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      Trump Urges Police Officers to Watch for Voter Fraud

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      Former President Donald J. Trump urged the board of the nation’s largest police union on Friday to “watch for voter fraud” across the country, an appeal that, if followed through on, could run afoul of multiple state laws and raise accusations of voter intimidation.Invoking his widely debunked claims of voter fraud in 2020, Mr. Trump suggested that the only way he could lose in November was if Democrats cheated. “Watch for the voter fraud, because we win without voter fraud,” Mr. Trump said at a meeting of the national board of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, N.C. “We win so easily.”Mr. Trump added that he believed the police could effectively scare some voters. “You can keep it down just by watching, because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re afraid of you people. They’re afraid of that more than anything else.”Mr. Trump’s comments follow his repeated statements raising doubts about the integrity of the upcoming election before a vote has been cast. But though Mr. Trump has previously urged his supporters to monitor voting activity — particularly in Democratic cities in battleground states — his entreaty to the police union heightens concerns that he is encouraging voter intimidation at the polls.Katie Reisner, a senior counsel at States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on elections, said that election officials and the police had been working for years to strengthen community relations around policing and elections, and that such encouragement from Mr. Trump could disrupt years of work and planning.“The idea of Trump telling the Fraternal Order of Police to take matters into their own hands and kind of go rogue, it’s certainly not a positive from a healthy elections standpoint,” Ms. Reisner said. “But it’s also really counter to a lot of work that’s happening in a lot of jurisdictions to make sure that law enforcement are both adhering to the law and not surprising their communities on Election Day or during voting.”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, Trump and Biden Consider World Trade Center Site Visits on Sept. 11

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      Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are considering visits to the World Trade Center site in New York City on Sept. 11 to memorialize the 2001 attacks.Ms. Harris is planning to travel to New York City after the presidential debate, scheduled for Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, according to three people directly familiar with her schedule who were not authorized to discuss the plans.Mr. Biden, who last year marked the anniversary of the attacks on a military base in Alaska as he traveled back from a diplomatic trip in Asia, is discussing his own plans to attend ground zero, two of those people said. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.And Mr. Trump, who built much of his political brand in the divisive aftermath of the attacks and on anger within the Republican Party about the Middle East wars that followed, is also considering visiting ground zero, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.The annual ceremony at the site has been a somber scene that has drawn mourners and also its fair share of politicians who have held office or are running for it. The vice president visited ground zero last year alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, several former mayors and Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, who was running for his party’s nomination for the presidency at the time.Hillary Clinton, who was the junior senator from New York when the 2001 attacks occurred, attended the memorial ceremony in 2016, when she was running for president. She fell ill as she was leaving, and was later treated for pneumonia. Mr. Trump also went to the ceremony that year, attending as he ran for office for the first time.Mr. Trump, the only native New Yorker of the group, did not make a return visit to the site in 2021, the 20th anniversary of the attacks. Mr. Biden visited all three attack sites that year and Ms. Harris spoke at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pa.The anniversary that year came nine months after Mr. Trump’s term in the White House ended, following an attack by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol to try to thwart certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Trump spent part of that anniversary in New York, visiting fire and police station houses, before returning to his adopted home state of Florida for a paid event providing color commentary for a boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Vitor Belfort.Mr. Trump has a long history of making questionable and provocative statements about what he saw on the day of the attacks.This year, the anniversary of the attacks will come just hours after a presidential debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, who have not yet met in person but whose campaigns are engaged in a brawl ahead of what is forecast to be a close election. More

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      House Republican Subpoenas Blinken Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

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      The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee summoned the secretary of state for testimony just days before an expected report on the U.S. exit, in which 13 American service members were killed.The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s testimony, threatening to hold him in contempt if he failed to address the panel later this month about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.In his letter subpoenaing Mr. Blinken, the chairman, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, wrote that receiving the testimony was important for committee members as they prepared “potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal,” after the expected release of an investigative report into the subject next week.“You served as the final decision maker for the department on the withdrawal and evacuation,” Mr. McCaul wrote in the letter, demanding that Mr. Blinken appear before the panel on Sept. 19 to speak about his role, and complaining that he had missed previous deadlines to comply.In a statement, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said Mr. Blinken would not be available on that date and criticized the committee’s refusal to accept what he called “reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing.”“It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena,” Mr. Miller wrote, noting that Mr. Blinken had testified before Congress 14 times, including four appearances before Mr. McCaul’s panel.The summons comes amid fresh political squabbling over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as the presidential race enters its final weeks. Democrats denounced former President Donald J. Trump for shooting video for his campaign last week at Arlington National Cemetery, where he appeared for a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed during the evacuation. Mr. Trump has stepped up his attacks on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, maintaining that they mismanaged the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and blaming them personally for failing to prevent the deaths of 13 Americans at Abbey Gate, outside the Kabul airport.Mr. McCaul’s report, the culmination of nearly three years of investigative work, is expected to lay similar blame at the feet of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.“It will serve as an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to properly prepare for the withdrawal,” Mr. McCaul said in a statement last week announcing the release of the report. “President Biden and Vice President Harris can no longer sweep their unmitigated disaster of epic proportions that they created under the rug.”In a statement last week, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, dismissed Mr. McCaul’s threats to subpoena Mr. Blinken as “political stunts that show the Republican Party’s desperation to score headlines during an election season.”Tuesday’s subpoena is the third that Mr. McCaul has issued to Mr. Blinken in conjunction with the panel’s Afghanistan investigation. The previous two sought documents related to the inquiry. More

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      The Cass Report: Biased or Balanced?

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      More from our inbox:Child Tax Credits Can Save Women’s LivesWake Up, RepublicansRicardo TomásTo the Editor:Re “The Strange Report Fueling the War on Trans Kids,” by Lydia Polgreen (column, Aug. 18):Thank you to Lydia Polgreen for this thoughtful, well-researched piece. She clearly identified the faulty and dangerous unspoken premise of the Cass report and much of the reporting on this topic: that being transgender is socially deviant and harmful, and we should do everything in our collective power to reserve gender-affirming care for those we deem virtuous enough to become “good” members of society.She also pointed out critics’ double standards. Our medical system routinely provides — without controversy — the same gender-affirming medications to cisgender children and adolescents that it provides to trans children and adolescents. The issue is clearly not “concern for children” but the deep-rooted transphobia that this “concern” masks.What if we didn’t think of being trans as being deviant or broken? What if we saw it for what it is: an identity as old as human existence that is as worthy of respect and celebration as any other, especially amid this climate of fear? What if we focused less on creating unnecessary barriers to care and more on protecting the right to self-determination and access to health care that respects each person’s unique needs?Libby Hartle-TyrrellBrooklynTo the Editor:Lydia Polgreen speculates on the legitimacy of the Cass report in what I see as an effort all too common among public figures: to burnish their liberal credentials at the expense of families like mine. They state that pediatric gender transition is too politicized, but blame only the Republicans. But I wish, I beg, that they talk to parents like me.Many of us are liberal, (formerly) Democratic professionals whose kids have been caught up in the left’s politicization of this issue. Our kids — who are smart, but struggle with mental health issues and anxiety — spent too much time online during Covid and self-diagnosed themselves as gender dysphoric. Meanwhile, activists have aggressively pushed an affirm-or-else, one-size-fits-all policy on educators, mental health providers and doctors.This confluence has created a dystopian nightmare for well-educated, thoughtful and compassionate parents who urge caution and question medicalization. People who we used to align with politically are telling our kids that we are transphobic and support their cutting us off. We grieve and watch in horror as our vulnerable kids permanently scar their bodies, reproductive organs and voices.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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      At Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Tries to Explain Arlington Cemetery Clash

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      Former President Donald J. Trump grappled on Friday with the lingering fallout from his visit to Arlington National Cemetery this week, offering an extended defense of his campaign’s actions leading up to an altercation between a Trump 2024 staff member and a cemetery official.Over a digressive 13 minutes, Mr. Trump insisted that he had not been seeking publicity on Monday when he posed for photographs in a heavily restricted area of the cemetery where veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are buried. He accused the news media of stoking the controversy and said baselessly that his political opponents had manufactured it.Accusing President Biden of being responsible for the deaths of the service members whose graves Mr. Trump was visiting, the former president said at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., “They tell me that I used their graves for public relations services, and I didn’t.”He said conspiratorially at one point, “That was all put out by the White House.” He repeated the accusation at an event in Washington on Friday night hosted by Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group focused on education.The controversy over the cemetery photographs has overshadowed the political intent of Mr. Trump’s visit: He and his allies have made the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan a central focus of their criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of national security and foreign policy.Instead, Mr. Trump has found himself struggling this week to fend off new criticisms of his long-scrutinized treatment of America’s veterans and fallen service members. At the same time, he has been twisting himself in knots to navigate the politics of in vitro fertilization and abortion rights and has confronted negative headlines for making obscene attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.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 Says He’ll Vote Against Florida’s Abortion Rights Measure After Conservative Backlash

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      Former President Donald J. Trump said on Friday that he would vote against a ballot measure in Florida that would expand abortion access in the state, clarifying his stance after having suggested a day earlier that he might support the measure.“I’ll be voting no,” Mr. Trump told Fox News, even as he said he disagreed with his home state’s current ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.Passage of the ballot measure, called Amendment 4, would allow patients to seek an abortion up to about 24 weeks of pregnancy.In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Mr. Trump, who had long avoided taking a firm position on the measure, said he was “going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.” His campaign promptly sought to clean up those remarks, saying in a statement that they were not indicative of how he would vote in November.His comments were also met with backlash from social conservatives and abortion opponents. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group, said Mr. Trump would be undermining a long-held opposition to abortions after five months of pregnancy if he voted for the measure.“We strongly support Florida’s current heartbeat law,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement, adding that she had also spoken privately with the former president. “For anyone who believes in drawing a different line, they still must vote against Amendment 4, unless they don’t want a line at all.”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 to Speak at Moms for Liberty Convention

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      Last year, the former president told the group it was time to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts” in education. Does that message still resonate with voters?Former President Donald J. Trump is set to speak Friday evening to a gathering of Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group whose priorities mirror much of his own education platform.Like Mr. Trump, they have called for stricter classroom discipline and vouchers for private school tuition and home-schooling costs. They want to ban certain books and cut funding to schools that embrace progressive ideas on gender and race, while slimming down or even closing the federal Department of Education.But as his presidential campaign leans heavily on cultural divides over gender, parenting and education, there have been signs of voter weariness, and questions over whether social issues in schools are still energizing voters.“Is this a wave that’s on the decline?” asked Julie Marsh, a professor at the University of Southern California who has studied school board elections. “We’re perhaps seeing signs of parents being turned off by some of this.”Mr. Trump’s appearance in Washington, D.C., is his second time speaking at the annual convention of Moms for Liberty, which was founded in 2021. He has embraced the group’s rhetoric, telling convention attendees last year that he would “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”In the past several months, Mr. Trump has floated provocative ideas like allowing parents to elect principals and creating an alternative credentialing body for teachers who embrace “patriotic values.”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 Floats I.V.F. Coverage Mandate While Campaigning in Michigan

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      The week after Democrats spent much of their national convention attacking him over his position on abortion rights and reproductive health, former President Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would require insurance companies or the federal government to pay for all costs associated with in vitro fertilization treatments if he is elected in November.Mr. Trump’s announcement — made in an NBC interview, a speech in Michigan and a town hall in Wisconsin — came with little detail about his proposal or how he might address its cost. For one cycle, the treatments can cost up to $20,000 or more. But he has been trying to rebrand himself to voters on reproductive access and abortion rights, issues that have cost Republicans at the ballot box.Mr. Trump, who often on the campaign trail has bragged about his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, last week on social media declared that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a phrase used by abortion-rights advocates.The post appeared to be an effort by Mr. Trump to cast himself as more of a political moderate on abortion, an issue that could hurt him in November.On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign accused Mr. Trump of trying to run from his record on abortion access.“Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, I.V.F. is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country.”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