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    Corporate America Braces for Trump 2.0

    The race for the White House is deadlocked, but business leaders aren’t taking chances, reaching out to the former president to rebuild relations.Are business leaders already banking on a second Trump presidency?Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesDo C.E.O.s think Donald Trump will win? As the presidential race nears its end next week, the most notable public sound from many C.E.O.s and businesses on the election has been silence — and Donald Trump’s camp is increasingly interpreting that as a sign that corporate America may be preparing for him to win.New reports show that top business leaders, including Silicon Valley heavyweights, have reached out to the former president, seemingly looking to rebuild relations and protect their businesses if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris.Business leaders are privately discussing how to prepare for a Trump return. Attendees at a gathering last week of the Business Council, an invite-only association of C.E.O.s, talked about steps to take in case Trump goes after perceived enemies, according to The Washington Post.“I’ve told C.E.O.s to engage as fast as possible because the clock is ticking,” an unidentified Trump adviser told The Post. “If you’re somebody who has endorsed Harris, and we’ve never heard from you at any point until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle.”Big Tech leaders are among those trying to reboot relations. In recent weeks, Trump has said that he has spoken with Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet. He has also heard from Mark Zuckerberg, and CNN adds that Andy Jassy of Amazon has reached out.The reason for such outreach is clear, Trump associates told CNN: Trump has gone after many of their companies and re-establishing relations is at the least a hedge in case he wins next week. (An unidentified source told CNN that Jassy’s call, made at the company’s request, was a general exchange of pleasantries.)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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    A Trump Rally Speaker Trashed Puerto Ricans. Harris Reached Out to Them.

    Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign moved quickly on Sunday to elevate and denounce racist and inflammatory remarks made by speakers at a rally for former President Donald J. Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York.Before Mr. Trump had even taken the stage, warm-up speakers had called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage,” referred to Ms. Harris as “the devil” and “the Antichrist,” and made racist or derogatory remarks about Latinos generally, African Americans, Palestinians and Jews.The remarks at the rally came as Ms. Harris wrapped up a day in Philadelphia, where she spent time courting Pennsylvania’s significant Puerto Rican population by visiting a local Puerto Rican restaurant. While there, she talked about a new plan she announced on Sunday to bring economic opportunities to Puerto Rico, discussed her visit there after Hurricane Maria, and said that even as a senator she had “felt a need and an obligation” to “make sure Puerto Rico’s needs were met.”“This is not a new area of focus for me,” she said. She received a warm reception from the crowd, with chants of “Sí, se puede.”Before the Trump rally on Sunday, Ms. Harris had already taken aim at her Republican rival in a video message to Puerto Rican voters. She noted that, as president, Mr. Trump had resisted sending aid to the island after back-to-back hurricanes, adding that he had offered nothing but “paper towels and insults.”“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” she said.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 Opens With Insults Aimed at Latino, Black, Jewish and Arab American Voters

    Former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday opened with a standup comic who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” in a set that also included derogatory remarks about Latinos generally, African Americans, Palestinians and Jews.It was a startling program for a campaign that has been trying to cut into Democrats’ support among Hispanic, Black, Jewish and Arab American voters in an effort to win in several key battleground states.The comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, was the warm-up act ahead of several other speakers whose remarks were laced with vulgar insults, profanity and racist comments.The crowd inside Madison Square Garden was predominantly white, with a significant number of Latinos. Many groaned at Mr. Hinchcliffe’s insult to Puerto Rico. Still, he told a tasteless, vulgar joke about the size of Hispanic families, mentioned watermelons as he called out a Black man in the audience and mocked Palestinians as rock-throwers and Jews as cheapskates.At roughly the same time on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Philadelphia courting Pennsylvania’s sizable Puerto Rican population with a stop at a local Puerto Rican restaurant, Freddy & Tony’s.But in New York, Mr. Trump’s rally featured a series of speakers whose remarks were far outside of longstanding political boundaries.One, Sid Rosenberg, a conservative radio host, referred to Hillary Clinton with profanity and a sexist epithet. And Grant Cardone, a businessman who spoke early in the program, referred to Ms. Harris as if she were a prostitute. Later in the program, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, mocked Ms. Harris’s racial identity and intelligence as he jeered the idea that she could win in November. More

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    Tim Walz and AOC Play Madden and Crazy Taxi and Talk Politics

    Wearing a camouflage Vikings hat, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, on Sunday to play Madden NFL 25 and talk about the election.“Are we going to play some ball? Are we ready to do it?” Mr. Walz said to the audience watching via the streaming platform Twitch, cautioning that he was prepared to lose. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, played as the Buffalo Bills, while Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, went with the Vikings.He and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez talked about the politics of Congress, where Mr. Walz served before he became governor and the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee. They compared the House to “public school,” with the Senate being more like “private school.” The House, they agreed, is where policy for the nation is shaped, and Mr. Walz said he would have been proud to have voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a signature achievement of President Biden’s administration.As the talk turned to the Senate and its procedures, Mr. Walz said knowingly to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: “I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster.”“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an early proponent of removing the filibuster several years ago. Vice President Kamala Harris said in September that she would support ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. After the stream ended, a Walz campaign official said that Mr. Walz “shares the vice president’s position.”In their Bills-Vikings Madden matchup on Sunday, which Mr. Walz and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez played for just a scoreless first half, they discussed housing policy and she asked him about voters who might be frustrated by the huge sums of money in politics or by the Biden administration’s positions about the war in Gaza. Twitch showed that about 12,500 people were watching on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s channel.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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    Jill Stein’s Third-Party Candidacy

    More from our inbox:Harris’s AdsDrug-Free TreatmentsRegretting Email, and Other Modern MusingsJill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate for president, after a campaign event in Dearborn, Mich., earlier in October.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “She’s Still Running for President, No Matter Who Asks Her to Stop” (front page, Oct. 20):I just came back from the grocery store in Philadelphia, where I live. On the street corner opposite the store was a sign that said something like “Demand more from Harris or I am voting for Jill Stein.” At the bottom it said the sign was from the progressive cause.Make no mistake: Anyone who votes for Ms. Stein because they think Kamala Harris isn’t progressive enough is really voting for Donald Trump. This is Pennsylvania, for heaven’s sake, which many believe is the most critical swing state. And where the race is thought to be very, very close.If progressives are really committed to their cause, they can’t vote for Ms. Stein in Pennsylvania. Massachusetts maybe — where it doesn’t matter. But not here. (Progressives can’t really think they will get closer to their policy goals with Donald Trump!)We can’t afford another Florida 2000, when the votes for Ralph Nader may have cost Al Gore the election. The stakes are too high.Stephen M. DavidsonPhiladelphiaTo the Editor:The platform of the Green Party includes as one of its “four pillars”: “Ecology: The human cost of climate change is too high. We need to get off fossil fuels and on to renewable energy.”The candidacy of Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, could hand Donald Trump the presidency. Mr. Trump, in his stint in the White House tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”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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    Joseph J. Ellis: The Ideals of the Founders Are on the Ballot

    The jury remains out on the verdict of the American electorate. While historians are virtually omniscient at predicting the past, we are not much better than most observers at predicting the future.Two predictions are, however, reasonably obvious: first, that Donald Trump will struggle to accept the verdict if he loses; second, that Kamala Harris will almost certainly win the popular vote, but could lose the election because of that strange American contraption called the Electoral College.More broadly, a longstanding American dilemma is on the ballot. Are a majority of American voters prepared to accept and even embrace the fact that we are a multiracial society — in effect, that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has become reality? Ms. Harris’s supporters are betting that we are. Mr. Trump’s supporters are betting that we are not.The founding fathers did not think about the popular vote and electoral college vote the way we do. Yet that disjunction looms over this election.There is also a gender dimension to our American dilemma that further complicates the outcome. Do we fully and finally believe the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, “with liberty and justice for all”? Even more than Barack Obama, Ms. Harris puts that question to the acid test. And polls will not provide a reliable answer, because many white and Black men will not reveal their deeper motives, even to themselves. Namely, that they cannot vote for a woman.As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, the idea of human equality pronounced at the American founding will be front and center. We will be bombarded with Jefferson’s lyrical tribute to human equality. But we will also hear about the reality of racial and gender prejudice embraced by several prominent founders and the vast majority of American citizenry over which they presided.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 Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Endorsement Calls Are Self-Sabotage

    I can think of some compelling reasons that leading independent newspapers should not be in the business of endorsing candidates for president.Unfortunately, the acts of self-sabotage by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times do not reflect any of them. And so one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.The owners of both papers took as long as possible to reveal what they had already concluded: For the first time in years — since 2004 for The Los Angeles Times and 1988 for The Post — each would refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate. This inspired Donald Trump’s campaign to whoop that even Vice President Kamala Harris’s “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.” The Times’s editorial editor, Mariel Garza, resigned and said the decision made the organization look “craven and hypocritical.” Others followed.The Post’s endorsement of Ms. Harris had reportedly already been drafted, only to be shelved on the orders of its owner, Amazon’s founder, Mr. Bezos. But it fell to the paper’s publisher, William Lewis, to announce the decision, saying, “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” Its editorial editor, David Shipley, in the face of his mutinous editorial board, said he owned the outcome, which he called a way of creating “independent space” for voters to make up their own minds.I’m not worried that Post and Los Angeles Times readers will have trouble deciding how to vote. I’m worried they’ll have trouble deciding whom to trust.Both papers are owned by billionaires — Patrick Soon-Shiong at The Times and Mr. Bezos at The Post — and it is this grim similarity that raises alarms, especially in the case of The Post, whose “Democracy dies in darkness” motto now moans like an epitaph. Rightly or wrongly, readers will reasonably conclude The Post backed off an endorsement of Ms. Harris to protect the owner’s business interests. Those interests are vast, spread across commerce, the military and, increasingly, the frothing frontiers of artificial intelligence. How now can readers trust The Post’s often excellent news coverage of those topics, which are core to its mission? It did not help the paper’s credibility when, on the day the nonendorsement was announced, Mr. Trump was spotted greeting executives of Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin space company in Austin, Texas.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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    Michelle Obama Makes a Searing Appeal to Men: ‘Take Our Lives Seriously’

    Michelle Obama issued an impassioned plea to American voters on Saturday — and, in particular, American men — anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women’s bodies and reproductive health, and what she described as the life-or-death stakes of returning former President Donald J. Trump to power.In her first appearance on the campaign trail during this election, Mrs. Obama, long reluctant to engage in the political arena, described the far-reaching consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, in the concrete terms of personal tragedy.“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Mrs. Obama said. “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.”And while she acknowledged the anger that many Americans feel about the “slow pace of change” in the country, she warned: “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”Michelle Obama, the former first lady, spoke about the potential risks to women’s health care in frank language. “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMrs. Obama’s words — at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris — amounted to an extraordinary centering of women’s bodies and their private experiences in an American presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than “baby-making vessels.”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