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    Kari Lake Delivered a Speech in Front of a Confederate Flag

    Kari Lake, the leading Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, delivered a speech in front of a Confederate flag at a Trump-themed merchandise store in Show Low, Ariz., last week.Footage of the speech, which was obtained by The New York Times, showed Ms. Lake on May 31 repeating lies about the 2020 election’s having been stolen from former President Donald J. Trump as she stood in front of a Confederate battle standard hanging in the store. The flag has become the one most associated with the Confederacy in the modern era.“I am the only person running for U.S. Senate, either Republican or Democrat, who truly believes there was fraud in the election in 2020 — does anyone else here believe that?” Ms. Lake said to cheers and applause. She later added: “We are still fighting. We have more fight in us. We have a lot of cases going.”The store, known as the Trumped Store, sells a variety of pro-Trump and 2020 election-denier merchandise as well as the Confederate battle flag and the Confederate national flag. The store also sells merchandise with slogans attacking President Biden, including “Let’s Go Brandon” and “F.J.B.,” which stands for a phrase that includes an expletive. A number of products also feature the phrase “Trump won,” in support of Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.In a statement, the Lake campaign defended her appearance at the store by saying: “Kari went to a store. The New York Times published an op-ed from the terrorist organization the Taliban. Do you approve of the Taliban?” In another statement, to The Guardian, which earlier reported Ms. Lake’s appearance at the store, the campaign said: “The Kari Lake campaign does not respond to British propaganda outlets. We stopped doing that in 1776.”The local news media in Arizona had also reported on Ms. Lake’s appearance at the Trumped Store earlier this week.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 Defends Vow to Prosecute Rivals, Saying ‘Sometimes Revenge Can Be Justified’

    Former President Donald J. Trump has in recent days been escalating his suggestions that he could prosecute his political enemies if elected in November.In interviews broadcast on Thursday and earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s remarks demonstrated how he is trying to put his legal troubles on the ballot as a referendum on the American justice system and the rule of law. His allies in the Republican Party have also joined his calls for revenge prosecutions and other retaliatory measures against Democrats in response to his felony convictions by a jury in a New York court on 34 charges.Mr. Trump was offered several opportunities by sympathetic interviewers in recent days to clarify or walk back his previous statements. Mr. Trump instead defended his position, saying at points that “I don’t want to look naïve” and that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”Dr. Phil McGraw, the television host and a self-described donor to Mr. Trump’s campaign, brought up the former president’s previous statements in an interview that ran on Thursday and gave him an opportunity to say, as Dr. McGraw put it: “Enough is enough. Too much is too much. This is a race to the bottom, and it stops here. It stops now.”Mr. Trump initially responded, “I’m OK with that,” but then added, “Sometimes, I’m sure in certain moments I wouldn’t be, you know, when you go through what I’ve been through.”Then, when Dr. McGraw said that revenge and retribution were unhealthy for the country and that Mr. Trump did not have time to “get even,” the former president replied: “Revenge does take time. I will say that. And sometimes revenge can be justified Phil, I have to be honest — sometimes it can.”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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    San Diego Is Once Again a Top Migrant Entry Point

    Asylum seekers from around the world are trying to enter the United States through California, and immigrant traffic there has reached its highest level in decades.From sunrise to sunset, the U.S. Border Patrol buses arrived every hour at a sunbaked parking lot in San Diego.Dozens of migrants stepped outside each time, many seeming to be confused about what was happening at this trolley hub on a recent weekend. There were no local officials to answer questions. No services. And few ways to reach their next destination in the United States.For the first time in 25 years, the San Diego region has become a top destination for migrants along the southern United States border, surpassing the number of illegal crossings at areas in Arizona and Texas for several weeks this year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.It has been a surprising turn for a border spot that was the focal point of the bitter national debate over immigration decades ago, before falling out of the spotlight as migrant flows shifted eastward. The recent surge in San Diego has been overwhelming enough that a government-funded welcome center exhausted its budget and had to close in February. Since then, the United States Border Patrol has bused migrants to a trolley center and sent them on their way.After being dropped off at the Iris Avenue Transit Center, many of the migrants head to the San Diego International Airport or find shelter provided by churches or nonprofit organizations in the San Diego area.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 Red Montana, Two Democrats Take a New Political Approach: Attack

    Democrats in Republican states have tended toward soft-spoken moderation, but Ryan Busse and Raph Graybill have charted a different course in trying to take down Gov. Greg Gianforte.At a recent campaign event at a brewpub in Whitefish, Mont., Ryan Busse was laying into his political opponent, Montana’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, with surprising vehemence for a red-state Democrat.He criticized Mr. Gianforte, who is running for a second term, as an elite, out-of-state rich interloper who simply does not understand Montanans.“I love putting the punch on this guy, because there’s so many places to put it on him,” Mr. Busse told the crowd.A former gun industry executive whose 2021 book “Gunfight” denounced the industry would seem like an unlikely candidate for governor in a state that loves its guns, especially since his book vaulted him to stardom in gun-control circles.But Mr. Busse, 54, and his running mate, Raph Graybill, 35, a crusading constitutional lawyer in Montana, are testing a new approach to campaigning as Democrats in Republican states. Instead of adopting the soft-spoken moderation of, say, the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, or the recently retired Democratic governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, or even the last Democratic governor of Montana, Steve Bullock, Mr. Busse and Mr. Graybill are campaigning as fighters, eager to activate not only the state’s few progressives but also its many voters disaffected with both parties. (Mr. Busse and Mr. Graybill will officially become the party’s nominees with Tuesday’s primary.)If nothing else, their campaign might bolster turnout for another endangered Democrat seeking election in a state almost sure to vote for former President Donald J. Trump in November, Senator Jon Tester.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’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate With Many Americans

    As the 2024 presidential election ramps up, here is what polls say about public views on the growing number of migrants.Former President Donald J. Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats. As many as 1.3 million people were expelled, mostly Mexican and Mexican American workers, some of whom were U.S. citizens. Critical to the initiative — named Operation Wetback, for the racial slur — was intense anti-immigrant sentiment. Officials at the time used that sentiment to justify family separations and overcrowded and unsanitary detention conditions — practices that the Trump administration would deploy decades later in its own immigration enforcement.As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some Latino advocacy and immigrant-rights groups are sounding the alarm that Mr. Trump’s tactics could amount to a repetition of a sordid chapter of American history. But recent polling shows that Mr. Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January. Authorities have reported record numbers of migrant apprehensions at the southern border for three straight years, including 2.4 million apprehensions in the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. Although the numbers have dropped sharply in recent months, immigration remains an albatross for President Biden: Even some Democratic mayors have complained that they need help from the federal government to contend with the migrant populations in their cities.Americans’ views on immigration are complex and constantly changing. Here is a snapshot of where public attitudes on immigration stand now.Public support for more immigration has ebbed after rising under Trump.Mr. Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration, both legal and illegal, helped push Americans of various political stripes to support more permissive policies.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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    Lara Trump, R.N.C. Leader, Denounces Larry Hogan for Accepting Trump Verdict

    Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and former President Donald J. Trump’s daughter-in-law, on Sunday denounced Larry Hogan, the Republican Senate candidate in Maryland, for urging Americans to “respect the verdict” against Mr. Trump — criticizing a prized recruit who has given the party a chance of winning a seat that has reliably been held by Democrats.Late Thursday afternoon, after a Manhattan jury said that it had reached its verdict — but before it had been announced — Mr. Hogan, a former governor of Maryland, posted on social media: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”That statement was not shocking coming from Mr. Hogan, a moderate Republican who has long been critical of Mr. Trump. But it enraged some supporters of Mr. Trump, who claimed that the trial was rigged because of grievances including its venue in liberal New York City.Former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, now running for Senate, has been a frequent critic of Mr. Trump.Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressMr. Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point, and quite frankly anybody in America, if that’s the way you feel,” Ms. Trump, who is married to Mr. Trump’s son Eric, said in an interview on CNN — the latest indication of how fealty to Mr. Trump has become a defining test within the Republican Party.She did not directly answer follow-up questions from the interviewer, Kasie Hunt, about whether the Republican Party would continue to support Mr. Hogan. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hogan did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.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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    Holy Cow, 34 for 45!

    WASHINGTON — At Nativity grade school, we grew up steeped in the lore — and gore — of martyrs. For their brave deeds and words, these men and women were stoned, crucified, beheaded, stripped of all their skin, shot with arrows and cooked alive on a red-hot griddle.So I’m a little surprised my siblings would somehow put Donald Trump in those martyrs’ sainted company.My sister and brother, disturbed by Trump’s constant chaos and slashing insults, saw their hopes for Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley evaporate.I called my Republican sibs Friday to see if hearing the word “guilty” ring out 34 times in a New York courtroom had finally severed them from Trump; they are, after all, children of a police detective.My sister, Peggy, said she couldn’t sleep all night.“You decided you can’t vote for a felon?” I asked.“I wasn’t going to vote for Trump,” she said. “But now I am because I thought this whole thing was a sham.”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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    Donald Trump and American Justice

    Readers offer a range of reactions and reflections.To the Editor:Re “Guilty: Jury Convicts Trump on All 34 Counts” (front page, May 31):I was overcome with a sense of giddiness on Thursday afternoon as I walked through Manhattan and news broke that former President Donald Trump had been convicted on 34 felony counts.I was glued to the live news updates on my phone, and soon enough messages began pouring in from like-minded friends who shared my sense of satisfaction that the justice system is alive and well, and that the verdict showed us that no one is above the law.Nonetheless, it took mere minutes before a more sober reality set in, and I contemplated how the verdict will likely play into the strategic hands of Mr. Trump’s campaign, energizing his ardent supporters, perhaps even working in his favor among some sympathetic swing voters.That so many of us find that morally offensive and reprehensible, while so many of our fellow Americans simply do not, reaffirms how deeply and dangerously divided this country truly is.Cody LyonBrooklynTo the Editor:Our system of laws has spoken. A jury of his peers found Donald Trump guilty on all counts in what was supposed to be the weakest of the criminal cases against the former president.Unfortunately, our Constitution does not prohibit a convicted felon from running for president; it even allows an elected candidate who has been criminally convicted to govern, even from prison.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