Today's recap
Kamala Harris delivered a speech on immigration policy, laying out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.
Donald Trump threatened to prosecute Google for “displaying bad stories” about him. In the middle of a busy day of presidential campaign events in Michigan, a key swing state, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform that, if elected president, he plans to prosecute Google for, he alleged, “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump” while “only revealing Good stories about Kamala Harris”.
And, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Alabama for last-minute voter purges. The justice department is suing Alabama for what it alleges is an illegal attempt to remove voters from the rolls too close to November’s election.
Here’s what else happened today:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke after his meeting in New York with Donald Trump and said the two men had a “very productive” talk. Ukraine’s president said the two “thoroughly reviewed” the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two-and-a-half years ago, Reuters reports.
In a video address on Friday, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, spoke of the indictment of three Iranian nationals for their role in a “wide-ranging hacking campaign sponsored by the government of Iran”. Wray said: “These individuals, employees of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted a US political campaign, current and former US officials, and members of the American media, all in an attempt to sow discord and undermine our democracy.”
Kamala Harris arrived in Tucson, Arizona, from Washington DC for election campaign events, including a visit to the US-Mexico border.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied among voters in North Carolina, a new poll shows. The CNN poll, released today and conducted from 20 to 25 September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of support among likely voters in North Carolina.
Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, pleaded not guilty to corruption charges when he appeared in court in Manhattan. He denies federal bribery and fraud charges. The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York. It is the first time that a sitting mayor of the city has been charged with crimes.
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After Kamala Harris spoke about her policies related to the southern border during a speech in Douglas, Arizona, the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union representing the US border patrol, said that Harris “has ignored the border problem she created for over three years”.
“She goes down there for 20 minutes for a photo op and decides to repeat some of the things the NPBC has said before. But again, where has she been the last 3 1/2 years?” the union wrote on X, repeating a Trump talking point.
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Google followed up on Donald Trump’s claim that the search engine is illegally using a system to only reveal bad stories about him and good stories about Kamala Harris by issuing a statement:
Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,.
Following up on a report by Fox News, Google continued: “This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”
Hugo Lowell in Washington dug into these claims:
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The progressive advocacy group Center for American Progress Action Fund reacted to Harris’s speech tonight.
“Donald Trump’s failed leadership fanned the flames of hate and did nothing to actually fix the problems at the border,” the group posted on X.
During her speech, Harris said Trump made the challenges at the border worse.
“He separated families, he ripped toddlers out of their mothers’ arms, put children in cages, and tried to end protection of Dreamers,” Harris said.
Donald Trump's failed leadership fanned the flames of hate and did nothing to actually fix the problems at the border. pic.twitter.com/exrgOyM8Zg
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) September 28, 2024
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Here’s some more in-depth reporting from the Associated Press, capturing how the reality of what is happening at the border has changed dramatically in the past few months, even as the political rhetoric (Trump’s in particular) really hasn’t:
As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso.
No one is waiting there now.
Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days.
In McAllen, at the other end of the Texas border, two Border Patrol agents scan fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.
It’s a return to relative calm after an unprecedented surge of immigrants through the southern border in recent years. But no one would know that listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking about border enforcement at dueling presidential campaign events. And no one would know from the rate at which Texas is spending on a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star – $11 billion since 2021.
Read the full Associated Press article here.
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If you’re looking to put both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s claims about what’s happening at the US-Mexico border in context, this article from August is a good place to start:
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Here’s how Hamed Aleaziz, a longtime immigration reporter, summed up the substance of Harris’s immigration policy today for the New York Times:
In a sign of how the politics of immigration have changed, Harris is promoting a policy that resembles a Trump-era effort to ban asylum for those who cross the border illegally. Harris says that she understands that people are desperate to come into the United States, but that the system must be ‘orderly.’
In the same speech, Harris slammed Trump for separating immigrant children from their families and putting “children in cages”, and called for a gentler rhetoric about immigrants, and a focus on solutions, rather than blame and attacks.
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Harris is getting big cheers from a Democratic audience as she shifts from talking about tough enforcement and Congress’s failures to pass immigration reform to talking about legal paths to citizenship for immigrants who have been in the US for years, the importance of helping “Dreamers” – undocumented young people who came to the US as children – and the many contributions of immigrant farm workers.
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Harris is repeating a central part of her immigration rhetoric: that Donald Trump deliberately torpedoed a bipartisan immigration reform bill because “he prefers to run on a problem than fixing a problem.”
Harris’s campaign, like the Biden administration previously, is highlighting Mitch McConnell’s own remarks about Trump’s influence on the legislation.
Mitch McConnell: We spent months working on a bipartisan bill to secure the border, but Trump didn't seem to want us to do anything at all. He told us to kill the bill pic.twitter.com/sHBaAa0gY2
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 27, 2024
The White House has been using this approach to the immigration issue since early this year: “Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a statement in early 2024. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”
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As Kamala Harris begins her speech on immigration policy, she lays out the balance she wants to strike: what’s important to her about the US immigration system is that “it works in an orderly way, that it is humane and that it makes our country stronger”.
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Among the people who introduced Kamala Harris, who is beginning her remarks on immigration and border policy, was Theresa Guerrero, a woman from Tucson, Arizona, who has become an activist after her son, Jacob, died of a fentanyl overdose.
Trump’s campaign also previously featured remarks, during the Republican national convention, from a parent of a child lost to fentanyl.
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The Harris campaign is already attacking Donald Trump using a video of his comments from Warren, Michigan, tonight, talking about tariffs and how prosperous the US was in the 1890s.
Trump announces he plans to take America back to “the 1890s” by imposing a 20% tax on all imported goods, including food, cell phones, clothes, and more pic.twitter.com/V54Y4bX8mX
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 27, 2024
Trump has been making the case for high taxes on imported goods, which Congressional Republicans who oppose tariffs hope they can “water down” if he’s elected, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
🚨Trump just now on his tariff plans: "I don't need Congress. I don't need them. I'll have the right to impose them myself, if they don't"
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 23, 2024
Trump has proposed tariffs as high as 20% on *all* $3 trillion of annual imports to the U.S. -- could be as high as a $5 trillion tax hike
I reported in May they were looking into this -- so far Congressional Republicans opposed to the tariffs have mostly expressed optimism that they'll water down Trump's plans when they get to Congresshttps://t.co/LvW7wdA5Uv
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 23, 2024
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Mark Kelly, the US senator from Arizona, has been shepherding Harris during her visit to the border town of Douglas on Friday.
Kelly began his remarks by sending greetings from his wife, the former Arizona representative Gabby Giffords, setting off a round of cheers for the beloved former representative.
He retold the story of negotiating the bipartisan border deal in Congress only to see Trump torpedo the package by pressuring Republican senators to reject it.
“This is the most hypocritical thing I’ve seen in three-and-a-half years in Washington,” Kelly said, calling the plan “the deal that Arizona needs”. Harris has vowed to revive the bill, if elected, and said she would have signed it into law.
Kelly ended his remarks by saying that the playbook for winning in November was simple: hard work.
“This is not rocket science. If it was, I could help,” the former astronaut quipped, as he campaigned for the vice-president.
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Biden embraced a more Trump-like border policy. Trump still claims Harris is weak.
Some context, as we wait for Harris to give a campaign speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she is expected to call for tougher action at the US border with Mexico:
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made criticism of Trump’s harsh immigration policies part of their bid for the White House in 2020. But the Democratic administration has increasingly moved right on immigration, leading to criticisms that, though Biden certainly does not verbally attack and revile immigrants as Trump does, Biden’s actual policy regarding the US-Mexico border made him a kind of Trump 2.0.
This past June, Biden signed an executive order limiting the number of asylum seekers admitted at the US-Mexico border, a policy that that split Democrats, and that some advocates said “will only cause suffering.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the Biden administration over the policy.
Since June, migrant crossings have plunged, though Democrats are asking: at what price?
Harris, who supported decriminalizing undocumented border crossings in 2019 during her brief presidential run, has moved away from that stance in her new campaign, also striking a more law-and-order tone, which she is expected to continue in her border policy speech today.
In contrast with Biden or Harris, Trump’s current immigration policy is a pledge to carry out “mass deportations”, which he has promised will be the largest in US history. That is expected to include a legally dubious roundup of up to 11 million people, “deployments of military and police units, and the creation of vast detention camps along the southern border”.
Trump has made political attacks against Harris, blaming her for the border crisis, a central part of his campaign against her. Polls have suggested US voters trust Trump more than Harris on immigration.
The global picture: in the US, as in the UK and Europe, wealthy democracies have spent decades trying to deter immigrants from coming across their borders to seek a better life by making border crossings increasingly surveilled, militarized and deadly. This has not, broadly speaking, stopped people from continuing to migrate in hopes of finding safer lives for themselves and their families, particularly as wars, climate change and other crises provide reasons to seek asylum elsewhere. But deterrence policies do mean that children and adult attempting to migrate are more likely to die because of the conditions that wealthy countries create at their borders, in hopes of persuading people that it’s too dangerous to migrate.
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A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found that 43% of voters favored Trump on the issue of immigration and 33% favored Harris, while 24% either didn’t know, chose someone else or declined to answer, Reuters reports.
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Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s town hall in Warren, Michigan, is running about an hour behind schedule, the New York Times reports. (The Detroit Free Press has a livestream here, should you wish to follow along.)
PBS also has a livestream of Kamala Harris’s expected campaign remarks on border policy in Douglas, Arizona, that will go live in about a half-hour.
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Asked what she had learned from her conversation with customs and border protection officials, Kamala Harris told today’s White House pool reporter:
They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job. They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do.
After pacing along the border wall in triple-digit heat, Kamala Harris is now headed to a college gymnasium in Douglas, Arizona, where she is expected to deliver a speech calling for tougher law enforcement action at the border.
Harris’s chat with customs and border protection officials by the side of the wall included a briefing on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl across the border, Lauren reports.
Douglas, the town Harris’s team chose for her remarks, is a blue dot of Democratic voters in the otherwise overwhelmingly red Cochise county.
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There’s record-breaking heat in Arizona as the vice-president visits the border today:
The latest 115° day EVER is possible in Phoenix tomorrow! 3 weeks later than the previous record.
— Amber Sullins (@AmberSullins) September 27, 2024
The 30-year avg number of 115°+ days in a year is 2. 2024 has had 11 so far.
Just look at the trend over the last century! This is the fingerprint of #climatechange in #Phoenix. pic.twitter.com/2O831NuBsy
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Harris meets border patrol agents on tour of border wall in Arizona
Kamala Harris has arrived at the US-Mexico border in Arizona, where the vice-president was briefed by two customs and border protection officials.
Harris stepped out of her motorcade on a dusty desert road outside Douglas, Arizona, and shook hands with two men, the Associated Press reported. Harris chatted with the uniformed agents as they walked along the rust-colored border wall in temperatures that neared 100F (38C).
The section of the wall Harris is viewing was constructed during Barack Obama’s administration, in 2011-2012, according to the White House pool reporter.
Harris’s conversation with the CBP officers was not audible to the pool reporter on scene. A White House official told him that Harris had “heard directly from CBP officials on their efforts to combat traffickers and transnational criminal organizations”.
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The Wisconsin supreme court has ruled that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name will remain on the swing state’s presidential ballot, the AP reports.
The decision from the liberal-controlled court on Friday marks the latest twist in Kennedy’s quest to get his name off ballots in battleground states where the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is tight.
The state supreme court upheld the ruling of a circuit judge who said state law says candidates can be removed only if they die. Some absentee ballots have already been sent to voters.
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DOJ files lawsuit against state of Alabama for last-minute voter purges
The justice department is suing Alabama for what it alleges is an illegal attempt to remove voters from the voter rolls too close to November’s election.
Justice Department Sues Alabama for Violating Federal Law’s Prohibition on Systematic Efforts to Remove Voters Within 90 Days of an Election
— DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) September 27, 2024
🔗: https://t.co/5vFAY6oKIq pic.twitter.com/CqVo9b9yzr
My colleague Sam Levine reported earlier this Month that the DOJ had issued a very public warning to states about why last-minute voter purges are illegal. Here’s the fact sheet on the law.
“As Election Day approaches, it is critical that Alabama redress voter confusion resulting from its list maintenance mailings sent in violation of federal law,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “Officials across the country should take heed of the National Voter Registration Act’s clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election. The Quiet Period Provision of federal law exists to prevent eligible voters from being removed from the rolls as a result of last-minute, error-prone efforts.”
We’ll have more context on this soon. Meanwhile, some early reporting from NPR:
JUST IN: @TheJusticeDept has filed the second lawsuit against Alabama’s voter removal program, alleging the state violated federal law by purging voters too close to this fall’s general election. @CampaignLegal filed a similar lawsuit earlier this monthhttps://t.co/VcNr7hoYLY
— Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) (@hansilowang) September 27, 2024
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If you’re getting confused about Trump’s campaign events today, you’re probably not the only one: Trump spoke in Walker, Michigan, earlier today. Walker is close to Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the western side of the state. Now Trump is headed to Warren, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where he’s holding a town hall at Macomb Community College.
Trump was supposed to talk about the economy. Instead, he ranted about the border.
Eager to deflect attention from Kamala Harris’s border visit, Donald Trump proved unable to resist turning a campaign stop in Michigan – ostensibly focused on inflation – into a rant about immigration.
The former US president seized on data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made public on Friday by the House of Representatives’ homeland security committee.
According to the committee, the data shows that as of 21 July “nearly 650,000 criminal illegal aliens were currently on ICE’s Non-Detained Docket (NDD) and roaming free in communities throughout the United States. This figure includes roughly 15,000 individuals convicted of or charged with murder, more than 20,000 of sexual assault, and more than 105,000 of assault.”
Trump told supporters in Walker, Michigan: “For the first time ever, we have specific numbers that were just released and it’s about the people that crossed the border illegally under Kamala Harris. That she’s even running is frankly ridiculous. That’s not a president. That’s not a president. She went to the border today because she went to see if she could - she’s getting killed on the border.”
Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans. But Trump said: “They just pour into our country. She has no idea where they’re from. From parts unknown. She’s responsible for every bloody crime scene, every funeral, every orphan child.”
He added; “She delivered these horrors, she unleashed these atrocities, and blood is on her hands at a level that probably nobody’s ever seen in this country before. But on November 5th, Kamala Harris will be held accountable for these crimes. She will be sent back to California and we will close the border, we will stop the invasion, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”
Trump again referenced Springfield, Ohio and, although he did not specifically mention a baseless conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pets, he said: “Those people have to be taken out and brought back to their country from where they came. I’m sorry.”
Trump supporters applaud snipers at Michigan town hall
In the wake of two attempted assassination attempts against Donald Trump, his supporters applauded the appearance of counter-snipers at a town hall event in Warren, Michigan, where Trump is slated to speak later today, the New York Times reported.
A local Twitter account appeared to have a photograph of the snipers heading up to the roof:
Secret Service sniper team going up at the Trump Town Hall at Macomb Community College. pic.twitter.com/8s89y4e1ZN
— TomsAmps (@TomsAmpsDetroit) September 27, 2024
Donald Trump threatens to prosecute Google for ‘displaying bad stories’ about him
In the middle of a busy day of presidential campaign events in Michigan, a key swing state, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform that, if elected president, he plans to prosecute Google for, he alleged, “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump” while “only revealing Good stories about Kamala Harris”.
It’s not immediately clear what prompted this threat against Google, or why Trump believes that this supposed behavior would be a crime that his justice department would be able to prosecute.
I’ll update with a response from Google as soon as we have it.
Trump on Truth Social today: pic.twitter.com/jG7ovbphYh
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) September 27, 2024
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As US politicians focus on border security, heat deaths are hitting record numbers
As my colleague Lauren Gambino is reporting, from somewhere near Tombstone, Arizona, Kamala Harris is currently heading to the border between the US and Mexico, where her comments are expected to focus on the US border with Mexico, and on presenting herself as a leader who is willing, like Donald Trump, to embrace tough, punitive border policies, as a response to Americans who want to shut US borders to migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and economic and environmental disasters elsewhere in the world.
But as Gabrielle Canon, our extreme weather correspondent, has just reported, one of the growing deadly threats to residents of states like Arizona isn’t other people: it’s extreme heat, which has already killed hundreds of people in Arizona so far this year.
Brutal heat continues to plague the south-west US, with excessive heat alerts lingering long into September as parts of the region set grim new records for deaths connected to the sweltering temperatures.
In Arizona’s Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, 664 fatalities are believed to have been linked to the heat this year , according to public health officials, who are still working to confirm more than half of them. Southern Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, has seen more deaths this year than in any year prior, with officials confirming this week that there have been 342 fatalities linked to the heat. This surpassed last year’s record, which marked an 80% increase over 2022.
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Harris expected to call for tougher border stance towards asylum seekers in Arizona visit
Kamala Harris has arrived in Tucson, Arizona, ahead of a visit to the border town of Douglas, which is about a two-hour drive south-east.
During her remarks later this afternoon, Harris is expected to call for tougher actions that would keep the border closed to asylum seekers attempting to cross between legal ports of entry.
According to a campaign official, she intends to call for making it harder to lift the emergency order by requiring the average number of border crossings to fall below the current level of 1,500 before the rule can be lifted.
During her visit, Harris will meet with border patrol agents and tour the US Customs and Border Protection’s Raul H Castro port of entry, between Douglas and Agua Prieta, Mexico. According to a campaign official, she will receive briefings on the port of entry and efforts to stop the flow of drugs into the United States. Arizona senator Mark Kelly, who flew with Harris from Washington on Air Force Two, and state attorney general Kris Mayes will join the vice-president.
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At Trump’s Michigan rally, some supporters leave before the former president is done speaking
According to multiple news outlets, some Trump supporters at the former president’s rally in Walker, Michigan, left the event early, as Trump was still speaking.
An NBC News reporter posted video of supporters walking out:
📍Walker, MI
— Alex Tabet (@AlexanderTabet) September 27, 2024
Attendees appear to be leaving Trump’s remarks in Walker, Michigan early as they exit the building while the former President is still on stage. pic.twitter.com/Vdp68Quo9C
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Trump addressed the early exits in his speech, claiming that “those leaving early were headed backstage to take photos”. That “may be true of some of them, but the crowd behind the press riser had already thinned out well before he made that remark”, reporter Michael Gold noted.
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More on the Arizona border town that Harris will visit today
This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from Los Angeles. While Trump is holding campaign events in Michigan, Kamala Harris is headed to Arizona to visit the US border, as Trump and other Republicans have been criticizing her for not doing since she became the Democratic presidential nominee.
The Associated Press has more context on the town Harris is visiting:
Douglas, where Harris will appear, is an overwhelmingly Democratic border town in GOP-dominated Cochise County, where the Republicans on the board of supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month, using a remote stretch of border wall and a pile of steel beams to draw a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.
The town of 16,000 people has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy port of entry that’s slated for a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned with making legal border crossings more efficient as they are with combatting illegal ones.
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Interim Summary
Here’s a look at where things stand:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has spoken after his meeting in New York with Donald Trump and says the two men had a “very productive” talk. He said the two “thoroughly reviewed” the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two and a half years ago, Reuters reports.
In a video address on Friday, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, spoke of the indictment of three Iranian nationals for their role in a “wide-ranging hacking campaign sponsored by the government of Iran”. Wray said: “These individuals, employees of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted a US political campaign, current and former US officials, and members of the American media, all in an attempt to sow discord and undermine our democracy.”
Later this afternoon, Kamala Harris will arrive in Arizona for election campaign events. She’s currently en route from Washington DC to Tucson. Shortly after landing in Tucson, the US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president will make her way to the US-Mexico border.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied among voters in North Carolina, a new poll shows. The CNN poll released today and conducted from 20 to 25 September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of the support among likely voters in North Carolina.
The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, pleaded not guilty to corruption charges when he appeared in court in Manhattan. He denies federal bribery and fraud charges. The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York. It is the first time that a sitting mayor of the city has been charged with crimes.
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JD Vance is scheduled speak at an event on Saturday hosted by a self-declared prophet who believes Kamala Harris practices witchcraft.
The Guardian’s Alice Herman reports:
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.
For the full story, click here:
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Here is a courtroom sketch of New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, during his arraignment on Friday morning:
No cameras inside the courtroom, but we have a sketch of @NYCMayor during his arraignment.
— Gloria Pazmino (@GloriaPazmino) September 27, 2024
Courtesy: Christine Cornell pic.twitter.com/NPdSnRBIVZ
Adams has been federally charged with bribery, wire fraud and illegal acceptance of foreign donations. He has pleaded not guilty.
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FBI director on Iran hacking investigation: 'We're going to disrupt you'
In a video address on Friday, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, spoke of the indictment of three Iranian nationals for their role in a “wide-ranging hacking campaign sponsored by the government of Iran”.
Wray said:
These individuals, employees of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted a US political campaign, current and former US officials, and members of the American media, all in an attempt to sow discord and undermine our democracy.
He added that the individuals impersonated US government officials via fake personas.
Wray continued:
What we’re talking about here – attempts by a hostile foreign government to steal campaign information from one presidential candidate and then shop it around both to that candidate’s opponent and the media. And while there’s no indication that any of the recipients of the stolen campaign information actually replied, Iran’s intent was clear – to sow discord and shape the outcome of our elections.
In a warning to Iran, Wray said:
If you try to attack our infrastructure or commit violence against our citizens, we’re going to disrupt you. And as long as you keep attempting to flout the rule of law, you’re going to keep running into the FBI.
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If you’re keeping an eye on the other big news in the US today, so are we. We’re liveblogging the aftermath of Hurricane Helene as, still a very dangerous storm, it roars through North Carolina. At least 20 people have been reported dead since the hurricane made landfall in Florida late last night and, now a tropical depression, it is leaving a trail of destruction and bringing major storm hazards to a huge area. Flooding is particularly acute across parts of the south-east, from Tennessee to Georgia. You can follow Helene news as it happens, here.
And in New York, as well as Donald Trump meeting Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed the United Nations general assembly amid protests. We’ve been blogging that and covering the sudden escalation of conflict in Lebanon, too.
Netanyahu had not long finished speaking before fresh airstrikes were delivered by Israeli military forces against Lebanon on the outskirts of the capital, Beirut, in Israel’s latest wave of counterattacks on militant group Hezbollah.
Iran, which backs Hezbollah, called the latest explosions, which targeted Hezbollah’s Lebanese headquarters, a “dangerous gamechanging escalation”, according to Reuters just now. The US said it was not given a heads-up by Israel before the latest explosions. International leaders have been putting on pressure at the UN this week for de-escalation and ceasefires by Israel in Lebanon and Gaza. We have all these developments in our global Middle East live blog, here.
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In what appeared to be a slightly awkward moment between Donald Trump and Voldymyr Zelenskyy after their meeting, the former president said, “We have a good relationship,” adding: “I also have a very good relationship with President [Vladimir] Putin.”
“If we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump said, referring to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.
Zelenskyy, who stood alongside Trump, then interjected and said, “I hope we have more good relations with us,” gesturing between him and Trump.
Trump: I have a very good relationship with President Putin
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 27, 2024
Zelenskyy: I hope we have more good relations with us
Trump: Oh, ha ha I see pic.twitter.com/5vgHy0xT0t
In 2019, Trump threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine as he put pressure on Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, which ultimately resulted in Trump’s impeachment.
The two men have had a fraught relationship, with Trump saying earlier this week at a campaign event in North Carolina: “The president of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president, me … We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.”
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Zelenskyy says he and Trump share 'common view' on Ukraine war
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has spoken after his meeting in New York with Donald Trump and says the two men had a “very productive” talk.
He said the two “thoroughly reviewed” the situation in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than two and a half years ago, Reuters reports.
We share the common view that the war in Ukraine must be stopped. Putin cannot win. Ukrainians must prevail.
It’s unclear if he and Trump reached a genuine consensus behind the scenes. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has been making magic-wand type claims that if he wins the White House he’ll have a peace agreement that all sides will like very quickly.
But he has previously talked in terms that implied he would allow Russia to prevail over what it has already claimed.
Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic rival for the White House, warned yesterday after meeting with Zelenskyy that he should not accept “proposals of surrender”, without mentioning Trump but clearly signaling in his direction.
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Interim summary
Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s an extremely dynamic news day and there is a lot more to come, so stick around and we’ll bring you all the main developments as they happen.
Here’s where things stand:
The US justice department unsealed criminal charges on Friday against three Iranian operatives accused of hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and disseminating the stolen information to media outlets.
Later this afternoon, Kamala Harris will arrive in Arizona for election campaign events. She’s currently en route from Washington, DC, to Tucson. Shortly after landing in Tucson the US vice president and Democratic nominee for president will make her way to the US-Mexico border.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are tied among voters in North Carolina, a new poll shows. The CNN poll released today and conducted from the 20 to 25 September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of the support among likely voters in North Carolina.
New York City mayor Eric Adams pleaded not guilty to corruption charges when he appeared in court in Manhattan. He denies federal bribery and fraud charges. The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York. It is the first time that a sitting mayor of the city has been charged with crimes.
Donald Trump had a meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York today. Appearing on Fox News afterwards, Trump told reporters that he wants a “fair deal for everybody” and also said that he “learned a lot” during his meeting. Zelenskyy, for his part, said: “We need to do everything to pressure” Russia’s Vladimir Putin to “stop this war”.
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared together at Trump Tower in New York. “It’s an honor to have the president with us, and he’s been through a lot,” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, who was standing next to him. “He’s going through a tremendous amount,” Trump said. The former president, who is running again this November, claims he can bring about a peace agreement that both sides will approve of. He has not said how.
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Justice department charges three Iranian operatives over hacking Trump campaign
The US justice department unsealed criminal charges on Friday against three Iranian operatives accused of hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and disseminating the stolen information to media outlets.
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Harris and Trump tied in North Carolina – CNN poll
A new CNN poll released today shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied among voters in North Carolina.
The poll, conducted from the 20th to 25th of September, shows Harris and Trump both receiving 48% of the support among likely voters in North Carolina.
Trump currently leads Harris among White likely voters in the state, according to the CNN poll, and Harris is now leading Trump among Black likely voters.
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The defense lawyer for Eric Adams said that he will be filing a motion next week to dismiss the charges.
The arraignment on Friday lasted less than 30 minutes. Adams and his lawyer have now been escorted out of the courtroom, according to reports.
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Eric Adams has pleaded not guilty all five charges in the indictment, which included wire fraud, bribery, two counts of receiving campaign contributions from a foreign national, and conspiracy.
He is due back in court on Wednesday for a case conference.
New York City mayor Eric Adams pleads not guilty to corruption charges
Adams has pleaded not guilty to federal bribery and fraud charges.
The mayor’s arraignment began just after noon local time at a federal courthouse in New York.
Earlier this week, Adams became the first sitting mayor of New York City to be criminally charged while in office in modern history, when he was indicted on bribery and fraud charges.
Since his indictment, the mayor has faced calls to resign from New York representatives including Jerry Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as several from New York City officials and leaders.
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Trump says he wants 'fair deal for everybody' after meeting with Zelenskyy
As Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, waits to appear at his arraignment at a federal court in Lower Manhattan, uptown, former president Donald Trump has seemingly just wrapped up his meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Appearing on Fox News after the highly anticipated meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy, Trump told reporters that he wants a “fair deal for everybody.”
Trump, appearing with Zelenskyy on Fox News, also said that he “learned a lot” during his meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday.
“We need to do everything to pressure” Vladimir Putin to “stop this war”, Zelenskyy added.
When asked whether there will be another meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy, Trump said that it could “very well happen.”
At the end of the appearance on Fox, Zelenskyy turned to Trump and invited him to come to Ukraine, to which Trump said he would, adding “it’s a beautiful country, beautiful weather, beautiful everything.”
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Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, was indicted on bribery and fraud charges this week and is scheduled to be arraigned today at noon local time, where he will enter a plea.
Earlier this morning, Adams was seen entering a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.
Adams has maintained that he is innocent, and is expected to enter a plea of not guilty.
According to the New York Times, the judge overseeing the case has also set a second hearing for Wednesday, which will be to discuss the trial schedule, among other things.
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In a statement posted on social media, Representative Jerry Nadler, who serves New York’s 12th congressional district which covers parts of New York City, responded to the indictment of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, on foreign bribery and corruption charges, and called on him to resign.
“While the charges outlined in the indictment by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York are very serious, Mayor Adams deserves the right to due process and to be treated as presumed innocent until proven guilty” Nadler said.
Nadler added that he believes that Adams has “lost the ability to effectively lead the City of New York and therefore, he must resign”.
My statement on Mayor Eric Adams: pic.twitter.com/pAovO99Gkn
— Rep. Nadler (@RepJerryNadler) September 27, 2024
On Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also of New York, also called on Adams to resign, saying that she cannot see how Adams “can continue governing New York City”.
Adams arrived in court this morning for his arraignment.
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Ahead of Kamala Harris’s visit to US-Mexico border in Arizona today, her presidential campaign released a new ad on Thursday focused on immigration.
The ad highlights Harris’s past experience prosecuting drug traffickers and cartel members.
“She will secure our border,” the narrator says in the video, adding that if elected, Harris plans to “hire thousands more border agents, enforce the law, and step up technology and stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking”.
Harris’s visit to the border today comes as several polls show that when it comes to immigration, voters appear to think that former president Donald Trump would do a better job at securing the southern border than Harris.
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Trump touts strong relationships with Zelenskyy – and Putin
Appearing with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York on Friday, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he and Zelenskyy have a “very good relationship” before going on to say: “I also have a very good relationship with President Putin.”
“I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump said, referring to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Standing next to Trump, Zelenskyy immediately responded to Trump’s comments about his positive relationship with Putin, and said that he hopes that he and Trump have a better relationship than the one between Putin and Trump.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that he and former president Donald Trump have a “common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped” and that it was important to meet with both US presidential candidates.
Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in New York comes a day after the Ukrainian leader met with the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, in Washington DC.
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Trump and Zelenskyy appear together at Trump Tower in New York
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have just appeared together at Trump Tower in New York.
“It’s an honor to have the president with us, and he’s been through a lot” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, who was standing next to him.
“He’s going through a tremendous amount,” Trump said, adding: “We’re going to have a discussion and see what we can come up with.”
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Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is about to speak at the UN general assembly.
You can follow along at the Guardian’s global Middle East live blog.
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In a pretaped interview with Melania Trump that aired on Thursday on Fox News, the former first lady said she saw her husband’s survival in the two attempts on his life as “miracles”.
In her first interview in more than two years, the Melania Trump blamed the media for “fueling a toxic atmosphere” and empowering those who “want to do harm to him”.
In the interview Melania, who is currently promoting her new memoir, said:
Is it really shocking that all this egregious violence goes against my husband? Especially that we hear the leaders from the opposition party and mainstream media branding him as a threat to democracy, calling him vile names?
“This needs to stop” she added.
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New York City mayor Eric Adams has arrived in court
Adams arrived in federal court this morning in New York, ahead of an unprecedented court appearance on federal charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign source.
This comes as Adams, a Democrat, was indicted this week. The criminal counts against him 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.
Adams, who is first sitting New York City mayor to be charged with a federal crime, has maintained that he is innocent.
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Kamala Harris is headed to the border today to try to flip the script on Donald Trump’s signature issue.
In the Arizona border town of Douglas, the vice-president will cast Trump as unserious about addressing the challenges at the US-Mexico border despite his escalating rhetoric.
Trump and Republicans have hammered Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration, which reached record highs last year. They’ve laid much of the blame on Harris, who they incorrectly claim was appointed “border tzar”.
On Friday, Harris will go on the offensive, accusing Trump of playing politics with an issue that is a top concern for American voters.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks released by her campaign.
At Trump’s urging, congressional Republicans earlier this year blocked a sweeping bipartisan border security package that included an asylum clampdown they sought. After it failed, Biden enacted rules that temporarily bars migrants from seeking asylum at the southern border. Since its implementation, arrests at the border have plummeted.
Trump said at a rally in North Carolina earlier this week that Harris’s credibility on the border is “less than zero”.
Polling has found that immigration is a top concern for voters nationally and in Arizona, the only swing state that shares a border with Mexico. While immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue, Harris has made some gains, narrowing his lead with less than six weeks before election day.
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A new Fox News poll shows former president Donald Trump slightly ahead of vice-president Kamala Harris in Arizona, but shows Harris with a slight lead in Georgia.
According to the poll, which was conducted between 20 and 24 September, Harris is ahead of Trump in Georgia by 3 percentage points, among likely and registered voters, and Trump leads Harris in Arizona by the same margin – 3 percentage points.
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Donald Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York this morning around 9.45am, the Associated Press is reporting.
The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday comes one day after the Ukrainian leader met with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden at the White House, and as tensions between Trump and Zelenskyy escalated this week.
On Wednesday at a campaign event, Trump accused Zelenskyy of “refusing” to negotiate a peace deal with Vladimir Putin.
Trump said: “The president of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favourite president, me,” adding: “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.”
The comments came after a controversial interview Zelenskyy gave to the New Yorker, where he questioned Trump’s plan to end Ukraine’s war with Russia and criticized Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, calling him “too radical”.
According to the Washington Post, this will be Trump and Zelenskyy’s first meeting in person since 2019.
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Trump expected to meet with Ukraine's Zelenskyy in New York
Good Morning, US politics blog readers. Don’t relax this Friday as it’s going to be a news-packed day and we’ll bring you all the developments as they happen.
Here’s what’s on the horizon:
Donald Trump is expected to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at Trump Tower in New York this morning. Zelenskyy is fresh from presenting his “victory plan” for defeating the Russian invasion of his country to Joe Biden and also meeting Kamala Harris, who indirectly slammed Trump’s notion of peace for that region as a plan for Ukraine to surrender territory already ceded to Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces.
Zelenskyy extended his stay in New York in order to meet Trump, the former US president and current Republican nominee for president in this November’s elections. The Ukrainian leader was in town for the United Nations general assembly.
New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat, is due to make an unprecedented court appearance today as a sitting mayor under federal indictment involving bribery and foreign influence.
Kamala Harris will visit the US-Mexico border in Arizona later today as part of a visit to this vital swing state, which narrowly went for Biden in 2020. She will continue her tougher talk on immigration as she closes the gap with Trump in polls on this hot-button election issue, with crackdown talk dismaying progressives.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will address the United Nations this morning in New York, as he shuns international urging for ceasefires in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon. We’ll have a report and also cover this in the Guardian’s global Middle East live blog.
