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      Trump Campaign Puts Out Baseless Claim of Plot to ‘Steal’ Election

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      As legal cases against former President Donald J. Trump churn forward on at least five fronts, two of them related to his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, his campaign is advancing baseless claims that the 2024 election, too, is on track to be stolen from him.In a statement on Monday, two advisers to Mr. Trump’s campaign — Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita — called on the Republican National Committee to “immediately cancel the upcoming debate in Miami and end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”They declared that if the R.N.C. proceeded with the debate, it would prove that “national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election.”Mr. Trump refused to attend the first two debates. The third is scheduled for Nov. 8. A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita did not cite any evidence in their statement to support their claim that Democrats are trying to steal the 2024 election.A spokeswoman for the R.N.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The committee is formally neutral in the primary; Mr. Trump’s campaign is effectively asking it to abandon that neutrality and turn its focus to the general election before any votes are cast.The statement follows a playbook that Mr. Trump used in both 2016 and 2020, pre-emptively suggesting that the upcoming elections would be rigged against him. He repeatedly planted in his supporters’ minds the idea that he could not possibly lose a fair vote and that, therefore, if he did lose, it would be evidence of fraud in and of itself.Trust in the security of U.S. elections among Republicans has plunged. Supporters of Mr. Trump, many of whom believed his lie that the 2020 race was stolen from him, stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to block the formalization of President Biden’s victory. Election officials have faced harassment and violent threats. More

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      Trump Targets Nikki Haley as She Climbs in the Polls

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      Until recently, former President Donald J. Trump mostly ignored Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and his onetime United Nations ambassador turned rival in the 2024 presidential race. No longer.After two strong debate performances, Ms. Haley has seen a jolt of momentum, and in polls of the early voting states New Hampshire and South Carolina, she has leapfrogged Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as the runner-up to Mr. Trump. On Friday, after the second debate of Republican candidates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that Mr. Trump skipped, the former president attacked her as “birdbrain” on his social media site, Truth Social. Over the weekend, his campaign appeared to escalate by sending a bird cage and seed to her hotel.A handwritten note attached to the bars of the bird cage said it came from the Trump campaign, according to a post that Ms. Haley shared on Sunday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Ms. Haley has taken the shift in his attention as a sign that Mr. Trump now sees her as a real threat.Betsy Ankney, her campaign manager, called the behavior “weird, creepy and desperate.” “It’s more proof that it’s time to leave the drama behind,” she said in a statement. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.The bitter exchanges are the latest twist in the long relationship between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, who still leads Ms. Haley and all of his other primary rivals by double digits in the polls.On the trail, Ms. Haley has walked a fine line between praise and criticism of her former boss: She has said that Mr. Trump uplifted the voices of rural Americans and handled the U.S.-Mexico border better than President Biden. But she has also called Mr. Trump “thin-skinned and easily distracted” and criticized his administration’s spending. She has said that unlike Mr. Trump, she believes that Jan. 6, 2021, the day the U.S. Capitol was violently ransacked by a pro-Trump mob intent on disrupting the formalization of Mr. Biden’s election win, was “a terrible day.”Mr. Trump has mostly been silent on Ms. Haley since she first began her campaign in February. At the time, he called her an “overly ambitious” person who “just couldn’t stay in her seat.” Some critics viewed his comments as sexist.When Ms. Haley first won the Republican primary for South Carolina governor in 2010, Mr. Trump mailed her “a campaign contribution in a gold-trimmed envelope,” she writes in her memoir, “With All Due Respect.” The two met in New York several times when she was there on business, and he seemed to follow her career — and even cheer her on, she said. He occasionally sent her news clips that mentioned her, and after she was re-elected in 2014, he faxed her his congratulations: “Nikki — You’re a winner!”That did not stop Ms. Haley from endorsing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida over Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Mr. Trump still went on to pick her for U.N. ambassador — and gave her a glowing review upon her departure. More

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      GOP Voters Show Appetite for Calls to Use Military Force Against Mexican Cartels

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      G.O.P. candidates on the trail have used the idea as both an effective applause line and a solution for what many Republicans see as an unchecked border.Iowa is more than 1,000 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico. But Republican primary voters in the Midwestern state have embraced what has become almost orthodoxy among the G.O.P. candidates vying for their votes: deploying military forces to fight drug cartels and secure the border.Just years after former President Donald Trump mused about it in the Oval Office, the idea of using the country’s military might at the border — without the consent of the Mexican government — has made its way into barns, diners and other haunts along the campaign trail. The Times reported Tuesday on Mr. Trump’s plans to make the idea a reality in 2025 should he ultimately win the White House.At a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Orange City, Iowa, last month, Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that the United States should “use our own military to secure our own southern border.” He drew cheers before he finished the line: “and if necessary, our northern border, too.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina received claps for his border policy pronouncements at the Iowa State Fair in August, during which he said, “We have to crush the cartels.” He added that the United States had “the available military-grade technology to stop the fentanyl flow across our borders.”And one of the most reliable applause lines for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — who frequently promises military strikes against Mexican drug cartels and deadly force against people crossing the border — has involved a declaration that his administration would leave drug traffickers “stone-cold dead.”A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that around two-thirds of Republicans support the idea of military intervention to take on cartels, though that percentage dropped when respondents were asked whether the United States should do so without Mexico’s permission.Unilaterally sending U.S. troops into Mexico is a nonstarter for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said the move would constitute “an offense to the people of Mexico.” Policy experts and even senior aides in the Trump administration also decried the prospect as an extreme escalation.But that hasn’t stopped G.O.P. presidential candidates from using the threat of taking out cartel members abroad through military force as both an effective rallying cry and a solution for what many Republicans see as an unchecked border and an opioid epidemic, even if promises of military intervention may prove difficult to keep.The line has received a warm welcome in other early voting states, too. Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, often pledges to send special military operations “to take out the cartels in Mexico.”At an event in Hampton, New Hampshire, last month, it really landed. “If Mexico is not going to do it, we will do it,” she told a crowd outside a cozy bed-and-breakfast, who began clapping before she finished her delivery. The small state has been ravaged by fentanyl. Few candidates have offered alternate thoughts. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who once led the Drug Enforcement Administration, has rebutted the idea of military intervention — a response that might partly explain why Mr. Hutchinson did not even make the G.O.P. debate stage last week.“It doesn’t make sense, as some candidates say, that we ought to start dropping bombs or invade Mexico,” Mr. Hutchinson said at a Republican tailgate for an Iowa-Iowa State football game in September. “Mexico is still a friendly country to the United States and economic partner, and you don’t invade another country.”The crowd didn’t seem convinced: Many resumed chatting or searched for refreshments during his remarks.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      James Craig, a Republican, Enters Michigan Senate Race

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      James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, announced on Tuesday that he was running for the Senate seat in Michigan being vacated by Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is retiring after more than two decades in the position.Mr. Craig, 67, ran for governor of Michigan last year and was leading early Republican primary polls until he was disqualified because of forged signatures on his nominating petition.He is likely to promote his background in law enforcement as he campaigns on some of the conservative priorities that have helped propel former President Donald J. Trump.But national Republicans have privately expressed concerns about Mr. Craig’s candidacy, worrying that personal issues, including multiple bankruptcies and divorces, could prove detrimental to his campaign.The campaign arm for Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, has recruited former Representative Mike Rogers, 60, to run for the seat.The Democratic Party’s best-known candidate so far is Representative Elissa Slotkin, who was elected to Congress in the blue wave of 2018 and has won re-election twice in a swing district. Her primary opponents include Hill Harper, an actor; Nasser Beydoun, a businessman; and Pamela Pugh, the president of the State Board of Education. More

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      House Democrat Leaves Leadership Position After Teasing Run Against Biden

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      Representative Dean Phillips would be a long-shot candidate, given that party leadership and major donors have coalesced around President Biden.Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota said Sunday that he would step down from his Democratic leadership position in the House as he flirts with a challenge to President Biden.Mr. Phillips, who served as co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has for months called for other Democrats to run against Mr. Biden in the presidential primary, citing his age — Mr. Biden is 80 — as a hindrance.“My convictions relative to the 2024 presidential race are incongruent with the majority of my caucus, and I felt it appropriate to step aside from elected leadership to avoid unnecessary distractions during a critical time for our country,” he said in a statement to The Times.Mr. Phillips, 54, said in July that he was considering a run against Mr. Biden — though he would have an uphill climb, given that party leadership and major donors have coalesced around the incumbent president. Two long-shot Democratic candidates — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson — are already in the race, but have struggled to gain support from Democratic voters or donors. Mr. Kennedy has strongly hinted that he would launch a third-party bid. No other challengers to Mr. Biden have emerged, despite Mr. Phillips’ urging and warning signs for Mr. Biden in the polls. Several Democrats who were seen as potential candidates have thrown their support to the president.The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Phillips’ resignation.Mr. Phillips said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that he was “not pressured or forced to resign” and he complimented Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, the committee chairman, on their “authentic & principled leadership.”Mr. Phillips will continue to represent the suburban Minneapolis district that he flipped in 2018, when he became the first Democrat to win that seat since 1958. More

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      Trump Kicks Off Swing in Iowa, Trying to Lock In Caucus Support

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      A Trump campaign event on Sunday was part of an effort by the former president to increase his presence in Iowa and to shut out his rivals in January’s caucuses.By the time the doors opened Sunday morning, the line to enter former President Donald J. Trump’s caucus organizing event in Ottumwa, Iowa, snaked down the sidewalk and around the parking lot.The hundreds of people who stood outside an event center in this small city, sweating through their “Make America Great Again” hats and their mug shot T-shirts, were happy to be here — the wait and the weather, near 90 degrees, be damned.“Hey, I’ve got Newsmax,” a volunteer in a Trump 2024 shirt called out, pointing to a camera apparently from the conservative cable network. “How about we start a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’?” he suggested, referring to a chant understood to be code for an insult to President Biden.From their perches on the sidewalk or nearby grassy knolls, Mr. Trump’s supporters obliged.Onstage later, Mr. Trump characterized his political opponents as “very bad people” and said that Republicans were generally nicer.“But please don’t be nice,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of well over 1,000 people who filled every available seat and packed a hall at the Bridge View Center. “Don’t be nice, because if we don’t win this election, we’re not going to have a country anymore.”Sunday’s “commit to caucus” event was part of the Trump campaign’s push that began last month to ensure that the former president’s foothold on the Republican Party translates to a strong showing at the Iowa caucuses in January. Such a victory could more definitively shut out his rivals and clear a path to the nomination.This pocket of southeastern Iowa, Wapello County, is of particular significance to his campaign. Democrats had won it in 10 straight presidential elections until Mr. Trump flipped the county in 2016 and held onto his advantage four years later.Even after his loss in 2020 — or maybe because of it — Mr. Trump has retained his appeal here. In remarks from the stage, Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, celebrated Ottumwa as “a place that used to be blue, and now you’re dark red, like the rest of Iowa.”Robert LaPoint, 61, said that he was among those swayed to reconsider past support for the Democratic Party. Though he had long identified as a Democrat, he said, he began to feel that the party had drifted too far left on issues like abortion. As of four years ago, he said, he had no party affiliation at all.It was not just the party that had changed, he added. In 2012, when Mr. LaPoint was still a Democrat, he met Mr. Biden, who visited Ottumwa while campaigning as former President Barack Obama’s running mate.“The Joe Biden we have now is not the Joe Biden we had then,” he said, pointing to Mr. Biden’s values and alluding to some verbal and physical stumbles that Republicans have suggested made Mr. Biden unfit for office.Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden extensively in his remarks, which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. But he also reserved some time to criticize his Republican rivals, even as he holds a commanding lead over them in national and Iowa polls.As he often does, Mr. Trump railed against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who generally polls behind Mr. Trump and has been viewed as the former president’s chief rival.Mr. Trump also attacked Nikki Haley, whom he once appointed ambassador to the United Nations, and who has built momentum after breakout performances at the two Republican debates. “I call her birdbrain,” Mr. Trump said.Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley and other challengers are banking on the state’s tradition of retail politicking, with smaller gatherings across the state. Mr. Trump’s schedule in the state has been lighter. But he draws sizably larger — and significantly more devoted — audiences.When he appears in Iowa, Mr. Trump is quick to tailor his national messaging to the state’s concerns and to frame a victory in the caucuses — and eventually the general election — as a dire necessity for a state in which he is hugely popular.Iowa is a major producer of ethanol, and Mr. Trump told the crowd that if Mr. Biden were to win again in 2024, “gas-powered cars will be gone, Iowa ethanol will be totally destroyed, and the economy of this state will be devastated.”Mr. Trump also cast himself as a defender of Iowa’s farmers, later meeting with a group of them.Though Mr. Trump again denounced the criminal indictments against him, he did not explicitly mention the civil trial set to begin on Monday in the New York attorney general’s case accusing the former president and his family business of fraud. Mr. Trump’s campaign sent out fund-raising appeals this weekend referring to the trial. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr. Hints Strongly at Third-Party Presidential Bid

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      The political scion, whose long-shot Democratic primary challenge has faltered, released a video teasing a third-party candidacy that would put Democrats on high alert.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hinted strongly on Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Biden, a move that would set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.Mr. Kennedy, in a video released by his campaign, teased a “major announcement” in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, promising to speak about “a sea change in American politics” and dropping clues that he would be continuing his presidential campaign outside the Democratic Party.“How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?” Mr. Kennedy says in the video. “It’s not through playing the game by the corrupt rules that the corrupt powers and the vested interests have rigged to keep us all in their thrall. Instead, we’re going to have to rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”“What I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory,” he declares at another point, saying that the more he sees the inherent goodness of the American people, “the more the path to victory becomes visible.”Mr. Kennedy’s top aides declined to elaborate about his intentions. But his supporters have expressed frustration with the Democratic National Committee’s primary process, which has been geared toward backing Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.“It’s kind of obvious,” said Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, who is backing Mr. Kennedy. “The primaries are so rigged, there’s no debates.”Mr. Kennedy, he added, “has to look at his options.”Democrats have watched Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy nervously since it began in April. They fear that any third-party candidacy could siphon off crucial votes from Mr. Biden, ultimately helping former President Donald J. Trump, the current favorite to be the Republican nominee.Mr. Kennedy, 69, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories whose family has symbolized Democratic politics for decades, has built a following among Silicon Valley tech executives, disaffected voters in both parties and skeptics of the medical and scientific establishments.After some polls in the late spring showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support, Mr. Kennedy’s fortunes fell as more attention was paid to his panoply of views on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration and vaccines that are well outside the party’s mainstream.By late summer, surveys showed Mr. Kennedy polling in the low single digits. With his campaign roiled by news coverage of recordings of bigoted remarks he made at a New York dinner, he no longer appeared to be a threat to Mr. Biden.In recent months, Mr. Kennedy has dropped hints about continuing his campaign as a third-party candidate. He met in July with the Libertarian Party chairwoman and suggested on a podcast that he could leave the Democratic Party.As the reality set in for Mr. Kennedy that Mr. Biden would not debate him, he began using his platform to become more critical of the party and its presidential election process.This month, he published an open letter to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chairman, and party members pleading for accommodations.“The D.N.C. is not supposed to favor one candidate over another,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.The Biden campaign and its allies at the D.N.C. have summarily dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. .The fact that some Republicans believe it would be advantageous to Mr. Trump if Mr. Kennedy embarks on a third-party run has raised questions about whether anyone in the former president’s world has encouraged it.But Mr. Kennedy has in recent months become far more popular with Republicans than he is with Democrats. His campaign in the Democratic primary has been supported by Republicans: David Sacks, a donor for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, hosted a fund-raiser for him in June.While Democrats are nervous that any third-party options would hurt Mr. Biden, it’s not clear from whom Mr. Kennedy would draw more votes if he qualified for the ballot in key battleground states.Over the years, third-party candidacies have been a focus of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.“I predict #RFK abandons the rigged Democrat nominating process and runs as an Independent,” Mr. Stone wrote on Sept. 24 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Stone said he had no involvement in Mr. Kennedy’s effort. “I’m supporting Donald Trump,” he said.Corey Lewandowski, an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his campaign manager during the 2016 election, wrote on X in response to an article about Mr. Kennedy’s possible move, “If true the race is over for @JoeBiden⁩!”Despite Mr. Kennedy’s earlier flirtation with the Libertarian Party, Brian McWilliams, a spokesman for the party, said there had been no recent conversations between Mr. Kennedy and its leadership.Placing himself on the ballot as a candidate of a newly established third party would be an onerous and expensive proposition for Mr. Kennedy, who would have to navigate ballot access laws in enough states to be a serious presidential candidate.Maggie Haberman More

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      Who Will Replace Dianne Feinstein in Her California Senate Seat?

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      The death of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, immediately turns the spotlight to an intense, ongoing three-way battle to replace her, fraught with racial, political and generational tensions over one of the most coveted positions in California and national politics.It also puts new pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will chose someone to fill her term through the end of 2024. Mr. Newsom, whose profile has risen in national Democratic politics in recent weeks as he has traveled the country on behalf of President Biden’s re-election campaign, had come under fire for announcing he would not pick any of the declared candidates in filling any vacancy, so as not to elevate them and give them an advantage in the Democratic primary race.Mr. Newsom had originally promised to pick a Black woman to fill the position if it opened up, and many Democrats thought he would turn to Representative Barbara Lee, a progressive. But Mr. Newsom said he would pick a caretaker senator instead. “I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Ms. Lee denounced Mr. Newsom for that decision, calling it insulting.The other leading Democratic candidates in the primary race for Ms. Feinstein’s seat are Representative Adam Schiff, a high-profile member of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Representative Katie Porter, a third-term California member of the House; and Ms. Lee.It remains to be seen if, after Ms. Feinstein’s death, any other candidates will jump into the race. However, Mr. Schiff, Ms. Lee and Ms. Porter are well-known figures in Democratic politics, and have for months been raising money and building support.It is unclear whom Mr. Newsom might pick to fill Ms. Feinstein’s seat for the remainder of her term. The names that have been discussed, since Ms. Feinstein said earlier this year that she would not run again, include Shirley Weber, the California secretary of state; Holly Mitchell, a Los Angeles county supervisor; and Angela Glover Blackwell, a civil rights lawyer in Oakland and the founder of PolicyLink, a research and advocacy nonprofit group.Mr. Newsom had originally made the pledge about a Black woman in response to the fact that there are no Black women serving in the Senate. The last one was Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who left the Senate to become Mr. Biden’s vice president.At that time, in January 2021, Mr. Newsom picked Alex Padilla, the California secretary of state, to replace her. Mr. Padilla became the first Latino from the state to serve in the Senate; he was elected last year to a full term. More