“The Republican Party has largely refashioned itself in former president Donald Trump’s image in the past five years, with downballot candidates jockeying for his endorsement, hugging him tightly on the campaign trail and embracing his policy initiatives,” the Washington Post reports.

“But many of these same candidates running for the Senate have not replicated the former president’s performance in the polls as Election Day approaches, a gap that is raising concerns among Republican campaigns and fundraisers who fear their candidates are running out of time to win over voters they should already have in hand.”

Sen. J.D. Vance admitted on CNN that he spread lies about the Haitian community in Springfield: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

NPR: Vance defends spreading claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets.

Axios: Vance pushes debunked pet-eating claims yet again.

“Kristi Noem, who shot her dog, is stumping for Trump in Pennsylvania after he claimed that immigrants are eating pets.”

— Philadelphia Inquirer, September 15, 2024.

“In this city thrust unwillingly into the white hot center of Donald Trump’s immigration wars, conspiratorial fervor lept from internet memes into the humdrum tasks of everyday life. Just since Tuesday, bomb threats shuttered city hall, closed a middle school and forced the evacuation of two elementary schools. Even the city’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio License Bureau closed Thursday,” Politico reports.

“As its own senator and the former president trafficked baseless claims that immigrants in this blue-collar swath of Ohio have been abducting and eating pets — something the state’s GOP governor on Sunday called ‘garbage that was not true’ — the city found itself turned upside down.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’s being investigated for cutting the head off a whale, NBC News reports.

Said Kennedy: “This is all about the weaponization of our government against political opponents.”

“Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election.”

— Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), on X.

“Donald Trump allies are worried that the former president’s ties to right-wing activist Laura Loomer could cost him votes in key battleground states,” NBC News reports.

“The allies told NBC News that there are ‘real concerns’ about Loomer and Trump’s association, especially in the wake of her racist social media post about Vice President Kamala Harris this week, where she wrote that the ‘White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center’ if Harris wins the presidential election.”

Donald Trump posts on Truth Social: “I hate Taylor Swift!”

“That was bonkers.”

— Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), quoted by the New York Times, after listening to Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) double-down on false claims of Haitian migrants eating pets.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) doubled down on false claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating pets. saying they came from “first-hand accounts from my constituents,” the New York Times reports.

He then attacked the interviewer, Dana Bash, for fact-checking him, and accused her of being a “Democratic propagandist” for connecting his and Donald Trump’s words to the bomb threats in the city.

A new Albuquerque Journal poll in New Mexico finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump for President, 49% to 39%.

“Despite some speculation New Mexico could be in play this year due to President Joe Biden’s sagging approval rating, the poll results suggest the likelihood of a similar outcome to 2020.”

George Will endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“The restoration of normal politics will require two things: The removal of Donald Trump — that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast — from public life. And the rekindling of an irrepressible conflict.”

“It is between progressivism, of which Kamala Harris is full to overflowing, and actual conservatism, about which Trump is contemptuous.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) told CNN he plans to speak to Vice President Kamala Harris soon and suggested he might endorse her.

“It was almost time for the presidential debate, but Kamala Harris’ staff thought there was one more thing she needed to know. So less than an hour before the vice president left her Philadelphia hotel, two communications aides got her on the phone for one of the strangest briefings of her political career,” the AP reports.

“They told her that Donald Trump had been posting on social media about a false and racist rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. The former president might mention it during the debate, they said.”