Vance says Harris can ‘go to hell’ in critical remarks on Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal – live | US elections 2024

JD Vance said at a rally that Kamala Harris can “go to hell” as he heavily criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate was speaking at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. Republicans have long sought to use the Afghanistan pullout to attack Joe Biden and are now using the same line of criticism against Harris in hopes of defeating the Democrat in November.

Mike Waltz, a Republican congressman, shared a statement from the families of US soldiers killed and injured during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, who said they approved of Donald Trump’s campaign staff taking photos and videos during his visit to Arlington national cemetery on Monday:

However, according to NPR, an Arlington official got into an altercation with Trump’s campaign staff because the former president’s entourage had been visiting a section of the grounds where only cemetery employees can take photos.

It’s unclear whether Trump having the permission of some of the families of those buried there is relevant to the cemetery’s policies.

JD Vance said the Trump campaign was given permission to have a photographer present during his visit this week to a section of Arlington national cemetery where photography is not allowed.

“There is verifiable evidence that the campaign was allowed to have a photographer there … they were invited to have a photographer there,” Vance said during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.

NPR has reported that two Trump campaign staffers got in an altercation with a Arlington official for filming and taking pictures in a section of the cemetery reserved for recent US military casualties, and where only staff members are allowed to use cameras.

Addressing reports of a scuffle, Vance said: “The altercation at Arlington cemetery is the media creating a story where I really don’t think that there is one,” and, “Apparently somebody at Arlington cemetery, some staff member, had a little disagreement with somebody, and they have turned the media has turned this into a national news story.”

The US supreme court has declined a request from the Biden administration to allow a plan that would lower or pause federal student debt payments for borrowers to take effect, the Associated Press reports.

Joe Biden proposed the plan, known as Save, after a previous attempt to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans was blocked by the supreme court’s conservative majority. Republican-led states sued over the Save plan, and have won rulings against it at the appeals level.

Today’s decision from the nation’s highest court will allow those rulings to stand while litigation plays out.

Here’s more, from the AP:

The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”

The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.

Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.

Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.

But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.

The gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, viewed the event as a “target of opportunity”, the FBI revealed today, according to the Associated Press.

The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, Kevin Rojek, told reporters that Thomas Crooks, who opened fire on Trump, searched on the internet for: “Where will Trump speak from at Butler Farm Show?” “Butler Farm Show podium” and “Butler Farm Show photos” ahead of the former president’s rally in July.

However, Rojek said that Crooks’s motive remains a mystery: “We have a clear idea of mindset, but we are not ready to make any conclusive statements regarding motive at this time.”

The gunman who tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July searched more than 60 times for information about Trump and Joe Biden, before registering for the Trump rally, according to a new Reuters report that cites FBI officials.

Reuters also reported that Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s top official in western Pennsylvania, said that the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Crooks, mounted a “sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some events, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets”.

Crooks then became “hyper focused” on the Trump rally after it was announced, Rojek said.

According to USA Today, Rojek said that Crooks researched the Trump and Biden campaigns between April and July 2024.

Controversy brews over a report that campaign staffers for Donald Trump were involved in a physical altercation with an official from Arlington national cemetery, which he visited earlier this week. Trump’s former defense secretary Mark Esper told CNN he was waiting to hear the outcome of an investigation into the scuffle, while saying the cemetery should never be used for “partisan political purposes”. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s communications director indicated that her campaign and Trump’s were still not on the same page about the rules for their 10 September debate, with the sticking point being whether the candidates’ microphones would be live when it was not their turn to talk. Trump seems to want them switched off, while Harris’s people want them on.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who is Harris’s running mate, invited unionized firefighters to tune into the debate, saying: “It’s going to be good.”

• Clips of JD Vance attacking people who do not have children keep emerging.

• Trump continued to rail against the gag order imposed on him in his hush money case, saying it is preventing him from talking about the “most important and corrupt aspects” of his prosecution.

Donald Trump yesterday said he had agreed on the rules for his 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, but a spokesman for the vice-president indicates they still are not on the same page over whether the microphones will be on or off when it is not a candidate’s turn to speak.

Trump yesterday said he had agreed to the same rules that governed his June debate with Joe Biden. In that case, microphones were muted when it was not time for him or the president to talk.

In an interview with CNN today, the Harris campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler implied that Trump had agreed that microphones would be on throughout – something the former president has not explicitly said.

“We’re going to have a 90-minute debate. Both candidates have said that they are comfortable with live, unmuted microphones for the duration of the debate that allows for the free flow and exchange of ideas between the two candidates. I understand that Donald Trump’s team of handlers is now attempting to overrule him. But as insofar as the candidates themselves, we’re in total alignment that this should be a 90-minute debate with live microphones. And so that’s what we look forward to,” Tyler said.

Asked if Harris would attend the debate, hosted by ABC News, if microphones are not always on, Tyler replied:

We fully intend to debate. We’re going to be there. The question is, will Donald Trump commit to the terms that he’s publicly agreed to? Or will he let his team overrule him? So I guess we’ll see if when he shows up on September 10, which decision he has made.