodología transparente y el uso de un método que tenga posibilidades de llegar a la mayoría o a todos los votantes potenciales. No se trata de un enfoque perfecto (omite algunas encuestas muy buenas e incluye otras que no lo son tanto), pero incluye a la mayoría de los pesos pesados del sector y elimina gran parte de lo que no funciona. More

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      in US Politics

      Harris calls Ohio bomb threats ‘crying shame’ in talk with Black journalists

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      On Tuesday, Kamala Harris was interviewed by a panel of three National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) members, during which the vice-president talked about the anti-immigrant sentiment toward Haitians in Springfield, Ohio; Israel’s war in Gaza; domestic economic issues; gun violence; and reproductive rights. The conversation was one of the few interviews Harris has done since becoming the Democratic nominee, and it served as an opportunity for her to reaffirm policies.When asked about “where [she] sees the line in terms of aggression and defense” in regards to the war, she said that she supported the Biden administration’s one-time pause on the delivery of 2,000lb bombs to Israel as “leverage” that they “have had and used”, but that achieving a deal was the real means to ending the war.“We have to agree that not only must we end this war, but we have to have a goal of a two-state solution because there must be stability and peace in that region,” she said, “inasmuch as our goal must be to ensure that Israelis have security and Palestinians in equal measure have security, self determination, dignity.”When asked what mechanisms the US has to support Palestinian self-determination, and whether or not it was even possible, as Israel’s ally, to support such a goal, Harris responded saying that she believed that it was. She described meetings with Israeli and Arab leaders to “talk about how we can construct a day-after scenario”.View image in fullscreenShe said that her “goals” are that there be no reoccupation of Gaza, no changing of the territorial lines in Gaza and “an ability to have security in the region for all concerned in a way that we create stability”.Harris was also asked about the false and racist tropes that Donald Trump and JD Vance have espoused about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, which has resulted in bomb threats and lockdowns in the city.“It’s a crying shame. I mean, my heart breaks for this community,” Harris said. “There were children, elementary school children, [for whom] it was school photo day. Do you remember what that’s like, going to school on picture day? Dressed up in their best, got all ready, knew what they were going to wear the night before. And had to be evacuated. Children. Children.”Harris described “a whole community put in fear”, and harkened back to her career as a prosecutor, during which she said she learned the importance of power.“When you have these positions, when you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to learn how much your words have meaning,” she said. “I learned at a very young stage in my career that the meaning of my words could impact whether someone was free or in prison … When you are bestowed with a microphone that is that big, there is a profound responsibility that comes with that.”Harris said elected officials, particularly the president, have been bestowed with public trust.“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s gotta stop,” she said. “We’ve gotta say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country.”The conversation shifted to young Black male voters who, according to polling, are considering voting for Trump as they see him as better for the economy.“What is your message to young Black male voters who feel left out of this economy, and how can your economic policies materially change their lives?” one journalist asked.“I think it’s very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody’s pocket,” Harris replied. “Black men are like any other voting group – you gotta earn the vote. So I am working to earn the vote, and not assuming I’m going to have it because I am Black, but because the policies and perspectives I have understand what we must do to recognize the needs for all communities.”In regards to economic opportunity for Black men, Harris acknowledged that many Black male entrepreneurs lack the relationships and capital necessary to see their ideas come to fruition. As vice president, she said, she has worked to increase access to funding for small businesses. In what she called her “opportunity economy”, Harris said she would extend small-business tax deductions to $50,000. She also said that she would work to alleviate the consequences of medical debt for Black voters.“One in four Black families or individuals is more likely to carry medical debt than others, so part of my perspective, and as vice-president, part of the work that we have done, is to say that we’re going to eliminate medical debt from being on your credit score,” she said.On HB40, a bill that would create a commission to examine US slavery, Harris said that she would not make an executive order, and that she would leave such a decision to Congress, but that “we need to speak truth about the generational impact of our history in terms of the generational impact of slavery, the generational impact of redlining, of Jim Crow. These are facts that have had impact.”Harris again highlighted her “opportunity economy”, which she said would help address “explicitly the obstacles that historically and presently exist”, including student loan debt, medical debt, bias in home appraisals and Black maternal mortality. Though she said she didn’t minimize the importance of executive orders, Harris said Congress’s ability to substantially and publicly handle the conversation around US history was vital.Last month during its annual conference, NABJ hosted Trump for a live panel conversation, where the ex-president insulted the organization and its members and made false claims about Harris’s racial identity. More

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      in US Politics

      Inquiry finds communications breakdowns before Trump assassination attempt

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      An internal Secret Service investigation has confirmed that multiple, substantial communication breakdowns preceded the 13 July attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported on Saturday that the former president’s security detail failed to direct local police to secure the roof of the building used by the gunman.The Secret Service had discussed placing heavy equipment and flags between the stage and what would become Thomas Matthew Crooks’ perch
      atop a glass factory 300ft away to block the clear sight lines from the roof.But supervisors who arrived at Butler for the rally found cranes, trucks and flags were not placed in a way that blocked the line of sight.Crook was later able to climb on to the roof and fire a rifle seven times, killing one spectator, wounding Trump in the ear and injuring two others, before being shot dead by Secret Service snipers.The internal probe, known as a mission assurance investigation, found that unlike security details guarding a sitting president and vice-president that have military support, the Secret Service uses a command post separate from local police to protect political figures who are not serving in office.But in Butler, Trump’s security detail had no way of communicating with local police guarding the perimeter of the fairground.The astonishing lack of communication led to Crooks being able to get on the roof despite reports of a suspicious person carrying a rangefinder an hour before Trump was due to speak that were not relayed to the Secret Service. It took rally-goers to alert local police to a man “bear-crawling” on the roof before he loosed off shots at the former president, with one clipping Trump’s ear.Instead, local countersnipers were instructed to text a photo of Crooks to just one Secret Service agent, and agents never heard local police radio traffic about trying to track him down. Butler county police also reportedly warned the Secret Service that they would not be able to post a patrol car next to the building but received no further instruction.Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the agency days after the shooting after saying the roof’s slope was too steep for agents to manage. Acting agency director Ronald Rowe said in a statement to the outlet that “the Secret Service cannot operate under the paradox of ‘zero fail mission’ while also making our special agents and uniformed division officers execute a very critical national security mission by doing more with less”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe report also found that the Secret Service had been slow to beef up Trump’s security even after it received reports of an Iranian plot to kill political candidates. Rowe testified to Congress later in July that he was “embarrassed” by security lapses and vowed to reform the agency’s practices. Two separate congressional investigations are also looking at security lapses.The Trump campaign has said it has sometimes been forced to cancel or postpone events over concerns that security is insufficient and followed years of requests from Trump aides for greater security. Both the first lady, Jill Biden, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, were in Pennsylvania that day, lending credence to claims that the Secret Service was stretched too thin.“I think the American people are going to be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president,” Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal told Fox News after being briefed on the internal review. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden jokes as he puts on Republican’s Trump 2024 cap: ‘I need that hat’

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      In a bitter and fraught US election, a rare moment of jollity broke through when video of Joe Biden joking with a Trump supporter about his age and trying on his Trump 2024 hat went viral.At an event on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Biden even joked with the man that he could not remember his own name.In a video of the exchange that went viral online, Biden is seen exchanging wisecracks with the man at an event on Wednesday in Pennsylvania.Then, when trying on the man’s Trump hat, Biden warned the crowd against eating “cats and dogs” in reference to debunked claims made by Trump during the debate on Tuesday that immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.The clip of the interaction shows the man wearing the Trump 2024 hat, approaching the president, and Biden offering him his own presidential seal cap to wear.“You remember your name?” the man sarcastically asks Biden, to which the president jokingly responds: “I don’t remember my name … I’m slow.”The man proceeded to call the president an “old fart”.“Yeah, I know man, I’m an old guy … you would know about that,” Biden responded.“He reminds me of the guys I grew up with,” Biden states to the crowd, while autographing the presidential hat for the man.“I need that hat,” Biden jokingly says, referring to the Trump hat, to which people in the crowd shout: “Put it on!”Biden proceeded to put the Trump 2024 hat on, and was greeted with cheers in the room.“I’m proud of you now,” the man is seen saying.“Remember, no eating dogs and cats,” Biden jokes.The exchange occurred during Biden’s visit on Wednesday to a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site of the Flight 93 crash on 11 September 2001, where he delivered remarks and spoke with some first responders on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11.The video of the exchange between Biden and the man in the Trump hat quickly went viral online on Wednesday, with an X account associated with Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign posting a photo of Biden wearing the hat with the caption: “Thanks for the support, Joe!”.The senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita also posted a photo of Biden in the hat, with the caption: “What’s Happening?”Another user wrote: “Biden wearing a Trump hat wasn’t on my bingo card.”A spokesperson for the White House said that the president tried on the hat in a gesture of unity and bipartisanship.“At the Shanksville Fire Station, POTUS spoke about the country’s bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that” said the White House senior deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates. “As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it.”Some X users celebrated Biden’s move, calling it “nice” to see “people from opposing parties joke around instead of attack each other”. More

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      in Elections

      Walz’s Pennsylvania Campaign Swing Underscores Challenges in the Battleground

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      Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Thursday capped two days of crisscrossing Pennsylvania, talking up Vice President Kamala Harris’s experience, taking shots at former President Donald J. Trump and making his now familiar pleas to voters that they fight for freedom with optimism.“Look, it would be easier if we didn’t have to do this. It would be easier if these guys wouldn’t undermine our system, if they wouldn’t lie about elections, if they wouldn’t put women’s health at risk. But they are, so it’s a privilege for us to do the fight,” he said in Erie, Pa., where he stumped from a stage at the edge of Presque Isle Bay before hundreds of cheering supporters waving “Coach” and “Kamala” signs.The appearance was one of several events that Mr. Walz used to blitz the local media airwaves and fire up Democratic volunteers with the Midwestern dad charm that his party is banking on to help draw white working-class voters. Mr. Walz, and his daughter, Hope, hit several cities in counties that went for Mr. Trump in 2016 — stung by fading American manufacturing and a difficult economy.The shooting this week at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., added urgency to his message at the Erie rally and at local Democratic offices, where he stressed it was in voters’ power to elect leaders willing to pass gun-safety laws, tackle climate change and ensure freedom in health decisions.“I say it as a gun owner; I say it as a veteran; I say it as a hunter: none of the things we’re proposing infringes on your Second Amendment right. But what does infringe upon this is our children going to school and being killed,” he said at a Harris-Walz field office in Erie. “It is unacceptable, and it doesn’t have to be this way. So we end that with our votes. We end it with a vision of a better America.”Onstage later, he recalled sitting with the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut when he was still a member of Congress and a cardholder of the National Rifle Association. “I think about it — today, my son, this week, started his senior year of high school,” Mr. Walz said. “And it’s bittersweet for me because those killed at Sandy Hook would have been entering their senior year, too.”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 Elections

      How Swing State Politics Are Sinking a Global Steel Deal

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      As the Biden administration nears a decision to block the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel, the debate over national and economic security is being dwarfed by presidential politics.The Biden administration has spent the past three years promoting a policy of “friend-shoring,” which aims to contain China and Russia by forging closer ties with U.S. allies like Europe and Japan.That policy appears to stop at the state lines of Pennsylvania.As the administration nears a decision to block the proposed acquisition of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, the traditional debate over national security and economic security is being dwarfed by a more powerful force: presidential politics.Legal experts, Wall Street analysts and economists expressed concern about the precedent that would be set if President Biden uses executive power to block a company from an allied nation from buying an American business. They warn that scuttling the $15 billion transaction would be an extraordinary departure from the nation’s culture of open investment — one that could lead international corporations to reconsider their U.S. investments.“This was a purely political decision, and one that stomps on the Biden administration’s stated focus on building alliances among like-minded countries to advance the economic competition with China,” said Christopher B. Johnstone, a senior adviser and the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At the end of the day, it represents pure protectionism that draws no apparent distinction between our friends and our adversaries.”Administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who leads a government panel that is reviewing the steel deal, have espoused the benefits of deepening economic ties with U.S. allies to make supply chains more resilient. Those sentiments are being disregarded in the heat of an election year, where domestic political dynamics take priority.The Biden administration has been under pressure to find a way to justify blocking the Nippon acquisition amid backlash against the deal from the powerful steelworkers’ union. The labor organization believes that Nippon, which has pledged to invest in Pennsylvania factories and preserve jobs, could jeopardize pension agreements and lay off employees.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