PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday decried Republican Donald Trump for inflammatory rhetoric about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and on other topics, saying voters should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.”

Sitting down for a rare extended campaign interview Tuesday with a trio of journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists, Harris said her heart breaks after threats of violence have disrupted the city following comments amplified by Trump and his running mate alleging, without evidence, that immigrants are kidnapping and consuming people’s pets.

Two days after Secret Service agents foiled an apparent assassination attempt on Trump, who blamed Democratic rhetoric for the latest threat to his life, Harris said that “there are far too many people in our country right now who are not feeling safe.” She referenced the threats to immigrants, but also the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for the next Republican administration and a GOP-led effort to restrict abortion access.

“Not everybody has Secret Service,” she said. “Members of the LGBTQ community don’t feel safe right now, immigrants or people with an immigrant background don’t feel safe right now. Women don’t feel safe right now.”

Harris said she personally has confidence in the Secret Service and feels safe under their protection. She spoke briefly with Trump on Tuesday to express her gratitude that he was safe, but in the interview said his rhetoric should be disqualifying.

“When you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to understand at a deep level that your words have meaning,” Harris said, without mentioning Trump by name. “Let’s turn the page and chart a new way forward and say you can’t have that microphone again.”

Harris said the Republican attacks on the city and migrants there were “lies that are grounded in tropes that are age old.”

The sedate interview in Philadelphia stood in contrast to former President Donald Trump ’s appearance before the same organization just a month ago, which turned contentious over matters of race and other issues.

The Trump interview opened a chapter in the campaign in which the Republican candidate repeatedly questioned Harris’ racial identity, baselessly claiming that she had only belatedly “turned Black” at some point in her professional career. Trump has since repeatedly questioned Harris’ racial identity on the campaign trail and during the September presidential debate.

Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, has repeatedly dismissed Trump’s remarks as “the same old show.” During her September debate with Trump, she said it was a “tragedy” that he had “attempted to use race to divide the American people.”

The vice president insisted she is working to earn the vote of Black men and not taking any constituency for granted. Black male voters are traditionally one of the most consistently Democratic-leaning demographics in the nation. But Republicans have tried to make inroads, while Democrats worry about flagging enthusiasm at the polls.

“I think it’s very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody’s pocket,” Harris said. “Black men are like any other voting group. You gotta earn their vote, so I’m working to earn the vote, not assuming I’m gonna have it because I’m Black”

Harris declined to say if she supported reparations for descendants of slaves, but said, “we need to speak truth about the generational impact of our history in terms of the generational impact of slavery, the generational impact of red lining.” She said expressed openness to studying the question “to figure out exactly what we need to do,” but said her focus was on building economic opportunity.

In Trump’s interview with NABJ, he lambasted the moderators and drew boos and groans from the audience at times. The interview also sparked debate within the NABJ convention itself, which operates both as a networking and communal space for Black professionals in media as well as a newsmaking event.

As with Trump’s appearance, the audience was made up of NABJ members and college students, but the tenor was markedly different. Where Trump called the reporters interviewing him “rude,” “nasty” and denounced their questions as “horrible,” Harris referred to the reporters who pressed her as “esteemed journalists.”

The crowd was inaudible throughout the Tuesday interview with Harris. In July, Trump’s comments were often met with laughter, shock and confusion from the room, which largely consisted of student journalists and media professionals outside political news.

Trump, his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and other Republicans have criticized Harris for largely avoiding media interviews or interacting on the record with reporters who cover her campaign events. She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, gave a joint interview to CNN last month. Her campaign recently said she would be doing more local media, and last week she sat for her first solo television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, taking questions from a Philadelphia station.

Asked whether Americans are better off today than four years ago when she and President Joe Biden entered office, Harris did not directly answer the question, instead referencing the state of the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and bringing up her plans to try to lower housing costs and promoting herself as a “new generation” of leader.

Harris said her candidacy offers the country a chance at “turning the page on an era that sadly has shown us attempts to by some to incite fear to create division in our country.”

Janiyah Thomas, Black media director for the Trump campaign, said Harris’ remarks to the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday reveal her record of failures for Black Americans.

“She told the NABJ that after three and half years of her failed policies, grocery prices are too high and the American Dream is unattainable for young Americans,” Thomas said. “We can’t afford four more years of Kamala Harris. It’s time to put President Trump back in the White House and restore economic prosperity.”

Harris has largely sidestepped traditional media appearances and instead focused on rallies, grassroots organizing and social media engagement, where the vice president can sidestep questions from independent journalists about her policy record and proposed agenda.

Tuesday’s event was moderated by Eugene Daniels of Politico, Gerren Keith Gaynor of theGrio and Tonya Mosley of WHYY, a Philadelphia-area public radio station that co-hosted the gathering.

Asked whether she would change U.S. policy toward the Israel-Hamas war, Harris said she endorsed Biden’s pause on 2000-lb. bombs to Israel and didn’t signal any daylight with the president.

Harris noted the killing of Israeli civilians — and some Americans – by Hamas on Oct. 7 and added that far too many “innocent Palestinians have been killed” in Israel’s response.

She added that the Israel-Hamas war has to end and a ceasefire and hostage deal must get done, while calling for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. She said the goal is to ensure “the Israelis have security and Palestinians in equal measure have security, have self-determination and dignity.”

NABJ noted the importance of hosting the conversation in Philadelphia, a major city in a battleground state with a large Black population. Philadelphia was also the home to one of the major precursor organizations to NABJ.

For years, the association has invited both major presidential candidates to speak before the convention. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all attended NABJ events as presidential candidates or while in office.

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Brown reported from Washington. AP writers Zeke Miller and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — The video was seen millions of times across social media but some viewers were suspicious: It featured a young Black woman who claimed Vice President Kamala Harris left her paralyzed in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco 13 years ago.

In an emotional retelling from a wheelchair, the alleged victim said she “cannot remain silent anymore” and lamented that her childhood had “ended too soon.”

Immediately after the video was posted on Sept. 2, social media users pointed out reasons to be wary. The purported news channel it came from, San Francisco’s KBSF-TV, didn’t exist. A website for the channel set up just a week earlier contained plagiarized articles from real news outlets. The woman’s X-ray images shown in the video were taken from online medical journals. And the video and the text story on the website spelled the alleged victim’s name differently.

The caution was warranted, according to a new Microsoft threat intelligence report, which confirms the fabricated tale was disinformation from a Russia-linked troll farm.

The tech giant’s report released Tuesday details how Kremlin-aligned actors that at first struggled to adapt to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race have now gone full throttle in their covert influence efforts against Harris and Democrats.

It also explains how Russian intelligence actors are collaborating with pro-Russian cyber “hacktivists” to boost allegedly hacked-and-leaked materials, a strategy the company notes could be weaponized to undermine U.S. confidence in November’s election outcome.

The findings reveal how even through dramatic changes in the political landscape, groups linked to America’s foreign adversaries have redoubled their commitment to sway U.S. political opinion as the election nears, sometimes through deeply manipulative means. They also provide further insight into how Russia’s efforts to fight pro-Ukrainian policy in the U.S. are translating into escalating attacks on the Democratic presidential ticket.

The report builds on previous concerns the U.S. has had about Russian interference in the upcoming election. Earlier this month, the Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees in an alleged scheme to secretly fund and influence a network of right-wing influencers.

Russia-linked actors have spent several months seeking to manipulate American perspectives with covert postings, but until this point, their efforts saw little traction. Notably, some of the recent examples cited in the Microsoft report received significant social media engagement from unwitting Americans who shared the fake stories with outrage.

“As the election approaches, people get more heated,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center said in an interview. “People tend to take in information from sources they don’t really know or wouldn’t even know to evaluate.”

Microsoft explained that the video blaming Harris for a fake hit-and-run incident came from a Russian-aligned influence network it calls Storm-1516, which other researchers refer to as CopyCop. The video, whose main character is played by an actor, is typical of the group’s efforts to react to current events with authentic-seeming “whistleblower” accounts that may seem like juicy unreported news to U.S. voters, the company said.

The report revealed a second video disseminated by the group, which purported to show two Black men beating up a bloodied white woman at a rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The video racked up thousands of shares on the social platform X and elicited comments like, “This is the kind of stuff to start civil wars.”

Microsoft’s report also pointed to another Russian influence actor it calls Storm-1679 that has recently pivoted from posting about the French election and the Paris Olympics to posting about Harris. Earlier this month, the group posted a manipulated video depicting a Times Square billboard that linked Harris to gender-affirming surgeries.

The content highlighted in the report doesn’t appear to use generative artificial intelligence tools. It instead uses actors and more old-school editing techniques.

Watts said Microsoft has been tracking the use of AI by nation states for more than a year and while foreign actors tried AI initially, many have gone back to basics as they’ve realized AI was “probably more time-consuming and not more effective.”

Asked about Russia’s motivation, Watts said the Russia-aligned groups Microsoft tracks may not necessarily support particular candidates, but they are motivated to undermine anyone who “is supporting Ukraine in their policy.”

Harris has vowed to continue supporting America’s ally Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion if elected president. Trump has demurred when asked about whether he wants Ukraine to win the war, saying in the recent presidential debate, “ I want the war to stop.”

At a forum in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to suggest jokingly that he would support Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming U.S. election. Intelligence officials have said Moscow prefers Trump.

The Harris campaign declined to comment. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft found that Iranian groups have also been laying the groundwork to stoke division in the election by creating fake news sites, impersonating activists and targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack.

U.S. intelligence officials are preparing criminal charges in connection with that attack, which targeted the Trump campaign, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Microsoft’s new report also touches on how a Chinese-linked influence actor has used short-form video to criticize Biden and Harris and to create anti-Trump content, suggesting it doesn’t appear interested in supporting a particular candidate.

Instead, the company said, the China-aligned group’s apparent goal is to “seed doubt and confusion among American voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.”

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The FBI and U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday were investigating suspicious packages that have been sent to or received by elections officials in at least eight states, but there were no immediate reports that any of the packages contained hazardous material.

The latest packages were sent to elections officials in Massachusetts and Missouri, authorities said. The Missouri Secretary of State’s Elections Division received a suspicious package “from an unknown source,” spokesperson JoDonn Chaney said. He said mailroom workers contained the package and no injuries were reported.

It marked the second time in the past year that suspicious packages were mailed to election officials in multiple state offices. The latest scare comes as early voting has begun in several states less than two months ahead of the high-stakes elections for president, Senate, Congress and key statehouse offices around the nation, causing disruption in what is already a tense voting season.

Local election directors are beefing up their security to keep their workers and polling places safe while also ensuring that ballots and voting procedures won’t be tampered with.

On Tuesday, the FBI notified the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office that postal service investigators had identified what they described as a suspicious envelope that had been delivered to a building housing state offices. The package was intercepted and isolated, according to state officials. No employees from the secretary of the commonwealth’s office had contact with the envelope, which is now in the hands of the FBI.

Powder-containing packages were sent to secretaries of state and state election offices in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming and Oklahoma on Monday. The packages forced evacuations in Iowa, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Hazmat crews in several states quickly determined the material was harmless. The FBI and postal service were investigating.

Oklahoma officials said the material sent to the election office there contained flour. Wyoming officials have not yet said if the material sent there was hazardous.

“We have specific protocols in place for situations such as this,” Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement after the evacuation of the six-story Lucas State Office Building in Des Moines. “We immediately reported the incident per our protocols.”

A state office building in Topeka, Kansas, was evacuated due to suspicious mail sent to both the secretary of state and attorney general, Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson April M. McCollum said in a statement.

Topeka Fire Department crews found several pieces of mail with an unknown substance on them, though a field test found no hazardous materials, spokesperson Rosie Nichols said. Several employees in both offices had been exposed to it and had their health monitored, she said.

In Oklahoma, the State Election Board received a suspicious envelope in the mail containing a multi-page document and a white, powdery substance, agency spokesperson Misha Mohr said in an email to The Associated Press. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which oversees security for the Capitol, secured the envelope. Testing determined the substance was flour, Mohr said.

State workers in an office building next to the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne were sent home for the day pending testing of a white substance mailed to the secretary of state’s office.

Suspicious letters were sent to election offices and government buildings in at least six states last November, including the same building in Kansas that received suspicious mail Monday. While some of the letters contained fentanyl, even the suspicious mail that was not toxic delayed the counting of ballots in some local elections.

One of the targeted offices was in Fulton County, Georgia, the largest voting jurisdiction in one of the nation’s most important swing states. Four county election offices in Washington state had to be evacuated as election workers were processing ballots cast, delaying vote-counting.

The letters caused election workers around the country to stock up the overdose reversal medication naloxone.

Election offices across the United States have taken steps to increase the security of their buildings and boost protections for workers amid an onslaught of harassment and threats following the 2020 election and the false claims that it was rigged.

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LeBlanc reported from Boston. Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

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Hung Cao

Age: 53

Employment: Vice President, CACI International

Highest level of education: Master’s degree from Naval Postgraduate School

Party affiliation: Republican

Military service: 25 years in Naval Special Operations (explosive ordnance disposal and deep sea diving)

Website: www.hungforva.com

What do you believe is the greatest problem facing our nation today and what would you propose to address that if elected?

Our open border. Everything that’s going wrong stems from our open border. Housing costs are at an all-time high because there’s millions who were not here a few years ago for which we need to provide housing. The Biden administration spends a billion dollars a day which includes free cell phones and gift cards upon arrival, driving up costs. Our open border is a national security threat as tens of thousands of military-aged males from China, Yemen and Syria enter daily. When I’m elected, my first priority is to secure our border by supporting efforts to finish the wall and root out terrorists who entered the U.S. illegally. We also need to make America energy independent again to lower energy costs, but equally important is ending our reliance on Middle Eastern countries that hate us.

The United States is currently providing significant military aid to Israel and Ukraine. Do you believe the U.S. should continue to provide funding to both or either of these nations? Explain why or why not.

The United States has provided Israel with a lot of support for many years and it is more important than ever to continue to support Israel in every way that we can. We have always been friends of Israel through the Iron Dome and in return, they have provided us with critical intelligence from the region. However, I’ve always been against giving blanket amounts of money. A lot of the money Congress has allocated to Ukraine is going to their retired workers pension plans, but here in the United States, we can barely fund Social Security. We have to pay for Americans’ Social Security benefits before we give out more blank checks.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said the court should reconsider several of its past rulings, including one that protected the right to contraception. Would you support legislation in Congress to codify the right to birth control into law?

If elected, I will protect access to contraception and oppose any bill in the U.S. Senate that would limit access to contraception from the federal level.

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Tim Kaine

Age: 66

Employment: U.S. Senator

Highest level of education: J.D., Harvard Law School

Party affiliation: Democrat

Previous elected offices: 2nd District Member of the Richmond City Council, Mayor of Richmond, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Governor of Virginia, incumbent U.S. Senator from Virginia

Website: timkaine.com

What do you believe is the greatest problem facing our nation today and what would you propose to address that if elected?

The economy, reproductive freedom, and affordable healthcare are issues that I hear about all across Virginia. I’ve proudly helped pass legislation to create good-paying manufacturing jobs and boost investments in shipbuilding. Right now, women are facing threats to reproductive freedom around the country which is why I’m fighting so that women can make their own health care decisions without interference from out-of-touch politicians. I’ve worked to protect the Affordable Care Act and took on Big Pharma to lower the cost of insulin so now no drug company can charge more than $35. I know there’s more work to do which is why I’m focused on lowering costs for working families, protecting reproductive freedom, and making healthcare more affordable.

The United States is currently providing significant military aid to Israel and Ukraine. Do you believe the U.S. should continue to provide funding to both or either of these nations? Explain why or why not.

It is critical that we honor our commitments to our democratic allies around the world. The acts of terror on October 7th were horrific, and I’ve worked across party lines to ensure that Israel has the support it needs. At the same time, much more must be done to protect civilian life in Gaza. We must secure both a hostage release deal and a ceasefire to end the immense suffering in the region. Ukraine is a free nation defending itself, and the U.S. must continue to support them in holding Putin accountable. Hampton Roads is home to the headquarters of NATO in North America, and I’m proud to have passed legislation to prevent any President from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO. It’s critical that Congress continues to support not only Ukraine and our allies around the world.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said the court should reconsider several of its past rulings, including one that protected the right to contraception. Would you support legislation in Congress to codify the right to birth control into law?

Absolutely. I co-sponsored the Right to Contraception Act and worked to introduce the bipartisan Reproductive Freedom For All Act to codify Roe v. Wade in order to protect Americans’ access to abortion and contraception. In the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans have threatened access not only to abortion but also birth control and fertility treatments, a position that is completely out-of-touch with most Virginians and most Americans. My opponent has pledged his support for a national law that could ban abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, and maternal health. I’ll keep fighting to protect access to abortion, birth control, and IVF so that Virginia women are free to make decisions about their own health care and grow their families.

Answers were compiled by The Virginian-Pilot staff. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that would prohibit political campaigns and outside political groups from using artificial intelligence to misrepresent the views of their rivals by pretending to be them.

The introduction of the bill comes as Congress has failed to regulate the fast-evolving technology and experts warn that it threatens to overwhelm voters with misinformation. Those experts have expressed particular concern over the dangers posed by “deepfakes,” AI-generated videos and memes that can look lifelike and cause voters to question what is real and what is fake.

Lawmakers said the bill would give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in elections in the same way it has regulated other political misrepresentation for decades. The FEC has started to consider such regulations.

“Right now, the FEC does not have the teeth, the regulatory authority, to protect the election,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who co-sponsored the legislation. Other sponsors include Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat; Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Washington Democrat; and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican.

Fitzpatrick and Schiff said the odds were against the bill passing this year. Nevertheless, they said they don’t expect the measure to face much opposition and could be attached to a must-pass measure in the waning days the congressional session.

Schiff described the bill as a modest first step in addressing the threat posed by deepfakes and other false AI-generated content, arguing the legislation’s simplicity was an asset.

“This is really probably the lowest hanging fruit there is” in terms of addressing the misuse of AI in politics, Schiff said. “There’s so much more we’re going to need to do, though, to try to attack the avalanche of misinformation and disinformation.”

Congress has been paralyzed on countless issues in recent years, and regulating AI is no exception.

“This is another illustration of congressional dysfunction,” Schiff said.

Schiff and Fitzpatrick are not alone in believing artificial intelligence legislation is needed and can become law. Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, introduced legislation earlier this month that aims to curb the spread of unauthorized AI-generated deepfakes. A bipartisan group of senators proposed companion legislation in the Senate.

Opposition to such legislation has primarily focused on not stifling a burgeoning technology sector or making it easier for another country to become the hub for the AI industry.

Congress doesn’t “want to put a rock on top of innovation either and not allow it to flourish under the right circumstances,” Rep. French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said in August at a reception hosted by the Center for AI Safety. “It’s a balancing act.”

The Federal Election Commission in August took its first step toward regulating AI-generated deepfakes in political advertising when it took a procedural vote after being asked to regulate ads that use artificial intelligence to misrepresent political opponents as saying or doing something they didn’t.

The commission is expected to further discuss the matter on Thursday.

The commission’s efforts followed a request from Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights organization, that the agency clarify whether a 1970s-era law that bans “fraudulent misrepresentation” in campaign communications also applies to AI-generated deepfakes. While the election commission has been criticized in recent years for being ineffective, it does have the ability to take action against campaigns or groups that violate these laws, often through fines.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen who helped the lawmakers write the bill being introduced Tuesday, said he was concerned that fraudulent misrepresentation law only applies to candidates and not parties, outside groups and super PACs.

The bill introduced Tuesday would expand FEC’s jurisdiction to explicitly account for the rapid rise of generative AI’s use in political communications.

Holman noted that some states have passed laws to regulate deepfakes but said federal legislation was necessary to give the Federal Election Commission the clear authority.

This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — The election director in Cobb County, an Atlanta suburb where votes will be fiercely contested in this year’s presidential race, recently organized a five-hour training session. The focus wasn’t solely on the nuts and bolts of running this year’s election. Instead, it brought together election staff and law enforcement to strategize on how to keep workers safe and the process of voting and ballot-counting secure.

Having a local sheriff’s deputy at early voting locations and panic buttons that connect poll managers to a local 911 dispatcher are among the added security steps the office is taking this year.

Tate Fall, Cobb County’s election director, said she was motivated to act after hearing one of her poll workers describe being confronted during the state’s presidential primary in March by an agitated voter who the worker noticed was carrying a gun. The situation ended peacefully, but the poll worker was shaken.

“That made it really real for me — that it’s so easy for something to go sideways in life, period, let alone the environment of Georgia and elections,” Fall said. “I just can’t have someone being harmed on my conscience.”

Across the country, local election directors are beefing up their security in advance of Election Day on Nov. 5 to keep their workers and polling places safe while also ensuring that ballots and voting procedures won’t be tampered with. Their concern isn’t just theoretical. Election offices and those who run them have been targets of harassment and even death threats since the 2020 presidential election, primarily by people acting on former President Donald Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him through widespread fraud or rigged voting machines.

The focus on security comes as threats of political violence have been on the rise. Trump was the target of a potential assassination attempt over the weekend, just nine weeks after another threat on his life. Federal agents last year fatally shot a Trump supporter who threatened to assassinate President Joe Biden, and the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was severely injured in a hammer attack by a man promoting right-wing conspiracy theories.

In just the last year, a gun was fired at a window of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election office, bogus 911 calls were made to the homes of top state election officials in Georgia, Maine, Michigan and Missouri in a potentially dangerous situation known as swatting, and election offices in multiple states were sent letters filled with a white powder that in some cases tested positive for the powerful opioid fentanyl. On Tuesday, the FBI and U.S. Postal Service said they were investigating suspicious packages received by election officials in at least a dozen states, although there was no indication any of them contained hazardous substances.

“This is one of the things that I have to say is just crazy, outrageous to me — the election threats to workers of both parties and their families, the bullying, the harassment,” Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said during a recent agency-sponsored online event. “These folks, they are not doing it for pay. They’re not doing it for glory. They’re doing it because they believe it’s the right thing to do to defend our democracy.”

Her agency has completed more than 1,000 voluntary physical security assessments for election offices since the start of 2023. Election officials have been using that help to identify gaps and request money from their local governments to make upgrades.

They also have been aided by a U.S. Election Assistance Commission decision in 2022 that allowed certain federal money to go toward security features such as badge readers, cameras and protective fencing.

California’s Los Angeles County and Durham County, North Carolina, will have new offices with significant security upgrades for this year’s election. They include bulletproof glass, security cameras and doors that open only with badges. Election workers across the country also will have new procedures for handling mail, including kits of Narcan, the nasal spray used for accidental overdoses.

In Durham County, a central feature of the new office will be a mail processing room with a separate exhaust system to contain potentially hazardous substances sent in the mail.

“We have countless reasons why this investment was critical,” said the county’s election director, Derek Bowens, pointing to threats against election officials in Michigan and Arizona and the suspicious letters sent to offices in Oregon, Washington, California and Georgia.

Bowens and others who have worked in elections for years said their jobs have changed significantly. Threats and harassment are one reason why some election officials across the country have been leaving. In some places, election workers are being trained in de-escalation techniques and how to respond to an active shooter.

“Security to this extent wasn’t on the list before. Now it is,” said Cari-Ann Burgess, the chief election official in Washoe County, Nevada. “We have drills that we work through, we have emergency plans that we have prepared. We are a lot more cautious now than we ever have been.”

In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, about a four-hour drive from where Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in July, election officials estimate they now spend about 40% of their time on security and working with local law enforcement and emergency managers on election plans. This involves regular trainings to prepare for anything that might interfere with voting or counting ballots.

“It’s very volatile, and Luzerne County reflects what is going on across the country” said County Manager Romilda Crocamo, who oversees the election office staff. “It seems that people are very emotional, and sometimes that emotion escalates.”

Crocamo is considering purchasing panic buttons for poll managers who will be at some 130 voting locations throughout the county on Election Day. State law in Pennsylvania prohibits law enforcement from being inside polling locations, but Crocamo and her team are speaking with local officials about having emergency responders with their radios at the sites should something happen.

Many local officials said they have increased the law enforcement presence at election offices, including on election night when poll workers are bringing in ballots and other material from voting locations. Added law enforcement also is planned in the weeks after Election Day, during the canvass of the votes and certifying the results.

In Los Angeles, law enforcement canine teams will be helping scan incoming mail ballots for suspicious substances. It’s part of an updated approach that includes a new $29 million election office that consolidates operations that previously had been spread across the county.

Dean Logan, who oversees elections for Los Angeles County, said security remains a top concern. He pointed to social media posts suggesting ways to damage ballot drop boxes and hamper mail voting. He said the letters with white powder were designed to disrupt election operations, and it’s the responsibility of election officials to ensure that doesn’t happen.

The office will have round-the-clock security and additional staffing from the county sheriff’s department for the November election.

“It’s important to me that we can tell voters they don’t have to be worried about the security of their ballots,” he said. “We’ve taken steps to keep them safe.”

Election officials say security is a balancing act, ensuring safety while making sure polling places are welcoming spaces for voters and providing enough access to election offices so the public can trust the process.

In Michigan four years ago, a large crowd of Trump supporters created a tense and chaotic scene when they gathered outside Detroit’s ballot counting operation the day after the election, chanting “Stop the count!” as they banged on the windows and demanded access.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said her office is much better prepared this time, with more cameras, armed security and bulletproof glass. Observers will now be checked in and screened by security outside a large room used for counting ballots at the city’s convention center.

“My biggest concern was to protect the staff and the process,” Winfrey said. “And in doing so, our building — it may look the same, but it’s not the same.”

A group of former members of Congress wants action before the end of this session on legislation barring lawmakers from owning or trading individual stocks.

The former lawmakers, organized by Issue One, a Washington-based political reform group, on Monday sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., calling for a floor vote on a proposal that advanced out of committee in July. Specifically, the group calls for the legislation to be tacked on to any “must pass” package Congress will take up in the waning days of the 118th Congress.

“Members of Congress are public servants. We want to uphold public service and we want to be more aspirational in what that means,” said Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican who served in the House from 1995 to 2011. “So disconnect yourself from any appearance of wrongdoing. And this has the appearance of wrongdoing.”

Wamp is one of more than 40 former members and officials who signed the letter. Schumer and McConnell did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The issue picked up intensity in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a series of questionable trades by lawmakers who’d been briefed on the global health emergency drew the attention of the public and federal regulators.

Recent efforts to address such trading have fallen flat, but the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s vote to advance a measure gave new hope to those who support stricter rules.

Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat who spent more than a decade in the House in the 1990s and early 2000s, signed on in part because of a perception among voters that members of Congress are “out for themselves.”

“Disclosure and transparency of stocks is simply not enough,” said Roemer, who was the U.S. ambassador to India after leaving Congress. “Insider knowledge, too often, is translated into insider benefit. And public service is not about private profit.”

Federal law already prohibits members from trading on nonpublic information and mandates the public disclosure of assets. But critics argue that the 2012 law lacks teeth. Its punishments are trivial — if applied at all — and members of Congress have continued to participate in the stock market in large numbers. More than half of all representatives and senators owned stocks in the 117th Congress, according to a Campaign Legal Center analysis.

The bipartisan proposal advanced out of committee this summer would significantly tighten existing rules.

Built on a bill led by Sen. Jeff Merkley, dubbed the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, it was a product of compromise between the Oregon Democrat and Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Gary Peters, D-Mich.

“We have momentum on our side to pass the ETHICS Act,” Merkley said in a statement Monday. “And the support of former members provides added fuel. They see the corrupt impact of stock trading, and I appreciate their support and advocacy.”

The legislation as amended would ban members of Congress, as well as the president and vice president, from buying and selling securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts and other comparable holdings. It would require divestiture from all covered assets and impose harsh penalties on members who fail to divest.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who is one of the wealthiest senators and isn’t seeking reelection, said the bill was too harsh and could disincentive qualified candidates to run for office. Roemer — who remembered owning stocks in individual companies while in Congress, but said none exceeded $1,000 in value — didn’t entirely disagree.

Roemer, like Romney, called the bill punitive. But he said he didn’t have concerns that it would turn away prospective public servants.

“I do think that once, hopefully, we pass this, that there might be some ways to learn from what’s happening in Congress and how it’s cleaned things up and to amend it later on,” Roemer said. “But we have to start with something, and I think this is the right place to start, given how far the pendulum has swung … and the American people’s eroding trust in institutions.”

Wamp referred to a July 2023 survey conducted by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy that found 87% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats favored a proposal to bar members from owning or trading stocks in individual companies (though the proposal polled included a provision allowing qualified blind trusts).

“Very, very rarely does any issue ever poll at 87% and 88% support among Democrats and Republicans,” Wamp said. “This is one of those things that could be done simply, quickly and help the Congress help themselves.”

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©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Donald Trump headlined an event billed as the unveiling of a crypto platform promoted by the Republican nominee and his sons, putting the spotlight on a niche digital-asset sector with a history of controversy.

The project, World Liberty Financial, will be part of the decentralized finance segment of digital assets and is supposed to help with financial security and being able to transact freely, Trump’s son Donald Jr. said in an X Spaces livestream on Monday.

“It’s a real problem that needed to be addressed, and honestly I think this is the way,” Donald Jr. said after comments from his father. The launch came a day after the former president emerged unscathed from a second apparent assassination attempt, the latest shock to roil the presidential contest.

The Republican nominee has pivoted to courting the digital-asset sector in search of donations and votes amid a tight race for the White House, even vowing to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.” His stance is an about-face given that he previously denounced Bitcoin as a “scam.”

On the goal of becoming the key crypto hub, Donald Trump said: “If we don’t do it, China is going to do it. China is doing it anyway. But if we don’t do it, we’re not going to be the biggest, and we have to be the biggest and the best.”

Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. began promoting World Liberty Financial on X and Telegram in recent weeks. Decentralized finance — or DeFi — is an arcane crypto sector, where people trade, lend and borrow digital assets peer-to-peer using automated software.

“The effort is consistent with Trump’s pro-crypto policy stance,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University. “It’s one thing to say you are pro-crypto, and other to launch a company in the space.”

The former president’s profile may make many more people aware of DeFi, proponents of which often claim gains in efficiency resulting from cutting out traditional intermediaries like banks. Critics argue the sector rests in a regulatory gray zone and is prone to hacks, a bugbear for crypto as a whole.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

NEW YORK (AP) — Hours after an apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life over the weekend, Elon Musk took to his social platform X to post a thinking emoji and a comment that “no one is even trying to assassinate” the Democratic president and vice president.

In the midst of anti-Muslim riots in the U.K. — which were ginned up by a false rumor — Musk declared that “civil war is inevitable” in the country.

And when an anonymous X user distorted data to claim a surge in sketchy voter registrations in three U.S. states, Musk amplified the false post and called it “extremely concerning.”

All three posts sparked quick backlash from public officials who called Musk’s words irresponsible and misleading. As his words amass millions of views and thousands of shares, they also illustrate the ability of one of the world’s most influential people to spread fear, hate and misinformation during fraught political moments around the world. That’s especially true because he owns the social platform that used to be Twitter, giving Musk the authority to shape how its content reaches users.

Musk’s inaccurate posts to his 200 million followers along with his site’s lack of guardrails are raising concerns about how he could manipulate public trust as Election Day in the U.S. draws nearer. He recently endorsed Trump’s presidential bid and has become more personally invested in politics — even agreeing to lead a government efficiency commission if Trump wins reelection.

Trump gave a shoutout to Musk during an event on X Monday evening, basking in the tech billionaire’s endorsement and referring to him as his “friend.” Musk did not reply to an emailed request for comment.

At the very least, experts and election officials worry that Musk could influence people to question the legitimacy of the vote. But they also are concerned his words could motivate threats and violence against election workers or candidates.

“X and Musk are raising the temperature of politics dangerously and irresponsibly at a critical moment,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “It’s shameful.”

The 53-year-old billionaire who bought and transformed Twitter in 2022 has modeled his social media site as a marketplace of ideas where people can speak freely without censorship, a move that has been cheered by many conservatives. He often has touted X as a superior news source to the mainstream media, one where users can post without fear and discern the “truth.”

Yet the changes Musk has made to the company over two years also have allowed false information to spread largely unchecked.

He has dismantled the company’s Trust and Safety advisory group and stopped enforcing content moderation and hate speech rules that the site followed before his takeover. He has restored the accounts of conspiracy theorists, incentivized engagement on the platform with payouts and content partnerships, and instituted a Community Notes feature that at times results in misleading comments being placed on posts.

Baseless claims from both sides of the political spectrum rack up thousands of shares on Musk’s X. After a gunman shot Trump in the ear in an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania, far-left users shared false conspiracy theories that the former president had set it up. And after the debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, far-right users spread a bogus claim that Harris was wearing an earpiece.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Musk has degraded the site so that it’s just a shadow of what it was in 2020, when it was regarded as a fairly reliable clearinghouse for information.

“Twitter, or X, has a very different public reputation now. There’s a reason millions of people left the platform and advertisers left,” Hasen said. “He’s spreading terrible messages. … The question is will the marketplace of ideas work well enough” that people will recognize those messages as untrustworthy, Hasen added.

Musk and many Republicans disagree with that sentiment. They say the site under its previous ownership unfairly censored accurate information about COVID-19’s origins and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden when the facts were not immediately available.

Musk uses his platform to post about his companies Tesla and SpaceX, to share his personal views that more people need to be having children, and to make jokes in response to memes and other content that he finds entertaining. He also has increasingly used the site to amplify unfounded claims from politicians, including that Democrats are “importing” migrants into the country to vote and that Haitian migrants in Ohio are killing and eating pets.

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview earlier this month that Musk’s election postings have created a “maelstrom of disinformation” that makes it harder for those who run elections to empower voters with the facts.

“I know the vast majority of election administrators just try to keep their heads down and do the work,” she said. “The challenge is, how do we get information about our work out to citizens, many of whom follow Musk or are members of X, or on the platform?”

Some election officials have tried engaging with Musk directly to educate him and his followers. In July, the Republican recorder responsible for elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, invited Musk through an X post to an all-access tour of the county’s election facility.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, organized a letter to Musk with four other secretaries of state this summer when Musk’s AI platform, Grok, was posting incorrect information about election rules. He said Musk deserved credit for belatedly correcting that misinformation.

Simon said that before Musk bought Twitter, the platform was helpful in correcting election misinformation and that he hopes Musk can do the same, whatever his personal beliefs.

“It’s one thing if you don’t like this election system or that election system in Minnesota,” Simon said, but factually false information about voting needs to be fixed.

Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also commented last month on one of Musk’s posts to correct a misconception that most elections in the U.S. don’t use paper ballots. She wrote that during the last presidential election in 2020, “all States w/close presidential vote counts actually used paper records, allowing votes to be counted, recounted, & audited to ensure accuracy.”

The X owner has at times backtracked when he recognizes his posts were ill-advised. Earlier this month, he sparked outrage when one of his posts promoted an interview between the right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson and a Holocaust revisionist. He then deleted it.

Musk also deleted Sunday’s post musing about how Biden and Harris had not been targeted by assassination attempts. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates nonetheless responded to call the post “irresponsible” and to say violence “should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, said most celebrities are careful about their words, recognizing that not everyone will understand their jokes or respond in a measured way. Musk, he said, has never had that kind of filter.

Even so, Vaidhyanathan said Musk’s influence might be overblown when it comes to political misinformation. His platform has lost money and advertisers, and he’s only one of many figures who have long made false claims about elections.

“Musk is just one more voice in that cacophony,” he said.

Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Chris Megerian in Washington and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Vice President Kamala Harris struck a measured tone, even steering clear of mentioning Donald Trump by name Tuesday in an interview with Black journalists that starkly contrasted with the former president’s own, highly contentious, recent appearance before the same group.

The session with the National Association of Black Journalists was one of the few extensive sit-down interviews Harris has done since replacing President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket in July. She repeatedly criticized Trump on issues including his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and opposition to abortion access, but was careful to refer to him as the former president and in other ways that avoided naming him directly.

Trump was ramping up his campaigning, too, after the presidential race was roiled by Sunday’s second apparent assassination attempt against him.

The former president was holding an evening town hall in Flint, Michigan, and has appearances later in the week in New York, Washington and North Carolina. Trump re-upped his past retaliation threats against election workers, donors and others as he tries to stoke fears about the integrity of the upcoming 2024 election.

He posted Tuesday on his social media site, “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before.”

Harris has her own stops in Washington, as well as Michigan and Wisconsin in coming days, with the two candidates overlapping in concentrating on the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania and North Carolina — all swing areas that could decide an election expected to be exceedingly close.

Harris answered questions from three association journalists at a small, relatively quiet venue at the Philadelphia studios of public radio station WHYY. That was very different from Trump’s addressing the NABJ conference in Chicago in July, when he was antagonistic to the moderators and sparked an uproar by questioning the vice president’s racial identity.

Her manner was a departure from her campaign rallies, where Harris often receives some of her loudest applause by declaring that her professional background as a prosecutor means, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Pressed about reports of eroding support among Black male voters, Harris said she wasn’t “assuming I’m gonna have it because I’m Black.” She ducked a question about whether she’d support efforts by some congressional Democrats for reparations from the government to compensate descendants of slaves for years of unpaid labor by their ancestors.

Biden has backed the idea of at least studying reparations.

As for Sunday’s arrest at Trump’s Florida golf course, she said she reached him by phone, checking in “to see if he’s OK.”

“I told him what I have said publicly, there’s no place for political violence in our country,” the vice president said. The White House described the conversation as cordial and brief.

In an earlier interview released Tuesday, the vice president told Spanish-language radio host Chiquibaby, “Like all Americans, I’m grateful” Trump was unharmed.

The former president has claimed, without evidence, that months of criticism against him by Harris and Biden, who call him a threat to American democracy, inspired the latest attack. That’s despite Trump’s own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.

“(asterisk)I really believe that the rhetoric from the Democrats” is “making the bullets fly And it’s very dangerous. Dangerous for them. It’s dangerous for both sides,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.

So far, Biden and Harris have tried to avoid politics in their responses to Sunday’s incident, instead condemning political violence of all kinds. The president also urged Congress to increase funding to the Secret Service.

Authorities say Ryan Wesley Routh camped outside the golf course in West Palm Beach, where Trump was playing on Sunday, for nearly 12 hours with food and a rifle but fled without firing shots when a Secret Service agent spotted and shot at him.

Subsequently arrested, Routh’s past online posts suggest he has not been consistent about his politics in terms of supporting Democrats or Republicans. The attack came barely two months after Trump was wounded during a rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said at a Georgia Faith & Freedom Coalition event that “it’s popular on a lot of corners of the left to say that we have a both sides problem.” But “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during her briefing with reporters Tuesday that there should be zero tolerance for violence-inciting rhetoric. She bristled at the suggestion that Biden and Harris have stoked division by calling Trump a threat to democracy, saying that there were concrete examples of the former president being that — such as when he helped incite an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In response to Vance’s comments, Jean-Pierre said, “When you have that type of language out there it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because people look up to that particular national leader, and they listen to you.” She said such comments open the door for “people to take you very seriously.”

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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Matt Brown in Philadelphia and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.