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      After Trump Assassination Attempts, Congress Debates Secret Service Funding

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      Virtually everyone on Capitol Hill agrees that the Secret Service needs to do a better job. But Democrats and Republicans are at odds over whether to increase the agency’s budget.After the second assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump in two months, a fevered debate has broken out in Congress over whether the Secret Service needs more money.Because the dispute is unfolding on Capitol Hill and comes little more than six weeks before a presidential election, the question has, perhaps predictably, become mired in politics. And given that there are only 11 days before Congress’s deadline for extending federal spending, it is threatening to complicate already contentious negotiations aimed at heading off a government shutdown on Oct. 1.Republicans have sought to pin blame on Democrats and their anti-Trump statements for the actions of Ryan W. Routh, 58, who was arrested on Sunday after hiding in the bushes with an assault rifle at Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., in an apparent attempt to target the former president. They have accused the administration of providing better protection for President Biden than for Mr. Trump and plan to vote on Friday on a bill that would ensure that Mr. Trump is protected at the same level as the president — something the Secret Service says is already happening.Democrats, who routinely note that Mr. Trump has long trafficked in the kind of bellicose language that can fuel political violence, have said they are all for beefing up protections for him and fixing what is broken with the Secret Service.They have even offered to increase funding for the embattled agency, including potentially through a stopgap spending bill they are negotiating to avert a government shutdown. In doing so, Democrats are effectively daring Republicans — who are bent on slashing spending, not increasing it — to be the ones to object to paying for increased protection for Mr. Trump.“If the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them, possibly in the upcoming funding agreement,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on the floor 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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      Vance Says He Will Keep Calling Haitian Immigrants ‘Illegal Aliens’

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      Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said on Wednesday that he would continue to describe Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, as “illegal aliens” even though most of them are in the country legally.The immigrants are mainly in the United States under a program called temporary protected status, which the executive branch can grant to people whose home countries are in crisis. Mr. Vance claimed falsely that this program was illegal.“If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” he said in response to a reporter’s question after a rally in Raleigh, N.C. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal.”Congress created the temporary protected status program in 1990 and presidents from both major parties have used it in response to wars, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises in various countries. The program allows people from countries designated by the Department of Homeland Security to live and work legally in the United States for 18 months, a period that the department can renew indefinitely. It does not include a path to permanent residency or citizenship.The Obama administration granted the temporary protected status to Haitians living in the United States illegally after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010. Under President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has granted or renewed temporary protected status to immigrants from a number of countries, including Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela. Ms. Harris did not make those decisions.Former President Donald J. Trump has long criticized the program. His administration sought to end protections for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, though some of those decisions were challenged in court, and Mr. Biden reversed some.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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      From a Long Island Rally, Trump Lobs Exaggerated Attacks at New York City

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      On the day that he was originally set to return to his hometown and receive the sentence for his 34 felony convictions, former President Donald J. Trump found himself a few miles east, basking in the raucous adulation of a packed arena on Long Island.Standing in front of thousands at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., Mr. Trump received a local hero’s reception, as he drew an exaggerated depiction of a New York in decline, made false claims and hammered Democrats over crime, inflation and immigration.He continued to falsely maintain that Springfield, Ohio, had been over overrun by illegal immigrants, even though the Haitian community he was referring to has temporary legal status. Then, he announced he would visit both that city and Aurora, Colo., another focal point of his exaggerated claims about migrants.“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Mr. Trump said. “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do.”As he discussed Springfield, members of the crowd began chanting, “Save the cats,” a reference to a debunked claim spread by Mr. Trump that Haitian migrants were abducting and eating pets. (Springfield’s Republican mayor said this week that a visit from Mr. Trump would burden the city’s strained resources.)Mr. Trump’s rally on Long Island was his second campaign event since the apparent assassination attempt against him on Sunday in West Palm Beach, Fla. Though he spoke with typical vigor about the incident, he later appeared jumpy at one point, as someone apparently approached the stage.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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      Candice Bergen Takes a Jab at JD Vance at the Emmys

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      The actress Candice Bergen was summoned to the Emmys this year to present an award. She also landed a political jab.Bergen is perhaps best known for playing the titular character in “Murphy Brown.” In her brief remarks, she recalled that her character, an unmarried news anchor, was rebuked by Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992 after she gave birth to a baby boy.The criticism from Quayle came during his unsuccessful re-election campaign with President George H.W. Bush. While Quayle was talking about family values, he said that Bergen’s character was “mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”Bergen won five Emmys for her work on “Murphy Brown.” At Sunday’s ceremony, she recalled the kerfuffle with Quayle, which became front-page news, and offered a quip.“Oh, how far we’ve come,” Bergen said. “Today, a Republican candidate for vice president would never attack a woman for having kids.”It was a thinly veiled reference to Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, who has complained that the United States is being run by Democrats, specifically “a bunch of childless cat ladies.”Aware of this, Bergen continued, “So, as they say, my work here is done.”Then she added some onomatopoeia: “Meow.” More

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      At a Key Moment in Trump’s Campaign, a Social-Media Instigator Is at His Side

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      The former president’s decision to elevate Laura Loomer, a far-right activist known for racist and homophobic posts online, has stunned even some Trump allies.Before Donald J. Trump traveled to Philadelphia for this week’s debate, he invited one of the internet’s most polarizing figures along for the ride.Laura Loomer was backstage with the Trump entourage while Mr. Trump squared off against Vice President Kamala Harris. She was in the spin room with the former president immediately afterward. And the next day, she flew with him to New York City and Shanksville, Pa., to commemorate the anniversary of Sept. 11.A far-right activist known for her endless stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic social media posts and public stunts, Ms. Loomer has made a name for herself over the past decade by unabashedly claiming 9/11 was “an inside job,” calling Islam “a cancer,” accusing Ron DeSantis’s wife of exaggerating breast cancer and claiming that President Biden was behind the attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump in July.Just two days before the debate, Ms. Loomer, 31, posted a racist joke about the vice president, whose mother was Indian American. Ms. Loomer wrote on X that if Ms. Harris won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.”For many observers, including some of Mr. Trump’s most important allies, the Republican presidential nominee’s choice at a critical moment of the campaign to platform a social-media instigator, albeit one with 1.3 million followers on X, was stunning.“The history of this person is just really toxic,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally, told a reporter for HuffPost on Thursday. “I don’t think it’s helpful 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 Calls for Ending Taxes on Overtime Pay in Tucson Speech

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      Although it had been billed as an event focused on housing and the economy, former President Donald J. Trump spent much of a meandering speech on Thursday in Tucson, Ariz., venting his grievances over his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.But when he eventually did turn to the section on economic issues, Mr. Trump made a new proposal as he sought to win the votes of working- and middle-class Americans: He called for eliminating taxes on overtime pay.“The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them,” Mr. Trump said. “Those are the people that really work. They’re police officers, nurses, factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers and machine operators.”Mr. Trump’s speech was his first campaign event since a debate performance on Tuesday night that some of his allies have admitted fell short. Mr. Trump insisted to around 2,000 supporters in Tucson that it was a “monumental victory” for him that rendered the need for a subsequent debate unnecessary.“Because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate,” Mr. Trump said, repeating a declaration he made earlier on his social media platform, Truth Social.Even as he maintained that he had triumphed, Mr. Trump spent significant time during his speech bashing the debate’s host, ABC News, and its moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis.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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      Johnson’s Spending Plan Falters, Facing Resistance From Both Parties

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      The speaker’s first effort to avert a government shutdown ran into a buzz saw of opposition from both far-right and mainstream Republicans.Speaker Mike Johnson’s initial plan to avert a government shutdown has run into a wall of Republican opposition, as lawmakers from an array of factions in his party balk at a six-month stopgap funding measure that Democrats have already rejected.Mr. Johnson has said he plans to bring up a spending bill this week that would extend federal funding through March 28, which includes a measure that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The addition of the voting restriction bill was a nod to the right flank of his conference and an effort to force politically vulnerable Democrats to take a fraught vote.But his $1.6 trillion proposal was almost immediately met with an outpouring of skepticism by House Republicans on Monday evening as they returned to Washington after a lengthy summer recess. Hard-line conservatives, including Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said they would oppose the legislation because it would extend current spending levels they believe are too high.The legislation “doesn’t cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage,” Mr. Massie said, referring to the voting restriction. He added: “I refuse to be a thespian in this failure theater.”On the other hand, Republican defense hawks, including Representative Mike D. Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said they opposed the plan because extending current spending levels for such a lengthy period would amount to a cut to military spending, which would otherwise be slated to increase in the coming months.The internal divisions were the latest headache for Mr. Johnson in a seemingly interminable series of skirmishes over government funding that have dogged him since Republicans took control of the House. Every episode has ended with the same result: passage of a bipartisan spending bill that has angered the right flank of the House Republican conference.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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      Why Trump Can Afford to Disrespect His Anti-Abortion Voters

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      The Babylon Bee, which is like The Onion for conservative Christians, last month ran a despairing story about the presidential options anti-abortion voters have before them. “Pro-Lifers Excited to Choose Between Moderate Amount of Baby Murder and High Amount of Baby Murder,” said the headline. It was a dark joke, but it spoke to something real: a disquiet among some anti-abortion activists over Donald Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the abortion bans enabled by his Supreme Court appointees. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told my Times colleague Astead W. Herndon that declining evangelical enthusiasm for Trump could be a “grave danger” to his campaign.As someone who wants Trump to lose, I hope he’s right, but I’m skeptical. “One of the things that Trump has done is reveal what you might call the G.O.P.’s dirty little secret, and that is that it’s never really been only about abortion,” said Robert P. Jones, the president of the Public Religion Research Institute. Conservative activists, he argued, have long seen themselves as part of a moral crusade against the killing of babies, but Republican voters, even white evangelical ones, tend to have more complicated views. In P.R.R.I. surveys, he said, white evangelicals are more likely to identify the economy, crime and immigration as critical issues than abortion. “The bond between Trump and rank-and-file Republicans and between Trump and white evangelical Protestants has really not been abortion,” said Jones.Clearly, a second Trump presidency would be catastrophic for reproductive rights. He obviously doesn’t care about abortion and is happy to take whatever position suits him at any given moment. But many of the people he will sweep into office with him are devoted to abortion bans. Part of the purpose of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 was to make sure there was a deep bench of MAGA apparatchiks ready to staff a second Trump administration, freeing him from the legal and bureaucratic roadblocks that stymied his first administration. The same people Heritage selected to defend Trump at all costs have thought deeply about how to use the levers of the federal government to restrict abortion.Still, in his spasmodic abortion positioning, Trump has annihilated the expectation that Republicans show deference to the social conservatives who’ve been crusading against abortion for a generation. On his vanity social media site, Truth Social, he wrote that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He’s come out against six-week abortion bans. He removed a plank from the Republican Party platform calling for an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution. He’s promised that his administration would provide free in vitro fertilization, a procedure that the Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose in June.In doing all this without losing significant support among Christian conservatives, he’s demonstrated how little leverage the anti-abortion movement has over him.Part of the reason Trump is less constrained on this issue than his predecessors is that he’s transformed the Christian right just as he has the broader conservative movement, dethroning serious-seeming figures while promoting those once regarded as flamboyant cranks. In Republican politics, Steve Bannon and Alex Jones now have far more influence than erstwhile conservative stalwarts like Paul Ryan and Dick Cheney. Similarly, in the religious realm, the ex-president has elevated a class of faith healers, prosperity gospel preachers and roadshow revivalists over the kind of respectable evangelicals who clustered around George W. Bush. “Independent charismatic leaders, who 20 years ago would have been mocked by mainstream religious right leaders, are now frontline captains in the American culture wars,” writes the scholar Matthew D. Taylor in his fascinating new book, “The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.”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