How Did This Horrifying Trump-Harris Halloween Float Get Approved?

The western Pennsylvania borough of Mount Pleasant is drawing negative attention over an exceptionally violent Halloween parade float depicting Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris in chains.

On Wednesday night, the borough held its parade, and one float featured a person with a Trump mask riding in a golf cart, with a fake sniper rifle mounted to the top of the vehicle. And trailing the vehicle was a rope or chain tied around the wrists of a woman dressed as Harris, who was also wearing handcuffs.

The depiction set off a backlash online and even within the borough, which is located 45 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The borough’s Democratic mayor, Diane Bailey, criticized the float on Pittsburgh TV news channel WXPI along with at least one local resident. Bailey said she was looking into how the float was even approved in the first place.

The NAACP’s Pittsburgh chapter condemned the float, with its president Daylon Davis issuing a statement saying in part, “This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression; it is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and Brown communities have long endured here in America.”

The parade’s organizer, the Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department, released a statement apologizing for the float.

“We, the members of the Mount Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department, want to take a moment to sincerely apologize for allowing the offensive participants to take part in the Mount Pleasant Annual Halloween Parade last evening,” the statement read. “We do not share in the values represented by those participants, and we understand how it may have hurt or offended members of our community.”

Displays like this in a battleground state only days before the election do a lot of harm to the political atmosphere, particularly in an election where the Republican presidential nominee has threatened violence against his enemies and called them “the enemy within.” The racial component of the display can’t be overlooked, either, with one resident saying the float “is simulating a lynching down Main Street in Mount Pleasant.” Hopefully, this small-town float isn’t a harbinger of what’s to come.

Europe’s Green Party is telling third-party candidate Jill Stein to step aside for the sake of America and the world.

European Green Party representatives from Italy, Ireland, Spain, and 13 other countries across the continent came together to sign onto a letter asking the U.S. Green Party’s Stein to withdraw her candidacy and endorse Democrat Kamala Harris for the sake of democracy.

“Right now, the race for the White House is too close for comfort,” wrote the French and Austrian co-chairs of the coalition in a statement released Friday. “We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House.”

There is no longer any formal relationship between the U.S. Green Party and the European Greens across the pond, in part because of key differences in policy around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so the statement is just a plea rather than a binding resolution. In their letter, the Europeans highlighted the connection between Trump’s “authoritarianism” and his close relationships with right-wing leaders Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Jair Bolsonaro, arguing that electing Trump would embolden anti-democratic actions around the globe.

Further, they also argued that by taking away votes from Harris and allowing a Trump win, Stein will not be able to help “bring about a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East,” an issue in which the U.S. Green Party candidate has staked her 2024 campaign upon.

In previous statements to The Guardian, U.S. Green Party spokespeople said they’ve been disappointed by the European Greens’ “silence and complicity” over Israel and Gaza, stating that the parties have “relied too much on US corporate news media” regarding the ongoing genocide.

Stein is polling at less than 2 percent nationally but may take home a larger share of the vote in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Arab and Muslim voters alongside others on the left have rallied around the call to cast a “conscience vote” against the U.S.-backed Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Others, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, see Stein’s candidacy as a potential spoiler for the election. “All you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious,” said the congresswoman.

At a rally Thursday night in Nevada, Donald Trump pledged to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of “women’s health” if he’s elected president.

“He’s going to work on health, and women’s health, and all of the different reasons ‘cause we’re not really a wealthy or healthy country,” Trump told a crowd of supporters.

Kamala Harris had a one-word response.

Kennedy, formerly an independent candidate for president, dropped out of the race in August and endorsed Trump, likely in exchange for a prominent role in a potential second Trump term. Some reports suggest that Kennedy could get a Cabinet position, such as secretary of Health and Human Services, or have a hand in choosing appointees. In fact, Kennedy has already recommended a prominent vaccine skeptic for HHS.

Kennedy heading up women’s health would be a disaster. Kennedy has a long history of opposing vaccines, and his anti-vax conspiracies even helped spread a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, most of them children. Kennedy also supports restrictions on abortion, and blames the rise in mass shootings on antidepressants and video games.

Kennedy has co-opted Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan into his own initiative, “Make America Healthy Again.” But his own health hasn’t been as impeccable as he claims, admitting that a doctor once suspected a worm ate part of his brain and then died inside his head.

His record with women’s issues apart from health isn’t good, either: He has a reputation as a compulsive womanizer, which may have been a contributing factor in the 2012 suicide of his second wife, Mary Richardson. If more recent allegations are to be believed, Kennedy also carried on an affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi, leading to her losing her job with New York magazine.

Kennedy’s reputation should be toxic enough for the Trump administration in any role, let alone one connected to public health and women. The question is whether this would help Trump attract any voters on the fence, or remind them that the former president’s reputation on public health isn’t so great either.

Donald Trump is once again exaggerating conspiracy theories about Democrats committing voter fraud into existence. 

During a rally in Glendale, Arizona, Thursday night, Trump claimed that there had been “bad votes” discovered in York County and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a key battleground state where early voting has indicated that Trump isn’t doing too well. 

Trump claimed that in Lancaster County, “there were 2,600 votes that happened to be written by the same pen, same hand, same signature, same everything. Uhhhh maybe there’s an explanation for that? Two thousand six hundred votes!”

There is an explanation for that, actually, which is that it’s a lie. Lancaster County didn’t discover thousands of fraudulent votes, but flagged a batch of voter registration forms for review. 

Last week, the county flagged around 2,500 voter registration forms for issues, including fake names, dubious signatures, inaccurate addresses and social security information, and other worrying details including suspicious handwriting, according to the Associated Press. Not only were the forms not ballots, but there was no evidence to suggest that they were all written by the same person.

Of the voter registration forms investigated, around three out of five had problems, according to Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, who said Thursday her office was still actively investigating the issue. 

This isn’t the first time Trump has attempted to place Lancaster’s investigation at the center of his bogus claims of voter fraud. The former president posted on Truth Social Monday that Lancaster County had been “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” 

By Wednesday, he was full-on raging over his fake version of the story. “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” he wrote. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”

York County has also received suspicious voter registration forms and mail-in ballot applications, according to ABC News. The county had received the forms as part of a large delivery of election materials from a third-party organization Field+Media Corps, which was acting on behalf of the Everybody Votes Campaign, according to County Commissioner Julie Wheeler. The documents are now under review, and if officials discover fraud, the forms will be fully investigated by the district attorney, Wheeler said.  

Both Lancaster County and York County supported Trump in the 2020 election. 

As Election Day approaches, and likely for many weeks after, Trump is sure to continue exaggerating to the point of invention as he attempts to undermine the integrity of the election.

Elon Musk is now under fire in multiple swing states over his election interference.

Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has asked Elon Musk to take down an “obviously fake” video which appeared to show a Haitian immigrant who claimed to have voted multiple times in Georgia and encouraged others to do the same.

“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen in this and other elections. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the 2024 Presidential election,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement on Thursday night.

His office says that they are working to identify exactly where the video came from, and that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is also investigating the matter. But Raffensperger and CISA have their suspicions about its origin.

“This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort. Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms,” wrote Raffensperger. “The likeliest suspect is a Russian troll farm,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, agreed. “It’s isn’t even that good of a fake … but it is fake. It is a lie. Please let anyone you know that this is a steaming pile of Russian … well you get it.”

Former CISA Director Chris Krebs also called the video “more nonsense from Russian troll farms.”

Georgia was subjected to massive disinformation campaigns during Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and was subject to Russian interference campaigns that sowed conflict in the state in 2016.

But fomenting distrust in the election system is easier when it’s coming from Trump and Musk themselves. In recent days, both billionaires have peddled lies about mass voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump’s campaign may have been riding high in a garbage truck earlier this week, but the latest numbers out of Pennsylvania have them feeling pretty trashed.

In Pennsylvania, more than 100,000 new voters have already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, dwarfing the 80,000 vote margin by which Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020, according to NBC News.

That means that if everyone who voted in 2020 cast their ballots the same way this year, this group of new voters would decide the race. Unfortunately for Trump, this group is dominated by female registered Democrats, who are likely to split for Kamala Harris.

Nearly 62 million early votes had already been cast nationwide as of Thursday evening, with 54 percent of ballots having been cast by women and 44 percent cast by men, according to Newsweek. Early voting in Pennsylvania mirrors that trend.*

While this data comes days ahead of Election Day, and women are more likely than men to vote early, the number of female voters has regularly exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1980. And this trend in early voting isn’t just contained to Pennsylvania. Across several battleground states, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far, according to Politico.

In an essential battleground state such as Pennsylvania, where polls have shown a particularly tight race, turnout and enthusiasm could be the key for Harris to claim victory in a state Trump plainly needs to win. And apparently, Trump’s team is panicking, according to Puck News.

“They’re going so crazy here,” one campaign source told Puck’s Tara Palmeri. “Anyone who hears how rabid they are about this issue can’t walk away from this and think they feel comfortable about where they’re at in PA.”

“They’re talking about criminal referrals,” the source continued. “They want to find poll watchers who they feel are engaged in voter suppression so that they can refer criminal prosecutions.”

The Trump campaign has already set to work making their desperate attempts to smear campaign officials in Pennsylvania. Earlier this week, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee Co-Chair Michael Whatley accused election officials in Delaware County of “actively suppressing” voters after one woman, a Trump supporter, was arrested at a polling station, according to ABC News.

Delaware County officials said that the woman had been “disruptive, belligerent, and attempting to influence voters waiting in line.” Later, officials said that the woman “did not get in line for any service,” loitered in the lobby for nearly two hours, and “approached various individuals,” which prompted complaints.

In a video with Whatley, the woman claimed she had been arrested “for exercising my First Amendment right” as she “tried to get the vote out.”

The Trump campaign has continued to push narratives of alleged voter suppression by election officials. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Trump and Senate candidate David McCormick sued the county over long lines at polling stations as people tried to register for mail-in voting. A judge has since extended the deadline to sign up for mail-in voting in the county. Both Delaware County and Bucks County supported Biden over Trump in 2020.

* This article previously misstated the number of early votes cast in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump made a dark and ominous threat against former Representative Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent critics.

At a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, with Tucker Carlson Thursday night, Trump attacked Cheney’s record on war, calling her “a very dumb individual.” The former president also insulted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and insinuated that she should be shot.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.

Trump’s threat evoked his earlier comments about using the military against “the enemy within,” which he said included the likes of Representatives Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, Cheney would also be on that list.

Trump’s gruesome attack was immediately met with backlash, including from Cheney herself.

With the election only days away, Trump has ramped up his violent rhetoric in a desperate attempt to scare up whatever votes he can, going after one of his most well-known critics in Cheney, who is campaigning with Kamala Harris. If he was trying to paint Cheney as a warmonger in comparison to himself, he failed heavily, as his choice of words is now what people are talking about.

Explosive new audio reveals that Donald Trump detailed how he really felt about his White House staff to Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein touted old photos of Trump with half-naked women taken at the site of the pedophile’s rampant sexual abuse of young girls.

On author Michael Wolff’s Thursday episode of his podcast Fire and Fury, Wolff shared a recording of a conversation with Epstein from 2017, in which the convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker recounted Trump’s true feelings about members of his administration, The Daily Beast reported.

“His people fight each other and then have outsiders—he sort of poisons the well outside,” Epstein told Wolff. Epstein went on to paraphrase Trump’s candid statements about his former strategist Steve Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“He will tell 10 people, ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kelly has a big mouth’—what do you think? ‘Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson,’” Epstein said.

“‘So Kelly[anne]—even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband—Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard.’ And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you, but Kellyanne hates you,’” Epstein continued.

Wolff said that he had recordings of roughly “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his long standing, deep relationship with Donald Trump.”

Epstein also shared photos from the “late 90s” of Trump surrounded by “topless young women” at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, where the disgraced financier victimized dozens of underage girls alongside his friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap,” Wolff said. “I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.”

Wolff claimed the FBI discovered the photos in Epstein’s safe when the agency raided his home in 2019, but never released the images to the public. Wolff described the photographs when discussing how he used Epstein as a main source for his book Fire and Fury, which focused on the Trump White House.

Wolff said that Epstein was afraid of Trump, believing that he was “capable of doing anything.”

The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff’s claims in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.”

Last week, a former model came forward with allegations that Trump had once groped her at a party, as part of a “twisted game” he was playing with Epstein. Trump recently praised Epstein, calling the sex offender, who died in prison before ever standing trial for sex trafficking charges, a “good salesman.”

“He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands,” Trump said in September, clarifying that he’d never been to Epstein’s infamous hub of sex trafficking. Trump waffled for years on the prospect of releasing files on Epstein’s known associates, and claimed that they likely contained “phony” stuff.

This story has been updated.

Someone on Deb Fischer’s team may want to ask her to identify Nebraska on a map.

The incumbent Republican senator, who’s facing a tough race this November, recently put out a campaign ad that described Nebraska as a “great place to raise families,” while showing beautiful, sprawling footage of anywhere but Nebraska.

Most of the footage comes from stock images titled “Patriot American Flag Flies over Anytown, USA,” sourced from various parts of the northeast. The New Republic’s Paige Oamek found one of the clips in the ad comes from a small town in Pennsylvania.

The mix-up comes at a dangerous time for Fischer in her race against independent challenger Dan Osborn. The Navy veteran and political outsider is reportedly within just two percentage points of Fischer. This is the closest Nebraska has come to being flipped away from red in years.

The Osborn campaign immediately seized on the gaffe.

“Maybe if Deb spent less time at fancy D.C. fund-raisers schmoozing her big corporate donors, she’d actually be able to recognize the state she’s running for Senate in,” Osborn said to The New York Times. “Since Deb so badly wants a New England vacation, Nebraskans will happily fire her on Nov. 5.”

The Osborn campaign also called back to Fischer’s prior uses of inaccurate stock footage to portray Nebraska, namely Ukraine and Romania.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Fischer faulted a “screw-up by a vendor” for the error.

JD Vance’s understanding of abortion rights in this country is so off-base that Joe Rogan had to correct him multiple times when he sat down for an interview for his podcast.

In a three-hour interview released Thursday, Rogan pressed the Republican vice presidential nominee on abortion, mentioning state laws prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, citing Texas as an example, and noted that women in such cases who travel out of state for an abortion could be subject to prosecution.

“That’s concerning to me, if there’s a place in the country where it’s legal to have a medical procedure and you live in a state where it’s not legal that your state can decide what you can and can’t do with your body, which is essentially based on a religious idea,” Rogan said.

Vance seemed unfamiliar with such laws.

“I don’t like the idea, to be clear. I’ve not heard of this, maybe as like a possibility, but not as something that actually exists in the law, but I’ve not heard of somebody being arrested, and I don’t like the idea of arresting people for moving about the country,” Vance said.

The reality is that around the country, many women have had to flee the state to get even a medically necessary abortion, as was the case for Kate Cox in Texas in December. In Texas, many cities and counties have passed ordinances banning people from traveling outside the state for an abortion—which seems to be the new front in the attack on reproductive rights.

Vance’s  interview continued on the topic, but things didn’t get better for him.

Rogan mentioned how Roe v. Wade was considered the law of the land, but that was quickly ended by the Supreme Court, and now “you have these religious men who are trying to dictate what women can or cannot do with their bodies.”

“I understand the pushback against that, but I think you can go, like with so many other issues, you can go way too far about it, and it becomes trying to celebrate” abortion, Vance responded. “At the very best, if you grant I think every argument of the pro-choice side, it is a neutral thing, not something to be celebrated.”

“I think there’s very few people who are celebrating, though,” Rogan replied. Vance suddenly agreed, claiming that echo chambers on social media were creating that impression.

Vance’s time with Rogan seemed to gloss over what he has actually said and proposed about abortion rights. Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Vance seemed to celebrate its demise on a right-wing radio show, even comparing abortion to slavery. Earlier this month, he touted Donald Trump’s abortion policies, claiming that the former president would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood if he wins the election.

Vance tried to convey some kind of level-headed viewpoint on abortion, but seemed unable to address very real abortion scenarios that women face in many states. Will voters take this into account as they head to the polls?