FILE - Melania Trump, wife of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 18, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged to build an economy that is both pro-business and helps the middle class. In remarks Wednesday at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh in battleground Pennsylvania, she said she “would take good ideas from wherever they come” as she promised to double the number of people being trained in registered apprenticeships and outlined her support for more home ownership.

Meanwhile, Republican Donald Trump offered his own competing vision of the economy while visiting a furnituremaker in Mint Hill, North Carolina. He defended his idea for a special lower tax rate for U.S. manufacturers and pledged to impose tariffs high enough that there would be an “exodus” of auto factory jobs from Japan, Germany and South Korea.

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Here’s the latest:

Trump claims the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams was related to immigration

Asked about the bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Trump framed the allegations as politically motivated and tied them to immigration-related strains on the city.

Saying, “I wish him well,” Trump added that he had predicted that Adams “will be indicted within a year” after the mayor “talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting us.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when questioned about the indictment earlier Thursday, said that the Department of Justice is “handling this case independently” and that Biden has not spoken to the mayor.

Harris embraces Ukraine's defense

Vice President Kamala Harris embraced Ukraine’s defense on Thursday and criticized calls for the besieged country to give up territory to Russia.

“They are not proposals for peace,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “Instead they are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable.”

Harris made the comments alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Washington to shore up American support.

“We have to keep pressure on Russia to end the war,” Zelenskyy said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested that Ukraine needs to cut a deal to end the war, and he’s criticized U.S. military assistance.

Trump discusses immigration at news conference

Donald Trump opened a news conference Thursday by calling Vice President Kamala Harris the “architect of this destruction” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump spoke at Trump Tower in New York ahead of Harris’ expected trip Friday to the border.

In part, the former president read from prepared remarks.

“She’s got no plans, she’s got no talent,” he said, of Harris’ work on immigration.

Trump has built his campaign partly around calling for cracking down on immigration and the border. Harris has increasingly tried to seize on the issue and turn it back against her opponent, though polls show voters continue to trust Trump more on it.

FCC adopts $6 million fine against consultant behind fake Biden robocalls

The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a $6 million fine against a man who sent misleading generative artificial intelligence robocalls to New Hampshire voters.

Steven Kramer must pay in full within 30 days or the case will be referred to the Justice Department, according to Thursday’s release. The FCC initially proposed the fine in May.

Kramer has admitted orchestrating the AI-generated message that was sent to thousands of voters two days before the first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 23. The calls impersonated President Joe Biden’s voice and falsely suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting ballots in November.

The consultant told The Associated Press in February that he wasn’t trying to influence the outcome of the primary election but rather intended to send a wake-up call about the potential dangers of AI.

Kramer declined to comment through a spokesperson Thursday. He also is charged with 13 felony counts and 13 misdemeanor counts in New Hampshire associated with the scheme.

Republican Wisconsin congressman falsely suggests city clerk was lying about absentee ballots

MADISON, Wis. — The mailing of about 2,200 duplicate absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic capital city of Madison has led a Republican member of Congress to falsely suggest that the clerk was lying about the presence of barcodes on the ballots themselves.

An initial statement on Monday from Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl did not specify that it was the envelopes, not the ballots, that contain the barcodes. The statement posted on the clerk’s website was later updated to specify that the barcodes were on the envelopes, not the ballots.

Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany posted a picture of an absentee ballot on the social platform X to show there was no barcode and suggested the clerk was lying.

Harris issues a policy guide

Vice President Kamala Harris has issued an official policy guide, a full 82 pages that push back against Republican criticism that she lacks policies.

Entitled ” A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,? the guide is one-stop-shopping for the ideas appearing in Harris’ speeches.

The first section goes over her thoughts on lowering costs for groceries, energy, health care and other items. The second section outlines her ideas for constructing 3 million more homes and boosting manufacturing and entrepreneurship.

But much of the guide focuses on former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. His last name appears 135 times and the first charts cite independent analyses suggesting he would be worse for inflation and job growth than Harris.

Wisconsin district attorney pursues investigation into mayor’s removal of absentee ballot drop box

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin district attorney said Thursday that her office is pursuing an investigation into the removal of an absentee ballot drop box by the mayor of Wausau.

Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box from outside of City Hall on Sunday. He distributed a picture of himself doing it while wearing worker’s gloves and a hard hat. Diny is a conservative opponent to drop boxes. He insists he did nothing wrong.

The drop box was locked and no ballots were in it. The city clerk notified Marathon County District Attorney Theresa Wetzsteon and she said in an email on Thursday that she is requesting an official investigation with the assistance of the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

Wetzsteon said she was waiting to hear back on her request.

A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately return a message Thursday.

It was the latest example in swing state Wisconsin of the fight over whether communities will allow absentee ballot drop boxes.

Millions face new voting restrictions

Millions of people face voting restrictions that did not exist during the 2020 election after states reacted to false allegations of widespread voter fraud, according to the latest assessment of the voting system by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

In a report released Thursday, the center said about half of the 63 new restrictive laws in effect this election curtail mail voting. Eleven shorten the period to request a ballot and five either tighten the deadline for returning one or place restrictions on officials in accepting late-arriving ballots.

Twelve states have laws on the books that restrict helping voters in returning their mail ballot applications or ballots, the report said. Several also reduced the number of drop boxes available for voters to return ballots.

Andrew Garber, counsel in the center’s Democracy Program, expects that people in places such as Georgia, Texas and Florida “are going to attempt to vote the same way they did a few years ago and they’re going to discover that they’ve been wrongly removed from the rolls or they’re not going to realize that the window to request and return a mail ballot is significantly shorter than it used to be.”

Not all the news in the assessment is about limits on voting. At least 156 laws make it easier to vote. The report cited New York, Michigan and Virginia as leaders in the push to expand voting rights.

Walz will attend Michigan-Minnesota college football game

Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz will campaign at a college football came in Michigan this weekend, ahead of his upcoming debate with Republican vice presidential pick JD Vance.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high school coach and teacher, will attend the game between the Michigan Wolverines and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Saturday. It’s in Ann Arbor. Walz will talk with students about the importance of voting in November.

The vice presidential debate is Oct. 1.

Melania Trump calls it a ‘miracle’ that her husband wasn't killed

Melania Trump said it was a “miracle” that her husband wasn’t killed during two recent assassination attempts.

In an interview that aired Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” the former first lady said a staffer alerted her to the shooting at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump said she was in New York this month when she saw television reports of the second shooting at a golf course in Florida.

“I think something was watching over him,” Trump said of her husband surviving both attempts. “It’s almost like, the country really needs him.”

Melania Trump also described the FBI’s 2022 search on her Mar-a-Lago home as an “invasion of privacy, saying the situation “made me angry.” Federal prosecutors ultimately charged Trump with mishandling classified documents, but a judge tossed the charges earlier this year. Prosecutors are challenging that decision.

This was the former first lady’s first interview in more than two years and comes as she promotes her new memoir.

Harris makes scandal-plagued Republican the star of her campaign to win North Carolina

There’s an unlikely star in Kamala Harris ' push to win North Carolina: Mark Robinson.

The state’s embattled Republican candidate for governor, Robinson is featured in conversations this week with Harris volunteers and voters on the phone and at their doorways. Democrats wave signs warning of Trump-Robinson extremism at their news conferences. Billboard trucks circulate in key cities warning that Robinson, also the state’s lieutenant governor, is “unhinged.” And Harris is running a new television advertising campaign highlighting Donald Trump’s history of lavishing Robinson with flowery praise.

No Democrat has carried this Southern state since former President Barack Obama in 2008, whose victory stands as the only Democratic win on the presidential level here in a half-century. But Trump held North Carolina by just 1.3 percentage points four years ago, and it is again emerging as one of the most competitive states in the final weeks before Election Day.

A new mystery firm enters Trump’s orbit, rekindling criticism of his presidential campaign spending

Launchpad Strategies was incorporated less than a year ago and has since received $15 million from Donald Trump’s election fundraising machine.

For what is mostly a mystery. Campaign finance records indicate the limited liability company was hired to provide online advertising, digital consulting and fundraising. On its website, the firm boasts it is a “full-service Republican digital agency run by expert strategists.”

Yet, those expert strategists aren’t identified. An online contact form doesn't appear to work. And business registration records in Delaware provide no clues as to who owns or runs the firm. The campaign’s checks are sent to a P.O. Box in North Carolina.

Campaign finance experts say Launchpad Strategies was built for anonymity and is the latest example of how the Trump campaign has used secretive businesses to obscure its spending from the public.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024