President Trump visited Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday afternoon, surveying a city that was thrown into tumult first by a police shooting and then by the killing of two protesters.
If the president’s trip was meant to highlight the issues of law and order he has made central to his re-election campaign, it was threatened to be overshadowed by a series of comments he made on Monday. Mr. Trump likened the police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back, setting off the protests, to a golfer who choked on an easy putt. And the president declined to denounce a 17-year-old who was charged with killing two protesters during a night of unrest in the city last week. The teenager attended a Trump rally earlier this year.
Mr. Trump toured buildings that were damaged in street violence that followed the shooting of Mr. Blake and then met with law enforcement officials to advocate cracking down on demonstrations that get out of control. But he did not meet with Mr. Blake’s family, and described police violence as just the work of “bad apples.”
A crowd of Black Lives Matter activists mixed with Trump supporters gathered in downtown Kenosha, occasionally chanting in each other’s faces and hurling insults as they awaited the president’s arrival.
“This is just ridiculous,” said John Crisman, who drove in from nearby Paddock Lake, Wis. “I was just standing here with my sign and some old lady started telling me that Black lives don’t matter, all lives matter. It’s just disheartening to see all this.”
Several dozen of Mr. Trump’s fans, wearing red caps and waving American flags, cheered as the president drove by, then immediately headed back to their cars.
“How often do you get to see a president?” asked Dan Dowd of Long Grove, Ill., as he and his wife, Diane, left the gathering.
He dismissed the protesters’ suggestion that conservatives were inciting violence. “The right is tolerant — all the violence is coming from the left,” he said, motioning toward a parking lot of cars that had been burned last week during the unrest. “There ought to be a way to express feelings without burning businesses to the ground.”
Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat, had asked Mr. Trump to put off his visit, but the president proceeded anyway.
The calm was broken when a woman in a pro-Trump hat and a man who said he was a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right group known for inciting violence at protests, showed up at a park that has been a hub for rallies since Mr. Blake’s shooting. As the police scrambled to separate the two from about 100 protesters shouting at them, an officer sprayed a chemical agent in the eyes of a documentary filmmaker.
Kenosha police officers pulled the man and woman from the crowd and stood between them and protesters at a gas station before detaining them in a police car and speeding out of the area. They ordered protesters back to Civic Center Park, but within a few minutes, protesters were again marching along the street, halting traffic at several intersections.
Later, a brief skirmish played out in downtown Kenosha between a man in a Make America Great Again hat and several protesters.
When a protester approached and yelled for the man in the hat to leave, he took a swing at the man, who dodged the punch and shoved the man to the ground.
Vaun Mayes, an activist in Milwaukee who was one of people who escorted the man away, said he had done so in part to keep the message focused on the protest against police violence and racism.
“They know people are going to react in some kind of way,” Mr. Mayes said of people who come to protest sites to argue with protesters. “And as soon as people react, the media flies to them.”
The corner where Jacob Blake was shot turned into a community festival on Tuesday, led by family members and activists who wanted to promote community healing, but also to offer a tacit rebuke to President Trump’s visit to Kenosha.
“We know why Trump is here in Kenosha today,” Tanya McLean, an organizer of the event, told the crowd of hundreds that had gathered. “He is here to sow chaos and fear. We reject these attempts to divide us.”
The president was trying to distract from the failures of his administration, Ms. McLean added, including the coronavirus crisis, growing unemployment and “the state sanctioned violence that denies Black Americans our right to freedom and a safe and healthy life.”
Those in attendance included Justin Blake, Mr. Blake’s uncle, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson had spent time with the young organizers in recent days to offer advice on strategy.
“I met with the leadership to convince them to not demonstrate today,” Mr. Jackson said. “If they demonstrate, it would be a big mistake. Trump would use it as a commercial.”
Instead of images of unrest and upheaval, the gathering carried the feel of a carnival. There were bounce houses for the children and the smell of grilled meat wafted through the air. There were booths offering Covid-19 testing, voter registration and reiki therapy. A D.J. played music.
Justin Blake said that the gathering was focused on the community today instead of buying into the narrative Mr. Trump was trying to create.
“We don’t know what his agenda is. He does,” Mr. Blake said. “It’s been racist, it’s been stirring up violence of police officers all over this country to do what they’ve done to our Black young people and murder them throughout this country.”
The spot where Jacob Blake was shot while leaning into his car more than a week ago was now occupied by a white truck with a sign across the front that read, “Think Big.”
Asked about Mr. Trump largely ignoring Jacob Blake during his visit to Kenosha, Justin Blake said that he was not surprised.
“That’s our president,” Justin Blake said. He said that Mr. Trump “had nothing but foul things to say about African-Americans, in particular our women.”
He said that he would not let Mr. Trump’s focus on other things bother him.
“That’s OK because he has an agenda,” he said. “I’m hopeful he can find his way out the door after this election, and we move forward to reestablish what this country was supposed to be built on.”
President Trump used a visit to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday to highlight his law-and-order message, accusing liberal politicians of appeasing or even encouraging anarchists and rioters in the streets while minimizing the outrage over police brutality that generated protests.
Mr. Trump toured buildings that were damaged in street violence that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, last weekend and then met with law enforcement officials to advocate cracking down on demonstrations that get out of control. But he did not meet with Mr. Blake’s family and described police violence as just the work of “bad apples.”
“Reckless far-left politicians continue to push the destructive message that our nation and law enforcement are oppressive or racist,” the president said during a session with local sheriffs and Republican political leaders. “They’ll throw out any word that comes to them. Actually, we should show far greater support for our law enforcement.”
Mr. Trump, who came despite the objections of the Democratic governor and mayor who said his presence could inflame tensions, met with a pastor affiliated with Mr. Blake’s mother but offered little concern over the shooting incident, telling reporters who asked about systemic racism that they should instead be focusing on rioting.
Mr. Blake was shot seven times in the back by the police as he was trying to break up a disturbance involving two women when the police arrived, according to his lawyer, and is now in the hospital paralyzed.
“I feel terribly for anybody who goes through that,” Mr. Trump said mildly when asked about Mr. Blake, and then said “it’s under investigation.”
He expressed far more sympathy for police officers, who he said have been unfairly assailed.
“The people of our country love you,” he said. As for those involved in shootings or violence, he said, “They’re under tremendous pressure and they don’t handle it well. They call it choking and it happens.”
At a round-table discussion of community safety in Kenosha, Wis., President Trump responded Tuesday to a local official who thanked him for deploying the National Guard by saying, “Once they responded and once we took control of it, things went really well.” It was an echo of a tweet on Monday in which Mr. Trump claimed, “If I didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now.”
This is false.
It was governors, not the president, who sent the National Guard to Kenosha. Nor was the presence of guardsmen the sole factor in tamping down the violence.
On Sunday, Aug. 23, a white officer shot and partially paralyzed Jacob Blake, a Black man, in front of his children. Protesters, reacting to the shooting, clashed with police officers, smashed car windows and set fires and officers dispersed the crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets.
On Monday, Aug. 24, Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin authorized the state National Guard to support local law enforcement. Protesters and police continued to clash and city officials later described Monday as the peak of the chaos and “our big night.”
A day later, Mr. Trump urged Mr. Evers to send the National Guard, though he had already done so. Mr. Evers declared a state of emergency last Tuesday and increased the number of guardsmen to 250. Two men were killed and another seriously injured in deadly shootings. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth noted the presence of out-of-town counterprotesters that night and said they “create confrontation” and “that doesn’t help us.” Mr. Beth also said that tactics like blocking off interstate highways and cooperation from local residents proved to be effective in tamping down the violence.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who signaled support for pro-police causes, was arrested on Wednesday morning. The Justice Department sent about 200 federal agents to the city that night. Protests continued but Mr. Beth said they were “very peaceful.”
Mr. Evers again increased the number of National Guard members deployed to Kenosha on Thursday, Aug. 27. The governors of Arizona, Michigan and Alabama also added National Guard troops to Kenosha, after Mr. Evers requested their assistance as part of a mutual aid compact.
Protests that night were “much calmer, much safer,” Daniel Miskinis, the chief of the Kenosha Police Department, said in a news conference on Friday. At the same news conference, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Knapp, who commands the Wisconsin National Guard, noted that about 1,000 state guardsmen were on the scene and clarified that it was the governor who made the final call on the Guard’s deployment.
The Russian group that interfered in the 2016 presidential election is at it again, using a network of fake accounts and a website set up to look like a left-wing news site, Facebook and Twitter said on Tuesday.
The disinformation campaign by the Kremlin-backed group, known as the Internet Research Agency, is the first public evidence that the agency is attempting to repeat its efforts from four years ago and push voters away from the Democratic presidential candidate.
Intelligence agencies have warned for months that Russia and other countries were actively trying to disrupt the November election, and social media companies remain a clear target for their meddling. Facebook and Twitter said they were warned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the Russian effort.
While the fake network and site did not reach as big of an audience as the group’s campaigns in 2016, it came with a new wrinkle: The Russians hired real Americans to write for the website. The fake site, called PeaceData, also used personas with computer-generated images to create what looked like a legitimate news organization.
“The Russians are trying harder to hide; they are increasingly putting up more and more layers of obfuscation,” said Ben Nimmo, whose firm, Graphika, released a report on the fake site. “But they are still getting caught.”
Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on Tuesday that Joseph R. Biden Jr. planned to visit Kenosha “as soon as possible” to help calm the city — and slammed President Trump’s trip there as an attempt to fuel “hate.”
Mr. Perez, speaking on a conference call with reporters, said Mr. Biden’s team was working on plans for a visit, “but he wants to make sure he gets to talk to everyone,” including the families of two protesters killed in a confrontation last week.
Mr. Perez, who headed the Justice Department’s civil rights division under former President Barack Obama, cited Mr. Trump’s defense of the teenager accused of killing the protesters as evidence that “hate has become mainstream with President Trump’s blessing.”
Local officials, including Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, had called for Mr. Trump to cancel or delay his visit, as Mr. Biden has done.
Earlier in the day, Symone Sanders, a top Biden aide, said in a CNN interview that he would travel to Wisconsin “very soon,” but that he “doesn’t want to do anything that would create a tussle, if you will, on the ground.”
Janet Napolitano, a former Homeland Security secretary under Mr. Obama who was on the call, said that Mr. Biden “won’t be there to incite violence, he won’t be there to bigfoot a governor and a mayor” and he is not going there “to save a campaign.”
Mr. Perez also called out Mr. Trump’s assertion, during an interview on Fox News Monday, that police officers who shoot people were comparable to golfers who “choke” when trying to sink a “three-foot putt.”
“When he isn’t lining up his own putt, he is sowing division,” Mr. Perez said of the president.
President Trump compared instances of the police shooting people to golfers who “choke” when trying to sink “a three-foot putt” when speaking about the shooting of Jacob Blake during an unrestrained interview on Fox News late Monday.
The president also floated a vague, baseless conspiracy theory that powerful people in the “dark shadows” were behind Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign as well as protests in Kenosha, Wis., and other cities, echoing themes struck by his supporters in the QAnon movement.
Mr. Trump’s remarks — which seemed to alarm even his sympathetic interviewer, Laura Ingraham — came as Wisconsin officials implored him to scrap or postpone his visit to Kenosha today, out of concern his presence could provoke violence and stoke unrest.
In comparable times of crisis, presidents have attempted to ease tensions, and Mr. Biden has asked protesters on both sides to eschew violence. Mr. Trump, who has expressed his appreciation for conservative counterprotesters — many of whom have been waving Trump-Pence flags — has not taken that approach.
At one point in their interview, when Ms. Ingraham asked Mr. Trump who was behind Mr. Biden’s campaign, he replied, “People that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows.”
She responded, “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
“There are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets,” Mr. Trump said. “We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend. And in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.”
There were “a lot of the people were on the plane to do big damage,” Mr. Trump said.
He provided no evidence for his claims. When Ms. Ingraham asked for more detail, he said the matter was still under investigation, adding, “I’ll tell you sometime.”
When asked about Mr. Trump’s comments in an interview with the North Carolina news outlet ABC 11 on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said the president “just continually lies.”
“I mean, come on,” he added. “The dark forces? Look, this president, from the moment he came down the escalator in his fancy hotel in New York, has been preaching division and hate.”
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump was hardly any clearer about his comments.
“I could tell you that I can probably refer you to the person and they could do it,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force One bound for Kenosha. “I would like to ask that person if it was OK. The person on the plane said there were about six people like that person or more or less and what happened is the entire plane filled up with the looters, the anarchists, rioters, people looking for trouble. The person felt very uncomfortable on the plane. It is a person you know. I’ll see whether or not I can get that person to speak to you.”
When Ms. Ingraham asked Mr. Trump about violence toward the police, the president said that officers in the U.S. were under siege because they occasionally “choke” and make mistakes.
“They can do 10,000 great acts, which is what they do, and one bad apple, or a choker, you know, a choker, they choke,” the president said.
“Shooting the guy in the back many times,” he continued, referencing what happened to Mr. Blake, “I mean, couldn’t you have done something different, couldn’t you have wrestled him? You know, I mean, in the meantime he might’ve been going for a weapon. You know there’s a whole big thing there, but they choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot putt.”
Ms. Ingraham, who repeatedly interrupted Mr. Trump during their interview to give him a chance to tone down his comments, tried to stop him as he was saying the word “putt.”
“You’re not comparing it to golf? Because of course that’s what the media will say,” she said.
“I’m saying people choke,” Mr. Trump said. “You’ve got a quarter of a second to make a decision. If you don’t make the decision and you’re wrong, you’re dead.”
That Mr. Trump would choose to use a golf metaphor is not surprising. The president, who owns luxury courses around the globe, has played more than 275 rounds since taking office, a far greater rate than his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
More than one million mail-in ballots were delivered to voters late during the 2020 primary elections, a new report from the United States Postal Service’s inspector general found in an audit released on Tuesday, underscoring concerns about the feasibility of widespread voting by mail in November’s general election.
In a survey of mail-in ballots sent during primary elections from June 2 to Aug. 13, the audit found that more than one million were mailed during the final week of the election, putting those ballots at “high risk” of not making it back to elections officials in time to be counted.
The investigation comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of the Postal Service. President Trump has claimed, without evidence, that voting by mail is more vulnerable to fraud, and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an ally of Mr. Trump, has made operational changes that have coincided with a slowdown in mail deliveries. The situation has prompted widespread concern among Democrats and voting rights groups that the president is seeking to interfere with the mail to bolster his re-election chances or sow distrust about the result.
The problems were most pronounced in Kentucky and New York, according to the report, where a combined 628,000 ballots were sent late.
In 17 states, the audit found, more than 589,000 ballots were sent from election boards to voters after the state’s ballot mailing deadline. And in 11 states, more than 44,000 ballots were sent from election boards to voters on the day of, or the day before, the state’s primary election.
One troubling finding, investigators noted, came from Pennsylvania, where 500 ballots were sent to voters the day after the election.
For months, the Postal Service has warned states to change their deadlines to avoid sending last-minute ballots to voters. An election expert testified before Congress last week that more than 20 states had failed to do so, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters in November’s presidential election.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to report a record-breaking haul of donations for August, raising more than $300 million between his campaign and his shared committees with the Democratic Party, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The sum would shatter past monthly records as small donors have poured money into Mr. Biden’s coffers, especially since the selection of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, and big contributors have given checks that can be as large as $620,000.
In a sign of the financial momentum behind Democrats, ActBlue, the main site that processes donations to the party, reported the second-biggest fund-raising day in its history on Monday, with more than $35 million donated. A majority of Mr. Biden’s August total came from online grass-roots donors, according to a campaign official.
The people familiar with Mr. Biden’s fund-raising did not know the exact final figure for the month of August, or how much higher than $300 million it would be.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Any amount above $300 million would surpass previous monthly hauls by candidates of both parties. It is more, for instance, than what Donald J. Trump ($90 million) and Hillary Clinton ($143 million) raised in August 2016 — combined.
In July, President Trump and the Republican National Committee out-raised Mr. Biden and the Democrats, $165 million to $140 million.
The Trump campaign has not announced its August fund-raising total but has said it raised $76 million over its four-day convention last week, slightly more than the $70 million the Biden campaign said it collected during its convention a week earlier.
President Trump on Tuesday won another delay in the long-running legal battle over whether he must turn over eight years of tax returns to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which subpoenaed them last year in a criminal investigation focused on Mr. Trump, his business and his associates.
In a brief order, a federal appeals court in New York said it would temporarily block a grand jury subpoena issued by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, while it considers Mr. Trump’s arguments that the request was “wildly overbroad” and politically motivated.
The ruling is the latest development in the president’s aggressive effort to keep his tax returns and other financial records out of the hands of prosecutors, Congress and others — a dispute that has reached the United States Supreme Court once and is almost certain to return there.
With an election looming, the ruling means that, as a practical matter, prosecutors will not receive Mr. Trump’s records for at least another month, and perhaps longer if the president seeks a review in the Supreme Court.
The incumbent Senator Edward J. Markey and his challenger, Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, are headlining the Massachusetts primary vote on Tuesday, but their bitter head-to-head battle is not the only race on the ballot. Voters also will weigh in on a set of House primaries that have pitted some of the party’s more moderate politicians against a lineup of more progressive upstarts.
In deep-blue Massachusetts — where both of the state’s senators and all nine of its representatives are Democrats — the results of Tuesday’s votes could be a bellwether for the future of the party, and serve as a test of strength for the Democratic Party’s more progressive wing in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Polls opened at 7 a.m. Eastern time and close at 8 p.m.
Seven candidates are running for the seat representing the Fourth District, the one Mr. Kennedy is vacating. The progressives on the ballot — including Jesse Mermell, a front-runner who has been endorsed by Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Ihssane Leckey, who has been endorsed by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — might split the vote, which could present an opportunity for Jake Auchincloss, 32, a Marine veteran endorsed by The Boston Globe.
In the Eighth Congressional District, which includes part of Boston, Robbie Goldstein, 36, an infectious disease specialist, has mounted a progressive challenge to the longtime incumbent Stephen Lynch, 65.
And in the First Congressional District in western Massachusetts, the 16-term congressman Richard E. Neal — who, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is one of the most powerful Democrats in the House — is facing a challenge from Alex B. Morse, the 31-year-old mayor of Holyoke.
Mr. Neal, 71, has been in Congress since 1989, the year Mr. Morse was born. Mr. Morse has been endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; Mr. Neal has been endorsed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It has been a tumultuous race for Mr. Morse, who considered dropping out several weeks ago after he was accused of inappropriate advances toward students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he was once a guest lecturer. He opted to remain in the race after The Intercept published messages from some of the students who had lodged accusations, revealing that they had discussed how they might damage his campaign.
But none of these races have drawn as much attention as the Senate contest between Mr. Markey, 74, and Mr. Kennedy, 39, who now is trailing in the polls. The two represent different generations of Democratic and state politics but are running on similar platforms, with each campaigning as the bold, progressive insurgent.
A new poll from the University of New Hampshire found that people who regularly watched Fox News or listened to conservative talk radio were significantly less likely to wear face masks than the population at large.
Among New Hampshire residents who never watch Fox News, 86 percent wear a face mask every time they are in public, unless they are both outdoors and socially distanced, according to the survey. Among those who occasionally watch Fox, that number is 74 percent, and among those who watch Fox frequently, it is only 50 percent.
The gap was even larger among conservative talk radio listeners. Among those who never listened, 87 percent said they wore masks; the number fell to 56 percent among occasional listeners and just 33 percent among frequent listeners.
The margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
The same pattern held on other indicators of how seriously people were taking the coronavirus pandemic. Fox News and conservative talk radio consumers were much less likely to say that they were worried about their or their family’s health, or that the worst of the pandemic was yet to come.
Eighty-one percent of respondents who never watched Fox, and 76 percent of respondents who never listened to conservative talk radio, said the government should prioritize containing the virus over restarting the economy. But only 12 percent of frequent Fox viewers and 3 percent of frequent talk radio listeners said the same.
The United States Chamber of Commerce, the influential and heavily Republican-leaning pro-business lobby, plans to break with past practice and endorse 23 first-term House Democrats in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with its plans, giving a boost to vulnerable Democratic incumbents and rankling conservatives.
Among the Democrats the chamber intends to support are Representatives Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria of Virginia, Antonio Delgado of New York, Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, Abby Finkenauer of Iowa and Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico. Each faces a difficult re-election fight this fall in a district that has traditionally voted Republican. The imprimatur of the powerful group would help burnish their claims of bipartisanship in races where Republican opponents say the Democrats are socialists in the thrall of party radicals.
The chamber also voted to endorse 29 freshman House Republicans. The endorsements are likely to be rolled out publicly in the coming weeks. A spokesman declined to comment on the internal deliberations, which were first reported by The Hill.
As arguably the country’s most powerful business organization, the chamber has disproportionately supported Republican candidates, pumping tens of millions of dollars into their campaigns.
While the group has endorsed a smattering of Democrats in recent years, they have represented a tiny fraction of the candidates it has supported.
But since President Trump took office — frequently clashing with Republican orthodoxy on trade and other economic issues — the chamber has made a concerted effort to reimagine the way it evaluates candidates to try to spur bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, on the theory that doing so would better serve businesses.
Conservatives have balked at the shift, trying to derail the endorsement of the Democrats and criticizing the move once it became public.
Brad Todd, a prominent Republican strategist working on congressional campaigns this fall, said in an interview that the chamber was putting at risk the most significant pro-business measure in recent memory: the corporate tax cut passed by Republicans in 2017, which Democrats opposed.
“It is the most hard-fought victory for free enterprise in the last 15 years, and the chamber is an active and willing ally in giving it up,” Mr. Todd said. “By endorsing the most vulnerable members of the House Caucus, they are endorsing the continued majority of Nancy Pelosi.”
President Trump denied on Tuesday that he suffered any mini-strokes when he was mysteriously taken to a hospital last year and he had his doctor issue a statement supporting him, but neither gave a fuller explanation for the visit, which had not been on his schedule.
“It never ends!” the president wrote on Twitter. “Now they are trying to say that your favorite President, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes. Never happened to THIS candidate – FAKE NEWS. Perhaps they are referring to another candidate from another Party!”
Mr. Trump did not identify who he believed was making that claim. “Donald Trump vs. the United States,” a new book published on Tuesday by Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, said that on the day of Mr. Trump’s trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland last November, word went out for Vice President Mike Pence to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Mr. Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.
The book did not claim that Mr. Trump, 74, had mini-strokes, a detail that the president volunteered even as he sought to knock it down. He seemed to be responding not to media reports but a tweet by Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, who made no claim but simply asked a question based on Mr. Schmidt’s book. “Did @realDonaldTrump have a stroke which he is hiding from the American public?” Mr. Lockhart wrote.
Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, issued a statement of his own. “I can confirm that President Trump has not experienced nor been evaluated for a cerebrovascular accident (stroke), transient ischemic attack (mini stroke), or any acute cardiovascular emergencies, as have been incorrectly reported in the media,” Dr. Conley said, mischaracterizing news reports.
“The president remains healthy and I have no concerns about his ability to maintain the rigorous schedule ahead of him,” Dr. Conley added. “As stated in my last report, I expect him to remain fit to execute the duties of the presidency.”
The White House has said Mr. Trump’s unannounced trip to the hospital last November was simply part of his “regular, primary preventive care,” but provided no further details.
It’s been a long summer on your Animal Crossing island. You’ve shaken a lot of trees and caught a lot of cicadas. You’ve cornered the Stalk Market with more turnips than anyone thought possible. You’ve bought more furniture from the Nooks than your house can hold.
But former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign thinks you might want a reminder of news from the real world: a virtual campaign sign for your virtual yard.
The campaign said it had made four signs available on the platform on Tuesday, the day autumn started in the Nintendo Switch game. One sign bears the Biden-Harris logo; others say “Team Joe” and “Joe,” with the “E” rendered in Pride colors. The fourth carries a stylized image of Mr. Biden’s signature aviator sunglasses.
This is not the first time a political campaign tried to capitalize on a popular video game. But it may be the first effort to involve this much wood-chopping, bug-catching and buying of kitchen appliances from raccoons.
President Trump’s campaign was dismissive of the stunt. “This explains everything: Joe Biden thinks he’s campaigning for President of Animal Crossing from his basement,” Samantha Zager, the campaign’s deputy national press secretary, said in an email. “The Trump campaign will continue to spend its resources campaigning in the real world with real Americans.”
But Christian Tom, the director of digital partnerships for the Biden-Harris campaign, said Animal Crossing “is a dynamic, diverse, and powerful platform that brings communities together from across the world.” He called the virtual signs an exciting new opportunity for our campaign to connect with supporters “as they build and decorate their islands.”
“We’re already looking forward to rolling out more digital swag, voter education tools and organizing efforts on Animal Crossing and other platforms,” Mr. Tom added.
Republicans and Democrats are waging a legal trench war over the rules for casting a ballot in November that may have decisive consequences in some states. Republicans say they want to tighten voting requirements to prevent fraud, though experts say fraud is a minuscule election problem. Democrats favor rules that make it easier to vote.
Monday saw three developments in that legal war, all in states that could be competitive in the presidential election.
In Texas, the Republican attorney general filed suit to stop the chief election official in heavily Democratic Harris County — Houston, to most people — from sending applications to vote by mail to two million voters. The filing said the mailing would create confusion and encourage fraud.
Texas is mired in a deeply partisan battle over who should be able to cast an absentee ballot in a pandemic, with Republicans largely managing to defend restrictive state rules. Texas is one of just six states that prohibit voters worried about getting Covid-19 from casting ballots by mail instead of in person.
But no law bars county officials from sending applications to voters. The attorney general nevertheless argued that the mass mailing exceeds the authority “implied” under state law.
In Iowa, national Democrats sued to overturn an order by the Republican secretary of state that bars county clerks from sending voters absentee ballot applications that have been pre-completed with details like voters’ names and addresses. Paul Pate, Iowa’s secretary of state, has said that only blank applications are valid; Republicans argue that making voters fill in those missing details is an important security measure.
The issue has consequences: Last week, local judges in two Iowa counties invalidated some 64,000 pre-completed ballot requests that voters had already submitted, effectively making those voters repeat the process. Thousands of additional ballot applications that had been sent out but had not been returned also would be negated. The Democratic lawsuit argues that county officials have sent similarly completed ballot applications in past years without objection.
And in Georgia, a federal district judge sided with national Democrats and ordered an extension of the deadline by which absentee ballots must be received to be considered valid. Current rules invalidate any mail ballot received after the 7 p.m. closing of the polls on Election Day. The ruling extends that deadline to 7 p.m. on the third day after Election Day for any ballot that is postmarked no later than Election Day.
Citing the burdens of the pandemic — and noting that the state rejected 7,821 ballots as late in the state’s June primary election — the judge said the risk that valid votes would go uncounted was considerable.
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