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      Vance Knocks Harris as a ‘Wacky San Francisco Liberal’ in Nevada

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      Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, began a swing of campaign stops in crucial battleground states in the Southwest — his first visit to the region since joining the ticket — with a pair of rallies on Tuesday in Nevada.Mr. Vance used those appearances to hone his attack lines against Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the de facto Democratic presidential nominee last week, denouncing her as a failed “border czar” and a “wacky San Francisco liberal.”Mr. Vance, a political acolyte of the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, accused the vice president of “allowing” migrants to murder Americans and of “inviting” drug cartels to deal fentanyl to children in playgrounds. He also repeated unfounded claims about undocumented migrants’ “bankrupting” Medicare and other government services.“She has the nerve to question our loyalty to this country,” Mr. Vance said in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas. He added that “loyalty to this country is closing the border, not opening it up,” and that “if Kamala Harris wants to see the face of disloyalty she might as well look in the damn mirror.”Before Mr. Vance took the stage at his second rally, in Reno, former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado of California said that Ms. Harris should be prosecuted because of the Biden administration’s policies at the border. Mr. Vance took the stage and thanked Mr. Maldonado “for such a great introduction,” adding: “I think he’s handled Kamala Harris. I don’t know if I have to say anything about Kamala now.”In both stops, he also blamed Ms. Harris for the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs through her support of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Trump significantly revised but left mostly intact during his term as president.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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      ‘I Was a Childless Cat Lady’: Women Respond to JD Vance

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      More from our inbox:Clearing Homeless EncampmentsFood and Gas PricesThe Roger Maris FireThe selection of Senator JD Vance of Ohio as former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate was supposed to appeal to women, voters of color and blue-collar voters, but a stream of years-old comments has threatened to undermine that.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Past Comments Fluster Vance as Democrats Go on Offense” (front page, July 29):JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in 2021, “We’re effectively run, in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”I would say this to Mr. Vance:I was a childless cat lady: three cats, no kids.I thought fertility was a given. There was no medical reason I couldn’t have children. Yet it did not happen. Three cats. A great career. No kids.I was, in effect at 38, a “childless cat lady.”I pursued fertility treatments. Treatments that many Republicans want to ban.I had painful tests, surgeries, running to the lab — five vials of blood drawn every day at 6 a.m. — then rushing to work for a minimum 12-hour day.Childless cat lady lawyer. Meow.I had one fabulous child at 38 with I.V.F. She was a triplet, but I lost my daughter’s siblings.I was pregnant three other times. I lost two other babies at four months. I needed a D and C: same procedure as an abortion. If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have died.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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      How the Kids Online Safety Act Was Dragged Into a Political War

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      The Senate was set to pass the Kids Online Safety Act on Tuesday, but the legislation faces an uphill battle in the House because of censorship concerns.Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sent 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to lobby against the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill meant to protect children online.The teenagers told the staffs of 85 lawmakers that the legislation could censor important conversations, particularly among marginalized groups like L.G.B.T.Q. communities.“We live on the internet, and we are afraid that important information we’ve accessed all our lives will no longer be available,” said Anjali Verma, a 17-year-old rising high school senior from Bucks County, Pa., who was part of the student lobbying campaign. “Regardless of your political perspective, this looks like a censorship bill.”The effort was one of many escalations in recent months by those who oppose the bill. In June, a progressive nonprofit, Fight for the Future, organized students to write hundreds of letters to urge lawmakers to scrap it. Conservative groups like Patriot Voices, founded by the former Republican senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, are also protesting with an online petition.What was supposed to be a simple piece of legislation to protect children online has been dragged into a heated political war. At the heart of the battle are concerns about how the bill could affect free speech on culturally divisive issues, which both sides of the spectrum worry could be weaponized under the guise of child safety. Liberals worry about censorship of transgender care, while conservatives are concerned about the same with anti-abortion efforts. The tech industry has also latched onto the same First Amendment arguments to oppose the bill.The controversy stems from the specific terms of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. The legislation would require social media platforms and other sites to limit features that can heighten cyberbullying, harassment and the glorification of self-harm. The bill would also require tech companies to turn on the highest privacy and safety settings for users under 17 and let them opt out of some features that have been shown to lead to compulsive use.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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      24 horas en la campaña de Trump

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      Cuando Donald Trump intenta ganarse a un público que no es inherentemente el suyo, los resultados pueden ser algo incómodos.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El fin de semana pasado, en solo 24 horas, Donald Trump visitó dos mundos muy diferentes al suyo.El viernes por la noche se presentó ante líderes religiosos en West Palm Beach, Florida. La tarde siguiente estuvo en Nashville, charlando con miles de criptoevangelistas en una conferencia sobre bitcóin.Estos grupos no podrían ser más diferentes, y Trump —que ni es devoto ni domina la tecnología— no era el defensor ideal para ninguno de los dos. Y, sin embargo, las dos apariciones proporcionaron un caso práctico para observar cómo él va cambiando de códigos —del cristianismo a las criptomonedas— mientras hace campaña.Suplica, fanfarronea, hace promesas extravagantes. Y sus intentos de ganarse a un público que no es inherentemente el suyo pueden ser muy incómodos.El viernes habló en la Cumbre de los Creyentes, una conferencia religiosa organizada por Charlie Kirk, fundador de Turning Point USA, un grupo activista conservador. Se trataba de un evento de producción impecable, adecuado para los televangelistas sureños y los cientos de pastores y jefes de ministerios que acudieron a la cita.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 Agrees to Be Interviewed by F.B.I. in Its Investigation Into Gunman

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      The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the shooter, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases.Former President Donald J. Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials said on Monday.“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”Mr. Trump’s supporters had sharply criticized Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the F.B.I. offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying it was a bullet or a fragment of one, a statement it reiterated on Monday.The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the gunman, Thomas Crooks, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases, and that he gathered information on other assassination attempts, including the shooting of Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, in May.Mr. Rojek also provided information about a critical — and lost — opportunity to stop Mr. Crooks. He said that a local law enforcement officer who was boosted onto the warehouse roof where Mr. Crooks had positioned himself just before the shooting “dropped down” to the ground after the shooter aimed at the officer.About 25 to 30 seconds later, Mr. Crooks fired eight rounds — hitting Mr. Trump’s ear, killing a bystander and injuring two other people.F.B.I. officials said they were taking the unusual step of providing investigative details, even though their efforts were continuing, to combat conspiracy theories and misinformation.They also said that their investigation was not geared toward identifying or analyzing security failures by the Secret Service and local enforcement that allowed Mr. Crooks to get within a few hundred yards of Mr. Trump to discharge a deadly volley with a clear line of sight.The investigation, they said, has been entirely focused on determining whether he was motivated by political animus — they have found no evidence to suggest that so far — and to find out if he was part of a larger conspiracy. They have not ruled that possibility out, but thus far, the bureau has found that Mr. Crooks had few contacts outside of his immediate family, and did not even seem to interact much with co-workers or fellow participants on gaming platforms.“We do still believe that he was a loner,” Mr. Rojek said. More

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      From Believers to Bitcoin: 24 Hours in Trump’s Code-Switching Campaign

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      When Donald J. Trump tries to win over a crowd that is not inherently his own, the results can be awkward.In a matter of just 24 hours this weekend, Donald J. Trump traversed two very different worlds, neither one of them his own.On Friday night, he appeared before religious leaders in West Palm Beach, Fla. The next afternoon, he was in Nashville, yukking it up with thousands of crypto-evangelists at a Bitcoin conference.The two groups could hardly be less alike, and Mr. Trump — neither a pious man, nor technologically savvy one — made for an unlikely champion at each. And yet, taken together, the two appearances provided a case study in how he code switches — from Christianity to crypto — as he campaigns.He begs, he blusters, he makes outlandish promises. And his attempts to win over a crowd that is not inherently his own can be acutely awkward.On Friday, he spoke at the Believers Summit, a religious conference put on by Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group. It was a slickly produced affair befitting the Southern televangelists and hundreds of pastors and ministry heads who turned up for it.In this setting, martyrdom was the motif, and Mr. Trump leaned into it, hard. (“I took a bullet for democracy,” he said at one point.)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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      Hulk Hogan Is Not the Only Way to Be a Man

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      The Democratic Party must join the battle for the hearts and minds of young men. It matters not just for this election, though the vast and growing gender gap means that disaffected men could hand Donald Trump the presidency. It matters for how we mentor young men, and it matters for how we view masculinity itself.And yes, the Democrats can do it. Within the Kamala Harris coalition, there are men who can show a better way.If you ever wondered whether the Republican Party sees itself as the party of men, I’d invite you to rewatch the last night of the Republican National Convention. Prime time featured a rousing speech by the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, a song by Kid Rock and a speech by Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship — all as warm-up acts before Trump delivered his acceptance speech. Republican manliness was the capstone of the convention.But what kind of men were featured? They’re all rich and powerful, and as a longtime fan of professional wrestling, I loved watching Hogan as a kid, but none of them are the kind of man I’d want my son to be. White was caught on video slapping his wife. Kid Rock has his own checkered past, including a sex tape and an assault charge related to a fight in a Nashville strip club. Hogan faced his own sex scandal after he had a bizarre sexual relationship with a woman who was married to one of his close friends, a radio host who goes by “Bubba the Love Sponge.”We know all about Trump, but it’s worth remembering some of his worst moments — including a jury finding that he was liable for sexual abuse, his defamation of his sex-abuse victim, the “Access Hollywood” tape and the countless examples of his cruelly insulting the women he so plainly hates.JD Vance is different. No one should denigrate his personal story. He has overcome great adversity, served his country honorably as a Marine and, by all accounts, is a good husband and father. But he now wears Trumpist masculinity like an ill-fitting suit. Last week, he was justifiably attacked for a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson in which he declared that the country is run, “via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies.” He identified Harris (who has two stepchildren) as just the kind of person he was talking about.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