Two things are true. It is true that the Democrats’ position in national and state-level presidential polling has improved since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party’s nominee. It is also true that Harris is underperforming where Hillary Clinton was at this point in 2016 and that she is even underperforming the 2020 ticket on which she appeared with Joe Biden.

Oh, and there’s a third thing: It is true that this probably doesn’t tell us much yet.

We can compare this year with past election cycles using the polling averages compiled by 538 (formerly FiveThirtyEight). It has a database of polling averages stretching back more than a half-century; we’ll focus just on the presidential elections since 2012.

You can see the national polling averages (and, for previous elections, final levels of support) for the Democratic and Republican candidates in each of those elections below. The last 150 days of the election are shown; we’re a bit more than halfway through that period in 2024. (The gray boxes on the charts in this article show the period that has elapsed in 2024.)

There are three things that probably jump out at you from the chart below. First, that support for both candidates generally increased as the election got closer. Second, that the Democratic candidates had much wider margins in 2016 and 2020 than in 2012. (In each election, the Democratic candidate earned more votes nationally, twice passing 50 percent. The Republican candidates never reached 48 percent.)

Third, the 2024 race shift dramatically after Biden stepped aside. Before then, he was static and Trump was climbing in the national average. After, Harris has soared while Trump flatlined.

A critically important (and unanswerable) question is whether the trend for Harris will continue. Will she see her support expand further? Or have we simply reached a point similar to that seen in 2016 and 2020, with the Democrat holding a national lead that doesn’t avoid close — and ultimately determinative — races at the state level?

We’ve typically been looking at this year’s anticipated swing states in two buckets: the states that adjoin the Great Lakes (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and those in the Sun Belt (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada). So we’ll do that again, starting with the Sun Belt.

What you will notice here first is that, in Arizona and Georgia, the margin between the dashed lines, showing the final results, narrowed from 2012 to 2016 and then flipped in 2020. In Arizona and Georgia, the Republican candidates had big leads in 2012 and 2016 and won those states. In 2020, though, the race was close in Georgia at this point while Biden had a big lead in Arizona. Biden won both states narrowly.

What also stands out is that Nevada doesn’t look the same as those other states. Polling at this point has ranged over the past three cycles, from a one-point Democratic lead in 2016 to a seven-point one in 2020. In those two elections, though, the Democrats each won by about the same margin.

In the Great Lakes (a.k.a. the “blue wall”), the narrowing occurred between 2012 and 2016, then shifting back to the Democrats in 2020. In all three states, though, the Democrats had leads at this point in 2012, 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Clinton lost all three.

What is harder to pick out on those charts is how Harris is faring relative to the three previous Democratic nominees. Nationally, Harris’s lead is larger than Obama’s in 2012 but smaller than Clinton’s or Biden’s. She’s mostly faring better than Clinton and Obama in the Sun Belt, but only doing better than Biden was at this point in Georgia. In the Great Lakes states, she’s faring worse than Clinton and Biden were at this point in all three.

Of course, as you undoubtedly know, the state polling averages in those states were notoriously off them mark in previous contests. Nationally and in these six states, Obama’s results beat the final polling averages by 2.4 points on average. Clinton, though, underperformed by an average of 2.5 points and Biden underperformed by 3.7 points.

That’s an important caveat, too: If polls are off the mark to the extent that they were in the prior two presidential contests, Harris underperforming Clinton and Biden becomes that much more problematic. If the polls for some reason miss the way they did in 2012? Very different story.

The analysis above also centers on the six states that flipped in 2016 or 2020. There’s another state that seems as if it might be worth considering here: North Carolina, which the Cook Political Report just moved from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.” There, too, the Democrats had modest leads at this point in 2016 and 2020 but ended up losing. Harris is faring far better than Biden but still tied with Trump.

Even in North Carolina, though, the switch from Biden to Harris meant a surge for the Democrat and Trump treading water. It’s not clear that the surge is over or lasting. It’s hard to know how the race will shift further as voters increasingly make up their minds about who they plan to support.

We can say with certainty, though, that the two truths with which this article began remain true. The Democratic position is much better than it was a month ago, but it’s not better than it was four years ago.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to immediately clear the way for the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan, adding to uncertainty about the future of a program that would affect millions of borrowers.

Biden introduced the program, Saving on a Valuable Education, last fall as millions of Americans resumed student loan payments following a hiatus of more than three years because of the pandemic.

The plan, commonly known as SAVE, offered lower monthly payments and a faster path to loan cancellation. It was announced months after the justices divided along ideological lines to invalidate a separate, $400 billion Biden administration program to forgive student loan debt.

More than 8 million people are enrolled in the new program, with debts already cleared for more than 400,000 borrowers.

But ongoing litigation has complicated and essentially stalled the administration’s plans. Republican-led states filed separate lawsuits accusing the president of exceeding his legal authority by creating a program with far-reaching economic impact. The Congressional Budget Office estimates SAVE will cost some $230 billion over the next decade, but the Biden administration says the figure is closer to $156 billion.

The justices were responding Wednesday to separate emergency requests in two cases. With no noted dissents, they left in place a sweeping hold on Biden’s plans issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit while that court weighs the merits of the case. The justices did not include an explanation for their action, but said the court expects the 8th Circuit will “render its decision with appropriate dispatch.”

If the appeals court rules quickly, the case could then be appealed to the Supreme Court this fall, putting the issue of student loan debt back before the justices amid a competitive presidential campaign between Vice President Harris and former president Donald Trump.

In a separate case in June, U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree of Kansas ruled against the student loan plan and issued an order blocking the government from recalculating and capping monthly payments for borrowers at 5 percent of their discretionary income. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit put Crabtree’s order on hold, allowing the Education Department to move forward with cutting monthly bills.

The attorneys general of three states — Alaska, South Carolina and Texas — asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the order while litigation continues and said Biden’s latest plan is essentially defying the high court’s 2023 student loan ruling.

‘This current attempt to unilaterally cancel debt is every bit as unlawful as the first,” the attorneys general told the court in their filing, adding that the Education Department “cannot cancel hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of student loans without clear authorization from Congress.”

Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, defending the program, told the justices that clearing the way for Crabtree’s sweeping order would create “intense confusion” for millions of borrowers if their payments must be recalculated and new bills issued, in addition to upending the work of the department.

In the 8th Circuit case, Prelogar asked the high court to vacate a sweeping injunction against SAVE issued by at the request of seven GOP-led states — Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

The 8th Circuit’s broad order blocks loan forgiveness under all four income-driven repayment plans, not just Save. It is also making it difficult for borrowers to enroll in any of the plans and for loan servicers to process applications.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a quasi-state agency that services federal student loans and funds state scholarships, would lose revenue when the loans are canceled. He called the injunction a ‘huge win for every American who still believes in paying their own way.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement that the 8th Circuit’s ruling would force millions of borrowers to pay hundreds of dollars more each month. The ruling, he said, “rejects a practice of providing loan forgiveness that goes back 30 years.”

Cardona said the department would place all borrowers enrolled in SAVE in an interest-free forbearance while the Biden administration continues to defend the program.

This is a developing story. It will be updated. Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.

The FBI has still not determined what motivated a gunman to try to assassinate former president Donald Trump at a July campaign rally in Pennsylvania, officials with the federal law enforcement agency said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

Federal officials sifted through five years’ worth of online activity by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks and said they found no credible evidence that a foreign entity directed him to carry out the attack. Nor did they find credible material indicating that he worked with a co-conspirator.

Investigators also found no consistent political focus for the shooter, saying they determined that Crooks made more than 60 online searches about Trump and President Joe Biden in the month before the attack.

Crooks’s online activity indicates “a mixture of ideologies,” said Kevin P. Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office. “We see no definitive ideology associated with our subject, either left-leaning or right-leaning.”

The gunman’s online history shows he sought information about both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention and researched logistics about Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, officials said. They stressed that the investigation is ongoing and that they continue to pursue leads regarding the gunman and any possible associates.

Crooks attempted to shoot Trump while the Republican presidential candidate was speaking at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13.

He opened fire from a rooftop just outside the security perimeter of the campaign rally. The gunman fired at least eight shots, killing one person in the crowd, critically injuring two others and wounding Trump’s ear, before being killed by a Secret Service sniper.

Officials said Crooks died of a single shot to his head. An autopsy determined that he had no alcohol or illegal drugs in his system at the time of the shooting, officials said.

The FBI officials said they conducted a “productive interview” with Trump as part of the investigation. They characterized the former president as cooperative. They also said Crooks’s parents have been cooperative throughout the investigation, handing over all the information they could to law enforcement.

Law enforcement officials previously said they were focused on Crooks’s online activity as they searched for his motive. They revealed in an earlier briefing that Crooks had searched online “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,” referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

While many expect political motives behind attacks on politicians, a 1997 Secret Service study of American assassins and would-be assassins of public figures found that “attackers and near-lethal approachers of public officials rarely had ‘political’ motives.”

There are multiple investigations into the apparent security lapses that allowed the gunman to shoot at Trump from relatively close range, including how he managed to use an HVAC system to clamber atop an unsecured roof, traverse multiple rooftops and then fire shots during the campaign rally.

“If you go back to the Trump presidency, we had 12,000 factories that were built during Donald Trump’s presidency.”

— Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, in remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Aug. 25

Vance, in defending former president Donald Trump’s proposal for across-the-board tariffs, argued that Trump managed to bring back manufacturing jobs from overseas when he was president. He then cited as evidence a statistic that immediately gave us PTSD.

“12,000 factories” — we’d fact-checked this falsehood during the Trump administration. Trump said it 15 times during his presidency, according to our database of false and misleading claims, including in the 2020 State of the Union address. He began making this claim after reports that, before the covid pandemic, the manufacturing sector was entering a recession.

But this is an especially bogus figure.

The Facts

“Factories” conjures up images of smokestacks and production lines, but the dataset cited by Trump — and now Vance — is not really about factories. Trump is citing a Bureau of Labor Statistics database set known as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which counts the number of “establishments in private manufacturing.”

But more than 80 percent of these “manufacturing establishments” employ five or fewer people. If those sound like pretty small factories, that’s because many are not “factories.” The BLS considers any establishment “engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products.” So that also means establishments “that transform materials or substances into new products by hand or in the worker’s home and those engaged in selling to the general public products made on the same premises from which they are sold, such as bakeries, candy stores, and custom tailors.”

It’s also strange that Vance would rely on an outdated Trump statistic. As we mentioned, Trump included this in the 2020 State of the Union address, and it represented the period from the first quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2019.

For all of Trump’s presidency, the figure would be nearly 18,000 additional “manufacturing establishments.” But here’s the rub: Through the first quarter of this year, President Joe Biden could claim a gain of nearly 39,000 during his tenure.

A Vance spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Pinocchio Test

It says something about the quality of Trump campaign research that Vance would need to reach back to an outdated claim debunked four years ago. These aren’t really factories — and Trump’s record on this statistic fares poorly compared with Biden’s.

Vance earns Four Pinocchios.

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The details of the dispute over Donald Trump’s campaign aides shooting photos and video in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery matter, as I wrote earlier. If they were told that filming in this hallowed area wasn’t allowed — as a U.S. defense official tells The Washington Post they were, more than once — and bulldozed ahead, that would be at least something of a scandal. Trump’s campaign has suggested there was a dispute but has said “there was no physical altercation as described.”

Even aside from the nature of the clash, which NPR reported got physical, we’re left with a very important question: Was shooting those photos and that video illegal, in and of itself?

Arlington National Cemetery’s statement certainly suggested it was.

“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the cemetery said Tuesday. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”

The apparently applicable law here is 32 CFR § 553.32. That law says the executive director of the Army National Military Cemeteries shall “ensure the sanctity of public and private memorial and ceremonial events.”

“All memorial services and ceremonies within Army National Military Cemeteries, other than official ceremonies, shall be purely memorial in purpose,” it says.

It adds: “Memorial services and ceremonies at Army National Military Cemeteries will not include partisan political activities.”

As for whether Trump’s and his campaign’s actions are “partisan political activities”?

Trump has no official role in the U.S. government right now, and the political purpose of the visit would seem pretty evident. In addition to Trump visiting the cemetery with campaign aides, his team has in recent days sought to highlight the Biden administration’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and attach it to Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Trump team has also shared the images in a very campaign-oriented way. Top campaign aide Dan Scavino posted a video of Trump laying a wreath with family members. Some family members spoke at last month’s Republican National Convention.

And Trump’s TikTok post featured clips of his visit and Trump saying, “And then they took over that disaster — the leaving of Afghanistan.” The caption appended: “Should have never happened.”

In other words, this goes beyond merely memorializing the dead; Trump is making an argument about the relative merits of himself and his successors in leading the federal government — one of whom he’s running against.

Micki McElya, a University of Connecticut history professor who wrote a book on Arlington National Cemetery, said politics are inherent at the cemetery, which often has to navigate that: “There is a long tradition of military families and veterans making their grief public to call leaders to account for their policies, actions, and words, and these protests have come from all along the political spectrum.”

But McElya called it “undeniable” that the Trump visit was a campaign event.

Tanya Marsh, an expert on funeral and cemetery law at Wake Forest University, added that U.S. law gives cemeteries broad authority to establish rules, including for visitors.

“Barring a private photographer who appears to be acting on behalf of a political campaign is certainly something that appears to be within the cemetery’s authority,” Marsh said. “So, yes, if the campaign was filming during the wreath-laying ceremony for partisan political activities, that would be a violation of federal law.”

The Trump campaign has shared a snippet of an email that it suggested involved the cemetery giving it clearance. But the snippet didn’t specifically address Section 60. (Photography is generally allowed, for example, at the Tomb of the Unknowns, as the above photo demonstrates.) The Trump campaign hasn’t responded to a request for the full email.

The campaign has also shared text messages indicating that the family members approved of the Trump campaign having media present, a point that Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) emphasized Wednesday.

“They invited him to be there and to support them,” Vance said.

But that, again, doesn’t specifically address the crux of the matter.

“While the families’ statement that they invited and approved of the campaign photographer’s presence in Section 60 may soften the remarkable cynicism and crass behavior of the Trump campaign in the eyes of some people,” McElya said, “the law does not give them the authority to sanction campaign photography.”

For now, it’s not known what kind of probing there might be into the matter. The cemetery said it filed a report, but it’s not clear to whom the report was sent. And even if the Trump campaign’s photography was illegal, the law doesn’t specify criminal penalties.

Beyond that, there’s the question of whether charges could be brought related to the altercation that NPR initially reported took place. NPR’s source said campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the cemetery official.

At least one member of Congress — Rep. Gerry Connolly (D), who represents Northern Virginia — is calling for more information from that report and from the cemetery.

One of the defining characteristics of Donald Trump’s rallies is the emergence of an ad hoc marketplace of Trump-related merchandise. If it is made of cloth, is red and carries the name “Trump,” it’s there and it’s for sale.

A businessman like Trump might be expected to have mixed feelings about such a display. On the one hand, it’s a demonstration of the extent of enthusiasm of his supporters. On the other, it’s a lot of money being made from his name going into other peoples’ pockets.

But then, he’s still making a lot of money off his own name, too. In fact, he seems to be making an increasing amount of money selling the Trump brand — at the potential expense of the Trump candidacy.

On Tuesday, for example, Trump announced the fourth collection of his non-fungible token (NFT) trading cards — digital images that are theoretically constrained to increase their value. You may recall the flurry of excitement around NFTs a few years ago, with similar images inexplicably selling for thousands of dollars before plunging in value. Trump was late to this game, but he’s stuck with it, probably because Trump’s NFTs offer something more than a poorly photoshopped image of Trump dressed up as a cowboy: They offer access to Trump.

If you are one of the first 25 people to buy 250 of these new NFTs, the website proclaims, you get a staggering package of goodies: two VIP dinners with Trump and two cocktail receptions, as well as three pairs of signed sneakers (more on those in a second) and some actual physical trading cards, among other things. All for the low price of … let’s see, each card retails for $99, so: $24,750.

This package, mind you, does not include the commemorative card that is adorned with a piece of the suit Trump wore during his debate with President Joe Biden earlier this year. For that particular relic, you need to spend about $1,500 on 15 trading cards.

The money Trump is encouraging his supporters to spend doesn’t go toward getting him elected. The website insists that “these Digital Trading Cards are not political” — sure — “and have nothing to do with any political campaign.” The company simply “uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

CIC Digital LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, the entity established when Trump won the presidency to theoretically separate himself from his business interests.

CIC Digital LLC is different from CIC Ventures LLC, also a subsidiary of the Trump Trust. (The “CIC” here is presumably short for “commander in chief,” which would perhaps not be how the Founding Fathers expected that title to be used.) CIC Ventures is the partner of the aforementioned sneaker salespeople.

Want shoes showing a stylized image of Trump immediately after he was shot last month? $299. Want the gold ones, titled “Never Surrender” after Trump’s response to having been arrested in Georgia? $499. The Timberland-style boots are $199. The orange bitcoin/Trump shoes are apparently sold out; they went for $299 as well. (You will notice, as we go through all of this, that cryptocurrency is an undercurrent. That’s not a coincidence.)

Perhaps you’re simply looking to impress the guys at the frat house with your support for Trump. The sneaker people have an array of products designed for you: sandals/slides ($149), a cooler ($299) and Trump-branded cologne, titled “Victory” ($119).

Trump also recently plugged a Telegram channel for something called “World Liberty Financial,” a cryptocurrency-oriented group with an unclear goal. Among the sparse posts at Telegram, though, there was an offered warning: “Please be aware of scams and fake tokens claiming to be associated with ‘Defiant Ones,’ ‘World Liberty,’ or similar names. Do not engage with these tokens!” Scams? In crypto??

There are, of course, plenty of offerings for Trump’s more traditional base of support. There’s the Trump Bible, retailing for about $60. (The website also helpfully explains what to do if your Bible’s pages are sticking together.) And there are the other quasi-religious Trump books any true supporter will have to flesh out his or her library.

The newest is “Save America,” which Trump touted as “a FANTASTIC new Book” for which he “hand-selected every Photo, from my time in the White House, to our current third Campaign for President of the United States.” It’s only $99 — unless you want it signed, which tacks on $400.

For $399, you can get a signed copy of the book “Letters to Trump,” which is what it sounds like. The first book published by the firm responsible for these tomes, called Winning Team Publishing, was “Our Journey Together,” which is now only $74.99. If you want the full “Our Journey Together” bundle — including a special edition of the book, one of Donald Trump Jr.’s books and a “Make America Great Again” hat — you only need to shell out $999. (Donald Trump Jr. is a co-founder of Winning Team Publishing.)

If you only want a MAGA hat, Winning Team has those, too, though it doesn’t appear that sales of these explicitly campaign-oriented hats actually kick anything back to the campaign. They retail for about $30, the same as the Donald Trump-shaped Bluetooth speaker also sold on the website.

Trump’s fancier supporters might be in the market for higher-end products. A standard-sized bottle of Trump wine, from Trump Winery, retails for as much as $94.99 — though the person who benefits would be Trump’s son Eric. For that same price, you can also buy (as of writing) almost five shares of Trump Media & Technology Group stock. Whether that stock or the NFTs are a better investment is a question better answered by economists, but it’s been an unalloyed boon for Trump himself.

Further along the income scale, the Trump Organization still offers memberships at its clubs and golf courses — more expensive than buying 250 NFTs but a better way to ensure face time with Trump on a regular basis. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club/home now welcomes new members for only $700,000 a year. But hurry; the price will reportedly jump to $1 million in October. No wonder profits at Mar-a-Lago have quadrupled since Trump left office.

Almost all of this — the NFTs, the sneakers, the memberships, the books — kicks some portion of what customers pay back to Trump in one form or another. (He made $300,000 from the Bibles, for example.) All while his campaign complains in fundraising emails to supporters about being outpaced by Vice President Kamala Harris.

This is the contradiction that’s lingered around Trump since he announced his 2016 candidacy: He wants to be both a businessman and a candidate at the same time. Except Trump, it seems, doesn’t see it as much of a contradiction at all.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz traveled across southern Georgia on Wednesday, the pair’s second bus tour in two weeks and their first burst of campaigning since the Democratic National Convention ended last Thursday.

The tour, which is scheduled to end with a Harris rally in Savannah on Thursday, is the campaign’s latest effort to compete in Georgia, which has become a critical battleground in the month since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

“Campaigning in this part of the Peach State is critical as it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban, and urban Georgians — with a large proportion of Black voters and working class families,” the campaign said in a statement announcing the tour.

The bus tour features more intimate settings and smaller groups, following the template Harris and Walz set while traveling through western Pennsylvania on Aug. 18.

Shortly after Air Force Two landed in Georgia on Wednesday afternoon, Harris and Walz chatted with students at a school in Hinesville, which is near Savannah.

“We wanted to come by just to let you know that our country is counting on you. All of you,” Harris told the students. “You are leaders, by the very fact that you are here in this room.”

She added: “We’re so proud of you. Your generation, all that you guys stand for … is what is going to propel our country into the next era of what we can do and what we can be.”

Later, Harris and Walz stopped at a barbecue restaurant.

Harris’s 30-vehicle motorcade included CNN’s Dana Bash, according to the Savannah Morning News. On Thursday, Bash is scheduled to conduct Harris’s first interview since she became the Democratic nominee.

Republicans, including those tied to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, have criticized Harris for not holding a news conference or sitting down for an extended media interview since Biden stepped aside July 21, making his vice president the likely nominee. Instead, Harris has largely stuck to more scripted events, including rallies that have attracted enthusiastic crowds and energized many Democrats.

That raises the stakes for the CNN interview, which is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, and which Harris and Walz will do together.

Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992. But many Democrats had privately given up on the idea of carrying the state in November, with polls showing Trump with a considerable lead over Biden.

Those same polls have largely shifted in Democrats’ favor since Harris entered the race, and the party is investing more time and resources in Georgia as it attempts to block Trump’s potential pathways to 270 electoral votes. If the Harris-Walz ticket can capture Georgia — or North Carolina, a nearby state that has not given its electoral votes to a Democrat since Barack Obama in 2008 — it would greatly increase the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House and complicate Trump’s path.

Both Democrats and Republicans have focused on Georgia in recent weeks, with Trump and Harris each seeing its 16 electoral votes as crucial for most paths to victory.

Harris traveled to Atlanta last month for a rally that featured rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo, drawing more than 10,000 people.

“I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right through this state,” Harris said at the event. “You all helped us win in 2020, and we’re going to do it again in 2024.”

Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, held a rally a few days later in the same venue, speaking to a near-capacity crowd.

During that rally, Trump unleashed a fusillade of strong personal attacks against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a popular Republican, resurfacing a bitter intraparty battle in the crucial state.

Trump called Kemp “Little Brian”; denounced him as “disloyal”; suggested the governor wanted Republicans to lose elections; and argued Georgia would have better crime and economic numbers if Kemp were no longer in charge.

Kemp responded on X that “my focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats — not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past. You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it.”

Trump later issued a conciliatory statement in a social media post, thanking Kemp “for all of your help and support in Georgia.”

The tour through Georgia is the second bus trip that Harris and Walz have taken through a battleground state. They also traveled through western Pennsylvania shortly before appearing at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.

During the Pennsylvania swing, Harris and Walz greeted supporters at an airport hangar, dropped in on a high school football practice, handed out baked goods to firefighters, met with volunteers and participated in a phone-banking session. The trip took them to Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh and a large cache of Democratic voters, as well as Beaver County, a more Republican-leaning area that Trump carried in 2020.

“On the bus tour, the Vice President and Governor Walz will meet directly with voters in their communities, much like their western Pennsylvania bus tour which included stops at a local campaign field office and a high school football practice,” the campaign said ahead of the Georgia swing.

Vance visited southern Georgia last Thursday, calling the state “one of the most important” to the outcome of the election.

“Kamala Harris wants to take San Francisco liberalism nationwide, and I think we’re not going to let her,” the Republican vice-presidential candidate said as he met with local law enforcement at an event focused on crime and the border. “Georgia is not going to let her, and I think it starts right here in Valdosta.”

Earlier this month, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign contacted military officials about visiting Arlington National Cemetery to mark the third anniversary of the Islamic State bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation from Afghanistan.

Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries, and Arlington is the most prestigious and sacred of all. Pentagon officials were deeply concerned about the former president turning the visit into a campaign stop, but they also didn’t want to block him from coming, according to Defense Department officials and internal messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Officials said they wanted to respect the wishes of grieving family members who wanted Trump there, but at the same time were wary of Trump’s record of politicizing the military. So they laid out ground rules they hoped would wall off politics from the final resting place of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their nation.

Instead, they got sucked into exactly the kind of crisis they were hoping to avoid.

A cemetery employee tried to enforce the rules as provided to her by blocking Trump’s team from bringing cameras to the graves of U.S. service members killed in recent years, according to a senior defense official and another person briefed on the incident. A larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee, leaving her shocked.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to the first report of the altercation, from NPR on Tuesday, by accusing, without evidence, the employee of “suffering from a mental health episode.” Defense officials said that the employee was trying to do her job and that the claim of a mental health episode was false. On Wednesday Cheung said the employee “initiated physical contact that was unwarranted and unnecessary.”

Cheung also said the campaign would release footage to support his claim but has not. The campaign did, however, post a TikTok of the event on Wednesday — exactly what military officials tried to prevent. The use of the footage marked a flagrant violation of the law against partisan actions at military cemeteries, defense officials said.

The visit comes as Trump struggles to regain his footing in a race altered by Vice President Kamala Harris’s replacement of President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket. He often portrays himself as a champion of the military, but Democrats point to his public and private remarks denigrating service members.

“I just haven’t seen anything this disgusting,” said Paul Eaton, a retired Army general and adviser to the liberal group VoteVets whose father’s remains are interred at Arlington. “It is completely inappropriate to do any kind of political activity on a federal installation, and it is immoral in my terms to conduct any kind of self-serving activity on a cemetery with the graves of our fallen.”

Defense officials were concerned about the event Monday because Republicans have frequently used the bombing, a low point of the Biden administration, as a political cudgel. In advance of the event, cemetery officials told Trump’s team that he could come in his personal capacity and bring personal aides, but not campaign staff. Campaign advisers went anyway.

No hats, signs or banners were allowed, according to military officials. No speeches. Reporters and photographers could follow Trump for a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns, but not to the 14-acre plot where veterans from recent wars are buried, known as Section 60. The media was kept away, unable to see the altercation — or anything else, for that matter — during that part of his visit.

The first part went according to plan. With full media coverage, Trump and two Marines injured in the bombing, Tyler Vargas-Andrews and Kelsee Lainhart, laid a wreath at the tomb, a monument dedicated to deceased U.S. troops whose remains have not been identified or recovered. The press then returned to a holding area, specifically instructed that reporters and cameras would not accompany Trump and bereaved families to Section 60.

But Trump officials said they did not view the campaign’s own photographer and videographer as subject to the same restrictions, so they continued on to Section 60. Their arrival there prompted the standoff with the cemetery employee over the rules. The identity of the Trump aide involved was not known Wednesday.

The incident has raised concerns about the safety of Arlington staff members, the senior defense official said, with vitriol aimed at them initially on Monday by liberals, after the news coverage of Trump at the cemetery was published. That has given way to language from conservatives that also is “concerning.”

“If the campaign feels the need to defend their team’s actions — which include bullying and physically pushing out of the way a longtime public servant and member of the team at Arlington working to protect the sanctity of the sacred spaces — then that’s on them,” one defense official said. “The rules were made clear to participants, and these two chose to disregard those rules. End of story.”

A brief report of the incident was filed with security personnel overseeing the cemetery, the senior defense official said. The confrontation is not under investigation by either the Army Criminal Investigation Division or the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, officials with each organization said.

Co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who was present Monday along with other campaign employees, in a statement called the cemetery employee “a despicable individual” who “does not deserve to represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.” LaCivita posted video on X on Monday of Trump laying flowers at the grave of Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, a soldier killed in the explosion, and speaking to his family on the phone.

In addition to the campaign’s TikTok video, Trump posed for photos on Monday at the graveside of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee with her family, including one where he is giving a thumbs-up gesture and others are smiling. Eaton called the gesture “appalling.”

The campaign also defended itself with a joint statement from the two injured Marines who appeared with Trump and the families of some of the service members killed, saying they wanted Trump and his cameras there.

Darin Hoover, whose son, Staff Sgt. Darin “Taylor” Hoover, died in the bombing, reaffirmed that in an interview Wednesday.

“We invited him. He didn’t come to us,” Hoover said. “He has shown nothing but sincerity to all of us and for what happened to our children, and for anybody else to try to take that away from the ceremony — both at the wreath-laying and at the graveside — is unconscionable.”

Hoover and some of the other grieving families also participated in the Republican National Convention and said Biden has not granted multiple requests to meet with him. They have grown closer to Trump over the years after bad interactions with Biden, who has offended some Gold Star families by discussing the death of his son Beau, who died of brain cancer after returning from serving in Iraq, in a meeting with them.

Other veterans and bereaved families viewed Trump’s visit as disrespectful to a sacred space that also belongs to them and to the nation. Section 60 is a place where young widows can be seem trimming grass with hand scissors, sharing comfort with other Gold Star families, and decorating graves with flowers and beads. Visitors have long taken graveside photographs there, and sitting presidents have visited before, but not as part of campaign events.

“That’s not the time or place for it,” said Karen Meredith, a VoteVets board member whose son, 1st Lt. Ken Ballard, is buried in the second row of Section 60. “They had to bully themselves into this thing. The lack of respect for the rules or the norms or the laws at Arlington — there’s just no respect.”

Rep. Michael Waltz (R.-Fla.), an Army veteran who participated in the Arlington event on Monday, stood by the family’s wishes and accused the cemetery employee of overstepping.

“If they had a Trump-Vance banner and campaign signs, or if he went to the microphone and hit the other side, then okay,” he said. “But that wasn’t the case.”

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), turned the incident into a political attack during a campaign speech in Erie, Pa., on Wednesday. “We’re going to talk about a story out of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives,” he said. He then falsely accused Harris of criticizing Trump’s visit to the cemetery, which she hasn’t commented on. A Harris campaign spokesman called it “pretty sad.”

“She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up,” Vance said. “She can go to hell.”

Trump has repeatedly defied restrictions on using federal property for campaign purposes by staging a political speech at Mount Rushmore, participating in a television interview inside the Lincoln Memorial, and holding the 2020 Republican National Convention at the White House itself. As president, he pushed unsuccessfully for a European-style military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

At the same time, Trump has repeatedly badmouthed the sacrifices of American service members. In 2015, he mocked the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for his time as a prisoner of war (“I like people who weren’t captured”), and earlier this month said the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military Medal of Honor because those who received the latter were “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”

Trump’s former aides have said he similarly disparaged service members in private, which he denies. Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Trump responded to appearing with a wounded veteran by saying, “No one wants to see that.” His former chief of staff, John Kelly, said Trump called U.S. Marines buried at cemeteries in France “suckers” and “losers.” (Other former aides have said they didn’t hear those remarks.) Kelly has also said Trump told him during a previous visit to Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

“He never understood why would you do anything that doesn’t benefit you,” one former senior Trump White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private interaction. “I remember talking to him about death and sacrifice for the country, and it was like talking Greek to him. That’s why it’s the height of hypocrisy he’s there laying a wreath, given his general feelings about veterans.”

The former official said it was painful to see the suffering families put their faith in Trump.

“They are clearly grieving, and their kids have given the ultimate sacrifice, and they think he can help them,” the former official said. “They don’t know who he really is and what he’s really about. It’s not their fault.”

Cheung called the former official a “coward” for speaking anonymously.

Hau Chu, Alex Horton, Hannah Knowles, Amy B Wang and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.