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      Trump takes stage at Wisconsin rally and continues anti-immigrant rhetoric – live

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      JD Vance accused Kamala Harris of flip-flopping on a series of major issues, such as fracking, Medicare for undocumented immigrants, private health insurance, and defunding the police.“Kamala, if you support fracking, if you support the police, if you support lower prices, and you want to close down the southern border, you’re welcome to endorse Donald J Trump,” Vance said. “All of us have done it, and you’re welcome to join the team.”JD Vance claims that Harris played a role in worsening the economy by exacerbating inflation.He linked the country’s economic woes to immigration, blaming Harris for what he describes as an “invasion” amid a lack of border control.Vance claimed that the presence of immigrants in the US is contributing to rising housing costs.He went on to make anti-immigrant remarks.JD Vance quickly touched a soft spot for the state of Pennsylvania: Natural gas.Vice President Kamala Harris says she doesn’t oppose fracking, despite prior assertions stating otherwise, but Republicans are still wielding her previous position to win over voters.“When Donald Trump is president, we are going to drill, baby, drill and bring back the great American energy economy,” Vance said during his speech. “She is the candidate of not buying oil and gas from Americans and Pennsylvanians. Kamala Harris wants us to buy energy from every tin pot dictator all over the world.”JD Vance attacked Kamala Harris, going back to her first solo interview on Wednesday, by saying she dodges questions on the economy by talking about her middle-class background and her former stint at McDonald’s.“The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no substance,” he said. “The problem with Kamala Harris is that she’s got no plan. And the problem with Kamala Harris is that she has been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years and has failed this country.’”Senator JD Vance took the stage in Pennsylvania.“We have got a hell of a crowd here in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said at the start of his speech. “We’re gonna turn Pennsylvania red, send Kamala Harris back in and send Donald Trump back to the White House.”Senator JD Vance is expected to deliver a speech in Newton, Pennsylvania, in a few minutes.The event at the Newtown Sports and Event Center comes as polls show a neck-and-neck race for president in battleground Pennsylvania.We’ll be covering the Republican vice-presidential pick’s remarks.Donald Trump wrapped up his speech in Wisconsin just before 5pm ET.His remarks mostly revolved around his proposed border policies and an anti-immigrant framing of the country.The mother of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five who was killed last year, took the stage briefly in Prairie du Chien.After Rachel’s death, a native of El Salvador was arrested. Trump has used this case to support his remarks against immigrants from Central America living in the US.“I do want to say vote for Trump, though, because I really believe that he’s going to close our borders,” said Patty Morin, Rachel’s mother.In his speech, Donald Trump shifted briefly from immigration to the economy.“Your towns, your cities, your country, is being destroyed,” Trump said. “This is bigger than inflation, which is killing you all, caused by Biden and Harris with their stupid energy policy.”He shifted again to making anti-immigrant remarks.“The only things that don’t get obsolete are the wheel and the wall,” he said about the barrier he started to build on the border during his presidency, which increased migrant deaths and devastating injuries.Donald Trump referred to Kamala Harris’s immigrant-focused speech last night in Arizona as “BS”.Fox News broadcasted her remarks, and Trump said “they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on”.“Everything she said is a lie,” the former president said.A video intending to attack Kamala Harris was shown in the middle of Donald Trump’s remarks.The video was a compilation of Harris’s comments about immigration policy.“She is a disaster, and she’s not going to ever do anything for the border,” he said after the video. “She’s incompetent and a bad person.”“She’s a Marxist,” he added.Donald Trump struggled to pronounce “Prairie du Chien”, the name of the town where he’s delivering his remarks.“You could have given me a little easier name than that, but I think we got it right,” Trump said.He continued to make anti-immigrant and racist comments half an hour into his speech.Donald Trump wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”.“There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation right through your border, no matter what lies she tells,” Trump said.“Kamala Harris can never be forgiven for her erasing our border, and she must never be allowed to become president of the United States and Wisconsin,” he added.Donald Trump said Kamala Harris’s border policies should disqualify her from ever becoming president and urged voters in Wisconsin not to support her.“Kamala is mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.”Donald Trump claims that more than 40,000 people were outside, unable to get into the building because the room was at capacity.He then turned to criticize Kamala Harris for her role in border policies, claiming that her actions have led to widespread chaos, suffering, and a lack of national security.“I watched this show that she put on, four years of the most incompetent border anywhere in the world, in history,” Trump said.Donald Trump has taken the stage, starting his speech more than an hour after his scheduled start time in Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. More

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      US Department of Justice sues Alabama for purging people from voter rolls

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      The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Friday against Alabama and its top election official, accusing the state of illegally purging people from voter rolls too close to the November election.Federal officials said the purge violates the “quiet period provision” of the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits the systemic removal of names from voter rolls 90 days before a federal election.Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, Wes Allen, in August announced an initiative “to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama”. More than 3,000 people who had been previously issued noncitizen identification numbers will have their voter registration status made inactive and flagged for possible removal from the voter rolls. The justice department said both native-born and naturalized US citizens, who are eligible to vote, received the letters saying their voting status was being made inactive.“The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights in our democracy,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke, who heads the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “As election day approaches, it is critical that Alabama redress voter confusion resulting from its list maintenance mailings sent in violation of federal law.”The lawsuit asks for injunctive relief that would restore the ability of affected eligible voters to vote on 5 November.“I was elected secretary of state by the people of Alabama, and it is my constitutional duty to ensure that only American citizens vote in our elections,” Allen said in a statement issued on Friday night. He said he could not comment on pending litigation.Allen in August acknowledged the possibility that some of the people identified had become naturalized citizens since receiving their noncitizen number. He said they would need to update their information on a state voter registration form and would be able to vote after it was verified.The Campaign Legal Center, the Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center earlier this month filed a lawsuit also challenging the voter roll purge. They said the state purge targets naturalized citizens who once had noncitizen identification numbers before gaining citizenship.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe plaintiffs in that lawsuit include two US citizens who received letters telling them they were being moved to inactive voter registration status because of the purge. One is a Dutch-born man who became a US citizen in 2022. The other is a US-born citizen. More

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      ‘I see the apathy’: Saginaw city’s Black voters could be vital – if they vote

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      The largest bloc of registered voters in the city of Saginaw has yet to make a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and probably never will. A majority of Black residents of the biggest city in the most closely contested county of the battleground state of Michigan simply don’t vote.To the frustration of civil rights activists and Democratic politicians struggling to secure every ballot in a state that the Harris campaign sees as crucial to victory, more than half of Saginaw city’s population has long been unpersuaded that elections make much of a difference to their lives.Now, against the backdrop of the drama of the US’s knife-edge 2024 election, Black organizations and churches are once again making a determined push to turn out voters, helped by the first female Black candidate for president and changes to Michigan law making it easier to vote.But Terry Pruitt, president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch running voter education campaigns, said it was a struggle to generate enthusiasm in Saginaw.“I’ve been here all my life. I grew up on the east side of Saginaw and I see the apathy. This is not something that they put at the top of the priority list when they’ve got to figure out, can I get to work today?” he said.“My church is on the south side of Saginaw, probably the lowest socioeconomic district in Saginaw county other than a couple of rural areas, and when I walk through the neighborhood and talk to people about why they don’t vote, you’d be surprised how many of them say, ‘that’s not important to me.’ These folks are going to go ahead and do what they want to do. They don’t listen to me. They don’t want to hear what I have to say.”Black residents account for nearly half of Saginaw city’s 45,000 population with white people about one-third. Historically, a sharp racial divide was marked by the Saginaw river running through the heart of the city so that there were two downtowns on opposite banks.Neighborhoods on the east side are overwhelmingly Black. The west side was mostly white but the population has become more mixed in recent years as large numbers of white people moved to neighboring Saginaw Township.Voter turnout in the east of Saginaw city is consistently well below the other side of the river and anywhere else in the county. Many people are automatically registered to vote in Michigan when applying for a driving licence but do not do so.In the 2020 election, which saw the highest turnout of voters in Michigan history at 70.5% as sharp divisions over Trump drew more people to the polls, less than half of registered voters in Saginaw city cast a ballot. In most Black neighborhoods the figure was even lower, falling below 40% in some precincts.Even during Barack Obama’s first run for the White House in 2008, turnout in the east of Saginaw, where the man who would become the US’s first Black president picked up more than 95% of the vote in many precincts, was still much lower than elsewhere.But the number that some Harris supporters in Saginaw are focused on is Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes – only slightly more than the number of registered voters who did not cast a ballot in the city of Saginaw. Although Joe Biden narrowly won the state back four years later, Michigan is again on a knife edge. Michigan could help decide the whole US election, and Saginaw could help decide the whole of Michigan.Jeff Bulls, the president of the Community Alliance for the People in Saginaw, which is running a get-out-the-vote campaign, said the low turnout was not easily overcome.“The numbers are stupid. They’re really, really low. Some people, especially poorer people, they feel like their vote doesn’t count. Or people have become jaded with government. A lot of them feel like government doesn’t have any effect on their lives. That’s how people draw back from the process: ‘I’m going to go vote for what?’ A lot of people are disenchanted with the process. That’s not easy to change,” he said.Bulls said the sense of being overlooked by political leaders was especially evident in March, when Biden was still running for re-election. The president visited Saginaw city but failed to meet Black leaders or visit a Black church.“There was a lot of tension with people feeling like the president didn’t really care about the Black vote. His visit was specifically to come here and meet with Black leaders in the community and Black clergy to address that sentiment. When he got here, everything changed. He ended up meeting with white liberal Democrats and that pissed a lot of people off and set off a firestorm,” he said.Pruitt demanded an explanation from Biden’s campaign which, he said, apologized.“It left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. It was clearly a mistake and, believe me, there were several of us who let him know that,” he said.Critics turned on the county’s Democratic party and its chair, Aileen Pettinger. She shakes her head in despair on being asked about the debacle.“Unfortunately, because I’m the party chair, I got the brunt of it. Honestly, we were only told the night before. In the past, they would ask our input. This time they did not listen to us at all,” she said.For some activists, the incident had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign when her staff arrived in midwestern towns waving data sets and riding roughshod over local advice, helping to cost her the election.Pettinger said the Harris campaign was a long way from that. Pruitt agreed.“I’m pretty sure that that would not happen with Harris,” he said.But Pruitt said the incident threw a spotlight on the alienation many in the city feel from established political parties.“There’s obviously the tendency for us who do vote to vote Democratic. But there’s a school of thought that the Democratic party takes that vote for granted and really doesn’t listen to what we really feel is important,” he said.Pettinger said she recognised the problem.“We have heard that on the doors but I’m seeing a huge shift out on the doors since Kamala has announced that she was running. It’s a huge difference. I haven’t seen hope like this since Obama, I haven’t seen this excitement,” she said.“I’m not losing hope. I feel very energised about it. We just have to make sure it carries over and make sure we get people to the ballot box.”Pruitt agreed that Harris had injected some enthusiasm into the election.“I don’t think it will drive it as much as Obama. I never had the slightest thought that I’d see an African American be elected president of the United States, so that phenomenon has already occurred,” he said.“But I see some people excited about the opportunity of a Black female being president and it will help drive our community to the polls. But in the end it’s the policies that matter to get people to vote. We have to help connect the dots for people. There has to be self-interest in voting which means you have to explain those two or three issues that you think are at the top of their list, and what we have to lose if we’re on the wrong side of voting on those things.”Pruitt said his get-out-the-vote campaign was focusing on the dangers Trump poses to “the social safety network”, including housing support, childcare assistance, and disability and social security payments.“As a national theme, abortion is out there and that’s what the parties are running with. That may be on the list for the average Black woman on the east side of Saginaw but it’s much further down the list. But if we start talking about losing the department of education and how that’s going to impact their children, that will hit home very quickly,” he said.Bulls said affordable housing was also a major issue in Saginaw even though the city’s population has dropped sharply over recent decades. Saginaw is dotted with grass-covered spaces where abandoned houses have been torn down, but rents for what remains are high and the quality often substandard.“In Saginaw city, almost 70% of our housing is over 60 years old. There’s a lot of blight, a lot of houses that have already been torn down or need to be torn down. There haven’t been any new builds in the city, en masse, probably this century. So we just have a huge need for new housing, whether it’s single family housing or apartments,” he said.Then there is policing in a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country. Bulls said some of the alienation comes from frustration at the political decision to bring the state police into Saginaw.“We’ve had a couple different community forums on it because people are really concerned. There’s a state programme called the secure cities partnership. It has largely brought a bunch of Michigan state police into the community. It’s been basically a stop-and-frisk program. They don’t answer 911 calls. They literally just patrol and pull people over. There’s a huge racial disparity on where they patrol and who they pull over. It’s been a very, very tense issue here, and it’ll continue to be until it’s dealt with,” he said.Still, campaigners see an opportunity in the introduction of nine days of early voting for this year’s presidential election which, they say, which will assist Black churches running “souls to the polls” initiatives to lead their congregations to vote after Sunday services.Pruitt has also looked to other places for advice, including to Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician who created voting rights organisations that proved crucial in the Democrats winning two key seats in the US Senate four years ago.“We’ve had conversations with Stacey Abrams and people from Georgia because it was remarkable what she did. But when I started looking at how she did it, it takes an army of people and an awful lot of money to make it happen. That’s another side of this, the resources, because the frustration for people like me is marshalling the resources to get it done,“ he said.Bulls feels the same constraints, and laments what he sees as the tendency of white politicians to leave it to Black organisations to get out the vote in their community.“It shouldn’t be left to us but here we are. It’s important to us so we’ll do it anyway, but it shouldn’t be just us,” he said.Get in touchWe’d like to hear from Saginaw residents about the issues that matter to them this election. You can get in touch with us here. More

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      North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson treated for second-degree burns

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      North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Republican Mark Robinson, received burns on Friday night while attending a truck show as he was campaigning for governor, his campaign said.Robinson was making an appearance at the Mayberry truck show in Mount Airy when he was injured, campaign spokesperson Mike Lonergan said in a statement.Robinson was treated at Northern regional hospital in Mount Airy for second-degree burns, he added.“He is in good spirits, appreciates the outpouring of well wishes, and is excited to return to the campaign trail as scheduled first thing” on Saturday morning, Lonergan said.Lonergan didn’t immediately respond to texts seeking details on how and where the burns occurred. Robinson had made campaign stops starting on Friday morning with Moore county Republicans. He has four appearances scheduled for Saturday.Robinson, the lieutenant governor since 2021, is running against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein, the current attorney general. The current governor, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was barred by term limits from running this fall.Many Republicans have distanced themselves recently from Robinson following a 19 September CNN report alleging he posted strongly worded racial and sexual comments on an online message board. A dozen staff members on his campaign or in the lieutenant governor’s office have quit in the fallout.Robinson, who has faced criticism for other inflammatory comments, has denied writing the messages more than a decade ago and has hired a law firm to investigate.Mount Airy, located about 100 miles (161km) north of Charlotte near the Virginia border, is where the late television star Andy Griffith grew up. The community served as the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show, which aired during the 1960s. City leaders have embraced that history with homages and festivals associated with the show. More

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      Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

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      The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation’s industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region’s economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation’s political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work – unions oppose the sale and the administration’s position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation’s steel capital.Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.“I’ve learned not to be comfortable with any election because we didn’t think Trump could win in 16 … but I think people are going to vote more common sense this year,” said Keli Vereb, a steelworker union rep and Lincoln borough council member.Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.Some union leaders say the comment may have cost her Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump won by 0.7%. After four years of pro-labor policies from Joe Biden, the party has begun to win back some who left, and with Trump proposing to block the US Steel sale if he were elected, Democrats risk a 2016 repeat if it is allowed to proceed.“Trump would pounce on them if they let [the sale] go,” said Allen George, a lifelong Democrat who worked in unions adjacent to the steel industry.The companies are making a powerful argument that the deal is vital to US Steel’s survival. US Steel claims it will be forced to cut Pennsylvania jobs and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh if Biden blocks Nippon’s $14.1bn bid, while it has promised to invest $2.4bn in its facilities if the sale goes through. The company’s “scorched earth” public relations campaign on the factory floors has at least some rank and file supporting the sale, said Bernie Hall, Pennsylvania director for USI.“Some are scared and think: ‘We should just take this and live to fight another day,’ and that’s natural,” Hall said.Many more, however, oppose the sale. The union’s contract is up in 23 months and they fear a Nippon-US Steel would cut jobs, or continue to send them to non-union states. They point to Nippon’s long history of “dumping” steel in the US, which has cratered prices and cost American jobs, and many fear the purchase is a ploy to continue the practice.US Steel’s record of closing factories and failing to keep promises has generated a deep mistrust and disdain for the company, workers told the Guardian on a recent Monday afternoon outside the Harvey Wilner’s pub in West Mifflin, just south of Pittsburgh. They rattled off a list of facilities that have closed over the decades.“Nippon can have at it,” said Barry Fez, who has worked in manufacturing in the region for decades, but, he says, in a few years he expects they will go back on their word.But that sentiment is colliding with Wall Street and Beltway support for the deal. The latter argue that the administration’s protectionist plan would run counter to international trade norms because Japan is an ally and close economic partner.The idea that trade decorum with Japan is more important than Pennsylvania union members’ security drew scoffs from some workers.“And then they’ll wonder why they lost an election,” said Mike Gallagher, a retired union member.‘They lie all the time’Banking legend JP Morgan created US Steel in a mega-merger in 1901. It grew to be the largest US producer, employing more than 340,000 people at its second world war peak. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, has closed many of its Mon Valley facilities, and now employs about 4,000 people, although the company says it indirectly supports 11,000 jobs and generates $3.6bn in economic activity annually.In the face of waning American steel power, the company has looked for a buyer, and many feel a US-Japan alliance makes sense in countering increasing Chinese domination of the industry.But the union is opposed, and in Pennsylvania, 25% of the electorate is unionized, making it a formidable bloc intensely courted by both political parties.Trump in January said he would stop the deal. Biden has said the same, including in a private meeting with steel workers in April, when the president insisted “US steel will stay US-owned”, according to Don Furko, president of Local 1557 in Clairton. “He said he ‘guarantees’ it.”The administration’s decision on whether the deal should be blocked largely lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is made up of Biden’s cabinet members and other appointees. It can veto mergers and acquisitions it finds present a national security risk.CFIUS was expected to issue an opinion on 21 September, but the administration punted until after the election. Union members say they aren’t worried.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been pretty clear and they will follow through,” Hall said.Harris has got the message: “US Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” she told a rally in Pittsburgh earlier this month.David Burritt, the CEO of US Steel, has warned of consequences if the deal is blocked. He says the company would “largely pivot away” from its blast furnace production in the region, and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.“We want elected leaders and other key decision makers to recognize the benefits of the deal as well as the unavoidable consequences if the deal fails,” Burritt said last month.That threat has further inflamed tensions. Furko said it reminds him of his young son flipping over the Monopoly board when he loses: “That’s really what’s going on here – if this deal doesn’t go through, then they’re going to flip over the Monopoly board.”Asked about US Steel’s claims that it will revitalize the region if the sale goes through, workers told the Guardian that there are no guarantees that the investment will be in Mon Valley. People would be “foolish” to believe that, Vereb said.That was echoed outside the Wilner’s pub. Fez recalled the pub’s heyday, when “you couldn’t get in there at 7am because it was so packed”, and the floor was littered with quarter wrappers from the slot machines.On a Monday afternoon around shift change time, a group of about a dozen retirees sat around the bar. They blamed US Steel for the region’s slowdown, and while they say they do not expect Biden or Trump to save the city, they have even less confidence that US Steel and a Japanese company will turn it around.“They lie all the time, and I don’t trust either one of them,” said Jack, a retiree who worked for US Steel for more than 30 years, who declined to use his last name.‘He gets credit for that’The political price that the Biden-Harris administration could pay for allowing the deal to go through can be seen in the 2016 election’s wake.Before 2016, the region was largely Democratic. But when Clinton made the comment about the clean energy industry putting coalminers and barons out of business, “Things turned on a dime,” Vereb said. Her borough of 900 was once about 80% Democrats. It’s now about 75% Republican, she estimates.About 75% of those working at US Steel’s Clairton Mill Works, several union leaders estimate, support Trump, and there is little Democrats can do to win back many of them.The situation is also complicated by US Steel’s intense campaign to convince workers that the sale will save their jobs. The company sends regular emails, holds meetings, takes out ads in newspapers and makes their case to reporters.“They say: ‘If you don’t support us, then we’re gonna shut this place down, and if that happens you can thank your union leadership,’” said Rob Hutchison, president of Local 1219. “When [rank and file] have that threat in their face eight to 12 hours per day, then it starts to become something they think about.”That also presents another political risk: if the Biden-Harris administration were to block the deal, and US Steel shuts down a plant, Democrats may again lose some voters.However, so far, the controversial move seems to be paying dividends.“I don’t know if the average Joe is thinking about CFIUS or is that in the weeds, but I think from a macro level, people see it, that it’s Biden supporting the union workers, and he gets credit for that,” Hall said. More

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      Harris accuses Trump of playing ‘political games’ during US border visit

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      Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of “playing political games” on immigration – his signature issue – as the vice-president sought to turn one of her biggest vulnerabilities into a political strength during a visit to the US-Mexico border on Friday.Speaking in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Harris declared the US both a “sovereign nation” and a “country of immigrants” and said as president, she would strengthen controls at the southern border, while working “to fix our broken system of immigration”.“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”She hammered Trump for derailing a sweeping bipartisan package that would have overhauled the federal immigration system, while providing additional resources to help hire more border patrol agents.“It should be in effect today, producing results, in real time right now,” Harris said, speaking on a stage framed by American flags and large blue posters that read “border security and stability”. “He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”After that bill collapsed, the Biden administration announced new rules to temporarily halt asylum processing at the US southern border. Since then, arrests for border crossings between ports of entry have plummeted. In July, arrests dipped below levels not seen since Trump’s final months in office in 2020, though they ticked up slightly in August.As president, Harris said, she would take “further action to keep the border closed”, including stiffening the punishments for those who cross between ports of entry. She emphasized her support for “humane” and “orderly” policies, reminding Arizonans of the measures Trump took during his first term to curb illegal immigration.“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” she said in Douglas, a blue dot in the overwhelmingly red Cochise county.Before her remarks, Harris walked a stretch of barrier constructed during the Obama administration. In the sweltering triple-degree heat, she received a briefing from customs and border protection officials on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl across the border.She also stopped by the Raul H Castro port of entry in Douglas, across from Agua Prieta, Mexico, which is slated to be expanded and modernized with grants from the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by Joe Biden.“They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job,” Harris said afterward.Speaking to supporters at a manufacturing plant in Walker, Michigan, Trump boasted that Harris was “getting killed on the border” and blamed the Biden administration’s border policies for fueling high levels of migration during the first three years of his presidency.“It’s a crime what she did,” he said. “There’s no greater act of disloyalty than to extinguish the sovereignty of your own nation.”In her remarks, Harris said she understood the unique challenges and needs facing border communities like the one in Douglas, having served as the attorney general of neighboring California. She recalled touring trafficking tunnels used by smugglers and touted her work prosecuting international gangs and criminal organizations that smuggle guns, drugs and people across the border.Republicans would rather discuss her more recent assignment, as vice-president during a period of record migration when she was officially tasked with addressing the root causes of people coming north from Central America. On Friday, Republicans misleadingly accused her of being an absentee “border tsar” whose policies led to the situation at the border.Voters in Arizona consistently rank immigration – Trump’s signature issue – as a top concern this election cycle, often second only to the economy. A sizeable share of voters trust Trump more on immigration and border security, but Harris’s campaign believes it has made progress softening Democrats’ deficit on an issue seen as one of their biggest electoral vulnerabilities.The campaign has blanketed the airwaves with ads designed to blunt Trump’s attacks over her immigration record. On Friday, it launched a new ad in Arizona and other battleground states highlighting her pledge to hire thousands more border agents and stop fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. “We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border,” a voiceover says.Less than six weeks before election day, polls show a tight race in Arizona, one of seven battleground states that will likely decide the election and the only one that touches the southern border.A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing states found Harris with a small lead in Arizona, while a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday found Trump opening a five-percentage point lead over Harris, marking a significant improvement from August when he trailed the vice-president by the same margin.Biden won Arizona by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the south-west state since Bill Clinton in 1996.Kris Mayes, the attorney general, who accompanied Harris throughout her visit on Friday, urged Arizonans not to sit the election out.“Races in Arizona can be close, take it from me,” Mayes said. In 2022, the Democrat won her race by 280 votes. More

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      New York mayor Eric Adams pleads not guilty to federal corruption charges

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      Eric Adams, the embattled Democratic mayor of New York City, who was indicted on federal criminal charges in an unprecedented scene for a sitting mayor of the city, pleaded not guilty in court in Manhattan early on Friday afternoon.The mayor arrived at court on Friday morning hours ahead of a scheduled arraignment, accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and free overseas trips from foreign actors seeking influence.“I am not guilty, your honor,” Adams said, looking solemnly at Judge Katharine Parker.Adams was released on the condition that he not contact any witnesses or people described in the indictment. Prosecutors said they would provide his lawyer with a list of names.Adams is allowed to speak with members of his family and staff but not about anything pertaining to the allegations, Parker said, warning he could face additional charges and punishment if he were to engage in witness tampering or intimidation.Adams left the courtroom without commenting. He smiled at a court officer but ignored the rows of reporters he passed on his way out. Afterwards, Adams stood silently outside the courthouse while his lawyer, Alex Spiro, railed against the charges to a crowd of cameras and onlookers who exchanged shouts of “Free Eric!” and “Lock him up!”“This isn’t even a real case. This is the airline upgrade corruption case,” Spiro said.Adams, 64, is due back in court on Wednesday for a conference before US district judge Dale E Ho, who will preside over the case going forward.In court for about 18 minutes, Adams sat stoically with his hands folded in his lap as Parker read the charges aloud, her sturdy delivery underscoring the gravity of the case.An indictment unsealed on Thursday included five criminal counts. US prosecutors allege that before and during his term as mayor, Adams “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him”.The charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals, wire fraud, and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national.The complaint focuses on trips Adams and his partner took to Turkey, India and Ghana on Turkish Airlines, sometimes staying in luxury hotels, that as an elected official he should have disclosed to the government, and campaign contributions made by Turkish officials through a system of “straw” donors.Adams “did not disclose the travel benefits he had obtained in annual financial disclosures he was required to file as a New York City employee”, the government alleges. “Sometimes, Adams agreed to pay a nominal fee to create the appearance of having paid for travel that was in fact heavily discounted.”In return, prosecutors said, Adams did favors for his patrons. That included helping Turkey get fire department approvals to open a new diplomatic tower in Manhattan, despite concerns about its fire safety system, prosecutors said.Adams says he is innocent. His lawyer has said it was neither unusual nor improper for a government official to accept some travel perks. The mayor has denied ever knowingly accepting an illegal campaign contribution and said any help he gave people navigating the city’s bureaucracy was just part of doing his job.Meanwhile, the local news outlet PIX11 reported that investigators had raided the home of Adams’s chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, on Friday and confiscated electronic devices. PIX11 said Lewis-Martin had her phones seized by the Manhattan district attorney’s office when she arrived back from Japan at JFK airport also on Friday morning.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Vance to talk at tour hosted by ‘prophet’ who thinks Harris practices witchcraft

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      JD Vance will speak at an event on Saturday hosted by the self-styled prophet and political extremist Lance Wallnau, who has claimed Kamala Harris practices witchcraft and has written that the US is headed toward bloody internal conflict.The campaign announced earlier this week that the Republican vice-presidential candidate will participate in a “town hall” as part of the Courage tour, a traveling pro-Trump tent revival, during a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.Wallnau, who hosts the tour and broadcasts its speakers on his online show – drawing hundreds in-person and sometimes tens of thousands virtually – is a proponent of the “seven mountains” mandate, which commands Christians to seek leadership in seven key areas of society – the church, the education system, the family, the media, the arts, business and government.He is also a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement that features modern-day apostles and has taken hold in particular in non-denominational charismatic churches that embrace faith healing and believe that the Holy Spirit can speak directly through believers in the form of speaking in tongues and prophesy. These religious spaces often also practice “deliverance ministry” and “spiritual warfare” to cleanse people of demonic entities.Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a scholar whose research focuses on such groups, noted that NAR-aligned practitioners engage in a unique form of “spiritual warfare” – fighting malign forces in not only individuals who are believed to be inhabited by a malign entity, but also entire geographic areas.“Spiritual warfare is the belief that a demon has taken up residence and is controlling anything from a large geographic space to a culture, to the White House or the supreme court,” said Gaspard-Hogewood.Extremism researchers worry that spiritual warfare, which is by definition waged in the supernatural realm, could become dangerous if interpreted excessively literally. On January 6, spiritual warriors affiliated with the Jericho March rallied at the Capitol to protest against the election results, engaging in a form of spiritual warfare on the National Mall. Wallnau, who himself prophesied that Trump would win the 2016 election and rejected the outcome when he didn’t win again in 2020, doubled down on his position at a stop of the Courage tour in Wisconsin.“January 6 was not an insurrection – it was an election fraud intervention!” Wallnau exclaimed to the roaring crowd.Wallnau has also written in his book, God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J Trump and the American Unraveling, that he believes the United States is headed toward a potentially bloody clash – a “fiery trial” that will come “both to believers and nations”. In his book, in which he also claims to have met with Trump on multiple occasions, Wallnau writes that the US is entering a “crucible”, which will involve “a ‘conflict’ of ideologies, often arms, to determine a victor in the power clash”.The Courage tour has made stops in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.The inclusion of Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, in the tour highlights the Trump campaign’s increasing alignment with a movement on the religious right that seeks to subordinate US government and society to Christian doctrine.A typical day at the Courage tour involves faith healing and music in the morning, followed by a series of speakers preaching about the scourge of secular society and espousing their opposition to LGBTQ+ inclusion. Trump-aligned organizations including TPUSA Faith and America First Policy Institute have had a presence on the tour handing out pamphlets and posting up at stands outside the tent.Vance’s speech marks the first time the Trump campaign has officially linked with the tour. In response to a request for comment about Vance’s participation in the Courage tour, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, did not directly comment on Wallnau or Vance’s participation in the event, but wrote that neither “President Trump, nor any of his supporters, ever engaged in an alleged ‘insurrection’.”Wallnau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Republicans have long enjoyed the support of conservative, and in particular, evangelical Christians. In 2016, Trump, whose profile as a twice-divorced billionaire who has faced multiple accusations of sexual assault, managed to maintain that alliance by assuring his presidency would represent the Christian right through conservative judicial appointments. Trump made good on his promise, ushering in an ultraconservative supreme court, which in 2022 overturned Roe v Wade – delivering opponents of abortion a stunning win.Since 2020, a burgeoning movement of evangelical leaders who seek to separate the church from Maga politics could threaten that alliance. If Trump is able to hold on to those voters and turn out enough conservative Christians at the polls, he could win back the White House.With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania could be a make-or-break state for Harris and Trump. Some polling shows Kamala Harris holding a narrow lead over Trump in the state; other polls suggest the candidates are virtually tied there.Vance’s participation in the Courage tour could alienate some. The campaign is probably betting the support he could shore up from rightwing Christians there will outweigh the risk of appearing at an event with extremist overtones. More