Robert F Kennedy Jr posted a new video on X on Tuesday, urging his followers not to vote for his name on the ballot, but to vote for Donald Trump.
This comes one day after the Michigan supreme court ruled that that Kennedy’s name will remain on the state’s ballot despite his withdrawal from the race several weeks ago.
“No matter what state you live in, you should be voting for Donald Trump” Kennedy said in the video. “That’s the only way we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington DC and fulfil the mission that motivated my campaign.”
Bottom line: No matter what state you live in, VOTE TRUMP. A Trump victory is a Kennedy victory. pic.twitter.com/GBn2p2RLnX
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 10, 2024
Project 2025 ex-director accuses Trump campaign advisers of ‘malpractice’
The former head of Project 2025, a rightwing blueprint for remaking the US government that was created by many of Donald Trump’s former officials, has urged the former president to replace his two campaign managers if he wants to win November’s presidential election.
Paul Dans, who stepped down as the project’s director in July after Trump dissociated himself from it, turned his fire on Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, blaming the advisers for a series of errors that he claims have jeopardised the Republican nominee’s chances of beating Kamala Harris.
Dans accused them of being guilty of overconfidence and of failing to adequately prepare Trump for the possibility that Harris would replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. That development changed the race, which polls suggested Trump had previously been leading. Dans told the New York Times:
Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire.
He also accused Trump’s campaign advisers of “malpractice”, and said their misjudgments led to an embarrassing public about-face, in which Trump finally claimed to disown the Project 2025 document.
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Interim summary
Two former Trump White House officials will join Kamala Harris’s campaign as surrogates for Tuesday’s presidential debate. Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director for Donald Trump, and Olivia Troye, who was homeland security adviser to Mike Pence, will speak out against Trump and for Harris ahead of the debate, the campaign said.
The White House described false claims being shared by prominent Republicans including the Trump campaign and JD Vance about Haitian migrants in an Ohio city eating pets and local wildlife as “dangerous” misinformation.
A new Harris-Walz campaign ad features Barack Obama mocking Donald Trump over his “weird obsession” with crowd sizes during his speech at the Democratic national convention last month.
Melania Trump, the former first lady, questioned the official account of the attempted assassination of her husband, Donald Trump, in a bizarre new video posted to X to promote her new memoir.
Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Republican governor of Florida, claimed the signature collection process for the state’s amendment on November’s ballot to protect abortion rights was fraudulent, and is reportedly sending his election police force to voters’ homes to try to gather evidence.
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The misinformation about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, comes as the Trump campaign has sought to make immigration a key issue, tying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the towns unprepared for migrants arriving via the southern border.
The city has seen a large number of migrants from Haiti, which has both helped the economy there with staffing concerns while also stretching the capacity of some services like clinics and schools, the New York Times reported.
A Biden administration policy provided temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants, who have left their home country because of ongoing violence. Some estimates say as many as 20,000 people from Haiti have come to the city, the Times said.
Last year, a migrant driving a van outside Springfield crashed into a school bus, killing one child, which added fuel to the concerns some residents have had with migration. Housing costs have also increased, which has led to fewer options for low-income residents of all backgrounds, the paper reported.
Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, went on Fox to say the Biden administration was to blame for “failing cities like ours and taxing us beyond our limit”.
Residents at recent council meetings have appealed to their elected officials to better manage the new stream of residents. In now viral testimony, one woman said she and her husband might need to move from their home because of ongoing problems with “men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me” and throwing items in her yard.
Some have also tried to tie a woman who was charged recently in Canton, Ohio, for allegedly killing and then eating a cat to the influx of migrants in Springfield, a different city more than 150 miles (241km) away. She does not appear to be a Haitian migrant.
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JD Vance appeared to backtrack on the false claim he promoted on Monday saying that Haitian migrants in an Ohio city were eating pets and local wildlife.
The Republican Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said his office had received “many inquiries” about the false claims, adding that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
Police in Springfield, Ohio on Monday said they had received no credible reports of immigrants harming pets.
The false claims appear to have originated from a commenter at a local city meeting, who said migrants were grabbing ducks from the park to kill and eat, and from local crime-watch Facebook groups. They were then shared on other social media platforms and made it into a headline in the Daily Mail.
White House says JD Vance false conspiracy about Haitian ‘cat-eating migrants’ is racist and 'dangerous'
The White House described false claims being shared by prominent Republicans including the Trump campaign and JD Vance about Haitian migrants in an Ohio city eating pets and local wildlife as “dangerous” misinformation.
The White House’s national security adviser John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday:
This kind of misinformation is dangerous. Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt so it needs to stop.
He added:
What’s deeply concerning to us is you’ve got now elected officials in the Republican Party pushing yet another conspiracy theory that’s just seeking to divide people based on lies and – let’s be honest – based on an element of racism.
Social media posts have claimed, without evidence, that migrants from Haiti to Springfield, Ohio, are stealing pets and local wildlife such as ducks and geese and are butchering them for food.
Many of the posts, including one shared by the X account for the Republicans on the House judiciary committee, use images generated by artificial intelligence to show Donald Trump holding and protecting cats and ducks, casting him as a savior to the town.
Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio! pic.twitter.com/YnTZStPnsg
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) September 9, 2024
Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, shared a meme of two cats hugging one another that said, “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.”
🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/96vvZhvuSv
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 9, 2024
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Donald Trump sexual abuse accuser Jessica Leeds says she ruefully “laughed out loud” when the former president recently disputed her sworn testimony that he grabbed her, tried to kiss her and ran his hand up her skirt on a plane in the 1970s by insisting “she would not have been the chosen one”.
“He assaulted me 50 years ago and continues to attack me today,” Leeds said alongside her attorneys during a press conference in New York on Monday.
It was like he had 47 arms – like an octopus, but not a sound was spoken.
Her remarks came after Trump appeared at an appeal hearing on the sexual abuse case brought by E Jean Carroll, which resulted in a jury finding Trump liable of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
Leeds, 82, came forward in 2016 and later testified in the Carroll trial, which centered on Carroll’s testimony that the Republican nominee in November’s election had assaulted her at a department store in the 1990s.
Leeds has accused Trump of groping her in the first-class section of an airplane. She said she fought him off and moved to the back of the plane. At her press conference, she said she later ran into him, prompting him to exclaim, “I remember you,” before calling her a derogatory word.
Melania Trump claims there is 'definitely more' to assassination attempt against husband
Melania Trump, the former first lady, questioned the official account of the attempted assassination of her husband, Donald Trump, in a bizarre new video posted to X to promote her new memoir.
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” she said.
Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?
“There is definitely more to this story, and we need to uncover the truth, she added.
The video ends with an image of her new book, “Melania”, due to be released on 8 October.
https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZND pic.twitter.com/KKA6anTEYC
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 10, 2024
The dispatching of election police to voters’ homes is not the only beef Ron DeSantis critics have with the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to upend the amendment 4 abortion ballot measure.
The official Florida health department’s website is urging voters to reject it, an unlawful use of taxpayers’ money for what amounts to political advertising, according to the ACLU of Florida.
Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement:
To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the state to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative.
Dystopian behavior by GOP politicians who are so desperate to keep Florida’s near total abortion ban in place that they will spend YOUR public money on political ads while come to your door with police to intimidate you on your petition signature. https://t.co/7ghWdii2qR
— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, PhD 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) September 9, 2024
This kind of propaganda, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process, sets a dangerous precedent. This is what we would expect to see from an authoritarian regime.
The state’s illegal act to undermine amendment 4 is nothing more than an abuse of power, aimed at preventing voters from rejecting the cruel and extreme abortion ban in place.
DeSantis has railed against amendment 4, which would nix the six-week abortion ban he signed into law in April last year, and allow abortions until viability of the fetus.
There’s a new squabble in Florida over an amendment on November’s ballot to protect abortion rights.
Having failed to persuade the state’s supreme court from blocking the measure going before voters in the first place, Ron DeSantis, the state’s hard-right Republican governor, now claims the signature collection process for amendment 4 was fraudulent, and is reportedly sending his election police force to voters’ homes to try to gather evidence.
The Tampa Bay Times spoke to voters who said uniformed officers from the Florida department of law enforcement showed up at their door. One told the newspaper that the officer had a 10-page dossier on him, including a printout of his driver’s license and a copy of his signature.
After the voter confirmed he had indeed signed the petition, the officer left.
DeSantis set up his own election fraud unit in 2022 and has been busy scouring thousands of the almost one million signatures that put the abortion measure on the ballot for authenticity.
Democrats are calling foul. State representative Anna Eskamani told the Orlando Sentinel:
These tactics set a very dangerous precedent for the future of our elections where [an] election police force can be sent in to intimidate, to try to re-evaluate history and to take away our votes and to take away our voices.
At a press conference Monday, DeSantis defended his tactics. His investigators, he said, found signatures that “appeared” not to be authentic.
“It may be… that voter will say, ‘No, I actually did do that,’ maybe they signed their name. That is absolutely possible,” DeSantis conceded.
Kamala Harris was asked to explain her shifts on certain policy issues over the years during a CNN interview last month.
Pressed on her reversals on fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings, Harris insisted that her “values had not changed”. She said:
I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.
On fracking, she said she made clear in the 2020 debate that she no longer supports a ban, and that as president she would not ban fracking.
On immigration, Harris said she thought laws on illegal border crossing should be followed and enforced on immigration. She pointed to her record as California attorney general, when she prosecuted gangs accused of cross border trafficking, as an indication of her values on immigration.
My values have not changed. So that is the reality of it. And four years of being vice president, I’ll tell you, one of the aspects, to your point, is traveling the country extensively. I believe it is important to build consensus, and it is important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems.
Donald Trump said he is feeling “great” ahead of tonight’s debate and that his biggest challenge facing off against Kamala Harris is that she has changed her positions on so many issues over the years.
Trump told NBC News this morning:
You don’t know what to expect. She’s changed all of her policies over the years.
“It makes it much easier. She’s no longer believable,” he added.
Trump’s debate preparations have been far less extensive and structured than Harris’s, but he participated in intensive sessions over the past two days, the outlet reported.
Sources told NBC that Trump has been nervous or disengaged with debate preparation in the past few weeks, but that he has been more focused as debate day neared.
Obama mocks Trump's 'weird obsession' with 'crowd sizes' in new Harris campaign ad
A new Harris-Walz campaign ad features Barack Obama mocking Donald Trump over his “weird obsession” with crowd sizes during his speech at the Democratic national convention last month.
The ad, titled Crowd Size, features footage from the former president’s remarks the convention in Milwaukee where he decries Trump for “whining about his problems” such as his “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.
“This weird obsession with crowd sizes ... it just goes on, and on, and on,” Obama says, making a suggestive hand gesture that drew laughter from the audience.
The ad launched this morning and will air nationally and in markets that appear intentionally targeted at Trump, including on Fox News and in West Palm Beach, Florida, as well as Philadelphia, where tonight’s debate is taking place.
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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will arrive in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday for their first (and potentially only) presidential debate.
The event will mark the first time that Harris and Trump have ever met face to face, and it comes less than two months after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race following his own fateful debate performance in June.
The change at the top of the Democratic ticket appears to have unnerved Trump and his campaign advisers, who have struggled to land attacks against Harris. The debate will present Trump with his most significant opportunity yet to negatively define Harris in voters’ minds, as polls show a neck-and-neck race in key battleground states.
For Harris, the debate could allow her to deliver on her oft-repeated promise to voters: that she will prosecute the case against Trump. Her political history – both on the debate stage and in Senate hearings – suggest she is well-positioned to make that case. But Harris is not without her vulnerabilities either.
Here are five key moments from Harris’s career that could offer a preview of her debate strategy.
The Harris campaign noted that the two former Trump White House officials joining them as surrogates tonight, Anthony Scaramucci and Olivia Troye, are not the only former Trump aids and officials speaking out against him.
The Harris campaign also released a new TV ad, titled The Best People, to coincide with tonight’s debate featuring former top officials in Donald Trump’s administration, including his vice-president, Mike Pence, secretary of defense, Mark Esper, national security adviser, John Bolton, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley.
“In 2016 Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House,” a narrator in the ad says.
Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again.
Take it from the people who worked for him: Donald Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, and our democracy.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 9, 2024
He should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.
Watch our new ad: pic.twitter.com/LWiyK1sfnm
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Former Trump officials to join Harris campaign at debate
Two former Trump White House officials will join Kamala Harris’s campaign in Philadelphia as surrogates for Tuesday’s presidential debate, the Harris campaign announced.
Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Donald Trump’s White House communications director, and Olivia Troye, who was homeland security adviser to Mike Pence and a top aide on the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, will speak out against Donald Trump and for Harris ahead of the debate, the campaign said.
Announcing the campaign’s plans to bring Scaramucci and Troye to the debate, the Harris-Walz campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler said:
Listen, don’t take it from us: Take it from the ones who know Donald Trump the best and who are telling the American people exactly how unfit Trump is to serve as president. They saw firsthand the abject failure of Donald Trump’s presidency.
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The White Stripes’ Jack White and Meg White have filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump for what they allege is the “flagrant misappropriation” of a recording of their hit song Seven Nation Army in a campaign video.
The video that spurred the legal action was posted by Trump staffer Margo McAtee Martin on X on 29 August, but has since been deleted. It shows the Republican presidential nominee boarding a plane with the opening riff of Seven Nation Army playing in the background.
Responding via Instagram at the time, Jack White wrote:
Don’t even think about using my music you fascists. Law suit coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others).
The singer has made good on the threat, filing a copyright infringement suit, alongside Meg White, as the White Stripes, seeking “significant monetary damages”, and listing Trump, his campaign and Martin as defendants.
The suit alleges that the campaign did not seek or obtain permission from the band to use the song, and did not respond to pre-litigation efforts to resolve the issue.
Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, will rally supporters in critical battleground states following tonight’s presidential debate.
The Harris campaign will kick off a “New Way Forward” tour involving a four-day campaign trip through major swing states, a new television spot, rallies, canvassing events and programs designed to target important voting groups, it said.
Harris is expected to attend 9/11 memorial ceremonies on Wednesday, and will embark on her tour on Thursday. Harris will visit North Carolina on Thursday and Pennsylvania on Friday. Walz will be in Nevada on Tuesday, Michigan on Thursday and Wisconsin on Friday.
Harris v Trump: How to watch tonight's debate
As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump meet tonight for their only scheduled debate, here’s what to know:
What time is the debate?
The debate will start at 9pm Eastern Time (1am GMT) and is expected to last 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.
Where is the debate?
Tonight’s debate will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a key election battleground state. As with the previous debate between Trump and Joe Biden, there will be no audience present.
World News Tonight anchor David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis will moderate the debate.
How can I watch the debate?
ABC News will carry the debate live on its broadcast network as well as its streaming platform ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. Several networks have also agreed to carry the event live.
When is the next debate?
As of now, there is only one debate scheduled before the election. Tim Walz and JD Vance are due to face off at a vice-presidential debate on 1 October in New York City.
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Harris and Trump to face off in presidential debate
Good morning US politics readers. It was the debate that was never meant to happen. Tonight, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet for the first time ever when they take the stage at Philadelphia’s national constitution center for the presidential debate.
With just eight weeks until election day and recent polls showing the candidates neck-and-neck, the stakes couldn’t be higher for both Harris and Trump. Today’s debate, which will start at 9pm ET and is expected to last 90 minutes, may well be the only chance the American public have to see their Democratic and Republican presidential candidates face off against each other on what voters say are their key issues, including the economy, immigration and reproductive rights.
We will be covering the debate tonight on our live blog. In the meantime, here’s what else we’re watching:
The Harris-Walz campaign unveiled a new ad for debate day, entitled “Crowd Size”, that features Barack Obama ridiculing Trump’s insecurities about his crowd size.
Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, sharply criticized the Trump campaign, revealing discontent on the right about what some see as a pivot to the center.
Voters in Delaware, New Hampshire and Rhode Island will cast their ballots in a slate of primary races today.
Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, appears before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic this afternoon.
Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, is in the UK for a US-UK strategic dialogue and will meet with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.
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