Trump to attend Alabama vs Georgia game while new poll shows Harris with slim lead in swing states: Live

Donald Trump boasted of a “very good relationship” with both Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin on Friday as he hosted the Ukrainian leader for a meeting at his New York City skyscraper.

The former president also repeated a bizarre boast that he could, if re-elected in November, negotiate an end to the nearly three-year Russian war against Ukraine.

Trump, who was impeached in 2019 for using American defense assistance to pressure Zelensky to launch sham investigations into President Joe Biden and his son, was being briefed on Kyiv’s latest plan for victory against Putin.

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Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday said the US government is duty-bound to “set rules at our border and to enforce them” as she called for reform of the American immigration system.

The immigration system should work “in an orderly way, that it is humane” and “makes our country stronger,” she said during a speech at Cochise College in Douglas, Arizona, after visiting the US border wall.

She also slammed her 2024 election opponent, former President Donald Trump, for commanding his Republican allies to vote against a bipartisan immigration and border reform package that experts said was stronger than any similar legislation considered by Congress in decades.

The vice president said the “dedicated agents” of the US Border Patrol and customs officers “need more resources to do their jobs,” which is why she supported the bipartisan legislation that would’ve provided funds to hire 1,500 more Border Patrol officers and purchase 100 machines to detect fentanyl at the border.

Andrew Feinberg has the story.

A few times tonight, Trump has faced questions from voters who said they had just been laid off, or were facing job cuts, in the auto manufacturing sector.

In response, Trump has said basically the same thing: If we put tariffs on everyone, end EV supports, and cut taxes, all your problems will be solved.

As Trump told one questioner, Todd, “You have one thing to do. You have to elect a person with business talent and common sense and this whole thing is going to turn around very quickly.” Refering, of course, to a person like one Donald Trump.

The former president promised that Todd’s auto plant would go from facing reductions to “making more than they’ve ever made in a very short period of time.”

The promise is an appealing one, but the subtance of Trump’s economic plans, meanwhile, are a bit less developed, as Alex Woodward reports.

Trump is arguing that Joe Biden is forcing U.S. automakers to build electric cars in China, which is not true.

“He sold you out,” Trump told the crowd, talking about United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, “because he let Biden, who doesn’t know what he’s doing, he let this guy come up with an all-electric mandate. Those cars are all going to be built in China.”

In fact, Biden has overseen nearly $2bn in investment in U.S. EV manufacturing, part of a move to make the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. electric or hybrids by 2032.

Here’s more on Fain and Trump.

Michigan is the heart of U.S. auto manufacturing, and as expected, Trump is starting off by pitching his audience on his economic plans, including in response to a question from a recently laid off deisel engine builder.

“If they want to do business in the United States, they have to make their products, whether it’s cars or anything else, we want them to make their product, have their plant in the United States,” Trump said of the goals of his proposed tariff regime.

Here’s more on Trump’s tariff plans.

The tumult of Eric Adams’s indictment on federal charges as part of a long-running corruption case has much of New York’s media and political classes already consumed by speculation around who will take over the mayoralty.

But they’re also talking about another New Yorker who is far from likely to be seeking that job: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rising progressive star of the New York congressional delegation. Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken backbencher in the Democratic House caucus, was one of the very first state electeds to call for Adams to resign as the feds closed in around him.

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Donald Trump is finally onstage in Warren, Michigan, after about an hour and a half of the crowd waiting for him to arrive.

We’ll track the latest from his town hall event.

Vice President Kamala Harris is making her first visit to the US-Mexico border as a candidate for the presidency to challenge Donald Trump on what has been his signature issue since he first ran for president in 2015.

Harris arrived Friday afternoon at a site along the US border wall in Douglas, Arizona, where she was greeted by a pair of uniformed officers from the US Border Patrol.

The two officers and the vice president chatted as they walked along a path next to the section of the wall, which was constructed during the Obama administration and is not part of the wall built during Trump’s presidency.

Asked what she’d learned from the Border Patrol officials, Harris replied: “They’ve got a tough job and they need, rightly, support to do their job. They are very dedicated. And so I’m here to talk with them about what we can continue to do to support them. And also thank them for the hard work they do.”

Andrew Feinberg reports.

Trump hasn’t shown up yet, but the campaign is playing a pre-recorded video of the former president encouraging supporters to “swamp” the vote, including through early ballots.

It’s a reminder of the Republican’s baffling stance on mail-in voting, which he alternatively dismisses as corrupt and praises as vital to his campaign.