President Biden and first lady to make ‘strong case’ to elect Harris at DNC on Monday night

(DETROIT) — Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota blitzed the country on Labor Day, making a concerted effort to court union workers ahead of the November election.

Harris kicked off Labor Day in Detroit, Michigan, meeting with union members and delivering brief remarks. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell joined Harris.

“The way we celebrate Labor Day is we know that hard work is good work; we know that when we organize, when we bring everyone together,” Harris said at the Northwestern High School gym in Detroit. “It’s a joyful moment where we are committed to doing the hard work of lifting up America’s families, and I want to thank everyone here for that work and the way you do it every day.”

“So, on Labor Day, and every day, we celebrate the dignity of work,” she later added. “The dignity of work, we celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build America’s middle class.”

Harris also credited union labor with many current workplace standards.

“Everywhere I go, I tell people, look, you may not be a union member, you better thank a union member; for the five-day work week, you better thank a union member; for sick leave, you better thank a union member,” she said. “For paid leave you better thank a union member for vacation time. Because what we know is when union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”

Union leaders, including United Autoworkers President Shawn Fain and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, stood behind Harris on stage as he delivered her remarks. They took the stage shortly before Harris.

Harris was set to join Biden later Monday in Pittsburgh at a union hall for the pair’s first joint campaign event since Biden dropped his bid for reelection. They will both deliver informal remarks, the Harris campaign said. The United Steelworkers, AFSCME, and other unions will be in attendance, as well as Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Mayor Ed Gainey and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio.

Walz and his wife, Gwen, started off the day meeting with laborers in St. Paul, Minnesota, before attending Laborfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to prominent labor groups, including SEIU, Teamsters, and United Autoworkers, Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Gwen Moore and Mayor Cavalier Johnson were there.

Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff was in Newport News, Virginia, to participate in Rep. Bobby Scott’s annual Labor Day Cookout and deliver remarks, the campaign said.

“Vice President Harris always put workers first and held powerful interests accountable. As California’s attorney general, she fought wage theft to make sure workers got the pay they earned. As senator, she fought tirelessly for the most vulnerable workers, walking the picket line with UAW and McDonald’s workers and introducing a domestic workers’ bill of rights,” the campaign said in a statement.

“Vice President Harris chairs The White House Task Force on Worker Organizing, which made it easier for working people to exercise their right to join a union,” the campaign continued.

“Meanwhile, Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in history,” the Harris campaign later added, criticizing former President Donald Trump. “He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor advocates. He hurt autoworkers, shipped jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of the super wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the middle class.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Amid escalating rhetoric from former President Donald Trump threatening to prosecute his enemies should he win the 2024 election, Attorney General Merrick Garland will deliver remarks to the Justice Department workforce Thursday urging they continue to adhere to longstanding principles intended to protect DOJ from improper politicization.

“Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations,” Garland will say, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks provided to reporters.

Garland will add, “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon. And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”

The remarks come as Garland has sought to refute allegations from Trump and his allies of weaponization of the department through its prosecution of individuals involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s dueling prosecutions of Trump himself for his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Those close to Garland have disputed those accusations as baseless — pointing in part to DOJ’s prosecution and conviction of Democrats like disgraced New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez on corruption charges as well as the separate Special Counsel prosecutions of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Trump and his allies, in turn, have ramped up in recent months their promises to use the Justice Department as a tool of retribution against his political enemies — with Trump in a Truth Social post over the weekend threatening “long term prison sentences” for “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” he baselessly accused of being involved in “cheating” in the 2020 and 2024 elections.

According to the excerpts, Garland will forcefully rebuke what he describes as a “dangerous — and outrageous” spike in threats targeting DOJ employees under his tenure.

“Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work,” Garland will say. “These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.”

Garland will use his remarks specifically to point to steps taken during his tenure he says have been aimed at isolating the department from allegations of politicization, such as re-implementing policies intended to limit contacts with the White House.

Those policies, however, were complicated by the Supreme Court’s July ruling that effectively granted Trump immunity in his federal election subversion case over his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the election. The court’s conservative majority determined that Trump and other presidents should be shielded from any criminal liability for contacts with the DOJ, that they said clearly fall within the chief executive’s core powers.

As a result, Special Counsel Smith returned a superseding indictment two weeks ago against Trump that stripped out any mentions of the alleged DOJ plot.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s conversation with Elon Musk on X Monday night started almost an hour late as the social media platform was plagued with technical difficulties before the two were connected for a conversation that covered illegal border crossings, the pandemic, and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

For about 40 minutes, listeners who could get into X Spaces were greeted with hold music, with Musk eventually claiming on X that the site appeared to be facing “a massive DDOS,” Distributed Denial of Service attack.

Eventually, at about a quarter to 9 p.m. ET, Musk kickstarted the conversation, praising the former president for how he handled the assassination attempt on his life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, mentioning Trump shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as Secret Service took him off stage.

“When I stood up before the hand, before the, you know, the fist in the air, they didn’t know if I was alive. Nobody did. And when I put the fist up, they were, they were just relieved and happy and thrilled, and the place went crazy,” Trump told Musk as the two talked about the incident for over 20 minutes.

Throughout the conversation, Trump returned to familiar talking points, including praising authoritarian leaders, slamming and calling President Joe Biden names, and disparaging immigrants.

During their talk, one topic of contention came up between the two — climate change, though Musk called it “global warming.” Musk repeatedly advocated for sustainable energy during the chat, while Trump continuously stumped for fossil fuels, claiming instead he’s more concerned about “nuclear warming.”

“I’ve heard, in terms of the fossil fuel, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity needed for the electric car, you know, fossil fuel is what really creates that, at the generating plants,” Trump said after Musk talked about the possibility of air being uncomfortable to breathe in the future.

Musk pushed back, telling Trump he wasn’t claiming “the house is on fire immediately,” but that “it’s probably better to move there faster than slower … without vilifying the oil and gas industry and without causing hardship in the short term.”

Still, as he mentioned global threats, Trump joked there would be “more oceanfront property” due to rising sea levels and global warming.

“You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one 1/8 of an inch over the next 400 years, and you’ll have more, you’ll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power,” Trump claimed.

Both men railed against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with Trump slamming her over the border, without mentioning he told the GOP members of the House to tank the recent comprehensive immigration bill that GOP Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford helped author.

“She’s saying she was strong on the border. ‘We’re going to be strong.’ Well, she doesn’t have to say [it]; she could close it up right now. … They could do things right now. It’s horrible,” Trump said.

During the X conversation, Trump once again claimed — without evidence — that President Biden leaving the race was a “coup.”

Trump continued to complain about Harris throughout the talk, bringing up her new TIME magazine cover, saying she looked like his wife, Melania Trump. He also argued that the vice president had gotten a makeover in the media.

“She is terrible. She’s terrible, but she’s getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on TIME magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing and actually looked very much like our great first lady, Melania … She didn’t look like Kamala,” Trump said, mispronouncing the vice president’s name.

Wrapping up just after Trump praised Musk for the audience size of their Spaces chat, which seemed to reach around 1.3 million at peak, Musk reaffirmed his support for Trump.

“I think we’re in massive trouble, frankly, with a Kamala administration, and that’s my honest opinion,” Musk said. “I think, really, it’s essential that, that you win for the good of the country this election.”

Reacting to the chat, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign slammed the pair as “self-obsessed rich guys.”

“Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com. Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024,” a statement from the Harris campaign rep said.

The campaign also poked fun at the more than 40-minute wait for the interview to begin by resharing on the Kamala HQ Truth Social account a previous Trump post on Truth Social which criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch event on X last year that was also delayed by glitches.

“Wow! the DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” the post read.

Last May, DeSantis had planned to begin his audio-only campaign launch with Musk, but repeated issues and crashes stalled the start of the Spaces event for almost 30 minutes, after alternating stretches of silence and crackling audio.

At one point, the Spaces was abruptly ended and then restarted — all as Musk and others could apparently be heard discussing the malfunctions behind the scenes.

Musk suggested during the DeSantis presidential campaign broadcast that the problems were due to strain on the platform’s servers and “scaling issues” because his own account was involved and has a following of 140 million users.

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