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US Monthly Headline News October 2024 Page 2
Story by Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter

A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles.

The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville.

But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment.

Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”

Veterans on Patrol’s channel on the encrypted social-media platform Telegram posted a message on Thursday displaying photos of what appears to be a cell tower on a mountaintop. The message asserted that locals “are in Live Exercises where the United States Military is permitted to destroy your homes, bodies and minds,” while suggesting that equipment on the tower “is solely for providing the U.S. military the means to murder Americans.”
Story by John Bowden

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance had a relaxed tone as he sat down for an interview with Joe Rogan on the latter’s podcast.

He had no idea what he was in for.

Thursday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience marks twice now in as many weeks that the fight commentator and former Fear Factor host has left a member of the Republican ticket looking foolish in selectively edited clips of his show. Vance, having clearly expected either the kind of freewheeling conversation Rogan is known for with his non-political guests or at the very least to not be challenged on his claims, walked into a rhetorical shooting gallery.

On Twitter/X Thursday after the interview, clips of Vance’s conversation were going viral — but they were being shared by the Harris-Walz campaign and its allies, not Vance or his running mate.

That was thanks to Rogan’s decision to press Vance — harder than some actual journalists — on his abortion stance. The host quizzed Vance as to what had been wrong with the precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1973, and further dug into why Republican lawmakers were passing overtly religious legislation, including bills that would prosecute women who sought abortion in states where it was legal if they returned home to states where the procedure was banned.
If Trump is reelected will he send Seal Team Six to kill people he does not like or people who do not like him?
By Eric Bradner, CNN

CNN — Donald Trump said former Rep. Liz Cheney is a “war hawk” who should be fired upon, as he raged against one of his most prominent intra-party critics while campaigning Thursday night in Arizona.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” the former president said at a campaign event in Glendale with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Trump also hurled insults at Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in House leadership, calling her “very dumb,” a “stupid person” and “the moron.”

Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president — who never accepted his 2020 loss — has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”
Story by Rhian Lubin

Donald Trump’s latest boast about the crowds at his campaign events backfired when he claimed that “no one” leaves his rallies early – just as a supporter got up and exited the stands directly behind him.

The unfortunate timing occurred while Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Rocky Mount, in the swing state of North Carolina on Wednesday.

“Everybody watches our rallies, everybody loves our rallies, we never have an empty seat,” Trump told the crowd, before he did an impersonation of opponent Kamala Harris.

“They try and demean us like that horrible, horrible person that I debated when she said ‘and people leave early.’ Nobody leaves early.”

At that very moment, a rallygoer donning a black t-shirt featuring the Republican’s mugshot got up out of his seat and left.
Story by David Moye

JD Vance made a bold claim to Joe Rogan during his appearance on Rogan’s podcast Thursday: that Donald Trump is actually popular with “normal” gay men.

Vance a Republican senator from Ohio, was telling Rogan about a gay friend who is a committed conservative. He contrasted this man with members of the “crazy” LGBTQ+ community writ large, particularly nonbinary and transgender people.

He told Rogan he and Trump “wouldn’t be surprised if we won the normal gay guy vote” — men who just “wanted to be left the hell alone.”

A number of gay Democrats on social media were quick to tell the Republican vice presidential nominee: Not so fast.
Story by Griffin Eckstein

Former President Donald Trump had a hard time finding a spot for his Halloween rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico rally, as unpaid bills came back to haunt his campaign.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that the campaign’s original plans to use the Albuquerque Convention Center were dashed, , due in part to an unpaid bill of nearly $445,000 from a 2019 rally.

“If you’re not going to pay your bills, we’re just not going to entertain you using city facilities, and that’s the way it should be,” Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller told the outlet.

Albuquerque is just one of many cities seeking to recoup unpaid fees from Trump's campaign stops over the last decade. Municipalities in Texas and Pennsylvania are still after more than $750,000, per an NBC News analysis shared earlier this month.
Story by Sara Boboltz

Former President Donald Trump admitted to a crowd of supporters that he was only there in Albuquerque, New Mexico, because he thought it would improve his image among Hispanic and Latino voters.

Trump’s popularity among voters in the demographic took a steep dive on Sunday, when a comedian called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The former president has refused to offer a personal apology.

“New Mexico, look, don’t make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK?” Trump told the crowd on Thursday.

“First of all, Hispanics love Trump, they do. True. I like them. They’re smart. They’re a lot smarter than the person running for president on the Democrat side,” he said, once again taking a shot at Vice President Kamala Harris’ abilities.

“So I’m here for one simple reason,” Trump said. “I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.”
Joey Garrison, Savannah Kuchar | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON ― Five days before the election, former President Donald Trump and his campaign are trying to milk President Joe Biden's "garbage" remark for everything its worth − telling supporters it shows what Democrats really think about half the country.

Yet Trump, the Republican nominee, has a well-documented, long list of disparaging remarks himself, including using the word "garbage" to refer to his adversaries in September, just last week referring to the United States as the "garbage can for the world," calling his adversaries the "enemy within" and labeling political opponents "scum."

Trump pounced − and hasn't let up − after Biden appeared to call Trump supporters "garbage." During a Harris campaign Zoom call Tuesday night, Biden said, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters − his − his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American."
Story by Damián Rancez

Nick Bosa, the standout defensive player for the San Francisco 49ers, has drawn new attention and criticism following a recent TV interview in which he appeared wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat in support of Donald Trump. This gesture, while sparking debates, isn’t the first time Bosa has faced backlash for his public views. Back in 2016, as a college freshman, he tweeted calling former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick “a clown,” referring to Kaepernick’s protests during the national anthem, a moment that has since resurfaced and sparked further discussion.

Bosa’s Comments and Apology
As Bosa prepared for the 2019 NFL Draft, where he was selected second overall by the 49ers, he addressed the “clown” comment. During his introductory press conference with the team, Bosa apologized, clarifying that he didn’t mean to attack Kaepernick’s stance. “It wasn’t directed towards (Kaepernick’s stance)… I respect what he’s done. If it empowers anybody, then he’s doing a good thing,” Bosa explained, calling the tweet a “bad decision” made in his youth. His apology came as he attempted to distance himself from the controversial tweet, aware of the social sensitivity of his comments.
Brad Reed

Former President Donald Trump had noticeably physical difficulty in trying to enter a garbage truck during a campaign stunt in Wisconsin on Wednesday, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was quick to pounce on the mishap while campaigning on Thursday.

During an appearance in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, Walz used Trump's stumble to again raise concerns about the 78-year-old former president's age.

"This dude is nearly 80 years old," said Walz. "He damn near killed himself getting into a garbage truck!"
Story by Lee Moran

The Las Vegas Sun ― in the 2024 election swing state of Nevada, where polling puts former President Donald Trump less than one point ahead of Democratic rival Kamala Harris ― has delivered a stinging rebuke of the GOP nominee.

The newspaper warned in an editorial published Wednesday that not only does Trump’s “racism, sexism, xenophobia” and more make him totally “unfit for any public office” but that his “mental acuity and sharpness are also in decline.”
Story by Bryce Covert

Though former President Donald Trump presents himself as a champion of the working class with promises to cut taxes on overtime, his record as both a businessman and president paints a different picture.

Trump and his businesses have faced multiple accusations of failing to pay workers overtime they were owed. Once he was in office, Trump’s Department of Labor issued a rule that reduced by millions the number of workers who would have become eligible for overtime pay under an Obama era rule.

Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a potential second Trump term that the former president has alternately embraced and distanced himself from, goes even further. The 900-page document outlines plans for a sweeping overhaul of overtime protections that would give employers ways to avoid paying overtime to workers who have long qualified for time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours.
Story by Nicholas Liu

The Supreme Court's conservative majority, overriding the objections of the court's liberal members, allowed Virginia on Wednesday to continue its removal of over 1,600 voters from the rolls.

The state's Republican administration under Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said they are weeding out non-citizens who are not legally allowed to vote, but the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups allege that the purge is also sweeping away actual U.S. citizens.

In a pair of lawsuits, the DOJ and civil rights groups accused Virginia of violating National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits states from "systematically" removing voters from the rolls 90 days or less before an election. A federal district judge ordered Virginia to restore the purged voters to the rolls last week, only for his directive to be reversed in turn by the Supreme Court, which did not explain its decision.

Not only does the decision appear to contradict federal law, but constitutes what former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance called a "disgraceful departure" from the federal courts' own jurisdictional principle to do no harm to the election process. The so-called Purcell principle, which takes its name from a Supreme Court election case in 2006, holds that courts should not change or approve of changes to election rules just prior to an election because it could confuse voters and disrupt election administration.
Opinion by Sara Pequeño, USA TODAY

When asked outright if she believed former President Donald Trump was a fascist at a CNN town hall last week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ answer was simple.

“Yes, I do,” the Democratic presidential nominee told Anderson Cooper. She used the term later in the night when asked what she’d say to someone considering a third-party candidate due to her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

“For many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” Harris said. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

I was surprised to hear her use such a loaded word on the presidential campaign trail, though people have called Trump one before. Historians and scholars have been debating whether Trump is a fascist for years, and the answer has shifted over time. So I decided just to ask the question. Is Trump a fascist?

Is Trump a fascist? This professor says yes.
Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor, is the author of “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” He has been describing Trump’s rhetoric and actions as fascist since 2018. In a Vox interview from the time, he described fascism's key components as "identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group) and smashing truth and replacing it with power."
Story by Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny, CNBC

In the home stretch of the 2024 election, voters who’ve been weighing both campaigns’ proposals to tackle living costs are now hearing a new pitch from the Republican side: accept some short-term economic pain to rein in government spending.

That message has emerged from former President Donald Trump’s wealthiest backer, Elon Musk, who says that the GOP nominee’s plans to put the U.S. on firmer fiscal footing would likely entail “temporary hardship” for ordinary Americans.   

At a virtual town hall event on October 25 held on Musk’s social media platform, X, the multibillionaire Tesla and SpaceX executive said he was “praying for a victory” for Trump, so he could begin working in a high-level cabinet role to axe federal spending.

“We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity,” he said.

Many economists agree that Trump’s economic and fiscal proposals could spark an economic calamity, though it is not clear whether they have considered, or given credence, to Musk’s calls for austerity.

In a joint letter released last week, 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned Trump’s plans for tariffs, tax cuts and an immigration crackdown — including detaining and deporting millions of people — would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” More than anything, they wrote, Trump would undermine the rule of law and political certainty, “the most important determinants of economic success.”
AP

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.

“That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.

The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”
Story by Janna Brancolini

Newly leaked video shows one of Donald Trump’s former top administration officials detailing his plans to give the Republican presidential candidate unchecked power to unleash the military on Americans if he wins re-election.

The plan involves creating “shadow” government offices that would create flimsy legal justifications to override objections from military leaders and carry out executive orders, including sending in soldiers against protesters and other perceived enemies, according to a stunning new report from ProPublica.

“We’re trying to build almost a shadow Office of Management and Budget. We’re trying to build a shadow Office of Legal Counsel,” said Russell Vought, who oversaw Trump’s OMB in 2019 and 2020, in a video from 2023.

Throughout his latest presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly described Democratic lawmakers as “the enemy within” and mused about using the military against his fellow Americans.

Republican pundits have tried to dismiss the comments as all talk, but Vought is expected to be given another high-level government role in a second Trump administration—perhaps even as White House chief of staff, according to ProPublica. He declined the news site’s requests for comment.
Story by Taylor Odisho

Texas police are investigating the distribution of flyers targeting Kamala Harris supporters, which threaten that they have been added to a "national database" and will be subjected to an IRS tax audit.

On Saturday, the San Marcos Police Department shared in a Facebook post that they were investigating two reports of flyers posted on political signs around the city, stating: "You have been identified and are now in our National Database of miscreant Harris supporters, either by social interactions with your neighbors who are on our investigations team, or by yard signs, or vehicle bumper stickers."

It goes on to say instead of "the hangman's nooses of the old days" the person receiving the flyer will be "IRS tax audited...and at a minimum - - - 4 years of painful misery."

It was signed, "The Grand Dragon of Trump Klan #124."

Since then, the number of incidents has jumped to five, according to reporting by KXAN.
By Brian Bennett / New York City

Donald Trump was the headliner at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. But the more than two dozen warm-up acts showed the country a lot about the party he’s built around him.

Speaking from a podium on the arena floor that read “Trump will fix it,” comedian Tony Hinchcliffe compared Puerto Rico to an “island of garbage,” and made lewd sexual jokes about Latinos. When a Black man stood to cheer him on, Hinchcliffe said the two of them had been at a Halloween party the night before, adding "We carved watermelons together."

Tucker Carlson said it’s going to be hard for Trump supporters like him to believe the election results if Kamala Harris wins. He also mocked Harris—whose mother was from India and father from Jamaica—for her biracial identity, saying she would be “the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected President.”
Trump rallied his MAGA troops with angry words about immigration and mocked Kamala Harris. We fact check the claims he made.
By Matthew Crowley, Louis Jacobson, Maria Ramirez Uribe and Amy Sherman | PolitiFact

Former President Donald Trump hammered home an anti-immigration theme in his closing argument pitch to voters on October 27 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

But before Trump spoke, the event made headlines for a series of racist jokes by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe. He called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” and disparaged Black Americans, Latinos and Jewish people. Democrats and at least two Florida Republicans, including Senator Rick Scott, swiftly condemned Hinchcliffe’s remarks about Puerto Rico.

“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign said in a statement after the rally addressing the comedian’s comment about Puerto Rico.

At the rally, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said he presided over the most secure border in United States history (he did not), that the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not deliver hurricane relief because the government spent its money bringing immigrants into the country illegally (it did not) and that foreign nations were emptying their prisons and sending convicts to the US (they are not).
A new "Daily Show" video shows how the former president's language lines up with that of Hitler.
By Ed Mazza

Donald Trump has used language shockingly similar to that of Adolf Hitler as he’s attacked immigrants, political rivals and others.

Now, a new “Daily Show” video montage shows just how close the former president’s rhetoric matches the Nazi dictator’s:

The video comes days after former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, in recorded interviews with The New York Times, said the former president told him Hitler “did some good things” and praised the Nazi dictator’s generals for being “totally loyal.”
Story by Ryan J. Reilly

WASHINGTON — With just days left until the 2024 election, Donald Trump supporters who fell for his lies about fraud in the last election continue to face legal consequences for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, even as Trump managed to stave off his own criminal trial and again become the Republican presidential nominee.

On Friday afternoon, a young Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol faced sentencing inside a federal courthouse in Washington, just a few hundred feet away from the crime scene. Caleb Berry, a now 23-year-old who stormed the Capitol along with members of the far-right Oath Keepers group, stood before the judge in a black shirt and apologized to everyone in the courtroom, and to the country.

Berry had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding and cooperated with the government, testifying at two trials for fellow Oath Keepers. At one trial, Berry testified that Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs — who was convicted of seditious conspiracy — told a group of fellow members on the east front of the Capitol that they "were going to stop the vote count" before they formed a military stack and headed into the building "like a battering ram."
Story by Nikki McCann Ramirez

Donald Trump refused a request for federal disaster relief funds from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in 2020 after wildfires tore through the eastern portion of the states, Politico's E&E News reports.

The dispute between the former president and Democratic governor adds yet another entry to Trump's record of injecting partisan politics into disaster response efforts - all while he attempts to accuse President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of intentionally withholding aid from Republican areas affected by hurricanes in the southeastern United States.

According to E&E News, Inslee requested $37 million in federal disaster funds in September 2020 to respond to the fires. According to the governor, Trump ignored the request, refusing to approve the aid even after a FEMA inspection confirmed that the damage to Washington communities met the threshold for federal assistance. The aid was ultimately approved by President Biden two weeks after he took office - about five months after the fires swept the region.

"It really was an outrageous abuse of power," Inslee told E&E News.

Trump and Inslee had been engaged in a public back-and-forth over the Trump's administration's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020, the former president called Inslee a "snake" after Inslee tweeted that pandemic mitigation efforts would "be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth."
Story by Suzanne Gamboa

A racist comment former President Donald Trump is reported to have made about murdered soldier Vanessa Guillén is drawing backlash from some Hispanics, but it could be tempered by her sister’s support for Trump and the current political divide among Latinos.

The Atlantic magazine reported that Trump, when he was president, complained about the cost of paying for Guillén’s funeral as he had promised her family he would do in a meeting at the White House in July 2020. Citing two unnamed sources who attended a December 2020 meeting and notes from the meeting, when he was told the $60,000 price tag, Trump responded, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican!” He told his chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows, not to pay for it, the magazine reported.

NBC News has not confirmed The Atlantic's reporting.

Meadows and Trump campaign spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied he made such a comment, the magazine reported.

Guillén’s sister, Mayra Guillén, who was not at the White House meeting at which Trump is alleged to have made the comment, came to his defense on X.

Vice President Harris said Trump wants "unchecked power" after his former Chief of Staff said the former President praised Hitler. NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard, New York Times White House Correspondent Peter Baker and Jewish Council for Public Affairs President Amy Spitalnick join Chris Jansing to discuss.
Opinion by Hayes Brown

Things haven’t been going well for Rudy Giuliani. Last year, a jury awarded Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, nearly $150 million in their defamation suit against him. It’s a sum that Giuliani hasn’t coughed up since the judgment, citing a lack of cash flow. Accordingly, a New York federal judge handed down an order on Tuesday forcing him to turn over millions of dollars’ worth of assets to Freeman and Moss, including his New York City condominium.

Since helping orchestrate former President Donald Trump’s failed attempt at election theft, Giuliani has lost his law license in New York and Washington, D.C.; been charged criminally in Arizona and Georgia; and faced a slew of other defamation lawsuits for the lies he told after the 2020 election. It’s a turn of events that feels downright karmic given the scale of the damage he’s caused, part of a chain of consequences and repercussions that have hounded him over the last four years. And as Trump and his allies prepare to challenge a loss next month, Giuliani’s downfall should serve as a reminder that their actions can have a steep cost.

Given his meteoric plummet from grace, it can be easy to forget that Giuliani was living a lavish lifestyle between his time as mayor of New York and serving as Trump’s personal lawyer. He was earning millions of dollars each year in fees from consulting and spending it almost as quickly. The number of legal troubles he’s faced and bills he’s left unpaid sent him to bankruptcy court last year — which promptly dismissed his filing, allowing Moss and Freeman to resume asking for what he owed them.
Story by Steve Benen

In late 2018, as Donald Trump prepared to launch a lengthy government shutdown, the then-president went out of his way to tell the public exactly who was responsible for the crisis.

“I am proud to shut down the government,” the Republican declared the week before federal operations ceased. Trump added, “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame [then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] for it. ... I will take the mantle of shutting down.”

When the shutdown actually happened, and it became politically problematic, the then-president briefly tried to shift gears and tell the public that it wasn’t really his fault, but by then, it was too late: Trump had already bragged, with pride and in unambiguous terms, that the shutdown was entirely his creation.

All of this came to mind recently when the former president recently said he wasn’t responsible for killing the bipartisan border bill that he killed months earlier. NBC News ran this report a few weeks ago:

Trump falsely said in remarks in Walker, Michigan ... that he wasn’t responsible for the collapse in the Senate of the bipartisan border bill earlier this year. The former president said that [Vice President Kamala] Harris went to the border today and said she made up “some lies,” including that Trump stopped the border bill in Congress.

“Let me tell you, number one, I didn’t stop it,” Trump said.

The list of GOP policymakers who said that Trump was responsible killing the bipartisan deal was not short. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for example, blamed the former president for the legislation’s demise. So did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who helped write the bill.
Story by Alex Henderson

When Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump's running mate, defends Trump during his appearances on right-wing media outlets, he typically accuses Democrats and Never Trump conservatives of overreacting to things he says. Trump's critics, Vance argues, fail to appreciate his sense of humor and don't realize that he "speaks from the heart."

But Vice President Kamala Harris, on the campaign trail, has emphasized that when Trump praises authoritarians or threatens to jail political opponents, he needs to be taken seriously. And Harris likes to quote poet Maya Angelou's famous warning, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

In an article published on October 22, National Public Radio (NPR) reporter Tom Dreisbach demonstrates that Trump's threats to take revenge against political foes aren't merely off-the-cuff remarks he occasionally makes — they are part of a disturbing pattern.

Dreisbach, in fact, cites more than 100 examples of Trump making such threats during his 2024 campaign alone.

"With just two weeks remaining until the presidential election," Dreisbach explains, "former President Donald Trump has used his most recent appearances on podcast and cable interviews to escalate attacks on fellow Americans whom he calls 'the enemy from within.' In one recent interview, Trump said that if 'radical-left lunatics' disrupt the election, 'it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.'"
Story by Ed Mazza

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz mocked Donald Trump’s latest excuse for his rambling speeches by taking a shot at the former president’s hair.

Trump calls his wild off-topic rants “the weave,” which he insists is actually “the most brilliant thing.”

But Walz said on Tuesday that Trump has been “rambling more than the normal rambling,” and isn’t buying the “weave” excuse.
Story by David Badash

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade is under fire for what some see as him defending Donald Trump’s embrace of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s regime, including reportedly saying he wanted “Hitler’s generals,” when he was president.

“Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,'” The Associated Press reports. “The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.”

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly (photo above, with Trump) told The New York Times, the AP notes.

“In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ‘German generals,’ Kelly would ask if he meant ‘Bismarck’s generals,’ referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ‘Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,’ Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.'”
When Donald Trump got the bill for Vanessa Guillén’s funeral in 2020, he reportedly raged, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican!”
Josh Fiallo

Donald Trump raged when he learned the funeral bill for Vanessa Guillén—the U.S. soldier who was sexually harassed and horrifically murdered by a male soldier at Fort Hood in 2020—cost $60,000, a bombshell report revealed Tuesday.

That outburst came after Trump invited Guillén’s loved ones to the White House and offered to pay for her funeral, The Atlantic reported.

Guillén, a 20-year-old American of Mexican ancestry from Houston, was buried in her hometown on Aug. 15, 2020. Months later, in December, Trump reportedly asked his advisers in a meeting, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

When an aide responded “yes” with the bill’s total, Trump allegedly unraveled. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican,” he said, according to people in the meeting who spoke to the Atlantic.

Rep. Jim Himes, Democratic Congressman from Connecticut and Miles Taylor, Former Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to the stunning reporting from Jefferey Goldberg of the Atlantic in the waning days of the Trump Presidency where Trump claims the family of a fallen U.S. soldier tried to ‘rip him off’, and admired the generals that Adolf Hitler were able to surround themselves with. NBC News has not independently verified The Atlantic’s reporting.
Story by Lily Mae Lazarus

Donald Trump kicked off his day-long tour in North Carolina by surveying the damage caused by Hurricane Helene and railing against federal emergency responders.

“I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” the former president told reporters outside Asheville on Monday when asked about the threats against FEMA workers.

“If they were doing a great job, I think we should say that too because I think they should be rewarded … If they’re doing a poor job, we’re supposed to not say it?”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently paused its recovery effort in the area amid a flurry of threats and reports of being targeted by militias, and, on Oct. 12, a North Carolina man, armed with an assault rifle, was arrested for allegedly threatening FEMA workers.
Story by Sareen Habeshian

Former President Trump admitted Monday he has seen no evidence to suggest there has been any election fraud in 2024, but raised doubts about "the other side."

Why it matters: The Republican presidential nominee's admission stands in stark contrast to his typical rhetoric on election integrity that has seen him make baseless claims about "rigged" polling places since 2016.

In echoes of the 2020 campaign, Trump has orchestrated a series of excuses to reject the results of the 2024 election in case he loses, in public remarks, on social media and in more than 100 preemptive lawsuits.

Hours after Trump admitted there was no evidence of election fraud, he reverted to making unfounded claims about "cheating."

Zoom in: During a press conference on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he's seen any evidence to suggest the 2024 election would not be fair.

Trump responded, saying: "I haven't."

He added: "Unfortunately, I know the other side, and they are not good. But I have not seen that."

Trump then turned to Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, and asked if he's seen anything suspicious while noting it's early in the voting process.
Story by Andy Hirschfeld

In the United States, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faces a growing pile of missed payments for rallies and legal bills during his current bid for the presidency, previous campaigns, and in the private sector.

This comes only weeks before the 2024 general election, where he is set to face off against Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris, who holds a tight lead in several key polls. A Marist poll out on Wednesday shows her leading the former US president by five points, four points from a Morning Consult poll and four points from an Economist/YouGov poll.

Harris just surpassed $1bn in fundraising and has, in the past three months, raised nearly twice as much as the Trump campaign. The Trump team is experiencing a decline in small-dollar donors, with contributions of $200 or less now making up fewer than a third of donations. At this point in the 2020 election cycle, those contributions accounted for nearly half of all donations, according to an analysis by the Associated Press and Open Secrets, a non-profit organisation based in Washington, DC.

The Trump campaign’s financial challenges are only underscored by the growing list of parties to whom he and the entities he represents owe money.
Story by Lily Mae Lazaru

JD Vance attempted to defend Donald Trump‘s “unfiltered” comments about using the National Guard and military to quash “the enemy within,” claiming they came from “the heart.”

“He’s not just running on slogans,” Vance told Fox News during a Monday appearance on America’s Newsroom. “When people ask him questions, he speaks from the heart sometimes that means he is going to talk about issues that the mainstream media isn’t focused on.”

Trump has repeatedly co-opted the title of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1950 speech, “the enemy within,” when referring to Democratic politicians and “radical-left lunatics.” The former president specifically named Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as examples of the “enemy.”

The former president, on Sunday, called Schiff a “crooked politician” and a “threat to democracy” who “wanted to put my son in jail,” in an interview with Fox News. As for Pelosi, Trump has falsely claimed she refused the help of National Guard during the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol and branded her as “so sick” and “so evil.”
Max Matza
BBC News

President Joe Biden is "deeply concerned" about a leak of classified documents that contain the US's assessment of Israeli plans to attack Iran, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Officials have not determined whether the documents were released due to a hack or a leak, Mr Kirby said.

House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed the publication of the documents over the weekend. They are said to contain the movements of Israeli military assets in preparation for a response to Iran's 1 October missile attack.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the country was prepared to counter any Israeli attack.

The documents, marked top secret, were shareable within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the US, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, CBS, the BBC's US partner, reported.

There is no "indication" that additional documents will "[find] their way into the public domain", Mr Kirby said Monday.

He added that President Biden "will be actively monitoring" the investigation to uncover how the documents were released, and he intends to hear measures that will be taken "to prevent it happening again".
Story by Aimee Picchi

Former president Donald Trump's campaign pledges would hasten the insolvency of the Social Security trust fund and lead to a 33% across-the-board cut to all benefits, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

The group's report, released Monday, is based on Trump's vow to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tipped income, as well as his proposal to slap tariffs on all imports and deport millions of immigrants, many of whom currently pay Social Security taxes.

The CRFB, which advocates in favor of lower federal deficits, said Vice President Kamala Harris's plans "would not have large effects on Social Security trust fund solvency." It added, however, that while Harris has pledged to protect Social Security, neither her campaign nor Trump's have specified how they would fix the looming shortfall in funding.

Under Trump's plans, Social Security's trust fund would become insolvent in 2031, which is three years earlier than currently projected by the Congressional Budget Office. At that point, the program would need to cut benefits by 33%, a steeper decrease than the 23% reduction forecast by the CBO in August.

A cut of that size would mean that the typical monthly benefit check of $1,907 in 2024 would be reduced by $629 per month, leaving recipients with average payments of $1,278.
Story by Sean O'Driscoll

Prosecutors have submitted lengthy excerpts from Mike Pence's memoir in their election fraud case against Donald Trump.

In the book, Pence described former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as reaching a "new low" by pushing an election conspiracy theory to Trump in 2020.

In his 2022 memoir So Help Me God, former vice president Pence recalled Giuliani and fellow lawyer Sidney Powell claiming in a meeting in November 2020 that the Democrats had stolen the election.

The submission of the lengthy excerpts by chief prosecutor Jack Smith suggests that Trump's exchanges with Pence are still central to the former president's election fraud case, despite a July 1 Supreme Court ruling that stated that Trump could not be prosecuted for official presidential acts.
Story by Haley BeMiller and Scott Wartman, Cincinnati Enquirer

At a recent hearing of an elections board in Ohio's Wood County, Ted Bowlus stood up and explained that he is, in fact, a registered Ohio voter.

"Would you require any more evidence than what I presented?" Bowlus asked election officials when he finished his pitch.

"No, sir," Republican board member Doug Ruck replied. "Your name's on the plaque right behind me."

Bowlus is also a Wood County commissioner.

He and Ruck were among nearly 17,000 voters in the northwest Ohio county − about 20% of its voting population − to have their registration challenged days before early voting began in the Nov. 5 election. Ohio law allows individuals to contest another person's right to vote, which is designed to catch ineligible voters who may get overlooked during typical voter roll maintenance.

But Wood County isn't alone. Lorain County fielded about 1,000 challenges on Oct. 4 as election staff prepared for their busiest time of year. Since the summer, challenges have reached the Democratic strongholds of Hamilton and Franklin counties and more conservative areas such as Butler County, which received more than 3,000 of them.

The impact is practical and political.
Story by Peter Stone in Washington

Key rightwing legal groups with ties to Donald Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states that are already sowing distrust of election processes and pushing dangerous conspiracy theories, election watchdogs warn.

They also warn that the groups appear to be laying the groundwork for a concerted challenge to the result of November’s presidential election if Trump is defeated by Kamala Harris.

America First Legal and the Public Interest Legal Foundation together reaped more than $30m dollars from the Wisconsin-based Bradley Impact Fund and its parent, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, from 2017 through 2022, according to a financial analysis from the Center for Media and Democracy.

Lawsuits filed by the groups, which overlap with some Republican party litigation, focus in part on conspiratorial charges of non-citizen voting, which is exceedingly rare, and bloated voter rolls, and pre-sage more lawsuits by Trump if his presidential run fails, in an echo of his 2020 election-denialist claims, say watchdogs.
By  MICHELLE L. PRICE and WILL WEISSERT

LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign suggested he would begin previewing his closing argument Saturday night with Election Day barely two weeks away. But the former president kicked off his rally with a detailed story about Arnold Palmer, at one point even praising the late, legendary golfer’s genitalia.

Trump was campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father, who suffered from polio and was head pro and greenskeeper at the local country club.

Politicians saluting Palmer in his hometown is nothing new. But Trump spent 12 full minutes doing so at the top of his speech and even suggested how much more fun the night would be if Palmer, who died in 2016, could join him on stage.
Story by Zach Schonfeld

The exonerated Central Park Five sued former President Trump for defamation on Monday over his comments at the recent presidential debate about their wrongful convictions for rape and assault.

During a segment on race and politics at the Sept. 10 debate, Trump said “they admitted — they said, they pled guilty.”

“And I said, ‘Well if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty,” Trump continued.

The five Black and Hispanic teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a woman jogging in Central Park in 1989. They spent years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2002, once the true culprit ultimately confessed, which was backed by DNA evidence.

The lawsuit notes the five members never pleaded guilty and the victim wasn’t killed, claiming Trump’s comments were made with a “reckless disregard for their falsity” to the tens of millions of Americans who tuned into the debate.
Story by Aliss Higham

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sought legal advice about placing Donald Trump's name on COVID-19 stimulus checks, a new investigation has found.

In April 2020, the Treasury Department ordered that then-President Trump's nameshould appear on Economic Impact Payments—a key pillar of the U.S. government's coronavirus relief measures—that were sent to tens of millions of Americans.

It was the first time a president's name would appear on IRS expenditures. At the time, Democrats said the decision to include the president's name was a political gambit by Trump to garner more support for his reelection and may be illegal.

Now, Bloomberg has found via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the IRS sought legal advice after a handful of top officials expressed concerns that the move could politicize the government agency. The name inclusion and a letter sent to the IRS by the White House and signed by Trump were both matters of concern, the emails show. Usually, a civil servant will sign checks and letters issued by the Treasury Department as a matter of nonpartisanship.
Story by Josephine Harvey

Former President Barack Obama deconstructed some of Donald Trump’s playbook attacks while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada on Saturday.

Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas, Obama accused the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), of leaning on scaremongering about immigration as an answer to any issue.

“If you challenge them, they’ll fall back on one answer. It does not matter what it is — housing, health care, education, paying for the bills — one answer: blame the immigrants,” he said.

“He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out and all your problems will be solved,” he added.

He acknowledged that there’s a “real issue” at the border and elements of the system are “broken,” but criticized Trump’s approach.

“When I hear Donald Trump talk ... he’s very quick to say to Kamala, ‘Well, you were vice president for four years,’” he added. “Dude, you were president for four years!”
Republicans will protect you against immigrants but not against Americans with guns that will kill you or family.

Opinion by Daniel P. Mears and Bryan Holmes

Homicide is a serious problem that calls for effective policy responses built on accurate information. Unfortunately, prominent politicians are again propagating the inaccurate notion that immigrants disproportionately contribute to crime, especially murder.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement response to a request from a Texas congressman informed — or misinformed — many of the latest claims of a connection between immigration and violent crime. One statistic from the letter in particular has been in the headlines: ICE counted 13,099 cases of “non-detained” immigrants convicted of homicide.

The implication that some seized upon was that thousands of immigrant murderers are roaming America’s streets and that the Biden administration is to blame. Former President Trump tied the figure to Vice President Kamala Harris on social media, writing: “It was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during Kamala’s three and a half year period as Border Czar.”

None of which is true. “Non-detained” simply describes individuals who are not currently in ICE’s custody; it doesn’t mean that they are free and able to do as they wish.
Story by AFP

"Breaking" news, screamed an online post by a conservative American influencer as he pushed disinformation about Kamala Harris, illustrating how journalism lingo has been co-opted as a tool to amplify election falsehoods.

The misuse of the term, typically deployed by media outlets to relay major news developments, is part of a persistent assault on reality across tech platforms that researchers say have relaxed their guardrails against false information in a crucial election year.

It is yet another disinformation trend undermining trust in traditional media -- already at historic lows, surveys show -- alongside the proliferation of fake "news" sites and the growing tactic of attributing false information to legitimate media outlets.

Disinformation peddlers "commonly use terms like 'breaking' in an apparent attempt to convey legitimacy," Sam Howard, politics editor at the watchdog NewsGuard, told AFP.

"This tactic has had a conspicuous role in false US political narratives that have spread in 2024."
Story by Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen’s last-ditch effort to revive a civil rights claim against his former boss Donald Trump.

The justices left in place lower court rulings that said Cohen could not pursue his allegation that then-President Trump and other officials violated his rights by putting him in solitary confinement for writing a tell-all book.

At the time of the 2020 incident, Cohen was serving a three-year sentence on various charges relating to the work he carried out for Trump.

He had been in home confinement because of the Covid-19 pandemic but was ordered back to prison after refusing to sign a form that would have prevented him from speaking to the press or posting on social media.

After 16 days in solitary confinement, a federal judge ordered Cohen released, finding that officials had retaliated against him on free speech grounds.

Cohen then sued Trump and other officials, seeking damages for the alleged violation of his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, among other things.
Story by Jordan Green, Raw Story

The man arrested with guns outside Donald Trump’s rally in Coachella, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spoken about assassination attempts against the former president less than two weeks earlier with a retired Army lieutenant colonel who calls himself Trump’s “secretary of retribution.”

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old former music video director who now produces conspiracy-driven documentary films, interviewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin, known for circulating a “Deep State target list” against Trump’s political enemies. The interview was produced for the America Happens Network, a company co-founded by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-thesis of what the mockingbird media has to offer.”

“You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raiklin during the interview, which was posted on the video platform Rumble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actually going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the election,’ because that’s certain, 100 percent certainty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be prepared.”

“I already have a plan,” Raiklin responded. “I have the counter-strategy. I’ve already war-gamed basically their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] scenario. And if worse-case [sic] scenario doesn’t happen, we win, right? But I’m always planning for the worse case [sic] scenario that they can do, both within their law, legal authority, and beyond of what they’re capable of.
Republicans complain about censorship, but have no problem censoring facts.

Story by Brian Fung, CNN

Three years ago, major internet platforms including Meta, Twitter and YouTube responded to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots with decisive action — suspending thousands of accounts that had spread election lies and removing posts glorifying the attack on US democracy.

Their efforts weren’t perfect, certainly; groups promoting baseless allegations of election fraud hid in plain sight even after some platforms announced a crackdown.

But since 2021, the social media industry has undergone a dramatic transformation and pivoted from many of the commitments, policies and tools it once embraced to help safeguard the peaceful transfer of democratic power.

The public got a taste of the new normal this summer, when social media was flooded with misinformation following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and the platforms said nothing.

Though platforms still maintain pages describing what election safeguards they do support, such as specific bans on content suppressing the vote or promoting violence near polling places, many who have worked with those companies to contain misinformation in the past report an overall decline in their engagement with the issue.
Musk announced Saturday that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a randomly selected voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC.
By Alexandra Marquez

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Sunday that tech mogul Elon Musk’s plan to give money to registered voters in Pennsylvania is “deeply concerning” and “it’s something that law enforcement could take a look at.”

Shapiro’s comments on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” come one day after Musk announced in Pennsylvania that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a random registered voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC “in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms.”

The super PAC has made signing the petition a prerequisite for attending rallies headlined by Musk, and on Saturday he surprised one rally attendee by giving away the first $1 million check onstage.

Shapiro, a Democrat, made clear on Sunday that his political differences with Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump and pledged to use millions of dollars to turn out Pennsylvania voters for the former president via his super PAC, are not driving his skepticism of these cash prizes.
Opinion by Jackie Calmes

10: As president, he violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
Ask Mike Pence, who forfeited his place as Trump’s ticket mate to Ohio Sen. JD Vance because Pence wouldn’t violate the Constitution; Vance would. Even after leaving office, Trump called for terminating parts of it so he could regain power. No one should think he’d keep the oath if given a second chance, especially when the Supreme Court that he packed has ruled that presidents are virtually immune from prosecution.

9: He still won’t say that he’ll accept the voters’ verdict.
And that is still unprecedented. Trump has gravely eroded Americans’ faith in the elections that are fundamental to democracy. He lied after his 2016 victory in the electoral college that he lost the popular vote only because up to 5 million people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. His efforts to flip his 2020 loss to Joe Biden got him criminally indicted, another first.

8: He will be held accountable for his alleged crimes as president only if he is defeated.
If reelected, Trump can order “his” Justice Department to bury the two federal cases that he succeeded in delaying past the election — the Washington trial for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, and the case in Florida for allegedly making off with and hiding top government secrets. A third case in Georgia, state charges for attempting to subvert its 2020 vote for Biden, could well be shelved if he were back in office.
CBS 21 News

Elon Musk announced he will be giving out a million dollar check every day until the election in a town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Saturday night.

The “doomsday” book is a series of legal documents and orders that lists the secret and extraordinary powers a President may be authorized to use in a major catastrophe such as a nuclear attack. Time Magazine correspondent Brian Bennett discusses his recent reporting that shows a number of former aides to former President Trump worked to withhold the full contents of the book from him for fear he would abuse it.

This week, former President Trump escalated his rhetoric against his political opponents, saying he would consider using the National Guard or military to address “the enemies within.” U.S. Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi joins Alex Witt to discuss this concerning development and security at polling places this year.
Story by Bart Jansen, Josh Meyer and Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – A trove of new records released in the federal election-interference case against former President Donald Trump described how money was spent on Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021.

The revelations were among 1,900 pages of evidence for federal charges against Trump that he tried to steal the 2020 election. The evidence also includes details of how his supporters spent election night at the White House and how Trump reacted to the riot at the Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is weighing the evidence to determine whether Trump is immune to federal charges, based on a Supreme Court ruling in July.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, opposed the release less than three weeks before the election as an example of prosecutors publishing “cherry-picked materials” that “would prejudice potential jurors and endanger potential witnesses” three weeks before the election.

But Chutkan ruled that keeping the documents confidential could also be considered election interference.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, called the release of evidence in the case interference in the election and said the case should be thrown out. He said “the entire case is a sham and a partisan” that “should be dismissed entirely.”
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