“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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The GOP presidential nominee’s full response fell short of offering a coherent vision or policy for how he’d address child care needs, as he pivoted to promoting his proposed tariffs on imported goods to the U.S. and touting the revenue they would bring in.

Asked if he would “commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable” and “what specific piece of legislation” he would support during a Q&A session at the Economic Club of New York Thursday, Trump said:

“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.

“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country.

“Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in.

“We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”

Trump’s response went viral online after the clip and transcript were shared, sparking criticism from the campaign of Democratic presidential rival Kamala Harris and leaving policy experts across the ideological spectrum baffled.

“Somewhere in that incoherent word salad was a claim that the proposed tariffs could both balance the budget and pay for free child care across the country, which is of course mathematically absurd,” said Brian Riedl, an economic policy expert with the conservative Manhattan Institute and a former policy adviser to prominent Republicans. “Trump sounded like the student who hadn’t studied for the test and was making up numbers.”

The Harris campaign responded by attacking Trump’s tariffs while highlighting her proposals to expand the child tax credit.

“Billionaire-bought Donald Trump’s ‘plan’ for making child care more affordable is to impose a $3,900 tax hike on middle class families,” Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said, citing estimates from two think tanks on the impact of Trump’s tariff plan. “The American people deserve a President who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’ plan to bring back a $3,600 Child Tax Credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”

The Harris proposal is less aggressive than what the Biden White House has endorsed for families with children, which includes capping child care expenses for the middle class at 7% of income, as well as universal preschool. The Harris campaign didn’t respond when asked if she’d push for those provisions if elected president.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates mocked Trump’s answer during a Friday interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“If you have any idea what the hell that answer means, you’re a better detective than I am,” Bates said, before citing analyses by nonpartisan experts that Trump’s tariffs would limit economic growth.

Reshma Saujani, who asked Trump the child care question at the Economic Club of New York, told NBC News after the event that the former president’s answer “kind of blew my mind.”

“He basically said that child care was not that expensive or that tariffs would solve it,” said Saujani, who is a member of the board and said the club had invited her to ask Trump a question. “That demonstrates to me how out of touch he really is. If you’re talking to parents and moms and families on the campaign trail, they’re talking about child care and the cost of it.”

In her question to Trump, Saujani, a founder of the groups Moms First and Girls Who Code, cited statistics showing that child care costs a total of $122 billion a year and described it as “one of the most urgent economic issues facing our country.”

She asked him to mention a specific piece of legislation he would advance to address the problem.

Trump did not answer her directly. Instead, he talked about the amount of money that would come into the U.S. through tariffs on foreign countries. He seemed to be suggesting that those sums could more than pay for child care needs, although he did not outline a plan for how the government should cover them.

For her part, Saujani believes Trump was making a different point that she called “shocking”: that the cost of child care is not that a big problem for the U.S. when compared to the sums involved in tariff collection.

Asked to clarify his response, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt replied: “President Trump’s first-term economic policies uplifted families by putting more money in our pockets, while making expanded access to childcare and paid family leave top priorities in his Administration. Now in Kamala Harris’ America, hardworking families are struggling to buy basic groceries, diapers, and baby formula for their children. President Trump will make America strong, safe, and prosperous again for struggling American families when he returns to the White House.”

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Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.

It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.

Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”

“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he added.

Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They argued that punishing the former president and current Republican nominee in the thick of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.

Trump’s lawyers argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also allow him time to weigh next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to reverse his conviction and dismiss the case because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.

In his order Friday, Merchan delayed a decision on that until Nov. 12.

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to have the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize the case from Merchan’s state court. Had they been successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.

Trump is appealing the federal court ruling.

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The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and did not take a position on the defense’s delay request.

“A jury of 12 New Yorkers swiftly and unanimously convicted Donald Trump of 34 felony counts. The Manhattan D.A.’s Office stands ready for sentencing on the new date set by the court,” a spokesperson for Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg told NBC News.

Messages seeking comment were left for Trump’s lawyers.

Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after the date Sept. 18.

Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.

Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case — brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat — was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current campaign.

Democrats backing their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his conviction a focus of their messaging.

In speeches at the party’s conviction in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, labeled Trump a “career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star to prove it.”

Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inspired chants of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.

In seeking the delay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 and sentencing, which was to have taken place two days later, was unfair to Trump.

To prepare for a Sept. 18 sentencing, the lawyers said, prosecutors would be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he would need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” they said.

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.

The Republican nominee and accuser E. Jean Carroll, a writer, sat at tables about 15 feet apart, in a federal appeals court. He didn’t acknowledge or look at Carroll as he passed directly in front of her on the way in and out, but he shook his head at points, such as when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer told 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.

“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that the jury was allowed to consider such items as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted years ago about grabbing women’s genitals.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago.

“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.

Trump left court in a motorcade before staging a news conference at Trump Tower where he said again that Carroll was telling a “made up, fabricated story.” Carroll, standing with Kaplan outside the courthouse afterward, declined to comment.

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The three-judge panel, if it follows the pattern of other appeals, would be unlikely to rule for weeks, if not months.

A jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He denies it. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.

Trump did not attend the trial and has expressed regret that he was not there.

The civil case has both political and financial implications for Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has jabbed at Trump over the jury’s verdict, noting repeatedly that he had been found liable for sexual abuse.

And last January, a second jury awarded Carroll another $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump had made about her while he was president, finding that they were defamatory. That jury had been instructed by the judge that it had to accept the first jury’s finding that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll.

Trump, 78, testified less than three minutes at the second trial and was not permitted to refute conclusions reached by the May 2023 jury. Still, he was animated in the courtroom throughout the two-week trial, and jurors could hear him grumbling about the case.

The appeal of that trial’s outcome, which Trump labeled “absolutely ridiculous!” immediately afterward, will be heard by the appeals court at a later date.

Carroll, 80, testified during both trials that her life as an Elle magazine columnist was spoiled by Trump’s public comments, which she said ignited such hate against her that she received death threats and feared going outside the upstate New York cabin where she lives.

During Friday’s arguments, Trump’s attorney said testimony from witnesses who said Carroll told them about the 1996 encounter with Trump immediately afterward was improper because the witnesses had “egregious bias” against Trump.

Sauer also attacked the trial judge’s decision to let two other women testify about similar acts of sex abuse they say Trump committed against them in the 1970s and in 2005. He denies those allegations.

Trump’s lawyers have also argued that Kaplan wrongly disallowed evidence that Carroll lied during her deposition, and other evidence they say would reveal bias and motives to lie for Carroll and other witnesses against Trump. The verdict, they wrote, was “unjust and erroneous,” resulting from “flawed and prejudicial evidentiary rulings.”

The judge is no relation to Carroll’s attorney.

Trump has insisted that Carroll made up the story about being attacked to sell a new book. He has denied knowing her.

Trump’s lawyers also challenged the repeated airing at trial of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” videotape, in which Trump is heard saying that he sometimes just starts kissing beautiful women and “when you’re a star they let you do it.” He also said that a star can grab women’s genitals because “you can do anything.”

In their written arguments, Carroll’s lawyers said Trump was wrongly demanding “a do-over” based on unfounded “sweeping complaints of unfairness” and other “distortions of the record, misstatements or misapplications of the law, and a steadfast disregard of the district court’s reasoning.”

“There was no error here, let alone a violation of Trump’s substantial rights. This Court should affirm,” Carroll’s lawyers said.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

Indictments announced Thursday by the Department of Justice allege that Dimitri Simes and his wife received over $1 million dollars and a personal car and driver in exchange for work they did for Russia’s Channel One since June 2022. The network was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Simes, 76, and his wife, Anastasia Simes, have a home in Virginia and are believed to be in Russia.

“These defendants allegedly violated sanctions that were put in place in response to Russia’s illegal aggression in Ukraine,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said in a statement announcing the indictments. “Such violations harm our national security interests — a fact that Dimitri Simes, with the deep experience he gained in national affairs after fleeing the Soviet Union and becoming a U.S. citizen, should have uniquely appreciated.”

The indictments come at a time of renewed concern about Russian efforts to meddle with the upcoming U.S. election using online disinformation and propaganda. On Wednesday federal authorities charged two employees of the Russian media organization RT with covertly funding a Tennessee company that produced pro-Russian content.

Simes, who led a Washington think tank called the Center for the National Interest, figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.

The report chronicles interactions that the Soviet-born Simes, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, had with assorted figures in Trump’s orbit, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Before one such meeting, according to the Mueller report, Simes sent Kushner a letter detailing potential talking points for Trump about Russia and also passed along derogatory information about Bill Clinton that was then forwarded to other representatives of the campaign.

Simes’s think tank helped arrange a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington at which Simes introduced Trump. Among those present was Sergei Kislyak, the then-Russian ambassador to the U.S.

Simes was never charged with any crime in relation to the investigation.

After the report was released, Simes defended himself in an interview in The Washington Post: “I did not see anything in the Mueller report that in any way that would indicate any questionable activity on my part or on the center’s part.”

A second indictment alleges that Anastasia Simes, 55, received funds from sanctioned Russian businessman Alexander Udodov. Udodov was sanctioned last year for his support for the Russian government. He is the former brother-in-law of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and has been linked to business dealings with both of them. Udodov also has been investigated for money laundering.

If convicted of the charges, the couple face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Messages left with an attorney for Simes and the Trump campaign were not immediately returned on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York found that there was no good cause to grant Trump’s lawyers permission to even file a motion.

The judge’s order said that in arguing “good cause” to move the case, Trump primarily argued that the state judge presiding over the criminal case, Juan Merchan, is biased against him and that the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling from July presents a valid federal defense for the hush money case.

Hellerstein rejected both arguments, finding first that a state court judge’s alleged bias does not present a federal question that would justify jurisdiction in a federal court.

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Hellerstein also held that his July 2023 conclusion he had made that removal of the case was not warranted — which followed briefing and an evidentiary hearing — remained the same because “the hush money payments were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”

Hellerstein rejected a similar attempt last year, but Trump’s attorneys argued the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity in a separate Trump criminal case presents a valid federal defense to his conviction.

The judge’s decision comes after prosecutors in New York urged Merchan not to allow Trump’s eleventh-hour effort to move the case to federal court to prevent him from ruling on pending motions in the historic state criminal case. 

Trump has asked Merchan to set aside the jury’s verdict because it allegedly relied on evidence of Trump’s “official,” and therefore immune, conduct, but also has requested that Merchan delay his sentencing until after the November election. Both motions are still pending.

“Federal law is clear that proceedings in this Court need not be stayed pending the district court’s resolution of defendant’s removal notice,” the DA’s letter said. It also added that “the concerns defendant expresses about timing are a function of his own strategic and dilatory litigation tactics: This second notice of removal comes nearly ten months after defendant voluntarily abandoned his appeal from his first, unsuccessful effort to remove this case; three months after he was found guilty by a jury on thirty-four felony counts; and nearly two months after defendant asked this Court to consider his CPL § 330.30 motion for a new trial.”

The DA’s office opposes Trump’s efforts to overturn the verdict and contends the impact of the “official acts” that were referred to in the case were negligible.

Merchan is expected to rule on that matter Sept. 16 — two days before Trump’s sentencing.

Prosecutors have also said they would defer to the judge on pushing back the Sept. 18 date in order to give Trump “adequate time” to try an appeal, but also urged him to pronounce sentence “without unreasonable delay.”

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He also waived the right to be present at his arraignment, where he will be charged with the same four counts from last year’s original indictment.

“I, President Donald J. Trump…do hereby waive my right to be present at Arraignment and I authorize my attorneys to enter a plea of not guilty on my behalf to each and every count of the superseding indictment,” he said in the filing.

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Special counsel Jack Smith’s office said in a court filing last week that it would not oppose Trump waiving his appearance on the charges, which are the same as the ones he pleaded not guilty to last August: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

Smith sought the revised indictment from a new grand jury after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on presidential immunity that barred federal prosecutors from using certain “official acts” Trump took in his role as president in their case against him.

The new indictment omits evidence from the previous one that could be construed as having to do with official acts, including Trump’s alleged conversations with Justice Department officials and White House advisers about his false claims of election fraud and ways to overturn the 2020 results.

Much of the superseding indictment is the same as the original, with prosecutors maintaining Trump didn’t actually believe the lies he was spreading in the wake of his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden and that he knew that they were not true.

“These claims were unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing, and the Defendant and his co-conspirators repeated them even after they were publicly disproven,” the fresh indictment says. “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”

Smith’s office said in its filing last week that the revised indictment “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”

Trump blasted that indictment on social media shortly after it was filed, calling it a “direct on democracy.”

“The case has to do with ‘Conspiracy to Obstruct the 2020 Presidential Election,’ when they are the ones that did the obstructing of the Election, not me,” he wrote.

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Democrats on the House Oversight Committee asked Donald Trump to show proof that he never received any money from Egypt, following a recent report on a nearly $10 million withdrawal from the nation’s state-run bank days before Trump became president in 2017.

The Democrats in a letter Tuesday said they were looking into allegations that Trump took a “cash bribe” from Egypt’s president, and that former Attorney General Bill Barr and others blocked a Department of Justice probe into that potential bribe.

The letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat, and Rep. Robert Garcia, the minority leader of a subcommittee on national security, was spurred by a report in The Washington Post that revealed the existence of the secret DOJ probe.

“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president — took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” they wrote.

They also asked Trump to provide information about a $10 million lump sum that Trump put into his own campaign in late 2016, including any funding sources that he used to repay the “contribution or loan.”

The Post first reported on the letter from Raskin and Garcia on Tuesday morning. The Democrats on the Republican-majority panel do not have the authority to issue subpoenas.

Asked about the letter, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told CNBC in an email, “This is textbook Fake News.”

“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed. None of the allegations or insinuations being reported on have any basis in fact,” Cheung said.

“The media is consistently played for suckers by Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors peddling hoaxes and shams,” he added.

The Post reported on Aug. 2 that federal investigators had received classified intelligence suggesting that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to boost Trump’s victorious 2016 presidential campaign with a $10 million donation.

The investigators, from a team assembled by former special counsel Robert Mueller, reportedly learned in 2019 that the state-run National Bank of Egypt had carried out a request to withdraw $9,998,000 by packing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags.

The Jan. 15, 2017 withdrawal request was executed the same day, just five days before Trump’s presidential inauguration, according to the Post’s investigation.

The discovery of that withdrawal appeared to bolster the claim that Sisi sought to give Trump money.

Trump had previously announced on Oct. 28, 2016, that he would make a $10 million contribution to his own campaign. But in order to persuade Trump to approve the transaction, his then-campaign finance chairman had structured it as a loan that could be repaid, the Post reported.

In early 2019, Mueller’s team reportedly handed the Egypt probe to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., helmed at the time by Jessie Liu, a Trump appointee.

Liu had suggested she was open to subpoenaing a set of Trump’s bank records, but later expressed hesitancy after conferring with Barr, the Post reported. Liu also privately signaled worry about exposing the DOJ to more accusations of interfering in a presidential election, since Trump by that time had announced his 2020 reelection campaign.

Liu in late 2019 was nominated to a role in the Treasury Department. Her successor, Timothy Shea, reportedly reacted negatively to the Egypt case.

He was replaced in May 2020 by Michael Sherwin, who decided to close the case for lack of evidence, according to the Post.

In Tuesday’s letter, Raskin and Garcia wrote, “We are certain you can see how significant troubling questions still haunt our country about the origins of your $10 million campaign contribution, the source of any repayment, and the credible allegations that it was all funded with cash provided by President El-Sisi through his grim intelligence services.”

They also wrote that the allegations stemming from the Post’s reporting “are especially alarming” in light of “several proven patterns of corrupt practices exhibited by both the Egyptian government and by you, of course, as a convicted felon, fraudster and corrupt politician.”

During former President Donald Trump ‘s administration, her office under the U.S. Department of Agriculture was told it would be moving. About 75 people were going to be relocated to Kansas City, Missouri, Dodson said, but less than 40 actually moved. A rushed process that failed to consider the need to find homes, jobs for spouses and schools for children prompted some retirements, she said, and some took other federal jobs, hurting the agency in the end.

Now, with Trump proposing the relocation of up to 100,000 federal jobs from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia under his Agenda 47 plan, concerns about being abruptly moved are again troubling federal workers. The Republican’s proposals stir anxiety in the midst of an unusually competitive U.S. Senate race in heavily Democratic Maryland that could determine control of the Senate, with even the Republican candidate calling the plans “crazy.” The proposals also could hinder Trump’s chances to win Virginia, a state he lost in 2016 and 2020, where a U.S. Senate seat widely seen as safely Democratic is also on the ballot.

“It’s causing a lot of anxiety, a lot of discomfort within the workforce, as you are faced with these strong, negative, anti-federal worker stances and this uncertainty of what might happen to your job, your home and your livelihood,” said Dodson, who is acting vice president of American Federation of Government Employees local 3403, which represents the USDA’s Economic Research Service.

And concerns don’t end there. Federal workers also are worried about “Project 2025,” a proposed overhaul of the federal government crafted by longtime Trump allies that would eliminate thousands of jobs and remove civil service protections for some federal workers. The former president has repeatedly distanced himself from the proposal this summer.

But the plan still worries Michael Knowles. He said it calls for making the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ D.C. presence “skeletal, and agency employees with operational or security roles should be rotated out to offices throughout the United States.”

Knowles, who is president of AFGE local 1924, said most of his members took an oath to uphold the Constitution and faithfully administer the laws of the United States. He said the members, who all work in the National Capital Region, are committed to the mission of government service.

“And they would do what they need to do to carry out that mission,” Knowles said. “But I think the employees would look dimly on arbitrary or capricious decisions that didn’t seem to make any business or operational sense.”

Trump’s campaign did not return requests for comment.

The District of Columbia has the largest number of federal civilian employees, with about 160,700 jobs, according to the Congressional Research Service. Maryland and Virginia are in the top four jurisdictions, with about 138,940 in Maryland and 140,400 in Virginia. California has about 142,040.

The proposals to move a large number of federal workers infuriate local leaders in the suburbs of Washington in both Maryland and Virginia. In Maryland, a heavily blue state where Trump is deeply unpopular, it’s viewed by many as retaliation by the former president, who received only 32% of the vote there in 2020.

Trump made headlines while he was in office when he denigrated Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Angela Alsobrooks, the chief executive of Prince George’s County who is the Democratic nominee in the Maryland U.S. Senate race, described Trump’s positions on the federal workforce “as yet another reason that we absolutely must put Donald Trump in the rearview mirror.”

“Former President Trump is a ruthless leader, retaliatory in all his ways, and what he talks about in terms of really harming federal workers is evil,” Alsobrooks said after returning from the Democratic National Convention last month.

Former Gov. Larry Hogan, her Republican opponent, condemned the relocation proposals as “crazy.” He said they “would be devastating to the region, the state of Maryland and bad for the federal government.”

“It’s like, you know, Trump trying to turn the federal government into one of his failed casinos, where he thinks he can do whatever he wants,” Hogan, who has long been one of the GOP’s fiercest Trump critics, said in an interview. “I think it would undermine our entire democracy.”

Businesses that provide services to the thousands of federal workers fear the ripple-effect threat of the proposed changes. At Census Auto Repair & Sales, for example, across the street from the U.S. Census Bureau’s headquarters in Suitland, Maryland, service manager Tay Gibson says his shop would feel the impact directly.

“I would hate to see the federal workers leave,” Gibson said. “That would be business leaving as well, and that would affect small businesses like myself.”

Libby Garvey, chair of the Arlington County Board in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, emphasized the potential hit on the local economy.

“If a large proportion of (tax payers) suddenly lose their jobs (or have to) move away, that takes a terrible, major hit to our local budget, which impacts our ability to pave the roads, make sure the water is clean, provide public safety, fire, police, emergency personnel and provide good schools,” Garvey said.

Karen Hult, a political science professor at Virginia Tech, said the move could harm Trump’s chances in Virginia.

“Federal workers around Northern Virginia, and in the D.C. metro area generally, are, in fact, a bit of a voting bloc,” Hult said “The other thing, of course, are all the contractors — the beltway bandits. They make a big difference, too.”

But Hult also said the idea of relocating federal workers could resonate with Virginians outside of the northern part of the state, who may feel a distrust of the D.C. bureaucracy.

Filipe Campante, a Bloomberg Distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on political economy and urban and regional issues, noted that there’s a reason why capital cities exist, with the presence of federal employees nearby. Physical presence, he said, is necessary for face-to-face interactions that are important to maintaining accountability.

While Trump and his supporters see the relocation as a positive in terms of moving the “deep state” away from the seat of government, Campante said it also has a downside.

“I think it is a positive factor for accountability that you have civil servants also operating as a check on political appointees, and this would be weakened by moving these people away from where the center of the government is, so I think from that perspective it would reduce accountability,” Campante said. “Obviously, then, it depends on whether you think this accountability is good or not.”

—-

Witte reported from Annapolis and Suitland, Maryland.

“In Florida, like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3,” the former president wrote, adding, “Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly. We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities.”

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Trump framed his position as one consistent with his “Make America Safe Again” agenda, writing that criminalizing marijuana would “waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them.”

He added, “no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana. We will make America SAFE again!”

The marijuana ballot measure, if passed, would “allow adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption.”

The state Supreme Court ruled in April to allow the measure on the 2024 ballot.

The post came after Trump’s campaign had to clarify his stance on another ballot measure in Florida, one that would guarantee a constitutional right to abortion in the state.

Florida currently has a six-week abortion ban and on Thursday, Trump told NBC News that the limit is “too short.”

“It has to be more time,” he added.

His comments drew fire from the anti-abortion rights movement, with figures like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser saying in a statement, “I spoke with President Trump this evening. He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4. President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position.”

A day later, on Friday, Trump clarified his remarks, saying, “I’ll be voting no,” on the abortion rights ballot measure.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee asked the federal court in Manhattan to seize the case from the state court where it was brought and tried, arguing that the historic prosecution violated Trump’s constitutional rights and ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.

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Trump’s lawyers said moving the case to federal court following his May 30 conviction will give him an “unbiased forum, free from local hostilities” to address those issues. If the case is moved to federal court, Trump lawyers wrote, they will then seek to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed. If it remains in state court, with sentencing proceeding as scheduled, it could amount to election interference, they said.

“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 Presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in a 64-page U.S. District Court court filing.

Trump was convicted in state court in Manhattan of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a payment to bury affair allegations that threatened to cloud his 2016 presidential run. Even if the case isn’t moved to federal court, the potential delay caused by litigation surrounding Trump’s effort could give him a critical reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.

Separately, the state court judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, is weighing Trump’s requests to postpone sentencing until after Election Day, Nov. 5, and to overturn the verdict and dismiss the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

The high court’s July 1 ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the deal to pay hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s lawyers had previously invoked presidential immunity in a failed bid last year to get the hush money case moved from state court to federal court. A federal judge rejected that request, clearing the way for Trump’s historic trial in state court.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s claim that allegations in the hush money indictment involved official duties, writing in July 2023, “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event.”

“Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties,” Hellerstein added.

A message seeking comment was left with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

For more from NBC Out, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill detained by police before Week 1 win; marks TD with handcuff celebration
• Speaker Johnson’s government funding strategy is on life support as defections mount
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This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

“A nameless bureaucrat at Arlington whose job it is to preserve the dignity of the cemetery is doing the complete opposite in trying to make what was a very solemn and respectful event into something it was not,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, a retired Marine who was with Trump at the cemetery Monday.

Trump has long portrayed himself as a champion of service members and veterans — an image bolstered by participants in Monday’s ceremony. But he has also created a pattern of disparaging service members that has led even some former aides to question the authenticity of his support for the military.

The latest episode threatens to blunt his attacks on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over a 2021 terrorist assault at the so-called Abbey Gate of the Kabul airport, which killed 13 American service members.

It was the third anniversary of the bombings, which occurred during the harried U.S. exit from Afghanistan, that took Trump to the Arlington burial ground, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, on Monday. He laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to honor those who died in the bombings and then moved to Section 60, an area reserved for participants in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Trump was joined at both sites by family members of the men and women killed at Abbey Gate. The family members invited him to participate in the commemoration, and they wanted the moment to be documented, according to two people who were present.

“I gave my permission,” Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Staff Sgt. Darin “Taylor” Hoover, told NBC News. “I wanted the memories. I wanted to make sure that my family at home — I have a huge family — I wanted to make sure that they were involved with it, as well, and they could see it and feel it, have the experience that we had. And so I said, yeah, in no uncertain terms, I was OK with it.”

Trump posed for a photograph beside Hoover’s grave, smiling and giving a thumbs-up gesture in a shot that included the headstones of other service members who were not part of Monday’s ceremony.

A federal regulation admonishes that memorial services at Army cemeteries “will not include partisan political activities.”

There is no greater sacrifice than giving one’s life in defense of our country. It was my solemn privilege to stand alongside the family of Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover at Arlington National Cemetery today as we paid tribute to his legacy and the 12 others who lost their lives… pic.twitter.com/tR6dhpMYsB

— Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox (@GovCox) August 26, 2024

NPR first reported Tuesday that two Trump campaign staffers had a confrontation with a cemetery official who tried to prevent them from filming.

“We can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed,” the cemetery said in a statement.

Whatever happened, Barnett and another participant — who asked to remain anonymous without authorization to speak for the families — said they noticed nothing amiss.

“We didn’t even hear about it until the next day,” the second participant said, who did not believe Trump’s participation amounted to campaign activity.

“It wasn’t politicized,” this person said.

Trump posted video that included clips from Monday’s ceremony to his TikTok account. In the video, he blamed Biden and Harris for the deaths at the Kabul airport.

Trump, like most Republican presidential candidates in recent decades, has won the majority of voters who have served in the military, according to exit polls. But his edge was smaller in his defeat in 2020 — 54% to 44% — than when he won that part of the electorate 61% to 34% in taking the presidency in 2016.

His aides have publicly dismissed the report of a physical interaction at the cemetery and accused Democrats of ignoring the anniversary, which is the most poignant reminder of a withdrawal that was politically damaging to Biden.

“They’re trying to muddle the fact that there was only one commander in chief in Arlington on Aug. 26,” LaCivita said. He noted that Biden was on vacation and that Harris did not visit Arlington on the anniversary. Both of them issued statements. 

Neither Trump nor Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, served in uniform. Their running mates, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., did.

Harris’ campaign declined to comment on the report of an altercation at Arlington, but its communications director, Michael Tyler, addressed it in a CNN interview Wednesday.

“Frankly, I think this episode is pretty sad when it’s all said and done,” Tyler said. “Listen, this is what we’ve come to expect from Donald Trump and his team. Donald Trump is a person who wants to make everything all about Donald Trump. He’s also somebody who has a history of demeaning and degrading military service members, those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.”

A Trump adviser who spoke with NBC News pointed to a statement signed by five Gold Star family members and two Purple Heart recipients who were with Trump on Monday defending him amid the firestorm. They said in the statement that they gave approval for Trump’s videographer and photographer to capture those moments so they could “cherish these memories forever.”

“Everything involved in the day was at their invitation,” this person said. “It wasn’t a campaign event. It was an event done by the families of these people, and they invited the commander-in-chief who has consistently demonstrated strong and unwavering support for them and all service members and their families.”

This person said that Trump was “grateful” for the invitation and that he would show “how committed he is when he’s back in the White House to ensure that the people who manufactured that insane and disastrous withdrawal are held accountable for it.”

The Trump campaign’s handling of the episode after details leaked to the media raised some eyebrows among Republicans, particularly a statement in which communications director Steven Cheung said “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”

A Republican operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the statement “so unprofessional.” A Trump ally, meanwhile, said the “behavior” outlined at the cemetery was “really out of character” for the campaign.

For years, Trump has faced accusations of showing disrespect to veterans and service members.

Early this year, he mocked the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for being unable to raise his arms because of injuries he sustained as a prisoner of war. In 2015, he also said McCain was not a “war hero” because “he was captured.”

“I like people that weren’t captured,” he said at the time.

McCain, a veteran of the Vietnam War, gained national recognition for his time as a prisoner of war in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was tortured.

This cycle, Trump also questioned why Nikki Haley’s husband was not with her on the campaign trail during the Republican primaries. Maj. Michael Haley was serving overseas at the time.

Just this month, Trump described the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is a civilian honor, as “much better” than the Medal of Honor, a military honor, because recipients of the latter are often deceased or severely injured.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said last year his former boss denigrated veterans and service members as “suckers” and “losers,” confirming remarks that were published in The Atlantic years earlier. Trump has vehemently and repeatedly denied making such comments.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and Army veteran, pointed to Trump’s comments about the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, adding that the episode at Arlington National Cemetery appeared to be a “continuation of something that I just find really problematic.”

“There is this attacking of those with military service and this increasing politicization and disrespect for those who have chosen to serve this country,” he said, adding that he still wanted to learn more details about what happened between Trump’s staff and the cemetery official.

At their convention last week, Democrats took Trump to task over military issues, emphasizing a theme of patriotism. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Trump “does not understand the service and sacrifice of our military” and that he was the only president since World War II who has not “honored our veterans and their sacrifices.”

But for Republicans, the episode served to further shine a light on what they see as one of the Biden administration’s biggest failings in Afghanistan, a key piece of their message on global instability over the past four years.

“The veterans that I talk to feel disrespected and disappointed, certainly at their commander in chief, in the direction of the United States militarily,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Rob Mercuri, a veteran and congressional candidate in the 17th District, which is a swing district with a large veteran population. “The only thing I would say about President Trump is that his plan is to project strength. My view is that the Reagan Doctrine of peace through strength is really important to come back to.”

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Alex Seitz-Wald contributed.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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The new indictment removes a section of the indictment that had accused Trump of trying to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to overturn his election loss, an area of conduct for which the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion last month, said that Trump was absolutely immune from prosecution.

The stripped-down criminal case represents a first effort by prosecutors to comply with a Supreme Court opinion likely to result in a significant revision of the allegations against Trump over his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power. It was filed three days ahead of a deadline for prosecutors and defense lawyers to tell the judge in the case how they wanted to proceed in light of that opinion, which said former presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for official White House acts.

The two sides will be back in court for a status hearing next week, the first such appearance in months given that the case had been effectively frozen since last December as Trump’s immunity appeal worked its way through the justice system.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the new indictment “an act of desperation” and an “effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt.’” He said the new case has “all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY. ”

The special counsel’s office said the updated indictment, filed in federal court in Washington, was issued by a grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case. It said in a statement that the indictment “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”

The central revision in the updated criminal case concerns Trump’s dealings with the Justice Department.

The original indictment included allegations that Trump tried to enlist the department in his failed effort to undo his election loss, including by conducting sham investigations and telling states — incorrectly — that significant fraud had been detected.

It detailed how Jeffrey Clark, a top official in the Trump Justice Department, wanted to send a letter to elected officials in certain states falsely claiming that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” and had asked top department officials to sign it, but they refused.

Clark’s support for Trump’s election fraud claims led Trump to openly contemplate naming him as acting attorney general in place of Jeffrey Rosen, who led the department in the final weeks of the Trump administration. Trump ultimately relented in that idea “when he was told it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department,” according to the original indictment. Rosen remained on as acting attorney general through the end of Trump’s tenure

The new case no longer references Clark as a co-conspirator. Trump’s co-conspirators were not named in either indictment, but they have been identified through public records and other means.

In its opinion, the Supreme Court held that a president’s interactions with the Justice Department constitute official acts for which he is entitled to immunity, effectively stripping those allegations from the case.

“As we have explained, the President’s power to remove ‘executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed’ may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The justices returned other core allegations in the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the trial judge presiding over the case, to determine what constitutes an official act protected from prosecution — and what does not.

The new indictment still includes one of the more stunning allegations brought by Smith — that Trump participated in a scheme orchestrated by allies to enlist slates of fraudulent electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had won in those states.

It also retains allegations that Trump sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes, and that Trump and his allies exploited the chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to further delay the certification of Biden’s victory.

Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the interactions between Trump and Pence amounted to official conduct for which “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.”

The question, Roberts wrote, is whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity.”

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the ruling. In an excerpt from an interview with CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” that aired Tuesday, she said: “I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same.”

In paperwork filed ahead of oral arguments next month, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said the current Republican nominee’s appeal is awash in “meritless legal arguments” and ignores volumes of trial evidence showing that he and his co-defendants engaged in “fraud and illegality on an immense scale.”

“On appeal, defendants tellingly ignore almost all their deceptions,” Assistant Solicitor General Daniel S. Magy wrote in a 168-page submission to the state’s mid-level appeals court known as the Appellate Division.

Trump, his company and top executives including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. “created and used financial statements rife with blatant misrepresentations and omissions to maintain loans worth more than half a billion dollars and to generate over $360 million in ill-gotten profits,” Magy wrote.

The Appellate Division said Wednesday that it will hear the case on Sept. 26, about six weeks before Election Day and just after the start of early voting in some states. The court typically rules about a month after arguments, meaning a decision could come before the presidential race ends.

If upheld, the judgment threatens to dent Trump’s personal wealth, disrupt his Trump Organization and damage his identity as a savvy businessman. As of Wednesday, the Trump defendants owe more than $485 million. That includes interest that continues to accrue even after Trump posted a $175 million bond in April to halt collection of the sum and prevent the state from seizing his assets while he appeals.

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Trump is asking the Appellate Division to overturn Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 finding that he lied to banks, insurers and others about his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals. He and his lawyers argue the verdict was “erroneous” and “egregious.”

The Appellate Division could either uphold Engoron’s verdict, reduce or modify the penalty or overturn the decision entirely. If Trump is unsuccessful at the Appellate Division, he can ask the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to consider taking his case. If he wins, he won’t have to pay the state anything and will get back his bond money.

Trump and his lawyers contend the case should never have gone to trial, the statute of limitations barred some allegations, and the state shouldn’t be policing private business transactions. They also object to the legal mechanics of James’ lawsuit, arguing that the law she sued him under is a consumer-protection statute that’s normally used to rein in businesses that rip off customers.

Trump denies wrongdoing and he and his lawyers say no one was harmed. He has decried the verdict as “election interference” and “weaponization against a political opponent,” complaining he was being punished for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.” James and Engoron are Democrats.

In their response Wednesday, state lawyers said the statute of limitations was applied properly and that state law authorizes the state’s attorney general to take action against fraudulent or illegal business conduct, “regardless of whether it targets consumers, small businesses, large corporations, or other individuals or entities.”

Wednesday’s scheduling of oral arguments adds to a busy September for Trump, as he campaigns to retake the White House while navigating the aftermath of multiple courtroom losses.

Trump is scheduled to debate his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, on Sept. 10. On Sept. 16, the judge in Trump’s hush money criminal case is expected to rule on a defense request to overturn his felony conviction and dismiss the case on presidential immunity grounds. Two days later, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in the criminal case — though his lawyers have asked that it be postponed until after Election Day, Nov. 5.

Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives schemed for years to puff up his financial statements to create an illusion that he and his properties were more valuable than they really were. Trump inflated his net worth on the financial statements by as much as $800 million to $2.2 billion a year, state lawyers said.

In addition to the hefty monetary penalty, the judge put strict limitations on the ability of Trump’s company to do business. Among other consequences, Engoron put the Trump Organization under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor for at least three years.

If upheld, Engoron’s ruling will force Trump to give up a sizable chunk of his fortune. The judge ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties, accounting for what he deemed “ill-gotten gains” derived from his inflated financial statements, including lower loan interest rates and profits from projects he wouldn’t have otherwise been able to finish.

With interest the total was $485.2 million as of Wednesday — including $20.6 million in interest that has accrued since the verdict. The sum will increase by nearly $112,000 per day until he pays, unless the verdict is overturned.

Trump maintains that he is worth several billion dollars and testified last year that he had about $400 million in cash, in addition to properties and other investments. James has said that if Trump is unable to pay, she will seek to seize some of his assets.

In a filing last month, Trump’s lawyers said that if Engoron’s decision is upheld, it would bestow James with “limitless power” to target anyone she desires, including her self-described political opponents.

“Our primary focus is not to get out the vote, it is to make sure they don’t cheat,” Trump said in remarks at a campaign event in Asheboro, N.C., a state that Vice President Kamala Harris‘ campaign views as competitive this year.

“We have all the votes we’ll need,” Trump said, indicating he’s not concerned about boosting voter turnout in his base. “You can see it…every house along the way has signs: Trump, Trump, Trump, Vance, Trump, Vance.”

“We are going to fight like hell to win this election,” he added. “They are going to cheat like hell to win the election because they have no bounds.”

When reached for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt defended the remarks.

“As President Trump has always said, our focus is on ensuring this election is too big to rig and protecting the vote!” she said in an email.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.

The former president, who has been indicted over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has been laying the foundation to undermine the 2024 results if he loses.

Trump has asserted, for example, that Google is rigging the election and has said that New York courts are interfering in the electoral process through his hush money trial and related gag order.

He has also falsely claimed for years that the 2020 election was stolen.

“The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020 and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024,” Trump said at a rally last weekend in Wilkes-Barre Township, Pennsylvania.

Trump has been asked numerous times if he will accept the 2024 election results even if he loses, and he has consistently qualified his response.

“If I do, and it’s free and fair, absolutely, I will accept the results,” he told CBS News on Monday.

Trump has previously downplayed the need to boost his vote count.

“My instruction — we don’t need the votes. I have so many votes,” he told Fox News last month.

At the same time, he has encouraged his supporters to do what it takes to vote for him.

“If you want to save America, get your friends, get your family and everyone you know and vote. Vote early, vote absentee, vote on election day. Do whatever you want, but you have to vote,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta this month.

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The images Trump shared had originally been posted on X by highly followed pro-Trump accounts. One of those accounts also posted multiple guides to using generative AI tools on its Substack blog. In a reply on X, the same account acknowledged that the images Trump reposted from them were AI-generated. 

The new images are part of a social media campaign that some pro-Trump accounts spearheaded over the weekend trying to suggest that more and more fans of Swift, who endorsed Biden and harshly criticized Trump in 2020, are turning to support Trump. In reality, there is little evidence this is the case for a notable number of Swift’s fans, who are called “Swifties.”

“There is no Swifties For Trump movement — but there should be,” wrote one of the accounts that Trump reposted on Truth Social in a caption on the AI-generated images.

Other pro-Trump accounts have also shared AI-generated images that falsely depict Democrat-leaning voter blocs, like Black voters, supporting Trump. 

Two of the images Trump shared on Sunday were of real people and featured a Liberty University college student who had a political communications internship this summer, according to her LinkedIn account. Her “Swifties for Trump” social media content flew under the radar with fewer than 1,000 views until large pro-Trump accounts, and then Trump himself, shared it. 

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The same pro-Trump accounts have also reshared TikToks from women who say they are Swift fans and are voting for Trump, in an effort to promote the idea that Swifties are mobilizing en masse to support Trump. But these videos received far fewer views on TikTok than they did when Trump and his highly followed supporters reshared them.

Representatives for Trump’s campaign and Swift didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Swift has yet to endorse any candidate in 2024, but some of her fans have mobilized to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. Shortly after President Joe Biden announced he was not running for re-election in July, a group called “Swifties for Kamala” launched on social media. It has more than 61,000 followers on X and is not affiliated with the singer or Harris.

“We do not represent every Swiftie, but I think there is a reason we don’t need AI to show our support for Kamala,” the organization’s co-founder, Irene Kim, told NBC News in a statement. 

AI-generated images and videos of Swift have repeatedly gone viral this year, from sexually suggestive ones that broke X’s platform guidelines to other ones that falsely identified Swift as a Trump supporter. 

Throughout his presidential term and his campaigns, Trump has repeatedly shared inflammatory memes created by his  online supporters. Up until 2021 he shared them on Twitter, but after he was banned from the platform that year, he has shared them on his own Twitter copycat platform, Truth Social. Trump has since returned to posting on X, with an uptick starting Aug. 12, the day he was interviewed by Elon Musk on the platform. Over the weekend, Trump posted a fake image of Harris standing in front of a communist symbol on both X and Truth Social. 

It’s not yet clear if the Sunday post or the images violate certain laws around publicity, likeness and AI. In March, Swift’s home state of Tennessee passed updated legislation to protect the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness with AI. While the account that acknowledged the photos were AI-generated labeled them as satire, the account that first published the “Uncle Sam” poster using Swift’s likeness did not. 

David Greene, the civil liberties director and senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NBC News that this situation, which is not exclusive to AI-generated content,  could overlap with publicity laws that protect people from unauthorized commercial use of their likenesses.

“This is probably a stronger case than many others because false endorsement is at the heart of those claims, though we typically see that in terms of product endorsements,” Greene wrote in an email. “This was just good old low-tech lying.”

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The branded Bible, listed in the disclosure as “The Greenwood Bible,” sells for $59.99 and includes a handwritten chorus to the song “God Bless the U.S.A.” by country singer Lee Greenwood, according to the branded Bible’s website. A limited edition copy that is said to bear Trump’s signature is also available on the website for $1,000.

Trump also has more than $1 million in cryptocurrency, the new documents show. His disclosure included details about a cryptocurrency wallet and “virtual ethereum key” holdings that he valued at $1 million to $5 million.

Trump’s public positions on crypto have shifted since he first took office, when he said the digital currency was a scam.

He has since embraced a hands-off approach from the government, with his campaign touting that he’s building a “crypto army.”

The shift came after lobbying from the industry — and signs that fostering the growth of crypto was popular among a segment of Trump’s base, particularly young men who spend time online.

“And I know a lot of very good people that are really into that world and into that market. They’re smart, they’re good people, and they think it’s going to be very beneficial,” Trump said recently on a livestream with streamer Adin Ross, adding that if the U.S. isn’t involved in crypto, China will be.

In his financial disclosure form last year, Trump estimated the value of Truth Social, his social media company, to hover between $5 million and $25 million. He valued the company, referred to as Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., at more than $50 million this year.

He had also reported two trademarks in China in the previous disclosure, a number that increased drastically to more than 100 by NBC News’ tally in his 2024 disclosure.

After they announce their candidacies, federal candidates and officeholders are required to file financial disclosures every year that typically provide general information about assets, investments and income.

Ginger Gibson and Christina Wilkie, CNBC contributed to this story

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Bulletproof glass of this kind is already available to sitting presidents and vice presidents. It is transported using military aircraft whenever the president travels, but Trump, a candidate and former president, does not have access to this military transportation support. Sources who asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive security provisions said the ballistic glass will now be prepositioned around the country and moved in by agents who will be responsible for guarding the material.

Not every outdoor event will require ballistic glass, but in order to better protect Trump, it is likely to be used whenever there are issues at specific sites or needs for added security.

It is one of several security measures previously only used for officeholders but that is now being added to Trump’s protection after a failed assassination attempt, one of the officials said.

The official said the Secret Service is also increasing manpower and technology to mitigate threats around Trump during outdoor rallies, as well as more frequent threat analysis and prevention for all protective details, including counter-snipers and counter-surveillance.

The Secret Service faced intense scrutiny and criticism after a gunman fired multiple times at Trump during an outdoor rally on July 13 in Butler, Pa., wounding him and two rallygoers and killing one other.

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said after the shooting that she was bolstering the protective details of the candidates for president.

Trump has not held an outdoor campaign event since the attempted assassination. 

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The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said it has issued an arrest warrant for Toby Shane Kessler, 39, of no fixed address, on a burglary charge in connection with the break-in.

The sheriff’s office says Kessler was captured on surveillance video Sunday night forcing his way through a back door into the office building in Ashburn. The office is being leased by the Trump campaign and serves as headquarters for the Virginia 10th District Republican Committee. The suspect’s face was captured clearly on the surveillance video.

According to the sheriff’s office, Kessler spent a brief time in the office and it’s unclear whether he took anything. They do not believe he left anything behind.

Thomas Julia, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said Wednesday that it’s too early to say whether there was any political motivation to the break-in and that authorities will know more once Kessler is arrested.

The sheriff’s office said Kessler has a history of criminal behavior and appears to have been in the Washington metropolitan area since at least 2018. He has a California driver’s license.

Last month, Kessler was charged in neighboring Fairfax County with entering property with intent to damage, a misdemeanor, according to online court records. The attorney representing him in the Fairfax case did not immediately return a call Wednesday evening seeking comment.

Kessler’s name does not appear as a defendant in Loudoun County court records.

When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secured the indictment a year ago Thursday, it was the fourth and most sprawling of the criminal cases against the former president. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden, and Willis used Georgia’s anti-racketeering law to allege that he and 18 others had participated in a wide-ranging scheme to subvert the will of the state’s voters.

Willis’ team notched some early victories in the case, but explosive allegations raised by one of Trump’s co-defendants early this year have caused a delay and could even derail the prosecution.

Here are some things to know about the case.

A lengthy indictment that cast a wide net

Nearly 100 pages long, the indictment included 41 criminal counts against Trump and 18 others. High-profile people charged along with the former president include his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and conservative attorney Sidney Powell.

All of the defendants were charged with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law and the indictment includes 161 alleged acts to support that charge. The narrative put forth by prosecutors alleges multiple people committed separate crimes to accomplish a common goal — challenging Trump’s electoral loss.

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The indictment includes charges related to a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which Trump urged the state’s top elections official to help him “find” the votes he needed to win. Other charges have to do with a getting a slate of Republican electors to falsely declare that Trump won the state, allegations of harassment of a Georgia election worker and a breach of election equipment in a rural south Georgia county.

The judge overseeing the case in March dismissed six counts in the indictment, including three of the 13 counts against Trump. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote that prosecutors had failed to provide enough detail about the alleged crime in those counts. Willis’ team has appealed that ruling.

A first-of-its-kind mug shot

When Trump arrived in Atlanta last August to be booked on the charges against him, he was quickly released on bond. But his brief stop at the Fulton County Jail marked the first time that a former president has had to sit for a mug shot.

While Trump and the others indicted all had to be booked at the jail, they waived their first court appearances. While his lawyers have been present and made arguments at numerous hearings over the last year, Trump has yet to set foot in a Georgia courtroom.

Early victories for prosecutors

Four of the 18 people charged along with Trump in Georgia pleaded guilty to lesser charges after reaching plea deals with prosecutors within a few months of the indictment.

Bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in September. Prosecutors had accused him of participating in a breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County.

The following month, Powell and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro each pleaded guilty. Powell was also accused in the Coffee County breach, while Chesebro had helped organize the Republican elector plan. The two of them reached deals with prosecutors just before they were scheduled to go to trial, having asserted their rights to a speedy trial.

Days later, attorney Jenna Ellis, a vocal part of Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020, entered a tearful guilty plea.

Salacious allegations upend the case

In early January, a lawyer for co-defendant Michael Roman, a Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide, alleged in a court filing that Willis had improperly engaged in a romantic relationship with lawyer Nathan Wade, whom she had picked to lead the prosecution against Trump and the others.

The court filing alleged that Willis benefitted financially from the case since Wade used his earnings to take her on trips. It said that caused a conflict of interest and that Willis and her office should be removed from the case. Willis and Wade acknowledged the relationship but said they had split travel and other costs.

During an extraordinary hearing, intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court and broadcast live on television. Judge McAfee chided Willis for a “tremendous lapse in judgment” but found no conflict of interest that merited her removal, as long as Wade left the case. Wade resigned hours later.

Trump and other defendants have appealed McAfee’s ruling. That appeal is currently pending before the Georgia Court of Appeals, which plans to hear arguments in December and then must rule by mid-March. Meanwhile, the appeals court has barred McAfee from taking any further action in the case against Trump and the others participating in the appeal while it is pending.

What’s next

It’s not entirely clear.

Regardless of how the Court of Appeals rules, the losing side will likely ask the Georgia Supreme Court to weigh in. That would cause a further delay.

The general election in November, in which Trump is the Republican nominee for president, provides more uncertainty. Even the appellate courts ultimately decide that Willis can remain on the case, it seems unlikely she would be able to move forward with the prosecution against Trump while he’s president if he wins the election.

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Complicating things further, the U.S. Supreme Court last month ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and are presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts. They are not protected for unofficial, or private, actions.

Trump’s lawyers in Georgia had already filed a motion earlier this year asserting presidential immunity. If Willis is allowed to continue her prosecution at some point, his lawyers will surely use the Supreme Court ruling to argue it should be dismissed.

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that deputies were contacted at roughly 9 p.m. ET Sunday and noted that security video had captured a person dressed in dark clothing with a dark cap and a backpack.

The campaign office in Ashburn, about 30 miles northwest of Washington, is being leased by the Trump campaign, and the state’s 10th District Republican Committee is also headquartered there, the sheriff’s office said.

“It is rare to have the office of any political campaign or party broken into,” Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman said in a statement. “We are determined to identify the suspect, investigate why it happened, and determine what may have been taken as well as what may have been left behind.”

Reached for further comment, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office said investigators would provide more details "as early as tomorrow" after they identify the person and that additional intelligence units were "there now investigating whether anything was taken or left and the motivation."

A Trump campaign spokesperson and the campaign for Mike Clancy, the Republican nominee for the House seat in the state's 10th Congressional District, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday evening.

The report of a possible burglary comes after Trump's campaign said Saturday that an Iranian group hacked it in June, around the time Trump was selecting his running mate.

The FBI said Monday that it is investigating the alleged hack. A source familiar with the matter said the FBI bureau is also investigating attempted hacks of three Biden-Harris campaign staffers and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, which were first reported by The Washington Post.

Ken Dilanian contributed.

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Elon Musk‘s much-hyped interview of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform X was quickly derailed by technical glitches in the first minutes of the scheduled start time on Monday evening.

Social media users trying to log on to the event, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET, reported that they could not join X’s livestream platform.

Shortly after 8:20 p.m., Musk blamed a cyberattack for the freezing screens.

The glitch was reminiscent of X’s technical disaster in 2023 that botched Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign launch announcement.

On Sunday, Musk, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, said that he had planned a series of tests to ensure that X’s livestream capabilities could handle the Monday event without technical disturbances.

The interview was billed as a buzzy, news-making event to help the Trump campaign revive its supporters after a rattling three weeks since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

“This is unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining!” Musk wrote in a Sunday post on X, teasing the event.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

During a meandering press conference Thursday riddled with false and misleading statements, Trump recalled riding as a passenger in the chopper with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown when it was forced to make an emergency landing. The comments were in response to a question about a relationship between Brown and Vice President Kamala Harris three decades ago.

But Brown has never shared a helicopter with Trump, the former mayor said. Instead, it was former California Gov. Jerry Brown who rode with Trump in a helicopter in 2018 to survey wildfire damage, and no emergency landing was reported.

On Friday night, Politico reported that Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said he had once ridden with Trump in a helicopter heading to New Jersey that almost crashed.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden told Politico. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

It was the latest apparent instance of Trump misstating names or telling anecdotes that fail to hold up to scrutiny — in this case, to disparage Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said about the alleged incident. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this was the end.”

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He went on: “We were in a helicopter, going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

Trump said Brown also told him “terrible things” about Harris. “He was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.”

But Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle that he’s never been in a helicopter with Trump.

“You would have known if I had gone down on a helicopter with Trump,” Brown told the paper.

The longtime Democratic politician said he has never disparaged Harris to Trump, either.

“Hell, no,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t say anything bad about any woman to him.”

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and Trump did ride in a helicopter to survey wildfire damage in 2018. But no problems with the flight were reported.

Current Gov. Gavin Newsom was also on the aircraft. A spokesperson for the Democrat, Izzy Gardon, said Friday there was no problem with the flight, no emergency landing, and no conversation about Harris.

Willie Brown’s long-ago relationship with Harris has resurfaced since she became the Democratic nominee for the White House. Now that Trump faces her in his bid for a second term, he and other Republicans have used the relationship to lob attacks suggesting Harris didn’t earn her political positions legitimately.

Brown was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982.

Harris, 59, spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before her elevation as the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then election as U.S. senator in 2016. She has been married to Doug Emhoff since 2014.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt declined to explain the discrepancies in Trump’s story when asked about it Friday on Newsmax.

“I would just refer you to President Trump’s statement and what he said yesterday,” Leavitt said. “The president has a lot of amazing stories from his life.”

Canadian singer Celine Dion on Saturday bashed former President Donald Trump for using her song “My Heart Will Go On” at his Montana campaign rally without her permission or endorsement.

“In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use,” the singer’s management team said in a statement, which she posted to her X account.

“…And really, THAT song?” Dion’s management team quipped, spurring mocking social media posts about the Trump campaign using music from a movie about a sinking ship.

Dion’s management and Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc. became aware of the campaign’s using the song on Saturday, according to the statement.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump used the song as an interlude at his rally in Bozeman, Montana on Friday where he repeatedly went after his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been gaining on him in the polls.

Harris has been using Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” during her campaign rallies, which the pop star reportedly gave the vice president permission to use.

Trump’s plane was en route to Bozeman, Montana, when it was diverted Friday afternoon to Billings, 142 miles to the east, according to Jenny Mockel, administrative assistant at Billings Logan International Airport. Mockel said the former president was continuing to Bozeman via private jet.

Trump’s campaign posted a video of him upon landing in which he said he was glad to be in Montana but did not mention anything about the landing.

The former president came to Montana hoping to remedy some unfinished business from 2018, when he campaigned repeatedly in Big Sky Country in a failed bid to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Tester has tried to convince voters he’s aligned with Trump on many issues, mirroring his successful strategy from six years ago. While that worked in a non-presidential election year, it faces a more critical test this fall with Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, trying to link the three-term incumbent to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Harris has benefitted nationally from a burst of enthusiasm among core Democratic constituencies, who coalesced quickly around her after President Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign last month. She’s drawn big crowds in swing states, touring this week with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her choice to be her vice presidential nominee.

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Trump’s only rally this week, meanwhile, will be in a state he won by 16 percentage points four years ago rather than a November battleground. Facing new pressure in the race from a candidate with surging enthusiasm, Trump on Thursday called questions about his lack of swing state stops “stupid.”

“I don’t have to go there because I’m leading those states,” he said. “I’m going because I want to help senators and congressmen get elected.”

He will add on fundraising stops in Wyoming and Colorado.

Trump could be decisive in Montana’s Senate race

Friday’s rally at Montana State University, which is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. Mountain time, is expected to draw thousands of GOP supporters. Yet the former president’s bigger impact could be simply having his name above Sheehy’s on the ballot in November, said University of Montana political analyst Rob Saldin.

“There is a segment of the electorate that will turn out when Trump is on the ticket,” Saldin said. And that could benefit Sheehy, a Trump supporter and newcomer to politics who made a fortune off an aerial firefighting business.

Republicans have been on a roll in Montana for more than a decade and now hold every statewide office except for Tester’s.

Tester won each of his previous Senate contests by a narrow margin, casting himself as a plainspoken farmer who builds personal connections with people in Montana and is willing to break with his party on issues that matter to them. He’s also become a prolific fundraiser.

The race has drawn national attention with Democrats clinging to a razor-thin majority in the Senate and defending far more seats than the GOP this year. Tester is considered among the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents.

For him to win, large numbers of Trump supporters would have to vote a split ticket and get behind the Democratic senator.

Trump’s drive to oust Tester traces back to the lawmaker’s work in 2018 as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Tester revealed past misconduct by Trump’s personal physician, Ronny Jackson, that sank Jackson’s nomination to lead the Veterans Affairs Department

Then-President Trump took the matter personally and came to Montana four times to campaign for Republican Matt Rosendale, who was then the state auditor. Rosendale lost by 3 percentage points.

Tester has positioned himself apart from national Democrats

Before Trump’s latest visit, Tester has sought to insulate himself against charges that he’s part of the Democratic establishment by rolling out the names of Republicans who support him, including former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot. His campaign highlighted more than 20 pieces of legislation, many dealing with veterans’ issues, that Tester sponsored and Trump signed.

Tester also was the sole Democratic delegate from Montana to withhold a vote backing Harris as the party’s presidential candidate in the wake of Biden’s withdrawal. And when the Democratic National Convention takes place later this month in Chicago, Tester will be back in Montana “farming and meeting face to face with Montanans,” campaign spokesperson Harry Child said.

The last time Tester attended the Democratic National Convention was in 2008. That’s also the last time a Democratic presidential candidate came anywhere near winning Montana, with President Barack Obama losing by just over 2 percentage points.

A similar situation is developing in Ohio, where three-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown faces a tough race in a state expected to vote for Trump.

Harris visited Ohio when the two were Senate colleagues to raise money for Brown’s 2018 campaign, but Brown has said he has no plans to campaign with her this year. Like Tester, Brown has highlighted legislation he worked on that Trump signed into law.

Friday’s rally takes place in Gallatin County, which Tester has become increasingly reliant on over the course of his political career.

He lost the county in his first Senate race, in 2006, but his support has since grown. A substantial margin of victory in Gallatin in 2018 helped push him ahead of Rosendale.

Republican Don Seifert, a former Gallatin County commissioner, said he voted for Tester that year and plans to do so again this year.

Seifert backed Trump in 2016 and said he has continued to support other Republicans, including Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Sen. Steve Daines.

“Montanans tend to vote for the person over the party,” Seifert said. “For the state of Montana, Jon is the one that can do what we need.”

But Sheehy says Tester has lost touch with his home state and fallen into step with Democrats in Washington. The Republican said in a message this week to supporters that Tester was “responsible for the rise of Kamala Harris” because he served as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2015 to 2017, when she was elected to the Senate from California.

Tester has outraised Sheehy by more than three-to-one in campaign donations reported to the Federal Election Commission. However, outside groups supporting Sheehy have helped the Republican make up much of that gap. Spending in the race is on track to exceed $200 million as advertisements from the two sides saturate Montana’s airwaves.

__

Associated Press reporter Julie Smyth contributed from Columbus, Ohio.

Trump Media, the social media company whose majority shareholder is former President Donald Trump, on Friday reported a net loss of more than $16 million for the most recent financial quarter, mostly due to legal expenses, as well as consulting and licensing expenses.

Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social app often used by the former president, also reported that its already meager revenue dropped by 30% for the three months that ended June 30, compared to the same period last year.

The stock price of Trump Media, which trades under the DJT ticker, has fallen sharply from a high of more than $71 per share shortly after began publicly trading in late March following a merger with a so-called special purpose acquisition corporation. Trump Media stock closed at $26.21 per share Friday afternoon, a decrease of .49%.

The company has a market capitalization of nearly $5 billion, an extraordinarily high valuation given its very modest sales.

In its 10-Q filing Friday afternoon, Trump Media reported a loss of $16.37 million for the quarter ending June 30, compared to a $22.8 million loss for the same quarter in 2023.

About half of the loss for the past quarter was due to legal expenses related to Trump Media’s merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., the company said.

“Additionally, the Company incurred $3.1 million of IT consulting and software licensing expenses, primarily related to its software licensing agreement to power its new TV streaming service,” Trump Media said in a press release.

Revenue for the most recent quarter was just $839,000, compared to $1.2 million for the same quarter last year.

“A significant portion of the decrease was attributable to a change in the revenue share with one of our advertising partners, in connection with an agreement intended to improve the Company’s short-term, pre-Business Combination financial position,” Trump Media said in its 10-Q filing.

“Additionally, revenue has varied as we selectively test a nascent advertising initiative on the Company’s Truth Social platform,” the company said.

Trump Media said it ended the quarter with $344 million in cash and cash equivalents, with no debt.

“The Company believes its strong balance sheet will enable the expansion and refinement of its new TV streaming platform, Truth+, which was launched in August 2024 on the Company’s custom-built content delivery network (‘CDN’),” Trump Media said in a press release.

“With its strong balance sheet and zero debt load, the Company believes it has sufficient working capital to fund operations for the foreseeable future,” the company said.

Donald Trump, who is the Republican presidential nominee, and his running mate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio are set to face the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in November’s election.

“Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said at his news conference at Mar-a-Lago. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people.”

Trump was responding to a question about whether he thought the end of his term could be considered a peaceful transfer of power, even though it was marked by the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As he has previously, Trump said the people who have been arrested as a result of the storming the Capitol have been treated unfairly. Then, unprompted, he compared his “Stop the Steal” rally before the protesters marched toward the Capitol to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was held on the National Mall.

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Trump acknowledged that official estimates put his crowd size as smaller than King’s, but he said he thought he had “more people.”

“But when you look at the exact same picture and everything is the same — because it was the fountains, the whole thing all the way back to go from Lincoln to Washington — and you look at it, and you look at the picture of my crowd … we actually had more people,” he said.

The congressional Jan. 6 committee pegged Trump’s crowd at 53,000 people, about one-fifth of the 250,000 who were estimated to be at King’s famous address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The NAACP on Thursday posted photos from both days on X and said of Trump’s crowd comparison: “Not only is that completely false, but here’s what is more important: MLK’s speech was about democracy. Trump’s was about tearing it down.”

Trump advisers and supporters alike have urged him to focus on the record of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, rather than on her race, which he has explicitly done over the past week. That tendency to go off-message, like comparing himself to a civil rights icon, was again on full display Thursday during a wide-ranging hourlong press conference in which he said Harris has been “disrespectful” to Black and Indian American voters by identifying as both.

He again baselessly questioned whether Harris has always identified as Black, called her “barely competent” and attributed her surge in the polls to her gender. At the same time, Trump acknowledged that Harris’ presence at the top of the ticket might hurt him slightly with Black voters, a demographic his campaign has heavily focused on.

“It changes around a little bit. I’m getting other voters,” Trump said from the ornate living room of his Mar-a-Lago club. “Perhaps you know I was doing well with Black voters, and I still am. I seem to be doing very well with Black males.”

“It’s possible that I won’t do as well with Black women, but I do seem to do very well with other segments,” he added.

Trump was quick to focus on the race of Harris, who has a Black father and an Indian mother, when it became clear she was going to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. That dynamic was highlighted last week by his comments at an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists. At the event in Chicago, Trump baselessly suggested that Harris had started identifying as Black only because it was politically advantageous. Later that night at a rally in Pennsylvania, his campaign posted on the arena’s big screen a headline that called Harris the first “Indian American senator.”

Asked why Harris is doing better in most public polling than Biden, Trump said that she “represents certain groups of people” and that the bump can also be attributed, in part, to the fact that “she’s a woman.”

“I see her going way down in polls now that people are finding out that she destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed the state of California with Gov. Gavin Newscum,” Trump said, giving a pejorative nickname to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Harris’ campaign responded to the news conference in a news release with the headline “Donald Trump’s Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference.”

“Split screen: Joy and Freedom vs. Whatever the Hell That Was,” read the release.

The news conference came during a relatively quiet week for Trump, who is holding just one event in Montana — which is heavily Republican-leaning — and has found himself in the rare position of being overshadowed by Harris’ emergence.

“What a stupid question,” Trump said glibly when he was asked about his lighter schedule. “This [is] because I am leading by a lot.”

Trump went on to say that while he is holding fewer events ahead of the Democratic National Convention this month, his campaign is in heavy rotation with TV ads and he is meeting with the media publicly, unlike Harris.

“I’m doing tremendous amounts of taping here. We have commercials that are at a level I don’t think that anybody has ever done before,” he said. “I see many of you in the room where I’m speaking to you on phones. I’m speaking to the radio. I’m speaking to televisions. Television is coming here.”

“Excuse me, what are we doing right now?” Trump added, referring to the news conference. “She is not doing any news conferences. … She’s not smart enough to do a news conference.”

Trump’s advisers have emphasized the importance of contrasting his record with that of Harris, which they have routinely framed as outside the mainstream, criticizing even supporters who sometimes deviate from their desired message.

A senior Trump adviser said: “Sometimes our allies don’t do us any favors, clarifying the differences. So for us as a campaign, we have to make clear where each candidate stands on the issues that matter to the persuadable voters so they have the real information, and we have to spend money across all of the means necessary to do that.”

Asked whether Trump always helps himself by making those contracts clear in his messaging, the adviser dodged:

“I won’t comment on that.”

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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In one of the videos, a Butler Township officer is being hoisted onto the roof of a building near the July 13 rally, minutes before Trump was set to speak.

The officer appears to peek his head over the roof before quickly dropping to the ground and running to a nearby police vehicle, the video shows. The shooter cannot be seen in this angle of bodycam video, and there is no audio.

NBC News has previously reported that in that moment, the officer came face to face with the shooter, Thomas Crooks, who pointed his weapon at the officer, prompting the officer to hit the ground, according to Butler Township Manager Tom Knights.

Later in the video, the officer appears to confirm the encounter, saying, “f—— this close, dude, he turned right around on me.”

Officials later determined that the shooter was on top of a building in a complex next to the Butler Farm Show — where Trump was giving his speech — which was roughly 148 yards from Trump and outside the safety perimeter set by the Secret Service that day.

Crooks fired eight shots, nicking Trump in the ear, killing one rallygoer and critically injuring two others. Crooks was shot and killed by counter-snipers within seconds.

A later portion of the same video clip shows the Butler Township officer jumping back onto the rooftop. In that video, Crooks’ bloodied body can be seen, handcuffed, after Secret Service snipers shot and killed him.

“Before you motherf—— came out here I put my head up here like a f——- idiot by myself dude…” the officer said on radio traffic captured in the clip. “I was calling out, ‘bro, on top of the roof, bro,’ were you on the same frequency?”

An unknown member of the SWAT team then said he was “pissed” that he “couldn’t … find him,” apparently referring to Crooks.

In another clip released Thursday, an unidentified Butler Township officer said about 10 minutes after Trump was shot that he told the Secret Service about the building’s vulnerability days before the rally.

The officer is heard saying that he “told them they needed to post the guys over here. I told them that.”

When asked “who” he told, the officer replied: “the Secret Service.”

The officer said he told Secret Service members July 9 — four days before the July 13 event — to “post guys over here,” referring to the building where the shooter was found.

“How the hell could you lose a guy walking over here?” the officer said.

Asked whether the officer’s team was on the roof, the officer answered no and said the team was inside. Some back and forth can be heard in the audio about where people were stationed.

The officer added that the Secret Service assured officials earlier in the week that “we’re going to post guys over here.” He does not specify the location in the video.

Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service spokesperson, said in a statement that the agency is reviewing the video.

“The U.S. Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” Guglielmi said. “The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a U.S. Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

Pennsylvania State Police has said it identified Crooks as “suspicious” before the attack.

The Secret Service has been criticized for its handling of the incident and any warnings before Trump took the stage, for how long it took to get the former president off the stage, and for its preparedness before the rally.

Amid the fallout, the head of the agency, Kimberly Cheatle, stepped down from her post. Days later, the acting head of the Secret Service said in a Senate committee hearing that Secret Service agents could be fired if it is found they broke protocol that day.

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he will be interviewed Monday night by Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs Tesla and SpaceX.

The former president’s planned talk with Musk comes on the heels of Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. It also follows the disclosure of probes of a Trump-supporting political action committee that Musk says he created.

“ON MONDAY NIGHT I’LL BE DOING A MAJOR INTERVIEW WITH ELON MUSK — Details to follow!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

CNBC has requested comment from Musk.

On Monday, the North Carolina Board of Elections told CNBC it had opened an investigation of the America PAC, a political action committee, which Musk has said he created, after receiving a complaint that the group was collecting personal data from website users and failing to help users register to vote as promised.

The practices of America PAC, which is supporting Trump’s candidacy, are also being eyed by the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office and Michigan’s secretary of state.

Musk is also the owner of the social media company X, which was previously known as Twitter when the company was publicly owned. Trump was for years an avid Twitter user before the site banned his account because he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

The ban was lifted after Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion.

Despite that, Trump uses Truth Social for his social media messages. The company is owned by Trump Media, a publicly traded company whose majority shareholder is the former president.

— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Lora Kolodny.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is the first substantive order since the case was returned to her Friday following a landmark Supreme Court opinion last month that conferred broad immunity for former presidents and narrowed special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump.

In their motion to dismiss the indictment, defense lawyers argued that Trump was mistreated because he was prosecuted even though others who have challenged election results have avoided criminal charges. Trump, the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race, also suggested that President Joe Biden and the Justice Department launched a prosecution to prevent him from winning reelection.

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But Chutkan rejected both arguments, saying Trump was not charged simply for challenging election results but instead for “knowingly making false statements in furtherance of criminal conspiracies and for obstruction of election certification proceedings.” She also said that his lawyers had misread news media articles that they had cited in arguing that the prosecution was political in nature.

“After reviewing Defendant’s evidence and arguments, the court cannot conclude that he has carried his burden to establish either actual vindictiveness or the presumption of it, and so finds no basis for dismissing this case on those grounds,” Chutkan wrote in her order.

Also Saturday, she scheduled an Aug. 16 status conference to discuss next steps in the case.

The four-count indictment, brought in August 2023, accuses Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Biden through a variety of schemes, including by badgering his vice president, Mike Pence, to block the formal certification of electoral votes.

Trump’s lawyers argued that he was immune from prosecution as a former president, and the case has been on hold since December as his appeal worked its way through the courts.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for core constitutional duties and are presumptively immune from prosecution for all other official acts. The justices sent the case back to Chutkan to determine which acts alleged in the indictment can remain part of the prosecution and which must be discarded.

At the National Association of Black Journalists‘ annual convention in Chicago on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump said inflation and high interest rates are “destroying our country.”

The Republican presidential nominee said if elected, he would “bring interest rates way down.”

“I bring inflation way down, so people can buy bacon again, so people can buy a ham sandwich again, so that people can go to a restaurant and afford it,” he said.

The president, however, exerts no direct control over interest rates. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, and it operates independently of the White House.

Inflation has been a persistent problem since the Covid-19 pandemic, when price increases soared to their highest levels in more than 40 years. The Federal Reserve — which sets interest rates — responded with a series of rate hikes to effectively pump the brakes on the economy in an effort to get inflation under control.

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Now, recent economic data indicates that inflation is falling back toward the Fed’s 2% target, paving the way for the central bank to lower its benchmark rate for the first time in years. The personal consumption expenditures price index — the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — showed a rise of 2.5% year over year in June. 

The federal funds rate, which sets overnight borrowing costs for banks but also influences consumer borrowing costs, is currently targeted in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, the result of 11 rate increases between March 2022 and July 2023.

Once that rate comes down, consumers may see their borrowing costs fall as well.

'A highly consequential year'

At the start of 2024, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference that this was going to be "a highly consequential year for, for the Fed and for monetary policy."

In the months that followed, signs of economic growth and cooling inflation have laid the groundwork for a widely anticipated rate cut, which is welcome news for Americans struggling to keep up with sky-high interest charges.

After this week's two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Powell said that central bankers could cut rates as soon as September, if the economic data supports it.

A contentious history

Trump, who nominated Powell to head of the nation's central bank in 2018, became a fierce critic of the Fed chief and his colleagues, skirting historical precedent while in office by repeatedly and publicly berating the Fed's decision-making. 

During his tenure in the White House, Trump complained that the central bank maintained a fed funds rate that was too high, making it harder for businesses and consumers to borrow and putting the U.S. at an economic disadvantage to countries with lower rates.

Ultimately, though, Trump's comments had no impact on the Fed's benchmark.

"Any chairman is going to remain loyal to the Fed's mandate over any browbeating from the White House," said Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School. 

Earlier this year, the former president told Fox Business that he would not reappoint Powell to lead the Fed. "I think he's political," Trump said. "I think he's going to do something to probably help the Democrats, I think, if he lowers interest rates."

Trump also told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview in July that cutting rates just weeks ahead of the presidential election in November is "something that [central bank officials] know they shouldn't be doing."

When asked about these comments Wednesday, Powell underscored the Fed's singular focus on the economy. (The central bank has a few main goals with respect to the economy: to promote maximum employment, keep prices stable and ensure moderate long-term interest rates.) 

"We don't change anything in our approach to address other factors like the political calendar," Powell said. "We never use our tools to support or oppose a political party, a politician or any political outcome."

The central bank is an independent agency that governs decisions about monetary policy without interference from the president or any branch of government. Therefore, it is theoretically free from political pressure.

"The Fed will staunchly defend their independence regardless of who is president," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

The election effect on interest rate policy

In previous presidential election cycles, the Fed has maintained its charted course through the election, whether that was tightening as in 2004, cutting in 2008 or remaining on hold as in 1996, 2012 and 2020, according to a research report by Wells Fargo released in February.

Further, since 1994, the Fed adjusted its policy rate roughly the same number of times in presidential election years as in non-election years, the report said.

A separate research note by Barclays also found "no compelling statistical evidence that Federal Reserve policy is conducted differently during presidential elections."

"The Fed's independence will remain paramount," McBride said. Going forward, "what will influence what the Fed does is what is happening in the broader economy."

And yet, Fed board members are nominated by the president and must be approved by the Senate. Powell will conclude his second four-year stretch as chair in 2026 — opening the door to a potential change in leadership — and, possibly, the direction of monetary policy — smack in the middle of the next presidential term. 

The Trump campaign did not respond to CNBC's request for comment. 

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, some of which aired Tuesday, Trump — who has a long history of making derogatory comments about female opponents — said: “She’ll be so easy for them. She’ll be like a play toy.”

He added, “They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her.”

Looking directly into the camera, Trump said, “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”

The former president has repeatedly attacked women who have criticized him by mocking their appearances and insulting their character. During the 2016 Republican presidential cycle, he called Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, a “nasty woman” — an insult that her supporters turned into a feminist rallying cry — and “unhinged.” Trump also poked fun at his Republican primary rival Carly Fiorina’s face on television and shared an unflattering photo of Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, on Twitter.

Trump has lobbed personal attacks and unflattering nicknames on his male opponents, but the attacks on his female rivals are often gender-based. He has referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy,” adult film actress Stormy Daniels as “horse face,” and his 2024 primary rival Nikki Haley as “birdbrain.”

Trump and his allies have pummeled Harris with attacks on her race and gender since she jumped into the presidential race, calling her “crazy” and a “DEI vice president.” They have also made fun of Harris’ laugh and called her “dumb as a rock.” On Wednesday alone, Trump referred to the vice president as “Crazy Kamala” at least five times on his Truth Social website.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump was not referring to Harris’ race or gender in the Ingraham interview and slammed Harris on her record on immigration.

“She is weak, dishonest and dangerously liberal, and that’s why the American people will reject her on November 5th,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance — who is facing backlash himself over comments he made in 2021 about “childless cat ladies” leading the country — repeatedly used the word “weak” during a speech in Nevada on Tuesday when describing Harris’ leadership.

“Of all of Kamala Harris’ faults, the worst of all is that she left America weak and vulnerable,” Vance said. “The entire world now knows that she helped cover up Joe Biden’s declining mental capacity for years.”

But he told NBC News that there’s no “particular effort to tag her as weak.” Vance added, “If there’s a particular label we want the American people to be aware of, it’s that she’s an ultra-liberal.”

NBC News’ Henry J. Gomez and Jillian Frankel contributed.

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When answering a question about Republicans labeling Harris a “DEI hire,” Trump asked for the reporter’s definition of DEI and appeared to question Harris’ heritage.

“So I’ve known her a long time – indirectly, not directly very much – and she was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” Trump said. “And now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

He went on to say the change happened “all of a sudden,” when she “made a turn and she became a Black.”

ABC News’ Rachel Scott, one of the event’s three moderators, said that Harris had always identified as Black. Harris also attended Howard University, a historically Black college.

The Harris campaign called Trump’s comments “hostile.”

“The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president,” Harris’ campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. “Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”

Harris campaign statement on Donald Trump’s remarks at the NABJ pic.twitter.com/atHw27Crfu

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 31, 2024

Similarly, at an event in Houston on Wednesday, Harris said Trump’s comments at the NABJ convention were disrespectful.

“It was the same old show ..the divisiveness and the disrespect,” Harris said according to NBC News. “And let me just say the American people deserve better. The American people deserve better.”

As for whether he thinks Harris is a “DEI hire,” Trump said he didn’t know.

news Jul 31

UAW union endorses Vice President Kamala Harris for president over Trump

Decision 2024 Jul 31

A speaking invitation to Donald Trump splits the most prominent American group for Black journalists

“Could be,” he said.

Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists was contentious and heated from the start.

“A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today,” Scott asked Trump during the conversation held at the NABJ conference. “You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswomen, women of color, who were American citizens, to ‘go back to where they came from.’

“You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabid’ to describe Black district attorneys. You’ve attacked Black journalists, calling them a ‘loser,’ saying the questions that they ask are, quote, ‘stupid and racist.’ You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at Mar a Lago resort,” she continued.

“So my question, sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you? After you have used language like that?” Scott asked.

Trump began by saying the question was asked “in such a horrible manner.”

“Don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC because I think they’re a fake news network. Terrible. I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit.”

Questions for Trump ranged from his thoughts on comments made by his vice presidential nominee JD Vance to the police shooting of Sonya Massey in Illinois to the Republican party’s thoughts on abortion and more.

The conversation was heated at times before ending abruptly as reporters on the stage said Trump’s team said they needed to end.

The program got off to a delayed start due to what NABJ sources said was a dispute over a live fact check of the address. But Trump noted the delay onstage and said the issue was from an equipment failure, with mic issues present during the Q&A.

The event, open to convention attendees only, had been described by organizers as a “Q&A with political journalists before an audience of registered convention attendees that will concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community.” It was fact-checked live by PolitiFact.

“Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us,” Harris’ campaign’s communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. “Today’s tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump’s MAGA rallies this entire campaign.”

No questions from the audience were taken.

“We look forward to our attendees hearing from former President Trump on the critical issues our members and their audiences care about most,” NABJ President Ken Lemon said in an initial statement about the event. “While NABJ does not endorse political candidates as a journalism organization, we understand the serious work of our members, and welcome the opportunity for them to ask the tough questions that will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know.”

Wednesday, Lemon released a new statement defending the organization’s controversial decision to invite Trump to speak, saying it was “in line” with convention practices dating back to 1976.

“It has always been our policy to ensure that candidates know that an invitation is not an endorsement,” Lemon’s statement said. ‘We also agreed that while this race is much different — and contentious — so are the consequences.”

Lemon added that Harris, the presumptive Democratic Nominee for President, had also been invited to speak.

Trump’s appearance at the NABJ has sparked mixed reactions from within the organization, as convention co-chair, Washington Post reporter Karen Attiah announced she would step down from her role, saying she wasn’t consulted about the decision to invite Trump to speak.

“To the journalists interviewing Trump, I wish them the best of luck,” Attiah wrote in a social media post announcing her decision to resign her position. “For everyone else, I’m looking forward to meeting and reconnecting with all of you in the Windy City.”

Attiah went on to say her decision was influenced by a “variety of factors,” and that she was “not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”

Attiah’s announcement Tuesday came several hours before a source familiar with Vice President Kamala Harris’ plans said that Harris would not attend the NABJ convention because of conflicts with her schedule, a report from CNBC said. According to a post from the NABJ, Harris has offered to address the NABJ virtually, post-convention.

The appearance from Donald Trump comes weeks away from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, scheduled for Aug. 19-22.

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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• Speaker Johnson’s government funding strategy is on life support as defections mount
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Ronald Rowe became acting director of the agency last week after his predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned in the aftermath of a House hearing in which she was berated by lawmakers from both parties and failed to answer specific questions about the communication failures preceding the July 13 shooting.

Rowe will be joined by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a joint hearing of the Senate committees on the Judiciary and Homeland Security.

Donald Trump Jul 29

Trump agrees to be interviewed as part of an investigation into his assassination attempt, FBI says

Donald Trump Jul 26

FBI confirms that a bullet struck Trump's ear during assassination attempt

The hearing comes one day after the FBI released new details about its investigation into the shooting, revealing that the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had looked online for information about mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt of the Slovakian prime minister.

The FBI also said that Trump has agreed to be interviewed by agents as a crime victim; the bureau said last week that the former president had been struck in the ear by a bullet or fragment of one. Trump said Monday evening that he expected that interview to take place on Thursday.

But the bulk of the questions Tuesday are expected to be directed at Rowe as lawmakers demand answers about how Crooks was able to get so close to Trump. Investigators believe Crooks fired eight shots in Trump’s direction from an AR-style rifle after scaling the roof of a building of some 135 meters (147 yards) from where Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.

One rallygoer was killed and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service countersniper.

At her hearing last week, Cheatle said the Secret Service had “failed” in its mission to protect Trump. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.

Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the rally. She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.

Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.

In a Monday night interview on Fox News, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him from the shooting but said someone should have been on the roof with Crooks and that there should have been better communication with local police.

“They didn’t speak to each other,” he said.

He praised the sniper who killed Crooks with what he said was an amazing shot but noted: “It would have been good if it was nine seconds sooner.”

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims of federal crimes during the course of their investigations. The FBI said on Friday that Trump was struck by a bullet or a fragment of one during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said Monday.

Rojek disclosed the planned conversation with Trump as he revealed new details about the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, including internet searches that reveal an interest in mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s prime minister earlier this year.

Despite hundreds of interviews, the FBI said it still has not been able to uncover a motive for the shooting, but it said that the portrait of Crooks that has emerged is of a reclusive loner whose primary social circle was his family. Crooks’ parents have been “extremely cooperative” with investigators, Rojek said, and the extensive planning that preceded the shooting was done online.

The parents have said they had no knowledge of Crooks’ plans, and investigators have no reason to doubt that, the FBI said.

“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the FBI said in a statement.

The statement comes two days after FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump nominated to his post in 2017, told House lawmakers that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.”

Wray had testified about the FBI’s ongoing probe into the assassination attempt. A gunman identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, was shot and killed after opening fire from an elevated post not far from Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one spectator dead and two others critically injured.

The director’s remarks before a House committee sparked widespread backlash among Republican lawmakers, as well as Trump.

Trump referred to the new FBI statement in a social media post Friday night.

“I assume that’s the best apology that we’ll get from Director Wray, but it is fully accepted!,” he wrote on Truth Social.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had also criticized Wray’s testimony.

“We’ve all seen the video, we’ve seen the analysis, we’ve heard it from multiple sources in different angles that a bullet went through his ear. I’m not sure it matters that much,” Johnson said on Thursday.

Wray’s testimony came the same day the House approved a resolution to create a bipartisan task force to examine the assassination attempt.

Before the FBI put out its statement Friday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had written a letter to Wray urging him to revise his testimony, saying, “the attempted assassin’s bullet ripped the upper part” of Trump’s ear, and that it “should not be a point of contention.”

Graham said Friday night, after the FBI’s statement, that Wray should never have suggested otherwise.

“Glad the FBI confirmed what everyone else knew. It was a bullet that struck President Trump. The statement by the FBI Director should’ve never been made,” Graham wrote on X.

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Former President Donald Trump on Friday vowed to hold another campaign rally in the same area of Pennsylvania where he survived an assassination attempt less than two weeks earlier.

Trump said the forthcoming rally in Butler will honor Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who was killed in the July 13 attack, as well as others who were injured.

“FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” Trump wrote in an all-caps Truth Social post announcing the rally, referring to the three words he mouthed to his supporters in the moments after the shooting.

Trump’s Friday afternoon post lacked specifics about when and where the rally would take place. The Trump campaign plans to hold indoor rallies in light of the assassination attempt, sources familiar with the campaign told NBC News.

The U.S. Secret Service has reportedly advised the campaign to stop holding outdoor rallies.

Trump sustained a minor injury to his ear in the incident, which he and his former White House physician, current Rep. Ronny Jackson, maintain was caused by the assassin’s bullet.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday that Trump’s injury might have instead been caused by shrapnel, spurring anger from the Republican presidential nominee’s allies.

Trump also lashed out at Wray, writing in another Truth Social post on Friday that the director’s remarks were “so damaging to the Great People that work in the FBI.”

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill detained by police before Week 1 win; marks TD with handcuff celebration
• Speaker Johnson’s government funding strategy is on life support as defections mount
• Trump allies hope the debate will turn the page from Harris’ ‘honeymoon’

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

David Dutch was discharged from Allegheny General Hospital Wednesday afternoon, the health system said in an email.

A second person who was wounded in the July 13 shooting, James Copenhaver, remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition, Allegheny Health said.

Both men were shot after 20-year-old gunman Thomas Crooks opened fire at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and tried to kill Trump as the former president and now-Republican Party nominee was speaking on stage. Trump was shot in the ear.

Another person at the rally, former fire chief Corey Comperatore, was shot and killed. Officials said the 50-year-old father of two daughters died shielding his family members.

Crooks was killed after opening fire. A motive in the shooting remains unknown and is under investigation.

On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House Judiciary Committee hearing that Crooks had searched “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,” referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, on July 6, one week before the rally.

Crooks had a rifle with a collapsible stock, “which could explain why it might have been less easy for people to observe,” Wray said.

The first people known to have seen Crooks with the gun observed him when he was already on the roof, Wray said. Investigators haven’t yet found anyone who saw him with the gun walking around before that, he said. “The collapsible stock is potentially a very significant feature that might be relevant to that,” he said.

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The gunman in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is believed to have done a Google search one week before the shooting of “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday, revealing new details about a suspect he said had taken a keen interest in public figures but had otherwise not left behind clear clues of an ideological motive.

The July 6 online search, recovered from a laptop tied to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

“That is a search that is significant in terms of his state of mind. That is the same day that it appears he registered” for the Trump rally scheduled for July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.

The FBI is investigating the shooting, which killed one rallygoer and seriously injured two others, as an act of domestic terrorism.

Crooks was killed by a Secret Service countersniper.

The investigation has thrust the bureau into a political maelstrom months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks in the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

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The agency has built out a detailed timeline of Crooks’ movements and online activity, but the precise motive — or why Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was singled out — remains elusive, Wray said.

“A lot of the usual repositories of information have not yielded, anything notable in terms of motive or ideology,” Wray said.

The FBI’s assessment is that Crooks acted alone.

Wray noted that Crooks had grown interested in public officials — besides Trump, Crooks also had photos on his phone of Democratic President Joe Biden and other prominent figures — and in the days before the shooting had appeared particularly consumed by Trump.

Crooks is believed to have visited the rally site a week before the event, staying for about 20 minutes, and then returned on the morning of July 13.

About two hours before the shooting, Wray said, Crooks flew a drone about 200 yards from the rally for about 11 minutes, using the device to livestream and watch footage and obtain what Wray said would have been a “rear view mirror” of the scene behind him.

The use of the drone, which along with a controller were recovered from Crooks’ car, so close to the rally site just hours before Trump took the stage add to the questions about the security lapses.

On the afternoon of the rally, Crooks attracted law enforcement scrutiny because of odd behavior around the edges of the event, including shouldering a backpack and peering into the lens of a range finder toward the rooftops behind the stage where Trump would stand within the hour.

Using what Wray said was mechanical equipment on the ground and vertical piping, Crooks was able to hoist himself up onto the roof of a squat manufacturing building that was within 135 meters (157 yards) of the stage. Crooks fired eight shots from an AR-style rifle before being he was killed.

The FBI thinks Crooks may have managed to avoid detection despite being armed because his weapon had a collapsible folding stock, Wray said.

Wray pledged to lawmakers that the FBI would “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation.

“I have been saying for some time now that we are living in an elevated threat environment, and tragically the Butler County assassination attempt is another example — a particularly heinous and public one — of what I’ve been talking about,” Wray said.

The hearing had been scheduled well before the shooting — as part of the committee’s routine oversight of the FBI and the Justice Department. Questions about the shooting dominated the session.

The FBI so far has avoided the same level of scrutiny over the shooting directed at the Secret Service over security failures that preceded the shooting and has led to the the resignation of Director Kimberly Cheatle.

Even so, Wray was not able to entirely avoid the antagonistic questions he typically receives from the Republican-led committee, a reflection of the lingering perception that the FBI and Justice Department have become politicized against Trump — something Wray has consistently denied.

That sentiment was made clear early in the hearing when the committee chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Wray: “I’m sure you understand that a significant portion of the country has a healthy skepticism regarding the FBI’s ability to conduct a fair, honest, open and transparent investigation.”

Grassley on X demanded answers and accountability following the July 13 assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump as he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was shot in the ear.

Crooks was shot and killed after firing at Trump. Crooks shot and killed one other person and wounded two others when he opened fire at the event.

The body camera video posted by Grassley, R-Iowa, shows Crooks’ body on the roof of the building from where he fired. The video also showed blood by the shooter’s body.

“We NEED detailed answers ASAP on security failures,” Grassley wrote on X. “TRANSPARENCY BRINGS ACCOUNTABILITY.”

In the video, someone in a black suit and sunglasses speaks with law enforcement officers armed with rifles and wearing body armor following the shooting and Crooks’ subsequent killing.

An officer points out a rifle lying on the roof, though it is not clear whether it is Crooks’.

The officer whose body camera is recording mentions that a sniper had seen a person coming from a bike and setting a backpack down, but lost sight of him. It is not clear in the video if the officer is talking about Crooks.

Grassley wrote that the video was obtained from the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit after requests from Congress. The Beaver County Sheriff’s Office has an unit by that name, which is a tactical team that responds to high-risk incidents.

The U.S. Secret Service and Beaver County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress have demanded answers about how Crooks was able to open fire at a former president, and the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General said it has opened three reviews surrounding the incident.

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday. She wrote in a resignation letter that she takes “full responsibility for the security lapse.”

Crooks’ motive has not been determined.

Pennsylvania State Police Col. Christopher Paris, who heads the agency, told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday that Crooks had been identified as suspicious before the shooting.

Crooks had been spotted “milling about and he stood out to them because he never made his way to a point of ingress to the venue,” meaning Crooks was milling about but not trying to enter, and that Crooks was later seen with a range finder.

Paris said the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, tasked with securing the building where Crooks fired from, relayed the suspicion and a photo of Crooks to the state police, which then passed along the message to the Secret Service.  

Crooks was not designated as an actual threat until seconds before he opened fire, Paris said.

Trump, now the official Republican nominee for president, plans to no longer hold outdoor rallies following the assassination attempt, according to two sources familiar with his campaign’s operations. The current plans are for those events to be held indoors instead, they said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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An ATV driver ran over the elderly man in Hancock at 5:45 p.m. following other vandalism incidents appearing to target those expressing support for former President Donald Trump or law enforcement, authorities there said.

On Monday, a 22-year-old man contacted Hancock police and said he wanted to “confess a crime involving an ATV driver within the last 24 hours,” the Houghton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

The man asked someone to respond to his home in Quincy Township, the sheriff’s office said, where deputies found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The ATV, also known as an all-terrain vehicle, believed to be involved in the crash was also found, as was clothing the suspect had been described as wearing, the office said.

Authorities did not identify the 22-year-old man.

The victim struck by the ATV was in critical condition, Hancock police said.

Statements from the police department and the sheriff’s office did not identify the nature of the political sign the victim was putting up when he was struck.

But Hancock police said that there were three incidents — two involving vandalism to vehicles — believed to be connected and carried out by someone in an ATV and that they appeared to target those expressing support for Trump or law enforcement.

The sheriff’s office said the victims had displayed Trump election signs or “thin blue line” stickers and flags.

The sheriff’s office said it and the Hancock Police Department were still investigating the case.

Hancock is a small city of around 5,000 in northwestern Michigan, in the state’s Upper Peninsula.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Harris rips Trump before fired-up crowd at first presidential rally in battleground Wisconsin
• Pennsylvania State Police identified Trump shooter as ‘suspicious’ as he hung around before rally
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