The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.

It also follows through on what people familiar with Harris’ forthcoming economic agenda said this week would be a centerpiece of her plans: an aggressive rhetorical attempt to shift the blame for high inflation onto corporate America. Polls show that argument resonates strongly with voters, including independent voters who could decide the November election.

Progressive groups have urged President Joe Biden, and now Harris, to fully embrace that argument.

In a release announcing the policy, Harris campaign officials did not detail how a price-gouging ban would be enforced or what current corporate behaviors would be outlawed if it were enacted. They said Harris would work in her first 100 days to put in place a federal ban “setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”

The officials also said Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” on corporations that fix prices. They said that she would direct more resources toward investigating price-gouging in the supply chain for meat and that she would push federal officials to closely scrutinize proposed grocery mergers.

They also said that Harris would unveil plans Friday related to housing costs and prescription drug prices. Many states ban price gouging, but the federal government does not.

Inflation and prices are an obstacle for Harris as she faces off with former President Donald Trump this fall. Price growth soared in the first two years of Biden’s administration. It is falling toward historically normal levels now, though prices remain elevated from where they were three years ago. On Wednesday, the annual inflation rate dipped under 3% for the first time since 2021.

Economists largely blame a mix of factors for the price surge, including snarls in global supply chains related to the pandemic recession and economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve and Congress — including increased federal spending and tax cuts approved first by Trump, then Biden.

Over the past year, as grocery prices in particular have dragged on Biden’s approval rating, progressive groups urged him to blame something else for high prices: powerful corporations, whose profits soared during the pandemic. Biden has partly complied. He has gone after meatpacking companies and oil companies over high prices. He admonished companies regarding so-called shrinkflation — reducing the size of a product, like a bag of chips or a candy bar, while keeping the price the same or even raising it.

An analysis this year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that corporate consolidation had contributed to recent elevated grocery prices but that corporate factors did not come close to accounting for the majority of the price increases.

Harris appears to be going further. People familiar with her plans said this week that she would seek to connect her price-gouging plans to her political biography, including her record of prosecuting corporate lawbreakers. The Wednesday release confirmed that strategy.

“In her remarks Friday,” it concluded, “Vice President Harris will discuss her lifelong commitment to fighting for the middle class and tackling powerful interests by invoking her time as California’s attorney general and going after corporate greed and price gouging — and winning.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

His effort has been unsuccessful. The news was first reported by The Washington Post.

“We’ve reached out repeatedly through the highest level intermediaries,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Wednesday night. “We’ve been told that they have no interest in talking with me.”

There was little chance the Harris campaign would engage with Kennedy. Public and private polling has found that as he spent the summer attacking President Joe Biden, he began to draw more support from voters otherwise predisposed to back former President Donald Trump. Now Harris does better in some surveys when Kennedy is included than when she is tested in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.

Kennedy, long seen as a potential spoiler in the race, has slipped in polls and struggled to raise money, and he has appeared to consider potential offramps as speculation has grown about whether he might drop out and, if so, whether he would endorse Harris or Trump.

On Wednesday night, Kennedy wrote: “I’ve always argued that we should be willing to talk with each other across party lines. I’m willing to meet with leaders of both parties to discuss the possibility of a unity government.”

The Post reported last month that Kennedy had held talks with Trump about a possible Cabinet job, proposing a role in public health leadership, in exchange for his support. And in a leaked video of a phone call between the two men, Trump tried to cajole Kennedy to exit the race and endorse him.

“I would love you to do something,” the former president said. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.” Kennedy said little in response on the call. The two men also met in person in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention.

Two people familiar with Kennedy’s campaign confirmed that advisers to Trump had raised the possibility of a Cabinet post with people close to Kennedy, but said the discussions were fluid and inconclusive. The political circumstances were also far different at the time, when Biden was still in the race and trailing well behind the former president.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy has confronted a range of negative headlines and setbacks in recent weeks.

This month, he acknowledged he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.”

That bizarre story overshadowed a more serious challenge: a court case in Albany that this week removed him from the ballot in New York. A judge said he had used a “sham” address to maintain his New York residency.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

In a three-page decision dated Tuesday, the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, slammed Trump’s filing seeking his recusal as “rife with inaccuracies” and repetitive, and dismissed the idea that he had any conflict of interest.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that the judge’s daughter “has a long-standing relationship with Harris” — a claim her colleagues have disputed — and cited her “work for political campaigns” as a Democratic consultant. But prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which secured Trump’s conviction in May on felony charges of falsifying business records, called his request “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” an issue that Merchan had already twice dismissed.

Merchan, a moderate Democrat who was once a registered Republican, rejected Trump’s initial bid to oust him last year and did so again in April, on the first day of trial. The judge, who has no direct ties to Harris, cited a state advisory committee on judicial ethics, which determined that his impartiality could not reasonably be questioned based on his daughter’s interests.

Trump, who has stoked right-wing furor against the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, renewed the recusal request once President Joe Biden abandoned his presidential campaign and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. She is now locked in a tight race with Trump, who has falsely portrayed his conviction as a Democratic plot to foil his campaign.

Juan Merchan’s decision, while anticipated, is consequential nonetheless: It enables him to soon decide two crucial matters that will shape Trump’s legal fate.

On Sept. 16, the judge is scheduled to determine whether to throw out Trump’s conviction following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting him broad immunity for official actions as president. The former president’s long-shot request was vigorously opposed by prosecutors, who urged Merchan to uphold the jury’s verdict, noting that the case had nothing to do with Trump’s official acts in the White House.

If Merchan denies Trump’s immunity motion, as expected, Trump could mount an emergency appeal. If that fails, the judge will then proceed with Trump’s sentencing on Sept. 18. Trump faces up to four years in prison, but could receive a far shorter sentence, or even probation.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

After describing at length the attempted assassination against him at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, Trump ran through familiar complaints about immigration — echoed by Musk — and attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.

Here’s a fact check:

— He inaccurately claimed that a chart he showed at the Pennsylvania rally, which he has repeatedly credited with saving his life, showed that “my last week, we had the best illegal immigration numbers.” (The chart was highly misleading, and unauthorized border crossings were not the lowest when he left office.)

— He misleadingly described Harris as “the border czar.” (She was responsible for addressing the root causes of migration in Central America, not border security.)

— He said that 20 million people had illegally crossed the southern border under President Joe Biden. (The number is overstated.)

— He claimed, with no evidence, that other countries take immigrants “out of jails, prisons” and “bring them to the United States.” (Prison populations are increasing across the world.)

— He claimed that crime in Venezuela had declined 72% because of an exodus of criminals into the United States. (The decrease is overstated, and there is no evidence that Venezuela had “gotten rid” of criminals.)

— He asserted that Biden “shut down Keystone XL pipeline, which is our pipeline that would have employed 48,000 people.” (Biden did rescind a permit for the pipeline, which had a projected employment of 35 permanent jobs.)

— He falsely described climate change as “where the ocean is going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.” (Under a worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise by as much as 10 meters by 2300, or nearly 33 feet, more than 3,100 times what Trump said.)

— He exaggerated grocery price inflation as high as “50, 60, even 100% in some cases.” (The index that tracks grocery prices is up by about 20% since early 2021.)

— He falsely claimed that inflation was the “worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years.” (Inflation reached 8% in 2022, the highest since 1981.)

— He falsely claimed that bacon now cost “four or five times more than it did a few years ago.” (The average price of sliced bacon was $5.83 per pound in January 2021 and $6.83 per pound in June 2024.)

— He falsely claimed that the 2017 tax cut was the “largest” in history. (At least half a dozen others are bigger.)

— He claimed, with no evidence, that the Biden administration orchestrated the criminal cases against him because it “went after their political opponent.” (At least two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning the Justice Department has no connection to the cases. Two others are overseen by a special counsel, specifically to avoid the perception of politicization.)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Trump flew from Bozeman, Montana, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Aspen, Colorado, on the jet, made by Gulfstream, to attend campaign fundraisers after Trump’s signature Boeing 757, often referred to as Trump Force One, experienced a mechanical issue en route to a campaign rally in Bozeman on Friday.

A Trump campaign official said that the campaign had called its charter jet vendor, Private Jet Services Group, after the mechanical failure to get a plane that could ferry the former president, and that the charter service had provided the Gulfstream jet. The official added that the campaign had used that private jet service as a vendor for years, and that it would take efforts to avoid using that plane in the future.

A representative for Elevate Aviation Group, which owns Private Jet Services Group, hung up on a phone call requesting a comment about the aircraft. Other phone calls and text messages were not answered.

Over the weekend, viral social media posts highlighted the apparent connection to Epstein. A report by the Miami Herald on Monday matched the charter plane’s tail number to a Gulfstream jet once owned by Epstein.

Epstein’s planes have long been a source of public interest; he was known to travel with high-profile passengers, including former President Bill Clinton, Trump, Prince Andrew and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running for president as an independent candidate. Epstein also brought young women — and girls, according to some who accused Epstein of sex trafficking — to entertain guests on board.

Trump and Epstein had routinely crossed paths over the decades, attending many of the same social events and being photographed together in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump spoke enthusiastically about their relationship in the years before Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of unlawful sex with minors. In 2002, Trump told New York magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.”

Speaking in the Oval Office in 2019, Trump distanced himself from Epstein, saying that he’d “had a falling out with him.”

“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” he added. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

In a clip from a political event in 2018, when he represented Minnesota in the House, Walz referenced his 24 years in the Army National Guard and background as a hunter while discussing his views on gun control. He spoke of supporting common-sense gun legislation that also protects Second Amendment rights, including background checks and restrictions on high-powered firearms.

“We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz said in the clip, which the campaign had shared Tuesday on social media, just hours after Harris named him as her running mate.

Walz deployed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, but not in a combat zone.

Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said in a statement Saturday that Walz’s remarks had been a misstatement and that he had not tried to mislead anyone about his military service.

“In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the governor misspoke,” Hitt said.

Walz, who is in his second term as Minnesota’s governor, has come under intense scrutiny from Republicans over his military record. They have accused him of exaggerating his record and of quitting the Army National Guard two decades ago to avoid being deployed to Iraq, rekindling claims made by two retired command sergeant majors during Walz’s first campaign for governor in 2018.

Leading that criticism is Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, who has accused Walz of “stolen valor.”

Vance served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2003-07 during the Iraq war. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006 with the aircraft wing but was not a frontline combatant. His official military occupation, known as a combat correspondent, meant he was tasked with basic communication roles such as writing articles about the happenings in his unit.

The Republican broadsides against Walz resembled the “Swift Boat” attacks in the 2004 presidential election that created a cloud of uncertainty over the military record of Sen. John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee. Chris LaCivita, who is a senior strategist for the Trump campaign, was an architect of those attacks, which were highly effective.

The conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal spurned comparisons this past week between Kerry’s situation and Walz’s military service, which it wrote was “far different.” It said that there were plenty of reasons to criticize Walz, but that his military record was not one of them. It quoted a New York Sun editorial that described the attacks as “thin gruel.”

On a number of occasions, Walz has emphasized that he did not serve in combat. During a CNN interview last month, when anchor Jake Tapper said Walz had deployed to Afghanistan, Walz corrected him and that he had served in Europe in support of that war.

In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio in 2018, when he was running for governor, Walz said of his military career: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did.”

And when Walz was running for reelection as governor in 2022, the Minneapolis StarTribune wrote that he had shied away from dramatic accounts of his time in the National Guard, framing himself instead as a former high school teacher and football coach.

The 2018 clip of Walz saying that “those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at,” was not the only one that Trump’s allies seized on this week.

They also pounced on a 2007 C-SPAN clip from a Capitol Hill news conference when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House speaker at the time, thanked Walz for his service “on the battlefield.” Walz was identified by C-SPAN as an “Afghanistan war veteran” at the time.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Walz’s “policies to allow convicted felons to vote” in Minnesota are evidence that he “is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.

But critics of the former president were quick to point out that, if not for such policies, Trump himself would be barred from voting.

A jury in New York convicted Trump of 34 felonies this year for falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn actor. While he is trying to overturn the verdict, it remains in place, and he is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House aide who is now a co-host of “The View,” wondered on social media, “Does he not believe he should be able to vote for himself?”

Former Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., who has been sharply critical of Trump, wrote: “Big reminder that Trump is a convicted felon with indicted felonies still to go to trial … and wants to pardon hundreds of violent Jan 6 felons but yeah, talk about felons, Mr. First ever nominated felon.”

Trump is registered to vote in Florida, which, when it comes to whether felons can vote, defers to the laws of the state where a conviction took place. New York allows people with felony convictions to vote unless they are in prison, so Trump can cast a ballot unless he is incarcerated on Election Day.

Stricter laws in many Republican-led states would stop him from voting until he had completed all terms of his sentence, including parole or probation — or, in some cases, require further action to have his voting rights restored even after he completed his sentence.

Leavitt said: “President Trump is eligible to vote. This does not apply to him at all.”

A bill Walz signed last year made Minnesota’s policy similar to the one in New York under which Trump is eligible: It restored voting rights to felons who had completed their prison sentences, rather than disenfranchising them until they completed parole or probation. Felons still lose their voting rights in Minnesota while they are incarcerated.

More than 20 states have policies similar to the ones in Minnesota and New York.

Florida’s laws are stricter: If it applied its own standards instead of New York’s standards to Trump, a sentence of parole or probation would disenfranchise him this November.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

In truth, he probably should not have been playing at all. Kane missed the end of the Bundesliga season with Bayern Munich because of a back injury. It was serious enough that it made him questionable for the team’s Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in May.

He was not the only player to be hampered. Jude Bellingham was still suffering from the aftereffect of a dislocated shoulder in November and may need surgery. For months, Bellingham has been wearing strapping on his shoulder that enables him to play freely. Some good news for Real Madrid fans is that Kylian Mbappé is unlikely to need surgery on his nose after breaking it while playing for France at the Euros.

Spanish goalkeeper Unai Simon had an operation on his wrist shortly after the tournament, which had been needed for some time. He managed to get through Spain’s victorious Euro 2024 campaign by using painkilling injections.

It was a similar story at the Copa América. You will have seen the pictures of Lionel Messi in tears, his ankle looking about twice the size it should have been after injuring it in the final. He already had to nurse his way to that final after suffering a groin problem in Argentina’s second game against Chile.

His Inter Miami teammate, Luis Suárez, also  had to miss the MLS All-Star Game with what has been described as knee discomfort, presumably related to the chronic knee issue he has had to manage for the past few years.

But perhaps more than all of that, many of the biggest players just looked exhausted.

“It’s so tough with crazy schedules and then coming together for the end of the season for one last tournament,” Bellingham said after the final. “It’s difficult on the body — mentally and physically you are exhausted.”

Bellingham, 21, played 54 games for club and country in a season that spanned 11 months, from the second week in August to the middle of July. Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti tried to manage Bellingham’s game time, giving him the odd week off here and there, but even when he was left on the bench at times, Ancelotti pressed him into action — shoulder strapping and all.

It is no wonder Bellingham was tired, but his workload was relatively light compared with others. Manchester United’s seemingly indestructible Bruno Fernandes got through 5,399 minutes last season. William Saliba of Arsenal in the Premier League and Germany’s captain, Ilkay Gundogan, also got more than 5,000 minutes under their belts. “It has been a very demanding season,” Gundogan said during Euro 2024.

Julián Álvarez might not have played the same number of minutes (3,480 for Manchester City), but his schedule has been brutal. His season began Aug. 11, playing for Manchester City until May, with his longest break between games coming in at 13 days. Fifteen days after the FA Cup final, he appeared in his first pre-Copa game for Argentina. He played two friendlies before starting all but one of its games during the tournament, then, after a break of 10 days, he was on the team for Argentina’s opening game at the Olympics, that marathon game against Morocco.

All of which backs up the point being made by FIFPro, the global players’ union, and some of the leading European leagues as they issue a legal complaint against FIFA, accusing soccer’s governing body of presiding over an international calendar that is “beyond saturation.”

FIFPro said: “The schedule has become unsustainable for national leagues and a risk for the health of players. FIFA’s decisions over the last years have repeatedly favored its own competitions and commercial interests, neglected its responsibilities as a governing body and harmed the economic interests of national leagues and the welfare of players.”

It is worth pointing out that complaints from Premier League teams about overwhelming scheduling ring hollow. They conduct lengthy preseason and postseason tours, which involve heavy travel. Chelsea is playing five games in 13 days in a preseason tour spanning the United States. Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United flew to Australia the day after the last Premier League season finished.

The point remains that the approach of FIFA — and most other governing bodies, including UEFA — to scheduling has consistently been “more is more.” The expansion of the World Cup from 2026, the revamped Champions League format, the new Club World Cup, the Nations League and whatever other brilliant wheezes they can dream up, all mean it is technically possible for an elite men’s player to play 87 games next season. No player will actually be on the field that many times, but it illustrates the point FIFPro is making. There is too much soccer, and even if you do not really care about player burnout, the overwhelming amount of games devalues the whole thing.

“You start in August and until May you don’t stop,” said Spanish soccer player Mikel Oyarzabal. “Then in June there is the national team and after that a Club World Cup. They will finish up in July and then, a few weeks later, the league starts again. It needs to be turned back, but it is not up to us. We have to adapt as best we can.”

Clubs generally do their best to regulate the number of games their key players appear in, and have a variety of methods to judge when the players are reaching their capacity and need a rest. But the sheer number of games — and their importance — means it can be difficult to determine which ones a player can miss.

There is also the desire from the players involved to play in games that from a medical perspective, they probably should not have done. Everyone who played through injury at the Euros and the Copa this summer probably would have rested had they been run-of-the-mill league games.

FIFPro has also raised concerns about excessive painkilling injections that are often given to players to squeeze a few more minutes or games out of them. The risk is not the injections themselves, but that they mask the pain that serves as the body’s way of letting the player know they are injured.

The point is that at the major tournaments this summer, despite brilliant play, thrilling moments and new heroes, the overall spectacle was diminished because the biggest stars either got injured, were playing with existing injuries or were tired.

“We are human beings, not machines,” former Liverpool and West Ham goalkeeper Adrián said. “We need a balance, for the fans to enjoy football, too. We need to be fresh and able to play. There are no movies without actors.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

“You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Walz wrote last year about his approach to governing. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”

Republicans have slammed these policies as big-government liberalism and complained that Walz has taken a hard left turn since he represented a politically divided district in Congress years ago.

Here is an overview of where Walz stands on some key issues.

Abortion

Walz signed a bill last year that guaranteed Minnesotans a “fundamental right to make autonomous decisions” about reproductive health care on issues such as abortion, contraception and fertility treatments.

Abortion was already protected by a Minnesota Supreme Court decision, but the new law guarded against a future court reversing that precedent as the U.S. Supreme Court did with Roe v. Wade, and Walz said this year that he was also open to an amendment to the state’s constitution that would codify abortion rights.

Another bill he signed legally shields patients, and their medical providers, if they receive an abortion in Minnesota after traveling from a state where abortion is banned.

“Abortion is health care,” he said on CNN in March, adding: “I think old white men need to learn how to talk about this a little more. And I think the biggest thing is, listen to women, listen to what they’re saying.”

Climate change

Walz’s administration has set a goal for Minnesota to rely on 100% renewable electricity by 2040. He signed legislation that directs officials to prioritize the creation of renewable energy facilities in the same communities that previously had fossil-fuel plants.

During his reelection campaign for governor in 2022, he said that he wanted electric vehicles to account for 20% of cars on Minnesota roads by 2030, and that he wanted the state to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. His administration has adopted stricter limits on tailpipe emissions, which effectively require auto manufacturers to make more electric or hybrid vehicles or otherwise improve fuel efficiency.

He recently announced a $200 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce emissions in the food system, including those generated from farming, supermarkets and organic waste processing facilities.

He has argued that it is possible to “create a clean energy future where we can protect our water, protect our land and do that in a manner that grows the economy.”

Democracy

He has condemned the attempts by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, including his repeated lie that he won Minnesota. “That is an affront to democracy,” Walz said in May. “That is absolutely a line that cannot be crossed.”

Last year, Walz signed a bill establishing automatic voter registration, letting 16- and 17-year-olds preregister to vote so that they are on the rolls when they turn 18, and allowing people to put themselves on a permanent list for absentee ballots.

He signed another bill this year that prohibits voter suppression, including any action that “results in a disparate burden” on a minority group, even if the burden is unintentional.

That legislation provided funding for local governments to open polling locations on college campuses and established criminal penalties for using “deepfakes” to try to influence an election.

Economic policy

Walz and Minnesota’s Democratic legislative majorities have enacted progressive economic policies such as providing free college tuition for low-income students, offering free meals for schoolchildren, and instituting paid medical and family leave.

His budgets have provided for tax rebates for low- and middle-income Minnesotans and have funded a child tax credit for low-income families, alongside tax increases on gas and on investment income for wealthy taxpayers.

In 2020, Walz signed a bipartisan measure that set aside $1.9 billion in bond funding for local construction and renovation projects, such as housing, roads and water infrastructure. In 2023, he approved an additional $2.6 billion in infrastructure spending.

Immigration

Walz supports a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. In a 2021 letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, he urged such a path for “Dreamers” brought to the United States as children, for essential workers, for people whose countries are in crisis and for the families of those immigrants.

As a member of Congress years ago, he voted for stricter screening of refugees, but changed his position when he ran for governor. During his 2022 reelection campaign, he denounced his Republican opponent for saying that accepting immigrants without enough resources threatened “Minnesota’s fabric of life.” Walz said, “He’s 100% wrong morally, and he’s 100% wrong economically and culturally.”

He signed a bill last year that made undocumented immigrants eligible for Minnesota driver’s licenses, which he argued would make roads safer by reducing unlicensed driving. He does not have a clear public record on border-security policies.

Israel and Gaza

Walz has not spoken extensively about Israel or the Gaza Strip.

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, he condemned Hamas while saying he supported a deal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, writing on social media: “The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas, and Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. We cannot let terrorists like Hamas win.”

But he has been largely silent since then, even after calls from protesters in Minnesota for the state to divest from Israeli companies.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Debby, which made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of at least 74 mph, blew 25 packages of cocaine onto a beach on the Florida Keys, according to Samuel Briggs II, the acting chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol in Miami. The drugs were discovered by a “good Samaritan,” who alerted authorities, Briggs said in a social media post. The U.S. Border Patrol seized the drugs, he said.

The cocaine blocks, which weighed about 70 pounds total, appeared to be wrapped in plastic and marked with a red and black symbol, according to photos shared by Briggs. Their street value, he added, was over $1 million. It was unclear whether they had washed up on shore in the water or been blown there by the wind.

The narcotics appeared in Islamorada, a village in Monroe County, according to Jeffrey Quiñones, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The drugs were taken into the agency’s custody, Quiñones said in an email on Tuesday. He declined to provide further details.

Drug packages have appeared Florida’s shores before. In 2019, a police department in Cocoa Beach warned the public to be cautious after a duffel bag stuffed with 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds) of powdered cocaine washed up during Hurricane Dorian, according to Florida Today. Soon after, another kilogram of cocaine was found on a beach in Melbourne. And in 1996, dozens of cocaine packages that had been dropped or dumped by smugglers also swept ashore on two beaches.

Bad weather may have also driven cocaine to wash up in Australia, after residents in New South Wales began reporting finding bricks and barrels of the drug along a 60 mile stretch of coastline. Australian police eventually accused a Queensland man of trying to smuggle 1,980 pounds of cocaine into the country. Adverse weather conditions may have partly hindered smugglers from retrieving the drugs, authorities said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.