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      Doug Mills Describes the Trump Shooting Scene

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      Doug Mills, a veteran photographer for The New York Times who has been taking photographs of presidents since 1983, was only feet away from former President Donald J. Trump at the rally in Butler, Pa., when shooting started.He spoke with Victor Mather about the experience.What did you see and hear today?It was a very standard, typical rally. The former president was maybe an hour late. The crowd had been hot all day. Donald J. Trump arrived, waving to the crowd, just like any other rally he does.There’s a pool of photographers, maybe four of us, who were in what is called the buffer area just a couple feet from the former president. We were all jostling around in there trying to get our normal pictures.With his Secret Service detail between him and the crowd, Donald Trump walked to the stage in Butler, Pa., on Saturday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAll of a sudden, there was what I thought were three or four loud pops. At first I thought it was a car. The last thing I thought was it was a gun.I kept taking pictures. He went down behind the lectern, and I thought, “Oh my God, something’s happened.”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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      National and World Leaders Condemn the Shooting at Trump’s Rally

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      Leaders across the United States and the world condemned the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday at his rally in Butler, Pa. President Biden, a wide array of prominent Democratic figures and other political opponents of the former president were among those who quickly condemned the violence, called for national unity and prayed for Mr. Trump’s safety.Mr. Biden, who was being briefed by national security officials in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, issued a written statement later in the evening.“I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania,” Mr. Biden said in the statement. “I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally.”He continued: “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”The top Republicans in Congress — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana — and their Democratic counterparts — Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York — also quickly published statements denouncing the shooting.“My thoughts and prayers are with former President Trump,” Mr. Jeffries said, adding, “America is a democracy. Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”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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      The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America

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      Americans received a sobering reminder on Saturday of the threat that political violence poses to our democracy. It is a mercy that Donald Trump was not seriously injured by gunfire at an evening campaign rally in Butler, a Pennsylvania city north of Pittsburgh, and a tragedy that at least one person at the rally was killed. We hope that Mr. Trump recovers quickly and fully.There is much we don’t know yet about the gunman and the shooting, which is being investigated as an attempted assassination. But this much is clear: Any attempt to resolve an election through violence is abhorrent. Violence is antithetical to democracy. Ballots, not bullets, should always be the means by which Americans work through their differences.It is now incumbent on political leaders of both parties, and on Americans individually and collectively, to resist a slide into further violence and the type of extremist language that fuels it. Saturday’s attack should not be taken as a provocation or a justification.Americans also must be cleareyed about the challenge that is confronting this nation. Saturday’s events cannot be written off as an aberration. Violence is infecting and inflecting American political life.Acts of violence have long shadowed American democracy, but they have loomed larger and darker of late. Cultural and political polarization, the ubiquity of guns and the radicalizing power of the internet have all been contributing factors, as this board laid out in its editorial series The Danger Within in 2022. This high-stakes presidential election is further straining the nation’s commitment to the peaceful resolution of political differences.Democracy requires partisans to accept that the process is more important than the results. Even before Saturday’s events, there were worrying signs that many Americans are failing that essential test. In a survey conducted last month by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 10 percent of respondents agreed that the use of force was justified to prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president, and 7 percent said the use of force was justified to return Mr. Trump to the presidency.Mr. Trump’s political agenda cannot and must not be opposed by violence. It cannot and must not be pursued through violence.The attack on Saturday was a tragedy. The challenge now confronting Americans is to prevent this moment from becoming the beginning of a greater tragedy.This election must be resolved by the votes Americans will cast.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads. More

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      Butler County, Where Trump’s Rally Was Held, Is a Republican Stronghold

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      The city of Butler, a blue-collar town that was built on steel, has been trying to get a foothold economically in recent years after struggling to reinvent itself following a loss of industry in recent decades.Home to about 13,000 people, the city is perched on the banks of Connoquenessing Creek, about a 50-minute drive northeast of Pittsburgh. It retains a relatively high poverty rate compared with the nation and the rest of Pennsylvania.But the county that the city sits within has been changing over time, becoming both more educated and more prosperous.Broader Butler County’s population of nearly 200,000 remains about 95 percent white, according to the Census Bureau, but the nonwhite share of the population has been slowly growing. The county has been becoming more heavily educated — about 38 percent of adults there now have a bachelor’s degree, slightly higher than the 34 percent average nationally.The county’s unemployment rate is well below the national level: just 2.8 percent. And per capita earnings in Butler County surpassed the state average in 2007, after being below it ever since records had begun to be kept.In fact, professional and business services are now the county’ largest employer. The southern part of the county is accessible to Pittsburgh, which makes it popular among commuters into the city, and it has seen new housing developments and businesses spring up in recent years.But even as it changes, Butler county retains large swaths of rural farmland and wooded forests. Gun ownership in that corner of Western Pennsylvania is pervasive, and hunting is such a major pastime there that local schools long took off the first day of deer season.The area skews heavily Republican, and Trump signs dot local roadsides. Voter registration data from the local Bureau of Elections shows that just under 40,000 Democrats are registered in the country, and nearly 80,000 Republicans. About 20,000 voters are registered as members of neither party.True to those trends, Trump voters outnumbered Biden voters nearly two to one in the 2020 election. More

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      Two Attendees Describe the Moment Trump’s Rally Erupted Into Chaos

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      Corey Check, a local conservative activist and Republican committeeman in Butler, Pa., and his friend Nathan Rybner were sitting in a section of seats to the right of where former President Donald J. Trump was standing onstage on Saturday evening when they heard a series of loud pops. The sounds seemed to be coming from over their heads in the section where they were sitting, they said.“I heard what I thought was firecrackers,” said Mr. Rybner, a Republican committeeman from Erie County, Pa. “It did not sound like a typical gunshot.”They were sitting close enough to the stage that as Mr. Trump spoke, they could take photos of themselves with the former president in the background. They watched in shock as Secret Service agents rushed toward Mr. Trump.Some of the other attendees in their section tried to flee the chaotic scene that followed, Mr. Check said, but a Secret Service agent ordered everyone to get down.“The first thing I thought to myself was, America’s under attack,” Mr. Check said. “I grabbed the hands of a couple of people I didn’t even know. We said the Lord’s Prayer. I called my family and told them I loved them.”When they were allowed to stand up, Mr. Rybner said he saw what appeared to be blood on a higher level of the seating section behind them. “There was a lot of blood,” he said.Before the rally devolved into chaos, while Mr. Rybner was still waiting for Mr. Trump to arrive onstage, he said he passed the time by looking at the crowd in the section. “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.Mr. Check, speaking by phone minutes after the shooting, was still struggling to process what he had just experienced.“We chanted ‘U.S.A.’” after all this happened, he said, adding that the country will live on “despite what some maniac did to Trump.”“We’re alive. And we will never stop. America has been here, we will always be here, chanting ‘U.S.A.’ Because we’re not done. These people will not destroy our country,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘This country needs him’: Biden draws rapturous applause at a Philadelphia church

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      Less than 48 hours after declaring only “the Lord almighty” could persuade him to exit the US presidential race, Joe Biden described his reliance on faith “in good times and tough times” at a predominantly Black church in north-west Philadelphia.Times are certainly tough for the president right now. But in the Mount Airy church of God in Christ on Sunday morning, you could be forgiven for not noticing. Biden was greeted by rapturous applause, and departed to chants of “four more years”.Biden, 81 – facing questions about his age, acuity and ability – was not the oldest man in the room. Alongside him sat the church’s founder, Ernest Morris Sr, 91.“Since you are only an octogenarian, sitting next to a nonagenarian, don’t let anyone talk about your age,” declared Bishop Louis Felton, the church’s senior pastor. “You’re a young whippersnapper.”Before the whippersnapper even approached the microphone, as members of his own party cool on his ability to win re-election as the Democratic nominee, he received the warmest of welcomes.Outside church, a handful of signs highlighted the division stretching the Democratic coalition. “Thank U Joe but time to go,” read one. Another urged Biden to “pass the torch”.But inside, before an overwhelmingly supportive audience, he did not touch on the growing calls for him to stand aside. In a brief seven-minute address, Biden focused on hope, the need for unity, and his administration’s achievements for Black Americans.“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he acknowledged. “And I’ve honest to God never felt more optimistic about America’s future.”After the service, congregants were quick to praise him. Sure, a few conceded, last month’s TV debate, in which Biden had a dire performance against Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump, had sparked concerns about his viability as a candidate, but they stood behind Biden.Kim Speedwell, 57, was unbothered by Biden’s missteps. “I think his experience speaks for itself,” she said. “Even though he is in his ages … We need four more years of his experience.”While doubts appear to mount among donors and senior party figures around the prospects of Biden’s campaign, those in church this weekend were confident he would prevail in November. “This country needs him,” said Mike Johnson, 69. “Democracy needs him.”The president’s age is “a difficult issue”, granted Paul Johansen, a teacher from Massachusetts. But “he has a lifetime of service that I respect and appreciate,” said Johansen, 58. “That is not undone by a bad night.“Having said that, I appreciate the fact that the federal government is a big entity and he’ll have a lot of people helping him.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRoz, a 69-year-old retiree who preferred not to use her last name, praised Biden’s Christian faith.“I just love the fact he does love God,” she said.She added: “Not just selling Bibles, when he probably hasn’t read one” as a swipe against Trump, who has not only wielded a Bible at a highly-controversial 2020 photo op but also began selling them during this election campaign.“I don’t care how much he slips … I slip more than him,” she added. “Anyone who got good sense is gonna vote for Biden. Who wants a criminal, a liar, an adulterer, a racist man, as president?”Felton, the pastor, noted that Biden had not originally been scheduled to appear at church on Sunday. The event was only arranged when the National Education Association’s union announced a strike on Friday, forcing his campaign to cancel a scheduled speech at one of its conferences.“God knew Biden needs some love,” said Felton. He found it in the pews of a carefully-selected church in Philadelphia. What about the ranks of his own party? More