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      Biden Appears to Insult Trump Supporters as ‘Garbage,’ but Quickly Tries to Clarify

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      President Biden on Tuesday denounced racist language at former President Donald J. Trump’s recent rally but appeared to insult Trump supporters as “garbage,” prompting waves of criticism from Republicans.The White House quickly objected to that interpretation of the president’s remarks, arguing that he was instead describing the racist language as “garbage,” not Trump supporters.The comments came as Mr. Biden was addressing Latino supporters by video. “Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Mr. Biden said, referring to a riff by Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian and Trump supporter who spoke at the rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.Mr. Biden said Puerto Ricans are “good, decent honorable people.” Then he went on: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”The White House released a transcript that showed Mr. Biden was saying “his supporter’s” demonization, meaning that Mr. Hinchcliffe’s demonization was garbage.But Republicans seized on the seeming gaffe, comparing it to a comment by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables.”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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      Partial Breach of Election Machine Passwords in Colorado Poses No Risk, State Says

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      Partial passwords for election machines that were accidentally leaked on the Colorado secretary of state’s website pose no threat to the system’s security, the secretary’s office said in a statement on Tuesday night.The passwords, which were exposed on a hidden tab in a spreadsheet online, were first revealed in a letter by Hope Scheppelman, the vice chair of the Colorado Republican Party. The passwords became visible when a user downloaded a voting systems inventory spreadsheet and clicked “unhide.”According to an affidavit that accompanied Ms. Scheppelman’s letter, the passwords had been exposed since at least August.But while the breach of password data is likely to erode confidence and invite disinformation in Colorado, there are multiple layers of security to protect the integrity of election machines in the state.Election machines are not connected to the internet, and they are required to be kept in secure rooms that require ID badges for entry. They also have “24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment,” according to the secretary of state’s office.Even if a person were to somehow gain access to a machine, the passwords revealed would not be sufficient.“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties,” Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, said in a statement. “Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system.”The statement also said the exposure would not affect how ballots are counted.The department contacted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security, whose officials told the office that they would monitor the situation.A representative for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday night.Chris Krebs, the former director of the security agency, said the breach of passwords “highlights the critical importance of the various compensating controls in place that protect our nation’s election systems.”“While this is an extremely unfortunate leak that may serve to undermine confidence in some circles and feed into conspiracy theories in others, it nonetheless has negligible if any technical impact on Colorado’s systems,” Mr. Krebs added.The breach of password data resonates in Colorado, a state where Tina Peters, an election official from Mesa County, concocted a brazen and bizarre breach of election machines after the 2020 election.She was recently sentenced to nine years in federal prison for her scheme. More

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      Michelle Obama, Rallying Young Voters Near Atlanta, Warns of ‘Apathy’

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      Michelle Obama, the former first lady and among the Democrats’ most popular surrogates, offered a bracing tutorial in the realities of political power on Tuesday night, beseeching thousands of people near Atlanta to vote and to “stop the spiral of disillusionment and apathy.”“It’s natural to wonder if anyone hears you, if anyone sees you,” Mrs. Obama told her audience, many of them students from Atlanta’s historically Black colleges and universities, at an arena just south of downtown. “It is healthy to push your leaders to be better, even to question the whole system.”But, she added, “It’s our job to show folks that two things can be true at once: that it is possible to be outraged by the slow pace of progress and be committed to your own pursuit of that progress.”Mrs. Obama’s pleas and warnings came as Georgia entered the final days of its early voting period, a stretch in which one participation record after another has fallen. Already, more than 3 million people in the state have cast ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office.With the state among the most contested this election year — Joseph R. Biden Jr. beat Donald J. Trump in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes in 2020 — Georgia voters have faced an onslaught of pressure to pick one side or another.Mrs. Obama, addressing a rally that was formally nonpartisan and unaligned with any campaign, made a different ask: Vote.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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      As Trump Sows Doubt on Pennsylvania Voting, Officials Say the System Is Working

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      With about a week to go before Election Day, officials from two Pennsylvania counties announced that they had found large batches of suspicious voter registration forms. While at least some of the documents appeared to be fraudulent, there is no indication that any of them are ballots, though officials clarified that they were continuing to investigate.To hear former President Donald J. Trump’s telling, Pennsylvania’s election system was already melting down.“They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster,” he said at a rally on Tuesday night in Allentown, Pa. “Every vote was written by the same person.” He made similar allegations about York County, building on claims that he made on social media earlier in the day about “Really bad ‘stuff,’” in the two counties. “Law Enforcement must do their job, immediately!!!”, he insisted.But contrary to Mr. Trump’s incendiary claim that fake ballots had been cast, there were no reports of actual ballots being among the two batches of documents. And on the ground, away from the high-strung channels of social media, law enforcement was already doing its job.Neither a representative for the Trump campaign nor the state G.O.P. immediately responded to requests for comment.Thousands of voter registration forms, as well as some mail-in ballot applications, were submitted in large batches by out-of-state canvassing groups. Some of the paperwork raised suspicions among county election workers, and officials from both counties said any forms that appeared to be fraudulent would be turned over to local prosecutors.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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      ‘Hatred and Vitriol’ at the Trump Rally in New York

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      More from our inbox:What My Gut SaysThe Benefits of Electric CarsDonald Trump at Madison Square Garden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “At the Garden, a Vivid Display of MAGA Fury” (front page, Oct. 29) and “The Pain of a Son’s Death, Worsened by Politics” (front page, Oct. 29):As I read these two articles, I wondered again where Trumpism has put its compassion. The first was about Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which included unbelievable amounts of hatred and vitriol. The second told the story of the Springfield, Ohio, family who lost a son in a school bus accident involving a Haitian driver and has since faced heckling and threats for objecting to the politicization of the accident.I cannot vote for a party that voices that much hatred and talk of violence. Where is the compassion? Where is the love, mercy, justice, humility?Kent OlsonSioux Falls, S.D.To the Editor:Even eight years ago I would have been astonished if anybody at a Trump rally were to dispense the kind of raw racist hatred that was heard at Madison Square Garden, but I was not astonished this time. Donald Trump and his minions have put down the dog whistle and have picked up an industrial-strength bullhorn. Why? Because they know that it will resonate with a large section of the American population.We have to stop living in denial: The majority of Americans are not racist, but racism is not a fringe movement; it infects many millions. Mr. Trump would not be beating the drum so hard if this were not true.The disheartening hard truth is that whoever is in the White House, racism remains a national cancer. How can we battle it? I wish I had an answer, but I know this much: As a starting point, it is imperative that we acknowledge that the malignancy exists.David EnglishActon, Mass.To the Editor:What a coincidence. Sunday was also the 50th anniversary of the national day of solidarity with Puerto Rican independence, also held at Madison Square Garden, which drew nearly 20,000 people.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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      A New Insult Reminds Puerto Ricans of How Trump Treated Them

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      As president, Donald Trump fought bitterly with Puerto Rican officials, ridiculed them and resisted sending aid to the territory after devastating hurricanes.Carmen Yulín Cruz’s cellphone started buzzing on Sunday while she was at the airport in Connecticut, waiting for a flight to Puerto Rico. A standup comic at former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in New York had called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”As video clips of the comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, began flashing on airport televisions, fellow Puerto Ricans preparing to board their flight began erupting, Ms. Cruz said.“People were asking me, ‘Mira, Yulín, what is this guy saying?’ — only in more colorful language,” Ms. Cruz, the former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, said on Monday. “And I said: ‘Well, this isn’t the first time. Let’s not be surprised.’”As president, Mr. Trump fought bitterly with Ms. Cruz and other Puerto Rican leaders, and resisted sending billions of dollars in aid after the territory was ravaged by back-to-back hurricanes in 2017. He made angry comments on social media and tossed paper towels at Puerto Ricans during a visit that few, if any, have forgotten. He even wondered privately if the United States could sell the island.In 2019, Mr. Trump decried local leaders as “grossly incompetent.” A year later, while running for re-election, he tried to portray himself as the “best thing that ever happened” to the island. The Republican Party platform no longer mentions statehood for Puerto Rico, a position the party had held before Mr. Trump’s relationship with the island soured.While his campaign distanced itself from Mr. Hinchcliffe’s joke, saying it did not reflect Mr. Trump’s views, Mr. Trump himself has not apologized.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’s Closing Argument: Turn the Page on Trump, and Avert Chaos

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      On Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump stood onstage at the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House, and encouraged thousands of his supporters to fight to overturn an election he falsely claimed had been stolen.“We fight like hell,” Mr. Trump said. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Droves of his backers then marched away and attacked the U.S. Capitol.That angry image is exactly the one that Vice President Kamala Harris wants Americans to remember as she steps onstage at the Ellipse on Tuesday evening. There, with the White House in the backdrop behind her, she will deliver what her campaign is calling a closing argument that is meant to persuade still-undecided voters to consider what the future might look like if it holds another Trump term.“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign’s chair, told reporters on a call Tuesday morning previewing the remarks. She said that Ms. Harris’s speech would be designed to reach a slice of the electorate that may be “exhausted” by the politics of the Trump era.“She’s going to focus on talking about what her new generation of leadership really means,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said, “and centering that around the American people.”Before leaving Joint Base Andrews for a campaign trip to Michigan on Monday, Ms. Harris offered a preview of sorts when she was asked by reporters to respond to what transpired at a Trump rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City a day earlier. Over the course of several hours, speakers there targeted Black people, Puerto Ricans, Palestinians, Jews, Ms. Harris and other Democrats.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