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      Kamala Harris Visits North Carolina to Check on Hurricane Response

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      Vice President Kamala Harris met with North Carolina and federal emergency officials on Saturday in Charlotte as she continued to help oversee the disaster response in the Southeast after Hurricane Helene.Ms. Harris participated in a storm response briefing at a North Carolina Air National Guard base at Charlotte’s airport, where she was joined by Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Mayor Esther Manheimer of Asheville, N.C., which was particularly hard-hit.The vice president praised local officials and residents for their response to the storm.“I’ve been seeing and hearing the stories from here in North Carolina about strangers who are helping each other out, giving people assistance in every way that they need, including shelter, food, and friendship and fellowship,” she said.Ms. Harris’s trip to Charlotte was her second trip this week to assess the storm’s toll in the Southeast, and it served as a reminder that in addition to running for president she continued to have duties to fulfill as the vice president.In addition to reviewing the official storm response, Ms. Harris visited a volunteer center, where she briefly joined them making packages of donated necessities — including things like canned food, formula, diapers and flashlights — for North Carolinians stranded by the storm.While the deadly storm and the conflict in the Middle East have at times diverted Ms. Harris from the campaign trail as she turns to her official duties, her aides and allies have said they believe having voters see Ms. Harris act as the vice president could make her appear presidential and empathetic to voters in a key battleground state.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 prometió hacer público su historial médico pero sigue sin hacerlo

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      Si vuelve a ser elegido, se convertirá en el presidente de mayor edad al final de su mandato. Sin embargo, se niega a revelar incluso la información médica básica.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Como candidato presidencial en 2015, Donald Trump se negó a publicar su historial médico, ofreciendo en su lugar una carta de cuatro párrafos de su médico personal en la que proclamaba que sería “la persona más sana jamás elegida para la presidencia”.En 2020, cuando estuvo hospitalizado por COVID-19 y se presentaba a la reelección, los médicos de Trump dieron una información mínima sobre su estado, que, según se supo más tarde, fue mucho más grave de lo que dejó entrever las descripciones públicas.En 2024, días antes de convertirse en el candidato presidencial republicano oficial por tercera vez, fue rozado por una bala de un posible asesino, pero su campaña no celebró una sesión informativa sobre su estado, no publicó los registros hospitalarios ni puso a disposición a los médicos de urgencias que lo trataron para ser entrevistados.Ahora, a poco más de un mes de unas elecciones que podrían convertir a Trump, de 78 años, en la persona de mayor edad en ocupar la presidencia (82 años, 7 meses y 6 días cuando su mandato termine en enero de 2029), se niega a revelar incluso la información más básica sobre su salud.Si gana, Trump podría entrar en el Despacho Oval con una serie de problemas potencialmente preocupantes, según los expertos médicos: factores de riesgo cardíaco, posibles secuelas del intento de asesinato de julio y el deterioro cognitivo que se produce de forma natural con la edad, entre otros.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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      America Needs a President

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      Last week’s column was devoted to uncertainties about how the next president would handle the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, where America’s proxy and ally is slowly losing ground to Russia, while the United States seems trapped by its commitment to a maximal victory and unable to pivot to a strategy for peace.One could argue that the Middle East suddenly presents the opposite situation for the United States: After the last two weeks of warmaking and targeted assassinations, the position of our closest ally seems suddenly more secure, while our enemies look weaker and more vulnerable. Israel is dealing blow after blow to Hezbollah and Iran’s wider “axis of resistance,” the Iranian response suggests profound limits to their capacities, and the regional balance of power looks worse for America’s revisionist rivals than it did even a month ago.Look deeper, though, and both the strategic deterioration in Eastern Europe and the strategic improvement in the Middle East have something important in common. In both cases, the American government has found itself stuck in a supporting role, unable to decide upon a clear self-interested policy, while a regional power that’s officially dependent on us sets the agenda instead.In Ukraine this is working out badly because the government in Kyiv overestimated its own capacities to win back territory in last year’s counteroffensive. In the Middle East it’s now working out better for U.S. interests because Israeli intelligence and the Israeli military have been demonstrating a remarkable capacity to disrupt, degrade and destroy their foes.In neither case, though, does the world’s most powerful country seem to have a real handle on the situation, a plan that it’s executing or a clear means of setting and accomplishing its goals.Or as The Wall Street Journal reported this week, as Israel takes the fight to Hezbollah, “the Biden administration increasingly resembles a spectator, with limited insight into what its closest Middle East ally is planning — and lessened influence over its decisions.”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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      5 Takeaways From Melania Trump’s Book: Abortion Rights, 2020 Election and More

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      Shining a little more light on her mysterious life, her memoir details her support for abortion rights, her doubts about the 2020 election and her explanation for that “I really don’t care” jacket.Melania Trump’s new memoir offers a few new glimpses into a life she has carefully walled off from the public, but readers hoping to understand one of the most mysterious first ladies in modern history will not make it past the gilded front gate.First ladies write memoirs because they want to be understood. (The hefty contract doesn’t hurt, either.) Hillary Clinton wrote about her husband’s affair with an intern and the poisonous political process that followed. Michelle Obama revealed that she was angrier with her husband’s critics — one in particular — than she had ever let on while he was in office. Laura Bush used her book to voice her support for gay marriage and abortion rights.It is almost as if they must survive the role before they can write about it.But in Mrs. Trump’s telling, her time as first lady was largely smooth sailing. Her book, an early copy of which was obtained by The New York Times before its release next week, does not reveal her to harbor differing views from her husband, beyond her support for abortion rights.In fact, her grievances — with the news media, with “the opposition” and with aides she believes failed her and her husband — sound a lot like her husband’s, only dressed up in couture.Here are five takeaways.The big revelation is that she supports abortion rights.Mrs. Trump made headlines this week when a reported excerpt from her book revealed that she supported abortion rights — a notable position given that her husband appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn a constitutional right to the procedure.“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” Mrs. Trump writes. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.”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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      2 Men Sentenced for Attacking Officers at Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

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      One of the men, from New Jersey, referred to lawmakers as “traitors” and encouraged other rioters to drag them out of the building by their hair, prosecutors said.A man from New Jersey and another from New York were sentenced to prison on Friday after federal prosecutors said they had breached the U.S. Capitol building and attacked law enforcement officers during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The New Jersey man, Michael Oliveras, 51, was sentenced to five years in prison. He broke into the Capitol with rioters and urged them to drag members of Congress out of the building by their hair, according to a news release.Prosecutors said Mr. Oliveras, who lived in Lindenwold, N.J., traveled to Washington to try to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. According to the release, he documented his attack online, not only posting on social media that he had booked a hotel room near the building to scope it out, but also detailing when he entered the Capitol.Mr. Oliveras, carrying an American flag, marched to the West Front of the Capitol and confronted police officers, the release said. About 10 minutes later, a video he recorded showed him barging into the building and looking for lawmakers, yelling, “Where are they?” He also called them “traitors,” prosecutors said.“Drag them out by their hair,” he yelled, using an expletive.Mr. Oliveras entered and was ejected from the Capitol twice. During an unsuccessful third attempt, he stood in a doorway telling others to “push” and then brawled with officers.He continued with the riot for hours into the evening, marching to the other side of the building and encouraging others as they destroyed media equipment, the release 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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      In Georgia, Black Men’s Frustration With Democrats Creates Opening for Trump

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      Most Black men in the key battleground will back Vice President Kamala Harris — but the Trump campaign has made an effort to capitalize on a sense of dissatisfaction some voters have expressed.Over the last month, Freddie Hicks, 23, has received dozens of Republican mailers addressed to him at his home in deep-blue DeKalb County, an Atlanta suburb.The messaging was largely consistent, painting Vice President Kamala Harris as a “failed leader” with “dangerously liberal” views on crime and abortion, and former President Donald J. Trump as supporting a “common sense agenda” on abortion and immigration.But it was the sheer quantity that alarmed Mr. Hicks’s father, Fred Hicks, 47, an Atlanta-area Democratic strategist. No one else in his family was being inundated like that, including him. And nothing similar was arriving from the Democrats or Ms. Harris.Mr. Hicks’s son is one of Georgia’s most sought-after voters this election: a young Black man. Mailers are only one mode of campaigning and often not the most effective way to reach voters. But anecdotes of their uneven distribution have been enough to rattle some Democrats who see lagging Black male support as a warning sign for the vice president’s campaign in the key battleground.“They are young, they’re volatile with respect to their opinions and their voting decisions and they don’t have inherently the same loyalty to the Democratic Party that say, you know, their parents do,” Fred Hicks said of young Black men like his son, whom he described nonetheless as a staunch Democratic voter. “This is concerning to me not just for the 2024 election, but the payoff, I think for Republicans could come well over the next 20 years.”Black men are rivaled only by Black women in their high turnout and loyalty to Democrats. In recent surveys, the gap in support for the party between Black men and women is the narrowest of any race. Yet, more Black men under 50 have expressed in polling and conversations their openness to voting for Mr. Trump or staying home altogether — scenarios that could decide the election in hypercompetitive states, including Georgia.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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      Liz Cheney Campaigns With Harris and Calls on Her Party to Reject Trump

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      It was an exercise in unsubtle and unlikely campaign optics: a Democratic vice president who is running for the presidency. A Republican former congresswoman who is the daughter of a staunchly conservative vice president. A small city known as the birthplace of the Republican Party in the middle of a battleground state.On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris and former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the most prominent Republican to endorse her campaign, traveled to Ripon in central Wisconsin where meetings in 1854 helped form the Republican Party. Just a mile away from a one-room schoolhouse where those gatherings were held, the pair tore into former President Donald J. Trump for his role in igniting a riot at the Capitol, and they warned of the threat he poses to democracy should he return to power.Ms. Cheney said that, in November, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship should not merely be an aspiration — “it is our duty.”Her remarks, delivered with an air of somber restraint, were as much a public indictment of Mr. Trump as they were an endorsement of Ms. Harris. Calling his candidacy “a threat unlike any we have faced before,” she called on conservatives to join her in an “urgent cause” to elect Ms. Harris and to reject what she called the former president’s “depraved cruelty.”“I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law,” Ms. Cheney said of Ms. Harris, “and I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children and, if I might say so, especially our little girls.”The joint appearance was one of the starkest examples to date of how Ms. Harris has endeavored to pitch herself as a unifying president who values pragmatism over partisanship. Her overarching goal is to win over moderate and independent voters who will be crucial to delivering her a decisive victory.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 in Michigan Dominated by More False Statements

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      Former President Donald J. Trump held a rally on Thursday in the key battleground state of Michigan that was notable mainly for his continued false statements and exaggerations on a number of subjects as varied as the 2020 election and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.In the roughly 85 minutes that Mr. Trump was onstage, he repeated a pattern of untrue assertions that have characterized many of his events as the 2024 presidential race heads into its final weeks. The crowd of supporters in Saginaw County, which he narrowly lost four years ago, included Mike Rogers, the former Michigan congressman and the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, and Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican Party chairman.Mr. Trump reiterated his familiar false claim that he had won the 2020 election and made no acknowledgment of new evidence that was unsealed against him on Wednesday in the federal election subversion case. He also said his campaign was up in all polls in every swing state, while several public polls show close races and Vice President Kamala Harris leading narrowly in a number of battlegrounds.Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the state of funding at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that the Biden administration had stolen disaster-relief money allocated to the agency to give to housing for undocumented immigrants so they would vote for Democrats.He cast electric cars as a threat to the auto industry, while at the same time praising Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who has endorsed his candidacy and featured him prominently on X, the Musk-owned social media platform.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states where Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in 2020 through a series of maneuvers that included breaching voting equipment and seeking to seat a set of fake presidential electors. Some of his supporters have been criminally charged in the state, where Mr. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator this year.Mr. Trump spent time in his speech taking satisfaction over his choice of running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose debate performance this week was applauded by many.“I drafted the best athlete,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Vance. The audience — several thousand supporters at a recreation center at Saginaw Valley State University, roughly 100 miles north of Detroit — cheered.And he mused, at one point, that instead of being on a beach in Monte Carlo or someplace else, he was running for the presidency again. “If I had my choice of being here with you today or being on some magnificent beach with the waves hitting me in the face, I would take you every single time.”Overall as of Thursday, Ms. Harris led by two percentage points in Michigan, according to The New York Times’s polling average, 49 percent to 47 percent. The vice president is scheduled to return to the state on Friday, campaigning in Detroit and Flint. More