Republicans turned Tim Walz’s outing at a dog park nearly three years ago into an attack on the Democratic vice presidential nominee this week, working on a false online narrative to paint Walz as a liar.
The intended takeaway was that Walz somehow lied about the identity of his dog, Scout, by describing two different dogs as his beloved pet in separate X posts. Social media users shared screenshots of the posts as alleged proof that the Minnesota governor exhibits a pattern of deceit, garnering thousands of likes, shares and reactions across platforms.
In one post, from June 2022, Walz is pictured hugging a black dog. The caption reads, “Sending a special birthday shoutout to our favorite pup, Scout.” The other, posted in October 2022, showed Walz beside a brown and white dog with the caption: “Couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it.”
In response, Walz supporters shared posts on social media showing that Walz was simply playing with someone else’s dog while mentioning Scout in the caption.
The seemingly innocuous post was not the only fodder that has been used against Walz in recent days. A joke he cracked in a campaign video with Vice President Kamala Harris about eating “white guy tacos” was used to accuse him of lying about how much he seasons his food. Opponents have also taken issue with Walz describing himself as a former high school football coach, pointing out that he was the defensive coordinator.
False and misleading claims of such a trivial nature might not seem particularly harmful, but a deluge of them could easily add up to real damage at the polls, according to experts. This is especially true when they go after a figure such as Walz, who is still relatively unknown on the national stage, though the fact that he is not at the top of the ticket could lessen the impact on the Harris-Walz campaign.
“It might seem trivial, and in some cases they really truly are, but they’re trying to make a larger attack about character that fits in a bigger narrative that is being created around this persona,” Emily Vraga, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies political misinformation, said of the recent attacks on Walz. “This becomes kind of a piece of the puzzle they’re trying to assemble.”
She added that “the sheer amount” of false claims can create the perception that there is some truth to them, even if voters don’t believe every single one.
Nathan Walter, an associate professor at Northwestern University who also studies misinformation, agreed that any one piece of misinformation doesn’t have to be significant in order to be damaging.
“The idea is to attack someone’s personality, and then these attacks become really almost like the canary in the coal mine, right?” he said. “So if he lies about his dog, if he lies about his illustrious career as a coach, he probably lies about many other things.”
Democrats have recently deployed a similarly shallow line of attack on the Republican ticket, Ohio Sen. JD Vance and former President Donald Trump, branding the pair as “weird.”
Mixed in with the frivolous attacks on Walz is criticism about other inconsistencies. For example, earlier this month Walz went after Vance by saying, “If it was up to him, I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF.” But his wife Gwen Walz issued a statement last week that disclosed they had relied on a different fertility treatment known as intrauterine insemination, or IUI.
What to know about the 2024 Election
Walz’s military record has also faced intense scrutiny from the right. One such concern is that he portrayed himself as someone who spent time in a combat zone when speaking out about gun violence in 2018. “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” he said at the time.
Walz never served in a combat zone during 24 years in the Army National Guard, but held many other roles. They included work as an infantryman and field artillery cannoneer, as well as a deployment to Italy in a support position of active military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vraga described the more superficial attacks as a “spaghetti approach,” in which Republicans are throwing out a lot of claims to see if they stick in place of a meatier narrative, dominating online discourse in the meantime. Plus, the idea that Walz is a liar “plays into this established worldview that we have about politicians as untrustworthy,” according to Walter.
Even in the polarized political climate of 2024, where many people on all sides hold strong beliefs unlikely to be changed by online name-calling, negative campaigning has the potential to repel potential voters altogether.
Such attacks could be used to demobilize voters, especially those who are not deeply engaged. “You might just start feeling like, why bother with politics at all?” Vraga said. “It’s just nasty.”
In a press conference from his Los Angeles-area golf club, former President Donald Trump revisited several topics from Tuesday night’s debate, repeating several false and misleading claims on issues including crime, the economy and immigration.
Here’s are the facts:
Trump again falsely claims crime skyrocketed under the Biden administration
CLAIM: New numbers show that crime has skyrocketed under the Biden administration.
THE FACTS: Violent crime surged during the pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year — the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records.
But FBI data released in June shows that the overall violent crime rate declined 15% in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year. One expert has cautioned, however, that those figures are preliminary and may overstate the actual reduction in crime.
On Friday, Trump cited numbers he said were from the “bureau of justice statistics” to claim crime was up. This appears to be a reference to the National Crime Victimization Survey recently released by the Justice Department, which shows that the number of times people were victims of violent crime increased by about 40% from 2020 to 2023. The report notes, however, that while the rate of violent victimizations in 2023 was higher than it was in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from the rate in 2019, when Trump was president.
That survey aims to capture both crimes reported to police and crimes that are not reported to police and is conducted annually through interviews with about 150,000 households. It doesn’t include murders or crimes against people under the age of 12.
No basis for claims that violent crime has spiked as a result of the influx of migrants
CLAIM: Thousands of people are being killed by “illegal migrants” in the U.S.
THE FACTS: This is not supported by evidence. FBI statistics do not separate crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. In fact, national statistics show violent crime is on the way down.
Inflation has not reached record levels
CLAIM: Prices have gone up “like no one’s ever seen before.”
THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. Inflation did soar in 2021-22, though it rose by much more in 1980 when inflation topped 14%. It peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.
Economists largely blame the inflation spike on the pandemic’s disruptions to global supply chains, which reduced the supply of semiconductors, cars and other goods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also pushed up gas and food prices. And Biden’s stimulus checks and other spending contributed by turbocharging spending coming out of the pandemic.
Inflation has now fallen to 2.5%, not far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Prices are still about 19% higher than they were before the pandemic, but the Census Bureau reported Tuesday that household incomes have risen by a similar amount, leaving inflation-adjusted incomes at roughly the same level as they were in 2019.
Trump raises false claims to suggest voting systems are fraudulent
CLAIM: The voting system isn’t honest. Millions and millions of ballots are sent out “all over the place. Some people get two, three, four or five.”
THE FACTS: Election officials have procedures in place to ensure that only one mail ballot is issued to each eligible voter. When a voter requests a mail ballot, election officials will verify that person’s eligibility by checking voter registration records — looking to match the voter’s information to what’s on file and, in some cases, checking that the voter’s signature matches as well.
What to know about the 2024 Election
When a ballot is sent out by an election office, that ballot is assigned to that specific voter. If someone else tries to use that ballot, the voter’s information will not match the office’s records for that ballot and it will be rejected. Election officials constantly update their voter lists to ensure they are accurate, removing dead people, those who have moved out of state or are not eligible.
In some cases, ballots are canceled — if a voter makes a mistake and requests a new ballot or decides to vote in person instead of using a mail ballot. In those cases, the original ballot is marked in such a way that if that original ballot were to show up at the election office it would be flagged and rejected.
At one point in his remarks, Trump singled out California, where all voters receive a ballot in the mail. He suggested he would win if votes were counted honestly. He has made this claim before and it is a reach. Just 23% of California voters are registered as Republican while 46% are registered as Democrats. He lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in California by 4.2 million votes, and he lost the state to Biden in 2020 by 5.1 million votes.
Trump misrepresents a revision of U.S. job numbers
CLAIM: A whistleblower forced the government’s recent downward revision of job gains by 818,000.
THE FACTS: That’s false. The preliminary revision occurred as part of a normal annual process and was released on a previously disclosed date. Every year the Labor Department issues a revision of the number of jobs added during a 12-month period from April through March in the previous year.
The adjustment is made because the government’s initial job counts are based on surveys of businesses. The revision is then based on actual job counts from unemployment insurance files that are compiled later. The revision is compiled by career government employees with little involvement by politically appointed officials.
The Biden administration is not secretly flying hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country
CLAIM: Harris and the Biden administration are secretly flying in hundreds of thousands of “illegal immigrants.”
THE FACTS: Migrants are not secretly being flown into the U.S. by the government. Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at a specified airport, paying their own way. Biden exercised his “parole” authority, which, under a 1952 law, allows him to admit people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
___ Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Chris Rugaber, Christina Almeida Cassidy and Elliot Spagat contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP) — There has been a doubling of petitions by workers to have union representation during President Joe Biden’s administration, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board.
There were 3,286 petitions filed with the government in fiscal 2024, up from 1,638 in 2021. This marks the first increase in unionization petitions during a presidential term since Gerald Ford’s administration, which ended 48 years ago.
During Trump’s presidency, union petitions declined 22%.
President Joe Biden said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press that the increase showed that his administration has done more for workers than his predecessor, Donald Trump, the current Republican nominee who is vying to return to the White House in November’s election.
“After the previous administration sided with big corporations to undermine workers — from blocking overtime pay protections to making it harder to organize — my Administration has supported workers,” Biden said. “Because when unions do well, all workers do well and the entire economy benefits.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is relying heavily on union support to help turn out voters in this year’s presidential election. But Trump with his push for tariffs on foreign imports has a blue collar appeal that has for some unionized workers mattered more than his record his office.
Just 16% of voters in 2020 belonged to a union household. Biden secured 56% of them, compared to Trump getting 42%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin of support in union households in this year’s election could decide the outcome of potentially close races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Workers have also become more empowered to report what they judge to be unfair labor practices. The National Labor Relations Board said its field offices received a total of 24,578 cases last fiscal year, the most in more than a decade.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday unveiled his ticket’s plans to improve the lives of rural voters, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks to cut into former President Donald Trump’s support.
The Harris-Walz plan includes a focus on improving rural health care, such as plans to recruit 10,000 new health care professionals in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and new grant programs, as well as economic and agricultural policy priorities. The plan was detailed to The Associated Press by a senior campaign official on the condition of anonymity ahead of its official release.
It marks a concerted effort by the Democratic campaign to make a dent in the historically Trump-leaning voting bloc in the closing three weeks before Election Day. Trump carried rural voters by a nearly two-to-one margin in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. In the closely contested race, both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out beyond their historic bases in hopes of winning over a sliver of voters that could ultimately prove decisive.
Walz, wearing a flannel coat and a campaign camo hat, announced the plan during a stop in rural Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania, one of the marquee battlegrounds of the 2024 contest. He is also starring in a new radio ad for the campaign highlighting his roots in a small town of 400 people and his time coaching football, while attacking Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
“In a small town, you don’t focus on the politics, you focus on taking care of your neighbors and minding your own damn business,” Walz says in the ad, which the campaign said will air across more than 500 rural radio stations in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. “Now Donald Trump and JD Vance, they don’t think like us. They’re in it for themselves.”
The Harris-Walz plan calls on Congress to permanently extend telemedicine coverage under Medicare, a pandemic-era benefit that helped millions access care that is set to expire at the end of 2024. They are also calling for grants to support volunteer EMS programs to cut in half the number of Americans living more than 25 minutes away from an ambulance.
It also urges Congress to restore the Affordable Connectivity Program, a program launched by President Joe Biden that expired in June that provided up to $30 off home internet bills, and for lawmakers to require equipment manufacturers to grant farmers the right to repair their products.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. court has given two top associates of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman until early November to start turning over any evidence in a lawsuit from a former senior Saudi intelligence official who says he survived a plot by the kingdom to silence him.
The order is among a spate of recent rulings suggesting U.S. courts are becoming more open to lawsuits seeking to hold foreign powers accountable for rights abuses, legal experts and advocates say. That is after a couple of decades in which American judges tended to toss those cases.
The long-running lawsuit by former Saudi intelligence official Saad al-Jabri accuses Saudi Arabia of trying to assassinate him in October 2018. The kingdom calls the allegation groundless. That’s the same month the U.S., U.N. and others allege that aides of Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials killed U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose columns for The Washington Post were critical of the crown prince.
Al-Jabri’s lawsuit asserts that the plot against him involved at least one of the same officials, former royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani, whom the Biden administration has sanctioned over allegations of involvement in Khashoggi’s killing.
The ruling is among a half-dozen recently giving hope to rights groups and dissidents that U.S. courts may be more open again to lawsuits that accuse foreign governments and officials of abuses — even when most of the alleged wrongdoing took place abroad.
“More and more … it seems like the U.S. courts are an opportunity to directly hold governments accountable,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, research director at Freedom House, a U.S.-based rights group that advocates for people facing cross-border persecution by repressive governments.
“It’s an uphill battle,” especially in cases where little of the alleged harassment took place on U.S. soil, Gorokhovskaia noted. “But it’s more than we saw, definitely, even a few years ago.”
Khalid al-Jabri, a doctor who like his father lives in exile in the West for fear of retaliation by the Saudi government, said the recent ruling allowing his father’s lawsuit to move forward will do more than help recent victims.
It “hopefully, in the long run, will make … oppressive regimes think twice about transnational repression on U.S. soil,” the younger al-Jabri said.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington acknowledged receiving requests for comment from The Associated Press in the al-Jabri case but did not immediately respond. Lawyers for one of the two Saudis named in the case, Bader al-Asaker, declined to comment, while al-Qahtani’s attorneys did not respond.
Past court motions by lawyers for the crown prince called al-Jabri a liar wanted in Saudi Arabia to face corruption allegations and said there was no evidence of a Saudi plot to kill him.
The Saudi government, meanwhile, has said the killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was a “rogue operation” carried out without the crown prince’s knowledge.
Khashoggi’s killing and the events alleged by al-Jabri took place in a crackdown in the first years after King Salman and his son Prince Mohammed came to power in Saudi Arabia, after the 2015 death of King Abdullah. They detained critics and rights advocates, former prominent figures under the old king, and fellow princes for what the government often said were corruption investigations.
Al-Jabri escaped to Canada. As with Khashoggi, the lawsuit alleges the crown prince sent a hit team known as the “Tiger Squad” to kill him there but claims the plot was foiled when Canadian officials questioned the men and examined their luggage. Canada has said little about the case, although a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigator has testified that officials found the allegations credible and said they remain under investigation.
Saudi Arabia detained a younger son and daughter of al-Jabri in what the family alleges is an effort to pressure the father to return to the kingdom.
Until now, efforts to sue Saudi officials and the kingdom over Khashoggi’s and al-Jabri’s cases have foundered. U.S. courts have said that Prince Mohammed himself has sovereign immunity under international law.
And judgments in civil cases against foreign governments and officials can have little effect beyond the reputational hit. Courts sometimes find in favor of the alleged victim by default when a regime or official fails to respond.
U.S. courts noted the alleged plot against al-Jabri targeted him at his home in Canada, not in the United States, although al-Jabri alleges the crown prince’s aides used a network of Saudi informants in the U.S. to learn his whereabouts.
Late this summer, a federal appeals court in Washington reversed a dismissal of al-Jabri’s claims by a lower court. He is legally entitled to gather any evidence to see if there is enough to justify trying the case in the U.S., the appeals court said.
Federal courts ordered al-Qahtani and al-Asaker last month to start turning over all relevant texts, messages on apps and other communication in the case by Nov. 4.
It’s an “exciting development,” said Ingrid Brunk, a professor of international law at Vanderbilt University and an expert in international litigation.
Courts in the U.S. and other democracies have been favorite venues to bring human-rights cases against repressive governments. But rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court since 2004 had choked off such lawsuits in cases involving foreign parties, which often have little link to the U.S., Brunk said.
Lately, however, particularly strong lawsuits against foreign officials and governments have been gaining footholds in U.S. courts again, she said.
“There’s been some very good lawyering here,” Brunk said of al-Jabri’s long-running case.
Other lawsuits also have pushed ahead. A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco last month allowed the revival of a case by Chinese dissidents accusing the Chinese government of spying on them.
Rather than suing China, however, the dissidents targeted Cisco Systems, the Silicon Valley tech company they accused of developing the security system that allowed the spying.
U.S. courts also have allowed human-rights-related lawsuits naming Turkey and India to move forward recently.
Some of the uptick in human-rights cases — those naming foreign officials and governments or targeting U.S. corporations — in U.S. courts again stems from plaintiffs “pursuing really promising, really creative” legal approaches, Brunk said.
Khalid al-Jabri said the family isn’t seeking money in its lawsuit. They want justice for his father, he said, and freedom for his detained sister and brother.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in the ABC presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024.
Getty Images
With the U.S. election less than a month away, the country and its corporations are staring down two drastically different options.
For airlines, banks, electric vehicle makers, health-care companies, media firms, restaurants and tech giants, the outcome of the presidential contest could result in stark differences in the rules they’ll face, the mergers they’ll be allowed to pursue, and the taxes they’ll pay.
During his last time in power, former President Donald Trump slashed the corporate tax rate, imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, and sought to cut regulation and red tape and discourage immigration, ideas he’s expected to push again if he wins a second term.
In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed hiking the tax rate on corporations to 28% from the 21% rate enacted under Trump, a move that would require congressional approval. Most business executives expect Harris to broadly continue President Joe Biden‘s policies, including his war on so-called junk fees across industries.
Personnel is policy, as the saying goes, so the ramifications of the presidential race won’t become clear until the winner begins appointments for as many as a dozen key bodies, including the Treasury, Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
CNBC examined the stakes of the 2024 presidential election for some of corporate America’s biggest sectors. Here’s what a Harris or Trump administration could mean for business:
The result of the presidential election could affect everything from what airlines owe consumers for flight disruptions to how much it costs to build an aircraft in the United States.
The Biden Department of Transportation, led by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, has taken a hard line on filling what it considers to be holes in air traveler protections. It has established or proposed new rules on issues including refunds for cancellations, family seating and service fee disclosures, a measure airlines have challenged in court.
“Who’s in that DOT seat matters,” said Jonathan Kletzel, who heads the travel, transportation and logistics practice at PwC.
The current Democratic administration has also fought industry consolidation, winning two antitrust lawsuits that blocked a partnership between American Airlines and JetBlue Airways in the Northeast and JetBlue’s now-scuttled plan to buy budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
The previous Trump administration didn’t pursue those types of consumer protections. Industry members say that under Trump, they would expect a more favorable environment for mergers, though four airlines already control more than three-quarters of the U.S. market.
On the aerospace side, Boeing and the hundreds of suppliers that support it are seeking stability more than anything else.
Trump has said on the campaign trail that he supports additional tariffs of 10% or 20% and higher duties on goods from China. That could drive up the cost of producing aircraft and other components for aerospace companies, just as a labor and skills shortage after the pandemic drives up expenses.
Tariffs could also challenge the industry, if they spark retaliatory taxes or trade barriers to China and other countries, which are major buyers of aircraft from Boeing, a top U.S. exporter.
Big banks such as JPMorgan Chase faced an onslaught of new rules this year as Biden appointees pursued the most significant slate of regulations since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Those efforts threaten tens of billions of dollars in industry revenue by slashing fees that banks impose on credit cards and overdrafts and radically revising the capital and risk framework they operate in. The fate of all of those measures is at risk if Trump is elected.
Trump is expected to nominate appointees for key financial regulators, including the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that could result in a weakening or killing off completely of the myriad rules in play.
“The Biden administration’s regulatory agenda across sectors has been very ambitious, especially in finance, and large swaths of it stand to be rolled back by Trump appointees if he wins,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. policy at Wolfe Research.
Bank CEOs and consultants say it would be a relief if aspects of the Biden era — an aggressive CFPB, regulators who discouraged most mergers and elongated times for deal approvals — were dialed back.
“It certainly helps if the president is Republican, and the odds tilt more favorably for the industry if it’s a Republican sweep” in Congress, said the CEO of a bank with nearly $100 billion in assets who declined to be identified speaking about regulators.
Still, some observers point out that Trump 2.0 might not be as friendly to the industry as his first time in office.
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, has often criticized Wall Street banks, and Trump last month began pushing an idea to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, a move that if enacted would have seismic implications for the industry.
Bankers also say that Harris won’t necessarily cater to traditional Democratic Party ideas that have made life tougher for banks. Unless Democrats seize both chambers of Congress as well as the presidency, it may be difficult to get agency heads approved if they’re considered partisan picks, experts note.
“I would not write off the vice president as someone who’s automatically going to go more progressive,” said Lindsey Johnson, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group for big U.S. retail banks.
Electric vehicles have become a polarizing issue between Democrats and Republicans, especially in swing states such as Michigan that rely on the auto industry. There could be major changes in regulations and incentives for EVs if Trump regains power, a fact that’s placed the industry in a temporary limbo.
“Depending on the election in the U.S., we may have mandates; we may not,” Volkswagen Group of America CEO Pablo Di Si said Sept. 24 during an Automotive News conference. “Am I going to make any decisions on future investments right now? Obviously not. We’re waiting to see.”
Republicans, led by Trump, have largely condemned EVs, claiming they are being forced upon consumers and that they will ruin the U.S. automotive industry. Trump has vowed to roll back or eliminate many vehicle emissions standards under the Environmental Protection Agency and incentives to promote production and adoption of the vehicles.
If elected, he’s also expected to renew a battle with California and other states who set their own vehicle emissions standards.
“In a Republican win … We see higher variance and more potential for change,” UBS analyst Joseph Spak said in a Sept. 18 investor note.
In contrast, Democrats, including Harris, have historically supported EVs and incentives such as those under the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris hasn’t been as vocal a supporter of EVs lately amid slower-than-expected consumer adoption of the vehicles and consumer pushback. She has said she does not support an EV mandate such as the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019, which she cosponsored during her time as a senator, that would have required automakers to sell only electrified vehicles by 2040. Still, auto industry executives and officials expect a Harris presidency would be largely a continuation, though not a copy, of the past four years of Biden’s EV policy.
They expect some potential leniency on federal fuel economy regulations but minimal changes to the billions of dollars in incentives under the IRA.
Both Harris and Trump have called for sweeping changes to the costly, complicated and entrenched U.S. health-care system of doctors, insurers, drug manufacturers and middlemen, which costs the nation more than $4 trillion a year.
Despite spending more on health care than any other wealthy country, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases and the highest maternal and infant death rates, according to the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.
Meanwhile, roughly half of American adults say it is difficult to afford health-care costs, which can drive some into debt or lead them to put off necessary care, according to a May poll conducted by health policy research organization KFF.
Both Harris and Trump have taken aim at the pharmaceutical industry and proposed efforts to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S., which are nearly three times higher than those seen in other countries.
But many of Trump’s efforts to lower costs have been temporary or not immediately effective, health policy experts said. Meanwhile, Harris, if elected, can build on existing efforts of the Biden administration to deliver savings to more patients, they said.
Harris specifically plans to expand certain provisions of the IRA, part of which aims to lower health-care costs for seniors enrolled in Medicare. Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to pass the law in 2022.
Her campaign says she plans to extend two provisions to all Americans, not just seniors: a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug spending and a $35 limit on monthly insulin costs.
Harris also intends to accelerate and expand a provision allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with manufacturers for the first time. Drugmakers fiercely oppose those price talks, with some challenging the effort’s constitutionality in court.
Trump hasn’t publicly indicated what he intends to do about IRA provisions.
Some of Trump’s prior efforts to lower drug prices “didn’t really come into fruition” during his presidency, according to Dr. Mariana Socal, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For example, he planned to use executive action to have Medicare pay no more than the lowest price that select other developed countries pay for drugs, a proposal that was blocked by court action and later rescinded.
Trump also led multiple efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults. In a campaign video in April, Trump said he was not running on terminating the ACA and would rather make it “much, much better and far less money,” though he has provided no specific plans.
He reiterated his belief that the ACA was “lousy health care” during his Sept. 10 debate with Harris. But when asked he did not offer a replacement proposal, saying only that he has “concepts of a plan.”
Top of mind for media executives is mergers and the path, or lack thereof, to push them through.
The media industry’s state of turmoil — shrinking audiences for traditional pay TV, the slowdown in advertising, and the rise of streaming and challenges in making it profitable — means its companies are often mentioned in discussions of acquisitions and consolidation.
While a merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is set to move forward, with plans to close in the first half of 2025, many in media have said the Biden administration has broadly chilled deal-making.
“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to do even better,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in July at Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley conference.
Media mogul John Malone recently told MoffettNathanson analysts that some deals are a nonstarter with this current Justice Department, including mergers between companies in the telecommunications and cable broadband space.
Still, it’s unclear how the regulatory environment could or would change depending on which party is in office. Disney was allowed to acquire Fox Corp.’s assets when Trump was in office, but his administration sued to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner. Meanwhile, under Biden’s presidency, a federal judge blocked the sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, but Amazon’s acquisition of MGM was approved.
“My sense is, regardless of the election outcome, we are likely to remain in a similar tighter regulatory environment when looking at media industry dealmaking,” said Marc DeBevoise, CEO and board director of Brightcove, a streaming technology company.
When major media, and even tech, assets change hands, it could also mean increased scrutiny on those in control and whether it creates bias on the platforms.
“Overall, the government and FCC have always been most concerned with having a diversity of voices,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investment. “But then [Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter] happened, and it’s clearly showing you can skew a platform to not just what the business needs, but to maybe your personal approach and whims,” he said.
Since Musk acquired the social media platform in 2022, changing its name to X, he has implemented sweeping changes including cutting staff and giving “amnesty” to previously suspended accounts, including Trump’s, which had been suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Musk has also faced widespread criticism from civil rights groups for the amplification of bigotry on the platform.
Musk has publicly endorsed Trump, and was recently on the campaign trail with the former president. “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m Dark MAGA,” Musk said at a recent event. The billionaire has raised funds for Republican causes, and Trump has suggested Musk could eventually play a role in his administration if the Republican candidate were to be reelected.
During his first term, Trump took a particularly hard stance against journalists, and pursued investigations into leaks from his administration to news organizations. Under Biden, the White House has been notably more amenable to journalists.
Also top of mind for media executives — and government officials — is TikTok.
Lawmakers have argued that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could be a national security risk.
Earlier this year, Biden signed legislation that gives Chinese parent ByteDance until January to find a new owner for the platform or face a U.S. ban. TikTok has said the bill, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with bipartisan support, violates the First Amendment. The platform has sued the government to stop a potential ban.
While Trump was in office, he attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order, but the effort failed. However, he has more recently switched to supporting the platform, arguing that without it there’s less competition against Meta’s Facebook and other social media.
Both Trump and Harris have endorsed plans to end taxes on restaurant workers’ tips, although how they would do so is likely to differ.
The food service and restaurant industry is the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer, with 15.5 million jobs, according to the National Restaurant Association. Roughly 2.2 million of those employees are tipped servers and bartenders, who could end up with more money in their pockets if their tips are no longer taxed.
Trump’s campaign hasn’t given much detail on how his administration would eliminate taxes on tips, but tax experts have warned that it could turn into a loophole for high earners. Claims from the Trump campaign that the Republican candidate is pro-labor have clashed with his record of appointing leaders to the National Labor Relations Board who have rolled back worker protections.
Meanwhile, Harris has said she’d only exempt workers who make $75,000 or less from paying income tax on their tips, but the money would still be subject to taxes toward Social Security and Medicare, the Washington Post previously reported.
In keeping with the campaign’s more labor-friendly approach, Harris is also pledging to eliminate the tip credit: In 37 states, employers only have to pay tipped workers the minimum wage as long as that hourly wage and tips add up to the area’s pay floor. Since 1991, the federal pay floor for tipped wages has been stuck at $2.13.
“In the short term, if [restaurants] have to pay higher wages to their waiters, they’re going to have to raise menu prices, which is going to lower demand,” said Michael Lynn, a tipping expert and Cornell University professor.
Whichever candidate comes out ahead in November will have to grapple with the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence sector.
Generative AI is the biggest story in tech since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. It presents a conundrum for regulators, because it allows consumers to easily create text and images from simple queries, creating privacy and safety concerns.
Harris has said she and Biden “reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation.” Last year, the White House issued an executive order that led to the formation of the Commerce Department’s U.S. AI Safety Institute, which is evaluating AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Trump has committed to repealing the executive order.
A second Trump administration might also attempt to challenge a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that requires companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents. The White House said in January that more transparency “will incentivize corporate executives to invest in cybersecurity and cyber risk management.”
Trump’s running mate, Vance, co-sponsored a bill designed to end the rule. Andrew Garbarino, the House Republican who introduced an identical bill, has said the SEC rule increases cybersecurity risk and overlaps with existing law on incident reporting.
Also at stake in the election is the fate of dealmaking for tech investors and executives.
With Lina Khan helming the FTC, the top tech companies have been largely thwarted from making big acquisitions, though the Justice Department and European regulators have also created hurdles.
Tech transaction volume peaked at $1.5 trillion in 2021, then plummeted to $544 billion last year and $465 billion in 2024 as of September, according to Dealogic.
Many in the tech industry are critical of Khan and want her to be replaced should Harris win in November. Meanwhile, Vance, who worked in venture capital before entering politics, said as recently as February — before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate — that Khan was “doing a pretty good job.”
Khan, whom Biden nominated in 2021, has challenged Amazon and Meta on antitrust grounds and has said the FTC will investigate AI investments at Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
Vice President Kamala Harris sits for an interview with Alex Cooper on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
Call Her Daddy
Vice President Kamala Harris was all business in an interview on the sex-positive “Call Her Daddy” podcast that aired Sunday.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, spent the bulk of the roughly 40-minute conversation litigating her case against Donald Trump, blasting the Republican nominee’s track record on abortion and women’s rights.
“There are now 20 states with Trump abortion bans,” Harris told “Call her Daddy” host Alex Cooper. “This is the same guy that said women should be punished for having abortions.”
In 2022, three Supreme Court justices whom Trump nominated during his presidency were part of a majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that for a half-century had said there was a federal right to abortion. The decision allowed individual states to restrict or permit abortions as they saw fit.
The “Call Her Daddy” podcast is largely popular with young women, a voter base Harris already polls strongly with.
But the podcast does not typically broach political topics, Cooper noted.
“I am so aware I have a very mixed audience when it comes to politics, so please hear me when I say my goal today is not to change your political affiliation,” Cooper said on the podcast before she began interviewing Harris.
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Harris’ appearance on “Call Her Daddy” is part of a larger media storm her campaign has scheduled for the upcoming week, an attempt to elbow Trump out of the news cycle.
Earlier Sunday, Trump’s wife, former first lady Melania Trump, doubled down on her own pro-choice abortion stance, bucking the Republican party line in a Fox News interview.
People observe the scenery near Chinese national flags displayed for National Day celebrations on October 3, 2024 in Chongqing, China. National Day Golden Week is a holiday in China commemorates the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images
U.S. broadband providers had their networks breached in a cyberattack tied to the Chinese government that targeted wiretap requests, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The attack may have allowed China to gain information on the American federal government’s court-authorized network wiretapping requests, the newspaper found.
It’s possible the hackers had access for months or longer to networks the U.S. uses to make lawful requests for communications data, the WSJ wrote, citing people familiar with the matter.
China denies allegations from Western governments and technology companies that it uses hackers to access government information.
Government officials have been concerned these cyberattacks could be used to disrupt U.S. systems in the event of a conflict between China and the U.S., the newspaper said.
The cyber breach, carried out by the Chinese hacking group known as Salt Typhoon, poses serious national security risks, the WSJ reported.
The F.B.I. declined to respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
Evan Vucci | AP
Former President Donald Trump is set to hold a Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of his July 13 rally that erupted in chaos after a gunman opened fire in a failed attempt to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee, killing one crowd member instead.
Trump first announced his plan to return to Butler in July, 13 days after the rally shooting.
With roughly four weeks until the Nov. 5 election and early voting well underway, the Trump campaign has been working to gin up hype around the Butler event. It could be one of Trump’s final high-profile opportunities to make his case to the American public, in a key swing state no less.
“BUTLER ON SATURDAY — HISTORIC!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
But Trump returns to Butler in a very different presidential race.
Ahead of that first Butler visit, Trump was still reveling in the disastrous performance of President Joe Biden at their June 27 debate, which spurred Democrats’ growing doubt about their candidate’s ability to win a second term.
Since then, Biden has dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the helm of the Democratic ticket and she has begun to erode Trump’s edge.
Trump’s second Butler rally will also spotlight his new entourage.
Tesla CEO and new Trump ally Elon Musk announced Saturday that he would speak at the rally. Musk officially endorsed Trump hours after the Butler assassination attempt, marking a stark pivot in their formerly hostile relationship.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will also deliver an opening speech.
Family members of Corey Comperatore, the crowd member who was shot and killed at the July rally, are also expected to join, according to the campaign.
Going into Saturday’s rally, the Secret Service said it beefed up its security plan.
The Butler shooting put the Secret Service under intense scrutiny as questions lingered about how a gunman could come within shooting distance of a former president at a public event. That outrage mounted further after Trump was the target of another assassination attempt in September.
On Friday, the Secret Service pledged that it had “made comprehensive changes and enhancements” to its communications abilities and resources.
“The former President is receiving heightened protection and we take the responsibility to ensure his safety and security very seriously,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone. He has not endorsed a candidate,” Dimon spokesman Joe Evangelisti told CNBC in a phone call.
Trump on Truth Social had posted a screenshot falsely claiming, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.”
The claim appears to have originated from a verified account on X earlier Friday. It was quickly amplified on social media by other pro-Trump accounts, and then the former president himself, before the bank issued its denial.
When NBC News asked Trump about the post later Friday, Trump said he did not know about it and that it was not posted by him.
“Somebody put it up,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t know.”
The post, published at 1:56 p.m. ET, was still visible on Trump’s official account more than two hours later.
The Trump campaign did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Former President and GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump post a Truth that claims J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has endorsed Trump for President.
Source: @realDonaldTrump | Truth Social
In September, Dimon said that he is not backing either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“I’m not endorsing anyone at this time,” Dimon told CNBCTV-18 at the JPMorgan Investor Summit in Mumbai.
Dimon has at times offered qualified praise for Trump, but the two men have also clashed repeatedly over the years.
During the Republican presidential primary season, Dimon had urged corporate leaders to support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump.
Trump tore into Dimon for siding with Haley, saying he “had to live with this guy when he came begging to the White House.”
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban cautioned Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday against forming an alliance with former President Donald Trump, because, he said, the Republican presidential nominee may not ultimately repay his political debts.
“Elon, there will come a time when you need something from Donald Trump,” Cuban wrote in an X post to his fellow billionaire. “You will think you will have earned the right to ask and receive. You have been a loyal, faithful soldier for him.”
“At the point you need him the most,” Cuban continued. “You will find out what so many before you have learned, his loyalty is only to himself.
Cuban’s message came in response to an earlier X post from Musk in which the SpaceX CEO amplified a variety of conspiracy theories about Democrats encouraging immigration into battleground states as “a surefire way to win every election.”
“If Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote.
Musk’s endorsement of Trump is a stark reversal from 2022 when he would openly sling insults at the former president on social media.
Cuban’s warning to Musk, one billionaire to another, hinted at the implicit bid for governmental favor that wealthy political supporters make when they hitch their wagon to a presidential candidate.
The two billionaires are on opposing sides of the presidential race this election cycle. But both business leaders have their eyes on some level of regulatory control.
Trump, Cuban believes, might not follow through on that exchange for Musk.
Cuban has become an outspoken surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris and her economic agenda. In recent weeks, he has regularly championed Harris as “better for business,” even amid some skepticism about her plan to raise corporate tax rates.
As Cuban ramps up his public support, he is also keeping tabs on a potential new job opportunity at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“I told her team, put my name in for the SEC, it needs to change,” Cuban said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Musk is chasing a new job of his own. Musk has repeatedly floated the creation of a so-called government efficiency commission to crack down on federal spending if Trump wins a second term in the White House. And he has raised his hand to helm such an agency.
Earlier this month, Trump endorsed the government efficiency commission idea and suggested Musk could be a “good one” to lead it.
But the Republican nominee hedged that Musk, a busy CEO of multiple companies, might not have the time for the job, but that he could “consult.”
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
Trump in a social media post wrote that if the Department of Justice does not prosecute Google “for this blatant interference of Elections” he would request its prosecution “when I win the election and become President of the United States!”
He seemed to be reacting to a new study by the right-leaning Media Research Center, which purportedly found that Google search engine results tended to show news articles that supposedly were positive to the Democrat Harris ahead of Trump’s own campaign website when a user searched for “Donald Trump presidential race 2024.”
In his post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.”
US Vice President and Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris speaks at an event hosted by The Economic Club of Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University on September 25, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Jeff Swensen | Getty Images
MRC founder Brent Bozell told Fox News Digital earlier this week that “Google is trying to stack the deck in favor of Kamala Harris.”
CNBC has requested comment from Google’s parent company Alphabet, as well as the campaigns of Trump and Harris.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
The second night of the Democratic National Convention was filled with excitement as a celebratory roll call marked Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination to be the party’s candidate for president. As speaker after speaker addressed the convention extolling her qualities to lead the country, they also spelled out differences with her opponents, former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at times misrepresenting the Republicans’ stances.
Here’s a look at the facts.
Missing context on Vance and the child tax credit
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: “Senate Republicans pretend to care about middle-class families, but they voted no on expanding the child tax credit. And JD Vance didn’t even show up to vote.”
THE FACTS: Vance did indeed skip an August vote on a bill to expand the child tax credit and restore some tax breaks for businesses.
The bill failed to advance in the Senate as Republicans largely opposed the measure, arguing that they would be in position to get a better deal next year, The Associated Press reported at the time.
But there’s more to the story.
Vance has also said he would support expanding the child tax credit, currently at $2,000, to $5,000. He said the Senate vote was a “show vote,” when bills are designed to fail but allow parties to highlight issues before voters.
The cost of Trump’s economic plan
Schumer on Trump’s plan to create tariffs: “He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries. It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs. Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year.”
THE FACTS: Trump has proposed imposing a tariff of anywhere from 10% to 20% on all imports and up to 60% on imports from China.
It’s Day 3 of the DNC, and there are 75 days until Election Day. Here’s what to know:
Economists do expect it would raise prices on many goods. The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, estimates it would reduce average incomes in the top 60% of earners by 1.8%. And the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive advocacy group, has calculated that the higher tariffs would cost households an extra $3,900 a year.
However, Trump has said the tariff revenue could be used to cut other taxes, which would reduce the overall cost of the policy.
Trump’s changing views on the Affordable Care Act
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham: “Donald Trump and JD Vance want to dismantle our healthcare system, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and limit protections for preexisting conditions.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham speaking during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly promised to replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law with a plan of his own. For example, three years after a Congress fully controlled by Republicans failed to repeal “Obamacare” in 2017, Trump urged the Supreme Court to overturn it.
More recently, the Republican presidential nominee threatened to reopen the contentious fight.
“The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare,” he wrote in a November 2023 post on his Truth Social site. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives. We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”
But Trump backed off a potential repeal in April. He said in a video posted to Truth Social that he is “not running to replace the ACA” and that he intends to make it “much better, stronger and far less expensive.”
Another misrepresentation of Trump’s bleach comment
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Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, on Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic: “And Donald, well, Donald told us to inject bleach.”
THE FACTS: This claim was also made on the first day of the Democratic National Convention by Rep. Robert Garcia of California.
It’s an overstatement. Trump actually asked whether it would be impossible to inject disinfectant into the lungs.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute,” he said at an April 2020 press conference. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, 2024.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris substantially outraised and outspent former President Donald Trump in August, ending the month with more cash to fund her final sprint to the November election, according to new filings from the Federal Election Commission.
The Harris campaign raised over $189 million in August, more than quadruple the $44 million sum that the Trump campaign brought in.
Those figures reflect fundraising specifically for the candidate’s main campaign accounts and do not include donations to the other branches of their political operations.
The Harris campaign announced earlier this month a total $361 million August haul from campaign donations joint with the Democratic National Committee and fundraising committees. That dwarfed the $130 million raised between the Trump campaign and its joint fundraising committees.
These figures do not factor in September donations, including the Harris campaign’s $47 million cash bump from nearly 600,000 donors in the 24 hours following the first and possibly only Harris-Trump debate.
The Harris campaign on Saturday accepted an invitation from CNN to hold a second debate on Oct. 23, but Trump has so far staunchly maintained that he will not do a rematch.
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The new FEC filings depict a steady surge of donor enthusiasm for Harris, even as the initial hype of Democrats’ July candidate swap tempered. The entire Harris political operation raised $310 million in July after President Joe Biden ended his candidacy and endorsed her to take over the Democratic ticket.
Harris has also flipped the donation gap to Democrats’ favor, erasing the fundraising lead Trump and Republicans had before Biden dropped out.
Since then, the Harris campaign has been outspending Trump with an advertising blitz across television and digital platforms, along with along with other campaign expenses.
Harris and the DNC jointly spent $258 million in August, well above the $121 million that Trump and the RNC disbursed, according to FEC filings.
“As we enter the final stretch of this election, we’re making sure every hard-earned dollar goes to winning over the voters who will decide this election,” Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a press release earlier this month.
Heading into the final sprint of the presidential race, the Harris team ended August with $404 million in cash on hand, outpacing the $295 million war chest reported by Trump’s operation.
The Trump campaign assured that its donations will carry it through the rest of the race.
“The Trump-Vance campaign has momentum for the final stretch of the race,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement. “These fundraising numbers from August are a reflection of that movement.”
PHOENIX (AP) — A judge has rejected a bid by Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, to move his charges in Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court, marking the second time he has failed in trying to get his charges out of state court.
In a decision Monday, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi said Meadows missed a deadline for asking for his charges to be moved to federal court, didn’t offer a good reason for doing so and failed to show that the allegations against him related to his official duties as chief of staff to the president.
Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia in what authorities allege was an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Trump’s favor. He had unsuccessfully tried to move charges in the Georgia case last year. It’s unknown whether Meadows will appeal the decision. The Associated Press left phone and email messages for two of Meadows’ attorneys.
While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors said Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat. Meadows has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Georgia.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.
The decision sends Meadows’ case back down to Maricopa County Superior Court.
In both Arizona and Georgia, Meadows argued his charges should be moved to federal court because his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff and that he has immunity under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law trumps state law.
Arizona prosecutors said Meadows’ electioneering efforts weren’t part of his official duties at the White House.
Meadows last year tried to get his Georgia charges moved but his request was rejected by a judge whose ruling was later affirmed by an appeals court. Meadows has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.
The Arizona indictment says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election. Prosecutors say Meadows also had arranged meetings and calls with state officials to discuss the fake elector conspiracy.
Meadows’ attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people trying to get ideas in front of Trump — or “seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”
In denying the former chief of staff’s request, Tuchi said Meadows wasn’t indicted for facilitating communications to and from the president or staying updated on what was going on in Trump’s campaign.
“Instead, the State has indicted Mr. Meadows for allegedly orchestrating and participating in an illegal electioneering scheme,” the judge wrote. “Few, if any, of the State’s factual allegations even resemble the secretarial duties that Mr. Meadows maintains are the subject of the indictment.”
In all, 18 Republicans were charged in late April in Arizona’s fake electors case. The defendants include 11 Republicans who had submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, another Trump aide and five lawyers connected to the former president.
The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges in Arizona.
Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.
The 11 people who were nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state.
A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ announcement on Tuesday that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be her running mate in the 2024 presidential election increased the spread of false claims about the Midwestern Democrat, some of which appeared on social media even before Harris made her pick public.
Here’s a look at the facts.
___
CLAIM: Walz said on CNN that he wants to invest in a “ladder factory” to help people scale the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and illegally enter the U.S.
THE FACTS: That’s false. Posts are misrepresenting a comment Walz made on an episode of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” last week. In the full segment, the Democrat criticizes former President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border by joking about the hypothetical investment. He then gives multiple other examples of how to address illegal crossings into the U.S. through Mexico.
Amid Harris’ Tuesday announcement, social media users used a clip from the segment to make it seem as though the Minnesota governor was advocating for illegal immigration.
“He talks about this wall, I always say, ‘let me know how high it is, if it’s 25 feet then I’ll invest in a 30-foot-ladder factory,’” Walz says, referencing Trump. “That’s not how you stop this.”
One X post that shared the clip reads: “FLASHBACK: Kamala’s VP pick, Tim Walz, says he should invest in a ‘ladder factory’ to help illegal aliens climb the border wall.”
But Walz was not offering to help people enter the U.S. without authorization. He was actually discussing how to prevent this from happening.
In the full segment, after making the investment quip, Walz gives alternative ideas for how to handle illegal crossings on the southern border. Arrests for such crossings reached a record high in December, but dropped to a new low for the Biden administration at the end of July following a temporary ban on asylum.
“You stop this using electronics, you stop it using more border control agents and you stop it by having a legal system that allows for that tradition of allowing folks to come here just like my relatives did,” Walz says near the end of the segment. “To come here, be able to work and establish the American dream.”
— Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin contributed this report.
___
CLAIM: Walz changed the Minnesota flag so that it resembles the Somali flag.
THE FACTS: Minnesota did unfurl a new state flag and accompanying seal in May, but the changes were made to replace an old design that Native Americans said reminded them of painful memories of conquest and displacement. The State Emblems Redesign Commission was established during the 2023 legislative session to oversee the development of a new design.
Changes were made to eliminate an old state seal that featured the image of a Native American riding off into the sunset while a white settler plowed his field with a rifle at the ready. The seal was a key feature of the old flag.
The commission included public officials, design experts and members of tribal and other communities of color. Its purpose statement dictated that the designs “must accurately and respectfully reflect Minnesota’s shared history, resources, and diverse cultural communities. Symbols, emblems, or likenesses that represent only a single community or person, regardless of whether real or stylized, may not be included in a design.”
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The public submitted more than 2,600 proposals and the commission picked one from Andrew Prekker, 25, of Luverne, as the basis for the flag.
Prekker said Walz had nothing to do with the creation of the flag, and Somalia had nothing to do with the flag design. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. and is home to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Oman, who was born in Somalia and is a member of an informal group of progressive Democratic House members known as The Squad.
“The inspiration behind my flag were three main concepts inspired by Minnesota’s history and culture: The North Star, the Minnesota shape, and three stripes representing different facets of Minnesotan identity,” he wrote in an email.
Prekker’s original design had the white star on the blue background with white, green and light blue stripes stretching over the rest of the flag. The flag was compared online with flags from states in Somalia that have green, white and blue stripes and a star. The stripes were dropped by the commission in the final design.
The final version of the flag features a dark blue shape resembling Minnesota with a white, eight-pointed star on it. The right side is light blue and is meant to symbolize the state’s abundant waters that led to it being known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
The Somali flag has a five-point star on a light blue background. “There is no connection to Somalia or any other country, and in complete honesty I didn’t even know Somalia existed before the whole flag debacle. Any similarities people want to see are a coincidence. It is a Minnesotan flag, and that is what I designed it for,” Prekker said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been spreading false claims that an image of thousands of people waiting at Detroit’s airport as Democrat Kamala Harris arrived for a campaign rally was fabricated with the help of artificial intelligence.
Reporters, photographers and video journalists representing The Associated Press and other news organizations who either traveled with Vice President Harris or were on the airport tarmac documented the crowd size last Wednesday as she arrived on Air Force Two. Harris’ campaign also denied the photo in question was manipulated and posted about it on social media.
Fifteen thousand people attended the Detroit airport rally, Harris’ campaign said. Harris and Walz spoke from inside a hangar where people were packed in. The crowd also spilled out onto the tarmac. The Wayne County Airport Authority, which oversees the airport, referred questions about the size of the crowd to Harris’ campaign.
Thousands of people have been showing up at her campaign rallies.
By the Harris campaign’s count, 12,000 people turned out for rallies in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, last week, followed by 15,000 in Glendale, Arizona. In Las Vegas on Saturday, more than 12,000 people were inside a university arena when law enforcement halted admission because people were getting ill waiting outside in the extreme 109-degree heat. About 4,000 people were waiting in line when the doors were closed.
An Associated Press reporter who covered the Harris events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, witnessed the throngs of people in attendance.
Trump pushed his false claims in back-to-back posts on his social media site on Sunday.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!.” he wrote. He included a post from another individual who made similar allegations about photo manipulation.
A minute later Trump posted, “Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was nobody there!” He included a photo of the crowd that was partly shaded and partly exposed to the sun.
Harris’ campaign confirmed on Monday that the photo being questioned was taken by a staff member and was not in any way modified using AI.
Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, analyzed the photo using two models trained to detect patterns of generative AI and found no evidence of manipulation. The models were developed by GetReal Labs, a company Farid co-founded.
Farid, responding Monday in an email, said he compared several versions of the photo and the only alteration he detected was some simple change to brightness or contrast, and perhaps sharpening. He said many other images and videos from the event last Wednesday show the same basic scene.
Trump started pushing false theories about the Harris campaign photo a few days after he held a news conference at his Florida estate on Thursday and was asked about the crowds at his Democratic rival’s rallies. Trump said no one draws crowds as big as he does.
“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump claimed at the news conference, his first since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.
What to know about the 2024 Election
He went on to falsely compare the crowd at his speech in front of the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.
But King drew far more people. Approximately 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King gave his speech, according to the National Park Service. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that there were at least 10,000 people at Trump’s address.
Some of Trump’s top advisers and supporters have been urging the former president to focus his criticisms on Harris’ policies and talk more about the border and the economy.
“Stop questioning the size of her crowds,” was the advice former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., offered during a Fox News appearance on Monday.
The Harris campaign needled Trump on a variety of issues in an email Monday titled “9 Days Since Trump’s Last Swing State Event.” The note included a bullet point that said, “he’s very mad about crowd sizes, claiming it’s all fake and AI-generated. (Maybe if he campaigned he’d get crowds too?)”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Biden administration officials on Thursday discussed the future of artificial intelligence at a meeting with a group of executives from OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft and other companies. The focus was on building data centers in the United States and the infrastructure needed to develop the technology.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily press briefing that the meeting focused on increasing public-private collaboration and the workforce and permitting needs of the industry. The computer power for the sector will likely depend on reliable access to electricity, so the utility companies Exelon and AES were also part of the meeting to discuss power grid needs.
The emergence of AI holds a mix of promise and peril: The automatically generated text, images, audio and video could help to increase economic productivity but it also has the potential to displace some workers. It also could serve as both a national security tool and a threat to guard against.
President Joe Biden last October signed an executive order to address the develop of the technology, seeking to establish protections through steps such as the watermarking of AI content and addressing consumer rights issues.
Attending the meeting for the administration were White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, among others.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat, Meta Chief Operating Officer Javier Olivan, and Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith were among the corporate attendees.
Matt Garman, the CEO of AWS, a subsidiary of Amazon, also attended. The company said in a statement that attendees discussed modernizing the nation’s utility grid, expediting permits for new projects and ensuring that carbon-free energy projects are integrated into the grid.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury will soon decide whether a convoy of supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently intimidated former Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis and two others on a Biden-Harris campaign bus when a so-called “Trump Train” boxed them in for more than an hour on a Texas highway days before the 2020 election.
The trial, which began on Sept. 9, resumes Monday and is expected to last another week.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that six of the Trump Train drivers violated state and federal law. Lawyers for the defendants said they did not conspire against the Democrats on the bus and that their actions are protected speech.
Here’s what else to know:
What happened on Oct. 30, 2020?
Dozens of cars and trucks organized by a local Trump Train group swarmed the bus on its way from San Antonio to Austin. It was the last day of early voting in Texas for the 2020 general election, and the bus was scheduled to make a stop in San Marcos for an event at Texas State University.
Video recorded by Davis shows pickup trucks with large Trump flags aggressively slowing down and boxing in the bus as it tried to move away from the Trump Train. One defendant hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, slowing the bus and everyone around it to a 15 mph crawl.
Those on the bus — including Davis, a campaign staffer and the driver — repeatedly called 911 asking for help and a police escort through San Marcos, but when no law enforcement arrived, the campaign canceled the event and pushed forward to Austin.
San Marcos settled a separate lawsuit filed by the same three Democrats against the police, agreeing to pay $175,000 and mandate political violence training for law enforcement.
Davis testified that she felt she was being “taken hostage” and has sought treatment for anxiety.
In the days leading up to the event, Democrats were also intimidated, harassed and received death threats, the lawsuit said.
“I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” Davis testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”
What’s the plaintiffs’ argument?
In opening statements, an attorney for the plaintiffs said convoy organizers targeted the bus in a calculated attack to intimidate the Democrats in violation of the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law that bans political violence and intimidation.
“We’re here because of actions that put people’s lives in danger,” said Samuel Hall, an attorney with the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The plaintiffs, he said, were “literally driven out of town by a swarm of trucks.”
The six Trump Train drivers succeeded in making the campaign cancel its remaining events in Texas in a war they believed was “between good and evil,” Hall said.
Two nonprofit advocacy groups, Texas Civil Rights Project and Protect Democracy, also are representing the three plaintiffs.
What’s the defense’s argument?
Attorneys for the defendants, who are accused of driving and organizing the convoy, said they did not conspire to swarm the Democrats on the bus, which could have exited the highway at any point.
“This was a political rally. This was not some conspiracy to intimidate people,” said attorney Jason Greaves, who is representing two of the drivers.
The defense also argued that their clients’ actions were protected speech and that the trial is a concerted effort to “drain conservatives of their money,” according to Francisco Canseco, a lawyer for three of the defendants.
“It was a rah-rah group that sought to support and advocate for a candidate of their choice in a very loud way,” Canseco said during opening statements.
The defense lost a bid last month to have the case ruled in their favor without a trial. The judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”
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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks away during a commercial break as US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris take notes during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024.
Investing in the Truth Social maker’s stock has come to be seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
The company has acknowledged that its success at least partly depends on Trump’s popularity, and analysts say its value will rise or fall based on his electoral prospects.
The steep stock decline on the heels of the debate could signal that some of Trump’s supporters weren’t pleased with what they saw on Tuesday night.
Both liberal and conservative political commentators said Harris appeared more prepared, articulate and even-keeled on the Philadelphia stage than Trump, who repeatedly bit on bait she tossed to throw him off topic.
Harris’ team, projecting confidence, immediately challenged Trump to another debate after the first one ended.
Trump said he may not agree to another one.
Trump Media, which trades as DJT on the Nasdaq, had surged as much as 10% in intraday trading Tuesday, possibly indicating optimism about how Trump would fare in the debate.
The company’s gains on Monday and Tuesday offered a respite from a weekslong rout that has seen shares sink as much as 75% from their intraday high in late March, when Trump Media merged with a blank-check firm.
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The slump coincided with President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.
It also came in the run-up to the date when Trump and other company insiders can start selling their shares.
Trump owns nearly 59% of the company’s stock, a stake that at Wednesday’s pre-market price was worth nearly $2 billion.
It is unclear if Trump plans to start selling off his stake when a lock-up agreement lifts on Sept. 19.
