road trip to savannah ga from nj

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Home / Atlantic Coast / Georgia / Savannah

Named the “Most Beautiful City in North America” by the Parisian newspaper and style arbiter Le Monde, Savannah (pop. 145,862) is a real jewel of a place. Founded in 1733 as the first settlement in Georgia, the 13th and final American colony, Savannah today preserves its original neoclassical, colonial, and antebellum self in a welcoming, unselfconscious way. Famous for having been spared by General Sherman on his destructive March to the Sea at the end of the Civil War, it was here that Sherman made his offering of “40 acres and a mule” to all people freed from slavery.

Before and after the war, Savannah was Georgia’s main port, rivaling Charleston, South Carolina, for the enormously lucrative cotton trade, but as commercial shipping tailed off, the harbor became increasingly recreational—the yachting competitions of the 1996 Olympics were held offshore. Savannah, home of writer Flannery O’Connor and songsmith Johnny Mercer, also served as backdrop to the best-selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and numerous movies, most famously Forrest Gump, but it has resisted urges to turn itself into an “Old South” theme park; you’ll have to search hard to find souvenir shops or overpriced knickknack galleries. The city is in such good shape partly thanks to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which has taken over many of the city’s older buildings and converted them into art studios, galleries, and cafés.

At the center of Savannah, midway down Bull Street between the waterfront and spacious Forsyth Park, Chippewa Square was the site of Forrest Gump’s bus bench; the movie prop was moved to the Savannah History Museum (303 MLK Jr. Blvd., 912/651-6825, 9am-5:30pm daily, $9) and may one day be erected in bronze. Reynolds Square, near the waterfront, has a statue of John Wesley, who lived in Savannah in 1736-1737 and established the world’s first Sunday school here. Wright Square holds a monument to Chief Tomochichi, the Native American leader who allowed Georgia founder James Edward Oglethorpe to settle here. At the south edge of the historic center, Forsyth Park, inspired by the Place de la Concorde in Paris, is surrounded by richly scented magnolias.

Another great place to wander is Factor’s Walk, a promontory along the Savannah River named for the “factors” who controlled Savannah’s cotton trade. This area holds the Cotton Exchange and other historic buildings, many of them constructed from 18th-century ballast stones. Linked from the top of the bluffs by a network of steep stone stairways and cast-iron walkways, River Street is lined by restaurants, and at the east end there’s a statue of a girl waving a cloth; it was erected in memory of Florence Martus, who for 44 years around the turn of the 20th century greeted every ship entering Savannah harbor in the vain hope that her boyfriend would be on board.

March is when things get crazy here in Savannah: Thousands of visitors come to the bars along Congress Street for what has grown into the world’s second-largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration—only New York City’s is bigger.

One of Savannah’s more unusual tourist attractions is the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace (10 E. Oglethorpe Ave.), a circa-1820 house that was the childhood home of the woman who introduced Girl Scouts to America in 1912.

Where to Eat and Stay in Savannah

Getting around is blissfully easy: Savannah is the country’s preeminent walkers’ town, with a wealth of historic architecture and a checkerboard of 22 small squares shaded with centuries-old live oak trees draped with tendrils of Spanish moss, all packed together in a single square mile. Savannah’s sensible and attractive modified grid plan makes finding your way so simple that it’s almost fun to try to get lost.

For an unforgettable midday meal, be sure to stop at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room (107 W. Jones St., 912/232-5997, 11am-2pm Mon.-Fri. Feb.-Dec., all you can eat $25), a central Savannah home and former boardinghouse that still offers up seasonal, traditional family-style Southern cooking—varying from fried chicken to beef stews, with side dishes like okra gumbo, blueberry pie, red or brown rice, and cornbread. It’s worth a trip from anywhere in the state—don’t leave Savannah without eating here. For a more upscale take on these Deep South classics, make plans to have lunch or dinner at The Olde Pink House (23 Abercorn St., 912/232-4286), on Reynolds Square. For an only-in-Savannah mix of Mississippi barbecue in a vintage New England diner, step inside the 1930s Worcester Lunch Car, housing the Sandfly BBQ (1220 Barnard St., 912/335-8058, Mon.-Sat.).

Places to stay in Savannah vary from quaint B&B inns to stale high-rise hotels. For the total Savannah experience, try the Bed and Breakfast Inn (117 W. Gordon St., 912/238-0518, $99 and up), which has nice rooms in an 1853 townhouse off Monterey Square. At the River Street Inn (124 E. Bay St., 912/234-6400, $149 and up), well-appointed rooms fill a converted antebellum cotton warehouse, right on Factor’s Walk at the heart of the Savannah riverfront. Nearby, the large Hotel Indigo (201 W. Bay St., 912/236-4440, $140 and up) has good-size hotel rooms (in the former Inn at Ellis Square) a few blocks from Factor’s Walk.

The main Savannah visitors center (301 Martin Luther King Blvd., 912/944-0455), in the old Georgia Central railroad terminal in the historic district, has free maps and brochures and other information on the city.

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Take a road trip to Savannah, Georgia: where to eat, stay and play

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Magic fills the air in the city of Savannah.

It drifts through the public squares that mark intersections downtown, and the old churches and bell towers that surround them. It hangs along the waterfront, embedded in the historic cobblestone streets and even the new shops and hotel that have revitalized the area. It buoys the people who come here for a good time, the artsy college students and curious tourists and rowdy bachelorette parties alike.

And lucky for us in Tampa Bay, Georgia’s coastal city is a manageable road trip away, pretty much the shortest amount of time you can drive in a car and end up in another state.

There’s rarely a bad time to visit this town dripping with Southern charm. Home to the Savannah College of Art and Design, the city is a creative enclave brimming with music and art. The weather is mild, like Tampa Bay, and the downtown Historic District is walkable and affordable. Savannah is perfect for a long weekend, small enough that you can see most of it in three or four days, but with plenty to do to keep it interesting.

And there are lots of different trips you can have here. Traveling with kids? Historic squares and a big playground in the middle of the city, not to mention the new Plant Riverside District, offer plenty of ways to entertain little ones. Coming here with friends who want to let loose? Savannah’s open container policy in its Historic District means you can get cocktails to-go, and the city offers raucous nightlife and daytime window shopping in equal measure.

Here are some suggestions for how to plan a trip to Savannah.

Take a stroll through the Historic District: Making your way through the Historic District on foot is a really nice way to spend a day. Start at River Street, and walk the cobblestone streets that run parallel to the Savannah River. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a giant cargo ship cruising down the water. From there, head up one of the old sets of stairs to Bay Street, and make your way into the downtown core. Peruse Broughton Street, a main shopping thoroughfare that’s home to Savannah icons like the Savannah Bee Company (try the mead tasting in the back!) and Leopold’s Ice Cream. From there, find the perpendicular Bull Street and head west away from the water. This is one of my favorite paths because it takes you through many of Savannah’s 22 historic squares, most of which date back to the 1800s. You’ll pass tons of shops, cafes, historic mansions and probably an Old Town Trolley, which offers lovely leisurely tours if your feet get tired.

Visit the Plant Riverside District: This 4 ½-acre entertainment district opened in 2020 after years of development that sought to revitalize Savannah’s historic waterfront. It’s a whole new look for River Street, whose uneven cobblestone paths and kitschy shops are preserved farther down the river. This new area has a Disney Springs feel, with more than a dozen restaurants, three rooftop bars and the JW Marriott hotel, a sprawling three-building complex that once housed a power plant dating back to the 1880s. Grab dinner at Graffito, a family-friendly Italian restaurant with solid pizza, or head to the 21-and-up Myrtle and Rose rooftop bar for small plates, cocktails and crazy cool views of the Savannah River.

Play at Forsyth Park: If you’ve got kids in tow, this is an ideal place to let them expend lots of energy. The 30-acre park in the middle of the city is shaded by large trees covered in Spanish moss and home to recreational activities like tennis and basketball courts, grassy fields and an amphitheater. The centerpiece of the park is the multi-tiered fountain, which was built in 1858. There’s a large playground here too, and don’t miss the cafe just off the park (more on that below) for breakfast, lunch and to-go cocktails.

Where to eat and drink

The Grey: Chef Mashama Bailey’s restaurant, set in a restored 1938 Greyhound Bus Terminal, opened nearly 10 years ago to much acclaim — and still draws a line of tourists and locals waiting to get inside at 5 p.m. I’ve been twice over the years, one time with reservations and a full, exquisite dinner, and the other on a recent trip as part of the nonreservation diners waiting to get in. This time, I sat at the bar, an uber cool space in the front of the restaurant that faces out onto Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Bailey’s food is familiar but innovative, Southern classics with African influences that are often like nothing else you’ve ever tasted. They only offer a few food items at the bar, but they’re perfect: a cheese plate with signature benne crackers and homemade jam, oysters that change daily and dessert, in my case a butterscotch pudding that reminded me of the Werther’s Originals my grandma used to pull out of her purse. This is the kind of dining experience you plan your entire trip around. 109 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 912-662-5999. thegreyrestaurant.com .

Vinnie Van GoGo’s: An iconic Savannah joint, this cash-only pizza spot is located in City Market, a historic marketplace that has served as a central gathering place for hundreds of years. These days, it’s home to restaurants and shops and bars teeming with nightlife revelers grabbing cocktails to-go. Vinnie’s is a perfect casual stop after a night (or day) of drinking, but also a family-friendly place that draws its fair share of local college students. It’s New York-style pizza all the way here, large slices or whole pies with a thin but hearty crust that you can load with toppings. 317 W. Bryan St. 912-233-6394.

Collins Quarter: The original location in the heart of downtown (51 Bull St.) is worth a visit, a prime breakfast and brunch spot with a full bar that’s also open for dinner. But the newer location near Savannah’s Forsyth Park (621 Drayton St.) is all the rage. Nestled in the park right next to a large playground, it’s open for breakfast and lunch, with a takeout window that serves coffee and pastries and a cart out front that offers cocktails, beer and wine. It’s an ideal scenario on a busy weekend when there’s a long wait for a table: Order a mimosa, take a stroll around the park, and loop back just in time to get your fill of crab cake Benedicts, Turkish eggs, and chicken and waffles. thecollinsquarter.com .

Little Duck Diner: A sweet spot in the heart of downtown, this place is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner but shines at breakfast, when the Flap Crab omelet and the Risotto Stacker (fried cheesy risotto, sausage and a sunny-side up egg) offer fun spins on classic fare. It opened in 2017 with a “vintage chic” aesthetic, complete with a black-and-white tile floor, bar stools and a marquee board listing the day’s milkshake flavors. 150 W. Saint Julian St. 912-235-6773. littleduckdiner.com .

Other suggestions: Treylor Park for Southern comfort fare; The Olde Pink House for cocktails and live music; Flying Monk Noodle Bar for steaming bowls of ramen; Gryphon for afternoon tea.

Where to stay

JW Marriott Savannah Plant Riverside District: This 419-room hotel anchors the new Plant Riverside District right along Savannah’s waterfront. It’s housed in three different buildings, all with distinct vibes: the Power Plant, which pays homage to the historic plant that used to reside here; the romantic and dramatic Three Muses; and the maritime-themed Atlantic. The towering main lobby is a stunner, bursting with colorful glass art, shops and art galleries, and historic touches like the original power plant’s switchboard. There are also dozens of hundreds-year-old geodes scattered throughout that imbue a real sense of drama. But nothing’s more dramatic than the chrome-dipped dinosaur hanging above, a replica of one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered. 400 W. River St. 912-373-9100.

Hampton Inn & Suites Savannah Historic District: For something more affordable but still in the thick of it, try the Hampton Inn located on the busy Oglethorpe Avenue. It’s just a couple of blocks from City Market, and still very much centrally located. It’s a totally serviceable spot to spend a weekend. 603 W. Oglethorpe Ave. 912-721-1600.

Kimpton Brice Hotel: This stylish spot is located on Bay Street, quite close to the waterfront. Despite the prime location, it feels calm, with its outdoor pool and surrounding courtyard offering a charming refuge from the city when you need a minute to rest. After a recent renovation, rooms have a hip, modern feel, and its Italian restaurant Pacci provides solid on-site dining. 601 E. Bay St. 912-238-1200.

©2024 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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VP Kamala Harris, Gov. Tim Walz kick off bus tour in Georgia

Hs marching band meets harris, walz bus tour.

The Liberty County High School marching band got to meet Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz on the first stop of the Democratic duo's Georgia bus tour.

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made their first trip to Georgia together on Wednesday.

Walz was there to greet Harris when she landed at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.

The Democratic duo kicked off their two-day bus tour in southern Georgia with plans to meet directly with voters and small business owners.

President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by more than 25-thousand votes in Chatham County in 2020.

Just as in 2020, Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson said the road to victory for the Democrats cuts through the Peach State.

US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz greet supporters as they arrive at a campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, August 7, 2024. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP

"Georgia is a top battleground state for the Republicans and the Democrats. It's a key part to the 270 electoral votes for the Harris-Walz campaign," Johnson told FOX 5's Deidra Dukes. "If she wins Georgia, it's game over, because that means she is probably going to win North Carolina. She will definitely win Virginia. She'll hold her own in key battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and also, she will compete in Nevada."

The Harris-Walz campaign has opened seven field offices in southeast Georgia.

RELATED: Fox News Poll: Harris up by 2 on Trump in Georgia, but within margin of error

Chatham County Commissioner and Democratic Party Chairman Aaron Whitely said the candidates' two-day bus tour is part of the Democrats' efforts to reach voters in rural and suburban areas.

"Chatham County is normally always blue.  It is our neighboring counties where you can see some red," Whitely explained. "Liberty County tends to lean blue, but we are trying to cut down on the margin in those red counties, in our neighboring counties here."

The candidates will also appear at a campaign rally in Savannah on Thursday.

Kamala Harris campaign says she raised $540M

Since President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has reportedly raised $540 million, according to her campaign.

Harris planned to campaign in Savannah earlier in August but canceled the event due to the serious rains and flooding caused by Tropical Storm Debby.

While Georgia appeared to be slipping out of the Democrats' reach, the nomination of Harris has led the party to have new hopes of an expanded electoral map - focusing on the Peach State's swing state status.

RELATED: Lil Jon surprises DNC crowd as Georgia casts 123 votes for Kamala Harris during roll call

The Republican candidate for vice president, Sen. JD Vance, appeared at a rally in Valdosta less than a week ago, where he took aim at Harris over the Southern border.

FULL: JD Vance rally in Valdosta, Georgia

Vice president candidate JD Vance holds a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, on Aug. 22, 2024.

Trump's last visit to Atlanta was a rally with JD Vance on Aug. 3.

During the bus tour on Wednesday, Harris and Walz made a special stop at Liberty County High School in Hinesville where they were greeted by the school's band.

Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, visit with members of the marching band at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as they travel across Georgia for a 2-day campaign bus tour. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Afterward, they popped into Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah where they met employees and voters.

Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris greets patrons during a visit at Sandfly Bar-B-Q restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as she and vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz travel across Georgia for a two-day campaign bus tour. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

At around 7:20 p.m., the bus tour took a sour turn. Savannah Police confirmed one of their motorcycle officers who was part of the motorcade was critically injured in a crash on I-516. FOX 5 Atlanta is working to learn more information about that.

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Trenton (New Jersey) to Savannah drive

Trenton (new jersey) to savannah road trip planner.

Here's a sample itinerary for a drive from Trenton (New Jersey) to Savannah. If you're planning a road trip to Savannah, you can research locations to stop along the way. Make sure you check road conditions to double check the weather. Traveling with a dog or cat? Find pet-friendly stops . Camping along the way? Search for RV campgrounds . Find the best hotels, restaurants, and attractions based on the most talked about places recommended by Trippy members.

9:00 am  start in Trenton (New Jersey) drive for about 1 hour

10:09 am   Wilmington (Delaware) stay for about 1 hour and leave at 11:09 am drive for about 2 hours

1:04 pm   Washington, DC stay for about 4 hours and leave at 5:04 pm drive for about 2 hours

6:50 pm   Richmond stay for about 1 hour and leave at 7:50 pm drive for about 1 hour

day 1 driving ≈ 6 hours find more stops

9:00 am  leave from Emporia (Virginia) drive for about 56 minutes

9:56 am   Rocky Mount (North Carolina) stay for about 1 hour and leave at 10:56 am drive for about 1.5 hours

12:24 pm   Fayetteville (North Carolina) stay for about 1 hour and leave at 1:24 pm drive for about 1.5 hours

2:46 pm   Florence (South Carolina) stay for about 1 hour and leave at 3:46 pm drive for about 1 hour

4:52 pm   Santee (South Carolina) stay for about 1 hour and leave at 5:52 pm drive for about 1.5 hours

7:36 pm  arrive in Savannah eat at Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room

day 2 driving ≈ 6.5 hours find more stops

Where should I stop along the way?

Wilmington (Delaware)   (9 answers) Washington, DC   (199 answers)     National Mall   (30 mentions)     National Air and Space Museum   (29 mentions)     Washington Monument   (25 mentions)     Museum of Natural History   (23 mentions)     Lincoln Memorial   (22 mentions)     National Gallery of Art   (19 mentions)     restaurants around Washington, DC:         Mitsitam Cafe         Founding Farmers         Rose's Luxury         Pavilion Café     questions about Washington, DC:         Best free things to do in Washington, DC?         Best hotel near museums         Fun free things to do in D.C.?         Getting from Union Station to National Mall?         How to make the most of three days in DC Richmond   (22 answers)     Carytown   (4 mentions)     Virginia Museum of Fine Arts   (2 mentions)     restaurants around Richmond:         Buz and Ned’s Real Barbecue     questions about Richmond:         What is your favorite restaurant in Richmond?         What is there to do in Richmond?         Nightlife in Richmond & hotels? Emporia (Virginia)   (2 answers) Rocky Mount (North Carolina)   (6 answers) Fayetteville (North Carolina)   (11 answers) Florence (South Carolina)   (6 answers)     questions about Florence (South Carolina):         Pet friendly hotel Santee (South Carolina)   (3 answers)

Where's the best place to eat in Savannah?

Need some recommendations on somewhere to get food?

Trippy members suggest Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room , which was mentioned 3 times.

Here are some more restaurants people talk about:

Want to research more popular restaurants in Savannah? Click the blue button below.

What are some things to do in Savannah?

This section could be endless, so rather than trying to suggest every local activity or attraction, we'll leave it open-ended.

These are some of the places people talk about on Trippy:

Of course, Trippy is the perfect place to ask questions because there's an entire community of travelers talking to each other and sharing tips and advice. Trippy is where you can get answers personalized for your tastes, budgets, trip dates & more!

For example, here are some questions people have asked about Savannah. Click on any question to see answers from the community!

Click the button below to explore more questions and answers related to Savannah.

Do I really have to go back home?

Yes, even this step is optional, because if you're on vacation who wants the trip to end? It's okay, you can start planning your next trip!

Want to plan the trip back? Get the reverse directions for a Savannah to Trenton (New Jersey) drive , or go to the main page to plan a new road trip .

You can also compare the travel time if you're flying or driving by calculating the distance from Trenton (New Jersey) to Savannah . Or get a full Trenton (New Jersey) to Savannah flight plan .

Don't forget about exploring your own hometown with a staycation. You can also find some cool day trips or get away for a weekend. Maybe try typing in a faraway location like London, Hong Kong, or Sydney, and get inspired for your dream trip around the world.

And if you know Trenton (New Jersey) well, please help your fellow travelers and answer their questions about Trenton (New Jersey)!

More info on this route:

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When should you leave? The best and worst times for traffic over Labor Day Weekend 2024

• Travel during the final long weekend of summer will be busy within the U.S., with domestic travel up by 9% from last year.
• This year, international travel is down 4% from 2023, likely due to rising costs.
• The roads will be most congested during the afternoons of Thursday, Aug. 29, and Friday, Aug. 30, and early evening and morning of Saturday, Aug. 31.

As Labor Day weekend approaches, travelers are gearing up for one last summer getaway .

This year, Labor Day falls on Sept. 2, marking the end of a record-breaking travel season. Travel during the final long weekend of summer will be busy within the U.S., with domestic travel up by 9% from last year, according to AAA.

Those driving to their destination can expect heavy traffic, especially during peak travel hours. But they can at least enjoy lower gas prices: The national average is about 20 cents a gallon less than last year's holiday weekend.

This year, international travel is down 4% from 2023, likely because of rising costs. According to AAA booking numbers, international travel for Labor Day weekend 2024 costs 11% more than last year.

Here's what travelers can expect for Labor Day weekend 2024.

Learn more: Best travel insurance

What are the most popular domestic destinations for Labor Day weekend 2024?

This year, many U.S. travelers are heading toward Seattle with bookings for the Emerald City up nearly 30% from last year, according to AAA's booking data. Some will be continuing to Alaska, with Anchorage and Juneau also topping the list for the most popular U.S. end-of-summer destinations.

"This is the time of year to go on an Alaska cruises ,” said Paula Twidale, senior vice president of AAA Travel, said in a news release. "There are fewer crowds compared to earlier in the summer, and if you’re lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of fall colors! It’s no surprise Alaska cruises are sold out this Labor Day weekend."

What are the most popular international destinations for Labor Day weekend 2024?

Just north of the Canadian-U.S. border, Vancouver tops the list for the most popular international destination, according to AAA. Following closely behind are beloved European destinations including Rome, London, Paris, Dublin and Amsterdam.

Learn more:   Best travel insurance

What are the worst times to drive for Labor Day weekend 2024?

The roads will be most congested during the afternoons of Thursday, Aug. 29, and Friday, and early evening and morning of Saturday. Returning home from the long weekend, drivers can expect the worst traffic during the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 1, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday and the morning of Tuesday.

"Drivers should expect the most severe traffic jams before the holiday weekend as commuters mix with travelers,” Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at INRIX, said in a statement. "Monitoring traffic apps, local news stations, and 511 traveler information services may help drivers navigate around congestion and reduce driver frustration this Labor Day."

What are the best times to drive for Labor Day weekend 2024?

If you're hoping to avoid traffic jams, plan to hit the road at night or the early morning. The best times to drive for Labor Day weekend are before 11 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 29, before noon or after 7 p.m. on Friday, and after noon on Saturday.

For returning home, depart before noon on Sunday, Sept. 1, before 10 a.m. on Monday, or after 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

The Key Points at the top of this article were created with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reviewed by a journalist before publication. No other parts of the article were generated using AI. Learn more .

Halfway Point Calculator

Midpoint between two places.

Travelmath helps you figure out the midpoint between two locations based on the driving directions from each starting point. You can find the closest town that is an equal distance from two cities. Use this tool to determine the best city to meet, or to look for interesting stops along the way if you're planning a long road trip and you need to take a break or stay overnight. Search for hotels at the midpoint city to split up your drive, or explore other nearby cities and discover local towns on your trip. If you're meeting a friend halfway in-between, you can figure out how far each person has to drive and how long it will take to arrive at the center. Even if you're separated by water, you can still calculate the straight line geographic midpoint to determine the closest flight distance.

You can also calculate the driving distance or check the total driving time . Or figure out the cost of driving for each person to get to the meeting spot. If you're driving a long distance, it might be useful to get a list of the best places to stop along your entire route.

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Harris and Walz Campaign in Georgia as Fall Races Heat Up: Election Updates

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are taking a bus tour through rural Georgia on Wednesday before a packed Labor Day schedule, while Donald J. Trump and JD Vance have a busy lineup of events ahead this week.

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Chris Cameron

Here’s the latest on the presidential race.

It’s not yet Labor Day, but the fall campaign season is hitting full swing. Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, started a bus tour in Georgia on Wednesday afternoon , after Mr. Walz began his day delivering a speech at a gathering of the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston.

On Monday, Labor Day, Ms. Harris and President Biden are set to make their first joint campaign appearance since her nomination. She also plans to appear in Detroit, and Mr. Walz will head to Wisconsin, another battleground state.

Their Republican rivals, former President Donald J. Trump and Senator JD Vance of Ohio, have a busy slate as well, including several rallies this week and a town hall in La Crosse, Wis., on Thursday. Mr. Vance is making stops on Wednesday in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and on Thursday Mr. Trump will be in Michigan and Wisconsin.

While they flood the swing states with appearances and ads, the Harris and Trump campaigns are still tussling over the logistics of the ABC News presidential debate set for Sept. 10. Mr. Trump on Tuesday announced for a second time that he would participate in the debate, and he suggested that the question of whether microphones would be muted when a candidate wasn’t speaking had been resolved. But a person briefed on the Harris campaign’s thinking said the issue remained an open discussion, and a spokesman for ABC declined to comment.

Here’s what else to know:

Elon Musk hires up : The world’s richest person hired a Republican operative with expertise in field organizing to help steer his political work, suggesting he is preparing to become even more involved in Republican politics. Get-out-the-vote efforts have been a priority for Mr. Musk, who has endorsed Mr. Trump.

Harris’s next big interview: Ms. Harris has agreed to her first major interview as the Democratic presidential nominee. She will appear on CNN alongside Mr. Walz for a joint interview on Thursday in Georgia.

Cemetery clash: Members of Mr. Trump’s campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery confronted one another during the former president’s visit to the cemetery on Monday, the military cemetery said.

Kennedy and the whale: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sawed the head off a dead whale and drove it home, his daughter said in a 2012 magazine article that has recently resurfaced.

A focus on China: For two years, a rural town in the middle of Michigan has been embroiled in a civil war over plans by a Chinese-owned electric vehicle battery company to build a $2.4 billion factory. The Trump campaign is seeking to leverage local anti-China sentiment in its effort to win Michigan this fall.

Trump’s transition team: Mr. Trump put his former rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and a former Democratic congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, on his presidential transition team , which will help him select the policies and personnel of any second Trump administration. Mr. Kennedy ended his independent campaign for president and endorsed Mr. Trump on Friday.

Theodore Schleifer

Donald Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., made its largest independent expenditure of the cycle on Wednesday, spending $23 millon on TV and direct mail, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission. Over the last week, the group has spent over $45 million on attacking Kamala Harris.

Michael C. Bender

JD Vance ended his event in Wisconsin by declining to say whether presidential candidates should have to abide by federal law banning campaigns from filming at gravesites, as former President Donald J. Trump did at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday . Instead, Vance put the onus on military families.

“The right person to ask is the Gold Star families who invited Donald Trump and lost a loved one because of Kamala Harris’s failed policies,” Vance said, responding to a reporter’s question. “Were they happy to have the president of the United States there? They would say, ‘Absolutely, thank God somebody showed up.’”

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Chris Cameron Maggie Haberman and Eric Schmitt

Chris Cameron was traveling with Donald J. Trump during his visit to Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump videos at Arlington stir more fallout after his gravesite visit.

The family of a Green Beret who died by suicide after serving eight combat tours and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery expressed concern on Wednesday that Donald J. Trump’s campaign had filmed his gravesite without permission as Mr. Trump stood in an area where campaign photography isn’t allowed.

Relatives of Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano issued their statement two days after Mr. Trump’s visit, which also included a confrontation between members of the Trump campaign and an Arlington employee. The former president’s campaign took video in a heavily restricted section of the cemetery known as Section 60, which is largely reserved for the fallen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

A woman who works at the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities over the altercation. But the official, who has not been identified, later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.

Sergeant Marckesano died on July 7, 2020, after moving to Washington to begin a job at the Pentagon. He had three children, and friends said he had chronic post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in combat. He earned Silver and Bronze Stars during his service. His gravesite is adjacent to that of Staff Sergeant Darin Taylor Hoover, a Marine who was killed in the 2021 bombing at Abbey Gate outside the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

The Hoover family granted permission to the Trump team to film and take photographs at the gravesite; the Marckesano family did not, and filming and photographing at the gravesite for political purposes is a violation of federal law, according to cemetery officials. Yet Sergeant Marckesano’s grave was shown in photos from the visit that were published online. A video was posted to Mr. Trump’s TikTok account featuring footage from the Section 60 visit and the gravestones from behind, with narration criticizing the handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

In a statement from Sergeant Marckesano’s relatives after being contacted by The New York Times, his sister, Michele, said, “We fully support Staff Sergeant Darin Hoover’s family and the other families in their quest for answers and accountability regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal and the tragedy at Abbey Gate.”

“However,” she added, “according to our conversation with Arlington National Cemetery, the Trump campaign staffers did not adhere to the rules that were set in place for this visit to Staff Sergeant Hoover’s gravesite in Section 60, which lays directly next to my brother’s grave.”

Sergeant Marckesano’s sister continued, “We hope that those visiting this sacred site understand that these were real people who sacrificed for our freedom and that they are honored and respected accordingly.”

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, did not address the statement from the Marckesano family, saying when asked about the TikTok video only that “the campaign will continue to respect the wishes of the Gold Star family members who invited President Trump.”

Sergeant Marckesano had served six tours in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne and others in combat overseas, according to news accounts at the time of his death. His family is said to have sought privacy since his death.

In the aftermath of the Monday altercation, the Army has closed the matter, after the Arlington official declined to press charges. According to three U.S. military officials, some Trump campaign members confronted and eventually pushed past the cemetery official when she tried to stop them from taking photos in Section 60.

Two Trump campaign officials, Mr. Cheung and Chris LaCivita, had insulted the cemetery worker in public statements on Tuesday. Mr. Cheung asserted that she was “suffering from a mental health episode” while Mr. LaCivita said that she was a “despicable individual” who “does not deserve to represent the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”

Military officials said that the cemetery worker feared that pursuing the matter with the authorities at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia, which has jurisdiction over the cemetery, could subject her to retaliation from Trump supporters. Mr. Cheung said in a statement on Wednesday that “that is ridiculous and sounds like someone who has Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The Trump team had said it was prepared to release footage of the altercation, but never did.

Several Army officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential aspects of the matter, on Wednesday sought to keep the politically charged issue from escalating. But at the same time, they defended the cemetery official and pushed back on attacks from the Trump campaign, with one official saying that the woman at the cemetery was just trying to do her job.

Since Monday, the former president’s cemetery visit has become increasingly scrutinized for its political nature.

He was there for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 American troops who were killed in the Abbey Gate bombing during the United States’ Afghanistan withdrawal three years ago. Mr. Trump has said President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris bear responsibility for the bombing and America’s chaotic withdrawal, and repeated his attacks on the subject in campaign events after his visit to the cemetery.

Mr. Trump had laid three wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Monday morning, the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing. Two of the wreaths were for Marines killed: Sergeant Hoover and Sgt. Nicole Gee. A third was dedicated to all 13 troops killed.

Mr. Trump was accompanied there by family members of the two slain Marines, as well as Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews and Corporal Kelsee Lainhart , two Marines who were injured in the Abbey Gate attack.

Mr. Trump then accompanied the families and Marine veterans to Section 60. That part of Mr. Trump’s visit was private and closed to the press, and resulted in the confrontation . In a statement, the cemetery said that federal law prohibited political campaigning or “election-related” activities within Army cemeteries, including by photographers, and that the prohibition was “widely shared” with those participating in the event.

For centuries the United States has tried to keep military might and partisan politics far from each other, to avoid the appearance of allegiances to a political party or ideology. Because of this, military members are forbidden from participating in partisan activities or endorsing candidates while in uniform and military bases are off-limits for political campaigns.

It was unclear on Wednesday whether the Defense Department would pursue a legal claim related to the episode.

Campaigning in Erie, Pa., on Wednesday, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, blamed “some staff member” at the cemetery for the incident and criticized the media for reporting on it.

“Apparently somebody at Arlington Cemetery, some staff member had a little disagreement with somebody,” Mr. Vance said. “And they have turned — the media has turned this into a national news story.”

Photos of Mr. Trump’s visit to Section 60 were later published online. Mr. Trump was photographed giving a “thumbs up” to the camera standing behind the grave of Sergeant Hoover, with Sergeant Marckesano’s grave clearly visible a few feet away. Mr. Trump posted the video on TikTok on Tuesday that also showed the two headstones from behind as Mr. Trump laid flowers.

Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, who published one photo of himself and Mr. Trump standing behind the graves on social media, apologized on Wednesday for including other photos of the visit to Section 60 in a campaign email that solicited donations.

“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” Mr. Cox said on social media . “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”

Michael C. Bender contributed reporting from Erie, Pa., and Dave Philipps from Colorado Springs.

JD Vance opened his remarks in De Pere, Wisc., his second of two campaign events today, with an extraordinary take on Vice President Kamala Harris. “She pretty much agrees with Donald Trump on everything,” Vance said. That’s not true, and Vance did not provide examples. Instead, he joked with the crowd that “she doesn’t think she’s going to win this race and she’s auditioning for my job.”

Swifties for Kamala, a group that is not affiliated with Kamala Harris’s campaign or Taylor Swift, raised more than $120,000 for the campaign after hosting a two-hour organizing call Tuesday, said Irene Kim, a founder of the group. The call featured remarks from Carole King, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Kim said some 34,000 people were on the call.

Nicholas Nehamas and Maya King

Nicholas Nehamas reported from Washington, and Maya King from Atlanta.

Harris tours Georgia as Democrats see the state fully in play.

Vice President Kamala Harris, aiming to go on offense against former President Donald J. Trump in Georgia, kicked off a bus tour on Wednesday in the rural southeastern corner of the battleground state.

Ms. Harris’s trip emphasizes a growing sense of optimism among Georgia Democrats that she could hold on to the state, which President Biden narrowly won in 2020. The Democratic ticket’s standing in the polls there has increased significantly since Mr. Biden dropped out of the race, although Ms. Harris still trails Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times polling average . Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, joined her for the two-day bus tour, which is meant in part to mobilize rural Black voters and will culminate with a rally in Savannah.

The bus carrying Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz is emblazoned with the words “A New Way Forward,” which has become one of their campaign slogans as Democrats try to portray Mr. Trump as a creature of the past.

In her first stop on Wednesday, Ms. Harris visited a high school in Hinesville, Ga., a city of roughly 35,000 where nearly one in two residents are Black, to hear the school band play. After the performance, she stressed the importance of practice to the student musicians — comments that could have reflected on her own sudden journey from serving as vice president to becoming the Democratic nominee.

“It requires a whole lot of rehearsal, a whole lot of practice, long hours, right?” said Ms. Harris, adding that she, too, had played in school bands. “Sometimes you hit the note, sometimes you don’t, right? But all that practice makes for beautiful music, and that is a metaphor — that is symbolic — for everything that you all will do in your life.”

The bus tour’s route takes the candidates through a part of the state not often visited by Democrats, underscoring the campaign’s efforts to motivate rural voters. That is true not just in Georgia, but also in nearby North Carolina, a demographically similar Sunbelt state.

Both states have significant populations of Black voters, including many who live in rural areas. Democrats have said that they must drive up turnout outside major cities and suburbs to defeat Mr. Trump statewide. Polls show Ms. Harris performing far better in North Carolina than Mr. Biden did, and her allies in the state have compared the energy of her campaign to Barack Obama’s in 2008 , the last time a Democrat was victorious there.

Her swing through Georgia with Mr. Walz carries echoes of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, in which he and Al Gore, his running mate, traversed the Peach State’s rural towns with their wives, as Mr. Clinton leaned on his Southern bona fides. Mr. Clinton later won Georgia by less than one percentage point, making him the last Democrat to take the state before Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020.

Mr. Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes and lost North Carolina by under 75,000, his closest defeat in 2020. The two states, which had been leaning toward Mr. Trump before Ms. Harris’s rise, are now considered tossups. One of Mr. Trump’s clearest paths to victory would involve holding North Carolina and flipping Georgia and Pennsylvania, which, with 19 electoral votes, is the most valuable of the battleground states.

The Harris campaign knows that winning Georgia or North Carolina would almost certainly guarantee her the White House. A Democrat who can defeat Mr. Trump in those traditionally moderate states is likely to face a far easier route to victory in the union-heavy blue wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Republicans know that, too. Mr. Trump and his allies have invested heavily in advertising in Georgia and North Carolina.

“If Harris wins North Carolina, she’s the next president of the United States,” that state’s governor, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said in an interview this month.

There has been some tension between Democrats in Georgia and North Carolina as they lobby their national party for resources .

North Carolina Democrats have been particularly motivated by the Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is from his party’s far-right wing and has called for banning abortion at six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. In contrast, Georgia has no competitive statewide races this year, unlike in 2020, when the Senate campaigns of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff helped turn out Democrats alongside Mr. Biden.

That is part of why Democrats have set their sights beyond the deep-blue Metro Atlanta area and are trying to mobilize voters in Georgia’s southeast and coastal regions, where there are many Black voters whose support will matter at the margins.

“The coast matters,” said Aaron Whitely, the chair of the Democratic Party in Chatham County, which includes Savannah, a smaller Democratic stronghold. “It is not surprising to us that the blue wave is in full effect here.”

New York Times/Siena College polls this month found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by four percentage points among likely voters in Georgia, but trailing her by two points in North Carolina. A previous Times/Siena survey of the Sun Belt states — which did not include North Carolina — found Mr. Trump beating Mr. Biden by eight points in Georgia.

Although Mr. Biden won in 2020 thanks in large part to turnout from Black voters, his support from them dimmed amid high inflation. Ms. Harris, who is Black and of South Asian descent, has re-energized many of them, polls show.

Black voters make up roughly one-third of the electorate in Georgia and one-quarter in North Carolina — higher levels than their representation nationwide. In 2020, about 13 percent of Americans who cast ballots were Black.

Georgia and North Carolina aren’t the only states where the Harris campaign is targeting rural voters. She and Mr. Walz also took a bus tour this month through a conservative county outside Pittsburgh.

Ms. Harris is raising money at a faster pace than Mr. Trump, allowing her to flood the airwaves in the battleground states. She has also built a more robust infrastructure of campaign offices and staff than Mr. Trump, which Democrats say will give her the advantage in getting out the vote. The Trump campaign is relying more on a force of volunteers and well-funded efforts from outside super PACs .

Later on Wednesday, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz stopped at a barbecue restaurant in Savannah. There, Mr. Walz displayed the kind of folksiness that Democrats hope will draw working- and middle-class voters, chatting about his children and “farm country.”

The Minnesota governor, a former high school social studies teacher and football coach, also found a table of patrons that included fellow teachers, who asked him for selfies.

“Can we do a teacher one?” a woman asked, before posing for a photo with Mr. Walz.

Michael Gold

Donald Trump reposts a crude sexual remark about Kamala Harris on Truth Social.

Former President Donald J. Trump used his social-media website on Wednesday to amplify a crude remark about Vice President Kamala Harris that suggested Ms. Harris traded sexual favors to help her political career.

The post, by another user on Truth Social, was an image of Ms. Harris and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s opponent in 2016. The text read: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The remark was a reference to Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and a right-wing contention that Ms. Harris’s romantic relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco whom she dated in the mid-1990s while he was speaker of the California State Assembly, fueled her political rise.

Mr. Trump’s repost was the second time in 10 days that the former president shared content from his personal account making sexually oriented attacks on Ms. Harris. Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.

The image Mr. Trump shared on Wednesday morning was another user’s screenshot of a post on X, and it was a reply to an unrelated video clip Mr. Trump had posted on Tuesday night.

Mr. Trump reposted the image as part of a series of 30 reposts he made on Truth Social between 8:02 and 8:32 a.m. on Wednesday, including several posts with references to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and its slogan. Mr. Trump also reposted photos that called for the prosecution or imprisoning of top Democrats and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The former president has vowed to direct federal prosecutors to investigate his political enemies if elected.

Previously, on Aug. 18, Mr. Trump had shared a video from the Dilley Meme Team — a group of right-wing internet content creators that makes pro-Trump videos and memes denigrating his opponents — that parodied the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic” to attack Ms. Harris as “moronic.” In the parody song, the singer says Ms. Harris “spent her whole damn life down on her knees,” at which point a photo of Mr. Brown appears onscreen.

The Harris campaign, which has largely ignored Mr. Trump’s personal attacks, declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly been accused of sexual misconduct and was found liable last year for sexual abuse and defamation. He has a history of attacking female opponents and critics in deeply personal terms, often describing them as mentally ill or at times expressing contempt in epithets.

Republicans close to Mr. Trump have expressed concern that he and his allies risk alienating women, Black voters and moderate swing-state voters if they continue to use racist and sexist attacks against Ms. Harris, the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to accept a major party’s presidential nomination. Mr. Trump last week acknowledged that some of his advisers have urged him to move away from personal attacks, a shift he said he did not plan to take.

Last month, Mr. Trump questioned Ms. Harris’s identity as a Black woman, suggesting at a convention of Black journalists that Ms. Harris had used her racial profile as a way to gain a political advantage.

The Trump campaign did not initially respond to a request for comment. But after this article was published online, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, complained about The New York Times and said that Mr. Trump, in his reposts about Ms. Harris, “rightfully calls to question her ability to be commander in chief.” The campaign did not respond to questions about the content of these posts and whether Mr. Trump intends to continue such attacks on Ms. Harris. Ms. Leavitt added, “The Failing New York Times spends more time airing negative stories about President Trump than writing about the negative consequences of Kamala Harris’s policies as vice president.”

Ms. Harris has for decades been subject to attacks like the ones Mr. Trump amplified, though they became more frequent during the 2020 presidential campaign, when she was President Biden’s running mate. Critics pointed to her relationship with Mr. Brown as a way to question her qualifications. And after the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested falsely, quoting from a conservative website, that Ms. Harris had “slept her way up,” T-shirts with the slogan “Joe and the Hoe” were worn by Mr. Trump’s supporters.

The slogan remained popular throughout Mr. Trump’s third presidential bid, and T-shirts bearing the phrase were frequently seen at Mr. Trump’s rallies up until Mr. Biden suspended his presidential bid.

Ms. Harris and her allies have over the years dismissed the claims that her relationship with Mr. Brown was central to her political rise, calling such attacks sexist and saying that she was qualified for positions she has held, including two state posts that Mr. Brown appointed her to, as well as winning elections as district attorney of San Francisco and California attorney general .

Mr. Trump frequently deployed gender-based attacks against Mrs. Clinton in his successful 2016 campaign. Faced with criticism over his treatment of women and the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording in which he crudely boasted about grabbing women’s genitals, Mr. Trump repeatedly pointed to the sexual indiscretions of Mrs. Clinton’s husband.

Throughout his political career, Mr. Trump has made a habit of sharing others’ divisive or offensive social media posts, then dismissing criticism by arguing he was simply reposting.

Last year, a jury found that Mr. Trump had sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room in the mid-1990s, then defamed her in a Truth Social post. Earlier this year, Ms. Carroll was awarded an $83.3 million judgment for continued attacks in social media posts.

Ken Bensinger contributed reporting.

Nicholas Nehamas

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, have arrived in Georgia for a two-day bus tour of the battleground state’s rural southeast corner. Democrats are aiming to go on the offensive against former President Donald J. Trump and are expressing renewed confidence about their chances of winning the state.

Their campaign bus, which is mostly blue with a red stripe and two large white stars, is emblazoned with a phrase that has become one of their campaign slogans: “A New Way Forward.”

Luke Broadwater

Reporting from Washington

G.O.P. releases Jan. 6 footage, seeking to shift blame from Trump to Pelosi.

House Republicans on Wednesday made their latest attempt to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, releasing a video compilation that sought to shift blame away from former President Donald J. Trump and onto former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was pursued that day by a violent mob of Trump supporters.

The Republican-controlled House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight released video clips, some previously unseen, shot for an HBO documentary about Ms. Pelosi. In them she is shown on the day of the riot venting her rage about the rampage at the Capitol, criticizing security officials for failing to anticipate and prevent it, and saying she felt responsible for their failure.

In the recordings, Ms. Pelosi rails against Mr. Trump and his role in firing up his supporters who stormed the Capitol, but also repeatedly suggests that she and her staff should have pushed the Capitol Police harder to make sure they were better prepared as Mr. Trump summoned thousands of his supporters to Washington to protest the transfer of power from the Trump administration to the Biden administration.

“I don’t care what they say — they should have had much more anticipation about the National Guard,” Ms. Pelosi said at one point during the footage.

At another point, she said: “I can’t believe the stupidity. I take full responsibility.”

In yet another clip, Ms. Pelosi hinted that Capitol Police officials might have deliberately failed to prepare enough, perhaps because they were sympathetic to Mr. Trump and his supporters.

“They thought these people would act civilized?” Ms. Pelosi said, sitting in the back of a car as her security detail whisked her away from an overrun Capitol to safety. “They thought these people gave a damn?”

She added: “Shame on us. I’m suspicious of their motivation, to tell you the truth.”

The video was shot for a documentary titled “Pelosi in the House” made by the filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, Ms. Pelosi’s daughter.

Republicans, who have been working for years to absolve Mr. Trump for what happened on Jan. 6, used the footage as a fresh opportunity to blame the former speaker for the attack, when more than 150 police officers were injured and a handful of them ultimately lost their lives.

“For over three years, Nancy Pelosi has refused to take responsibility for her failure to secure the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021,” said Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who is leading a Republican inquiry seeking to show bias in the work of the House committee that investigated the assault. “Instead, she has pushed the focus of the failure on President Trump. As speaker, she controlled House operations and security on the House side of the Capitol — which she acknowledges in this HBO footage.”

In fact, Ms. Pelosi was not solely responsible for the security of the Capitol that day. While the speaker wields considerable influence, security is the job of the Capitol Police, which is controlled by a board that includes one security official appointed by the speaker and one by the Senate leader, who at the time was Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky.

Ian Krager, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, denounced the Republicans’ efforts.

“Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on Jan. 6,” Mr. Krager said. “The speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on Jan. 6 or any other day of the week.”

In the video clips, Ms. Pelosi repeatedly made clear she believed that the blame for the attack fell on Mr. Trump, who spread lies about massive voter fraud stealing the 2020 election from him, fired up a rowdy crowd of his supporters near the White House and directed them to march to the Capitol while Congress was meeting to certify the election.

“I think our focus has to be on the president. Let’s not divert ourselves,” she said at one point, discussing a statement she would issue calling for Mr. Trump to be removed from office.

“There is a domestic enemy in the White House,” Ms. Pelosi said at another moment. “Let’s not mince words about this.”

The leaders of the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee also opted to focus more on the actions of Mr. Trump that led to the assault on the Capitol than the security failures that allowed the complex to be overrun.

In a text message, Alexandra Pelosi said the batch of footage just released was “NOT news!” and noted that some of it had already been seen in her documentary, which premiered on HBO in 2022.

“Hope you appreciate the cinematography,” she added, noting her footwork to capture the scene as her mother fled the angry mob, “backwards and in heels!”

The Trump campaign already had about 50 supporters gathered to greet Vance at a deli in Erie, Pa., when the power went out, just 30 minutes before he arrived. “I think Kamala turned out the lights,” Vance told the crowd.

JD Vance, speaking in Erie, Pa., defended the campaign after an altercation on Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery and cursed Vice President Kamala Harris for the criticism from her campaign. “She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Vance said. “She can go to hell.”

Elon Musk, eyeing an edge for Trump, hires a Republican political adviser.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has hired a Republican operative with expertise in field organizing to help steer his political work, a move that suggests that Mr. Musk is preparing to become even more involved in Republican politics and get-out-the-vote efforts specifically.

Chris Young, most recently a senior political official at PhRMA, the trade association of the pharmaceutical industry that does some grass-roots organizing, is joining Mr. Musk’s team, according to three people briefed on the move. They spoke on condition of anonymity because it was not public.

The hire reflects a less whimsical approach to political involvement for Mr. Musk. The Tesla, X and SpaceX leader has been a mercurial political and philanthropic donor for years, frustrating some in the conservative movement. He has just a few key relationships in Washington: Mr. Musk is particularly close with Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker of the House, who himself is close with Mr. Young professionally.

Mr. Young has worked for the trade group since 2020 after rising through the ranks of Republican field organizing. A native of Louisiana, he began his career working as a field organizer for former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s operation before becoming the national field director for the Republican National Committee during the 2016 cycle.

Mr. Young was once the head of Engage Texas, a voter-registration nonprofit in the state funded by major Republican donors. Field organizing has been a priority of Mr. Musk, who like Mr. Young lives in Texas, during his recent foray into campaign politics. Mr. Musk, for instance, at one point privately dismissed television advertising and argued that donors should simply fund programs that convince voters, two at a time, to back Mr. Trump.

Mr. Young declined to comment. Mr. Musk and Jared Birchall, the head of Excession, Mr. Musk’s family office, did not return a request for comment.

Political “donor-advisers” function as both gatekeepers and consiglieres, and ultrarich donors typically hire them when they are preparing to make significant political contributions over the long term.

Part of Mr. Young’s job will be to serve as Mr. Musk’s eyes and ears at a super PAC that Mr. Musk started but has undergone some turbulence . America PAC is focused on Republican voter turnout, but the group effectively shelved its entire field operation after just a few weeks, following the super PAC’s hiring of a powerful Republican consulting firm. The group’s new leadership has since restarted its field program.

Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.

Senator JD Vance is speaking in Erie, Pa., the first of his two campaign events today. He’s joined by his wife, Usha, in a warehouse at Team Hardinger, a trucking logistics company, to “remind everybody just how good our truckers could do if we get better leadership in the White House.”

So much for tempering personal attacks. Vance just responded to a shouted comment from his crowd in Pennsylvania about speaking without a teleprompter: “Ma’am i don’t need a teleprompter, I’ve actually got thoughts in my head, unlike Kamala Harris.”

Maggie Astor

Donald Trump made an incendiary claim about his Secret Service protection.

Former President Donald J. Trump claimed without evidence in an interview broadcast on Tuesday that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had denied him sufficient Secret Service protection and that they were therefore partly responsible for the assassination attempt against him last month.

“Our people were always fighting to get more security, more Secret Service, and he knew that we didn’t have enough,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden during an interview with the television host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole D.O.J. to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”

The Secret Service has been under a cloud since July 13, when the gunman was able to fire , unimpeded, on Mr. Trump at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The attack grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, killed a spectator and seriously wounded two others. The F.B.I. is investigating, and congressional leaders have also opened inquiries. But there is no evidence that Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris knew about any deficiencies in Mr. Trump’s protection.

The Secret Service has taken responsibility for the security lapses that made the shooting possible. Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director and has been replaced.

The former president’s remarks to Dr. Phil were similar to what Mr. Trump had written in a social media post in July , when he blamed Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris for the shooting and said they had failed to protect him.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday also echoed an accusation that some of his allies — including Senator JD Vance of Ohio, now his running mate — made right after the assassination attempt: that Democrats’ criticism of him, and descriptions of him as a threat to democracy, might have incited the gunman. Investigators have not confirmed the gunman’s motive.

That assertion by Mr. Trump came after Dr. Phil, referring to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, asked, “I’m not saying that they wanted you to get shot, but do you think it was OK with them if you did?”

“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy. No, they’re a threat,” Mr. Trump replied. “They would say that. That was a standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going.” He added, “Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

Mr. Biden, who did campaign against Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy , called for the nation to “lower the temperature in our politics” after the assassination attempt and condemned it.

Mr. Trump has a history of violent speech dating back to his 2016 campaign, when he suggested he might pay the legal fees of a supporter who was accused of attacking a protester, and said of Hillary Clinton : “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” More recently, he has suggested that shoplifters should be shot and embraced the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also described the outcome of a Democratic victory in apocalyptic terms.

In the interview with Dr. Phil, which ran for about an hour, Mr. Trump also repeated his complaints about Ms. Harris replacing Mr. Biden as the Democratic nominee.

“In politics, you have an opponent and you win or you lose,” he said. “But you don’t have an opponent, and then you’re doing well against the opponent, they take him out, they give you a new opponent. They give you a nice fresh opponent.”

And he expanded his false claims about voter fraud, saying he believed he had won California — one of the most Democratic states in the country, which voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 by nearly 30 percentage points.

“If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California,” he said. “If we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.”

Democratic operatives have launched a super PAC called Democracy Defenders, starting with $10 million in funding, to support messaging and lawsuits against any Republican efforts to undermine voting rights, vote-counting or election certification. The PAC is led by Jim Messina, who managed the 2012 Obama campaign, and its chief strategist is the former Biden spokesman T.J. Ducklo.

Kellen Browning

In Boston, Walz assails Trump on labor and previews Harris’s debate: ‘It’s going to be good.’

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, assailed former President Donald J. Trump’s labor record while contrasting it with his own at a firefighters’ union convention in Boston on Wednesday.

Speaking to the International Association of Fire Fighters, Mr. Walz built on the message woven throughout his party’s convention last week in Chicago: that Democrats were defending blue-collar workers, and Republicans hoped to exploit them.

“Every single chance they’ve gotten, they’ve waged a war on workers,” Mr. Walz said of Mr. Trump and Republicans, while promising that, if elected, Ms. Harris would sign the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a proposed bill that would strengthen labor protections. (Congress would have to pass the bill first.)

Mr. Walz, in one of his first solo campaign appearances since being named to the Democratic ticket, also previewed the upcoming debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump. Campaigns often try to manage expectations, but Mr. Walz did not hold back.

He predicted that Ms. Harris would “hold him accountable on the debate stage,” referring to Mr. Trump.

“Tell me you’re not looking forward to that,” Mr. Walz said. “It’s going to be good.”

After a quiet stretch for Mr. Walz since the convention, his appearance in Boston begins a busy rest of the week for him, as both the Harris and Trump campaigns prepare for the fall stretch. Mr. Walz will travel to Georgia later on Wednesday to begin a bus tour with Ms. Harris, and then he will attend fund-raisers in Raleigh, N.C., and the Washington metro area later in the week. On Thursday, CNN will air an interview with the pair, Ms. Harris’s first sit-down interview since beginning her presidential bid.

The Harris campaign hopes Mr. Walz, a former teacher and union member, can be a key conduit to working-class voters, as well as to rural white voters in the Midwest.

His first solo campaign event was an appearance before another union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, this month in Los Angeles.

Republicans, meanwhile, are working to attack Mr. Walz’s credibility, arguing that he has lied or overstated various aspects of his biography, including his military service record .

Previewing the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris debate, Walz said that “she’s going to hold him accountable on the debate stage.” He added: “Tell me you’re not looking forward to that. It’s going to be good.” He just wrapped up his speech after just over 15 minutes.

Notably, Walz has not — at least so far — repeated the false claim he made in Los Angeles that he was the first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan. (Donald Trump was a member of the Screen Actors Guild until 2021, when he resigned after the union threatened to expel him following the Jan. 6 insurrection.)

Walz is onstage now. He’s clearly very comfortable speaking to organized labor, based on his demeanor at this appearance and at his stop at a union convention in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. He’s talking about pensions and eulogizing a deceased Minnesota fire captain.

Gov. Tim Walz is set to address the International Association of Fire Fighters here in Boston momentarily, his second solo campaign event at a union gathering in recent weeks. The Harris campaign hopes Walz, a former teacher and union member, can be a conduit to working-class voters.

The Harris campaign released a new ad on Wednesday about Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint drawn up by allies of former President Donald J. Trump that Democrats have tried to use as a political cudgel against him. The ad says that Trump is out for “complete control” and that Project 2025 is a road map for making Trump “the most powerful president ever.”

The ad is part of a $370 million media blitz that the Harris campaign is financing in battleground states through Election Day. But it will also run in the Florida media market that includes Palm Beach, where Trump lives — apparently so the former president is sure to see the ad on his TV.

Democrats have begun a highly targeted messaging campaign up and down the Pennsylvania ballot.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party began a program Wednesday to give locally tailored messaging to canvassers across the state, for candidates from the Harris-Walz ticket down to school boards.

The party said it was the largest and most coordinated campaign it had conducted in Pennsylvania.

Canvassers will have highly targeted talking points. In a town where conservatives control the school board, the focus might be on book bans; in a rural county without good internet access, it might be on broadband funding from the infrastructure bill President Biden signed; in Pittsburgh, where a bridge collapsed in 2022, it might be on funding for road repairs.

The canvassers will also have campaign literature to give out, tailored to each of the state’s 67 counties and 203 State House districts, or even smaller areas. Each piece of literature — there are 395 in all — will have a QR code leading to a list of every candidate on local ballots and to voting information like polling locations that can be updated daily if details change.

The state party is spending at least $500,000 on the effort, called Vote Local PA.

The program is an acknowledgment of Pennsylvania’s central role this year. Its 19 electoral votes could tip the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. The re-election campaign of Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, could decide control of the Senate. At least four House races are competitive, and both chambers of the divided state legislature could flip.

But Vote Local PA is also an attempt to address a serious vulnerability for Democrats: the extent to which their base has consolidated toward cities. Though the party has gained ground in the suburbs, it has hemorrhaged support in exurban and rural areas, forcing it to rely more on high turnout and overwhelming margins in its strongholds.

Mitch Kates, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, described Vote Local PA as a rejection of concentrating efforts in Democratic counties and an effort to narrow loss margins elsewhere. Losing a Republican county by 25 points instead of 30 could matter in a statewide race.

“This program isn’t the solution, but it’s certainly a weapon in the arsenal of being able to fight the good fight in every single county,” Mr. Kates said. “We are giving our people the tools and resources they need to effectively have conversations with their neighbors.”

In past elections, said Lori McFarland, the chairwoman of the Lehigh County Democratic Committee, she would stuff literature for each local candidate into bags that she suspected voters threw away instantly. Her team will now have single cards for each of seven State House districts within the congressional district covering Lehigh County, which is represented by the vulnerable Democratic incumbent Susan Wild.

Judy Hines, the vice chair of the Democratic Party of Mercer County — a rural area between Pittsburgh and Erie — said the increased coordination among campaigns, and between the county and state parties, felt “like in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ when it’s black and white and it goes into color.”

Maya King and Nicholas Nehamas

Maya King reported from Atlanta, and Nicholas Nehamas reported from Washington.

Harris and Walz point their campaign bus to rural Georgia.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, seeking to build Democrats’ momentum in the Sun Belt, will campaign on Wednesday in the rural counties of southeast Georgia before holding a rally on Thursday in Savannah.

Democrats outside the party’s Metro Atlanta engine have long complained that focusing on the capital city, where a majority of Democratic voters in the state live, ignores pockets of supporters in less populous areas. Organizers have emphasized the particular need to engage voters in rural South Georgia and the state’s mountainous northern regions — both heavily conservative parts of the state that will still require high turnout from Black and moderate white voters to keep Democrats competitive.

A visit from the presidential ticket, some rural Democrats say, shows that top party leaders heeded their calls.

“A little does a lot in rural areas,” said Melissa Clink, the former chair of the Democratic Party in Forsyth County, north of the Atlanta suburbs. “If we can get some face time with, especially, the top of the ticket, then not only does that help donors open up their wallets to fund get-out-the-vote operations on the ground but it also inspires more people to do more work because they feel seen.”

The Georgia bus tour is similar to a campaign trip that Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz took to a conservative-leaning county outside Pittsburgh this month. Like South Georgia, Democrats in western Pennsylvania have also said their voters were being unwisely ignored by presidential campaigns. On their tour, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz made sure to highlight the diversity of the area, engaging with residents in Aliquippa, a former steel town that has a large Black population, where they spent time with a high school football team alongside the former Pittsburgh Steelers star Jerome Bettis. (Mr. Walz is a former high school football coach, which might also play well in Georgia.)

More broadly, Democrats hope Mr. Walz — who flipped a largely rural and more conservative House district in southern Minnesota in 2006 — can help stem their losses with rural and white working-class voters, especially men, who have grown increasingly hostile to their party. He has worked to present a more caring version of masculinity that contrasts with the brash aggressiveness of Mr. Trump.

His party knows it cannot hope to win those rural voters outright. But in what is expected to be a tight election, Democrats are aiming to keep their margins manageable outside the cities and suburbs, something Joseph R. Biden Jr. accomplished during his 2020 campaign. Ms. Harris has made few gains with white men since taking over the ticket.

The Harris campaign says it has invested heavily in rural Georgia, hiring nearly 50 staff members across seven offices, in places including the small cities of Valdosta and Albany close to the Florida line and rural towns like Millen and Cordele, which calls itself the watermelon capital of the world .

Polling shows that Ms. Harris has made Georgia competitive , after it seemed to be slipping out of reach for Mr. Biden. And Mr. Trump has devoted a significant chunk of his advertising budget to the state, suggesting his team also sees the state as being back in play.

In Savannah, where Ms. Harris will hold a rally on Thursday, Democrats are hoping her visit will reignite energy in a city that is home to the second-largest cluster of blue votes in the state.

“Love is an action word — you show people first by your presence,” said Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, who has lobbied the Biden and Harris campaigns to campaign in the city for months since Ms. Harris visited in February. “Her presence is going to really be indicative of that esteem she has for our community.”

‘A terrible president’: 12 times Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized Trump.

The alliance between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former President Donald J. Trump, which was fortified on Tuesday with Mr. Kennedy’s appointment to Mr. Trump’s transition team, is a sharp turnabout in a long-combative relationship.

Mr. Kennedy had spent the better part of a decade lobbing attacks at Mr. Trump, portraying him as a buffoonish, anti-democratic bully who led a feckless administration.

“In many ways, he’s discredited the American experiment with self-governance,” Mr. Kennedy said of Mr. Trump in early 2020 .

Mr. Kennedy set aside his criticisms when he suspended his long-shot independent presidential campaign last Friday, saying that he was backing Mr. Trump because he was “choosing to believe” that “this time” Mr. Trump would bring him into his administration — something that did not happen for Mr. Kennedy the last time around, after they met in 2017. Mr. Kennedy, reached for comment, pointed to the remarks he made Friday.

Mr. Kennedy acknowledged Friday that he and the former president “don’t agree on everything.” But he said that they had found common ground on certain issues, and he took a different, far more positive tone in front of a cheering crowd of Trump supporters in Glendale, Ariz.

“Don’t you want a president who’s going to protect America’s freedoms, and who’s going to protect us against totalitarianism?” Mr. Kennedy asked on Friday.

Six years earlier, he had accused Mr. Trump of “systematically” supporting totalitarian governments around the world.

Here’s a look back at 12 times Mr. Kennedy ridiculed Mr. Trump and his policies.

July 2, 2024

“Donald Trump was a terrible president”

In an appearance on the “Breaking Points” podcast after the debate between Mr. Trump and President Biden, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Trump had turned the “government over to corporate pirates” during his presidency.

In calling Mr. Trump a “terrible president,” Mr. Kennedy argued that he had made some compelling promises but had not followed through on them. “I don’t think he’s capable of meeting the expectations and fulfilling the promises that he raises with his rhetoric.”

June 19, 2024

“Absurd and terrifying”

Mr. Kennedy said on social media that Mr. Trump had an “imperial plan” for American foreign policy.

“It is not an ‘America First’ strategy, nor will it make America great,” Mr. Kennedy wrote, calling the former president’s policies “absurd and terrifying.”

June 13, 2024

“He spent more money than all presidents”

Mr. Kennedy regularly targeted Mr. Trump’s stewardship of the economy, highlighting significant increases in the national debt between 2017 and 2021. He described the risk of further growth in the debt as “existential.”

“President Trump ran up $8 trillion — more money than every president in United States history from George Washington to George Bush,” Mr. Kennedy said on “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” (A calculation by the liberal Urban Institute in Washington found that deficit growth under Mr. Trump was the third-highest in U.S. history when measured as a share of the economy, behind increases under Mr. Bush and Abraham Lincoln.)

June 11, 2024

“A weakness for swamp creatures”

During his campaign, Mr. Kennedy repeatedly suggested that Mr. Trump presided over a corrupt administration.

“Despite rhetoric to the contrary, President Trump has a weakness for swamp creatures, especially corporate monopolies, their lobbyists, and their money,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on social media in June. “After promising to drain the swamp, instead, he hired swamp creatures to regulate their own industries.”

May 24, 2024

“He didn’t stand up for the Constitution”

Addressing the Libertarian National Convention , Mr. Kennedy chastised Mr. Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that he had presided over lockdowns that produced the “greatest restriction on individual liberties this country has ever known."

“He didn’t stand up for the Constitution when it really mattered,” Mr. Kennedy said.

April 27, 2024

“A barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims”

Pushing to debate Mr. Trump in the spring, Mr. Kennedy unloaded on the former president , who had claimed that Democrats had planted Mr. Kennedy in the race to help their party.

“When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on social media . “President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims.”

April 1, 2024

“Appalling”

Appearing on CNN, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election were “appalling.”

“I’m not going to defend President Trump on that,” Mr. Kennedy said. He added: “There’s many things that President Trump has done that are appalling.”

Jan. 14, 2020

“He’s a bully”

Early in the 2020 election cycle, Mr. Kennedy told Yahoo Finance that Mr. Trump had “discredited” American democracy, calling him a “bully.”

“He’s a bully, and I don’t like bullies,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And I don’t think that that’s part of American tradition.”

May 17, 2018

“Buffoonery at a high level”

At a conference in Philadelphia a little over a year into Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Trump was severely damaging the United States’ reputation abroad — and also bruising the idea of democracy itself.

“If you live in China today, and you’re looking at what’s happening in the United States, why would you ever say, we want to switch our system for that system, which can produce that kind of buffoonery at a high level?” Mr. Kennedy asked.

Mr. Kennedy said Mr. Trump was “purposefully and systematically” supporting “tyrannical” governance by other world leaders. “He is also encouraging it by the example of what a disaster democracy’s become,” Mr. Kennedy added.

Aug. 15, 2017

“I don’t like President Trump’s environmental policies”

In an interview with the science and medical news website Stat early in the Trump presidency, Mr. Kennedy said: “I don’t like President Trump’s environmental policies, and I would not endorse them.”

“I would say that President Trump’s administration is essentially destroying 30 years of my work on environmental issues,” said Mr. Kennedy, who began to work on efforts to preserve the environment the 1980s.

Still, Mr. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, said in the interview that he had engaged in talks with the Trump White House about vaccine safety.

Aug. 5, 2016

“It’s scary”

Mr. Kennedy used those two words to describe Mr. Trump’s political rise, three months before Mr. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

In an interview with Larry King, Mr. Kennedy said that he was squarely behind Mrs. Clinton and that Mr. Trump was tapping into an “atavistic urge for a leader who is kind of a man on horseback who’s decisive, who’s violent.” He added: “It’s scary.”

March 15, 2005

“We need some positive role models”

More than a decade before Mr. Trump rode down the golden Trump Tower escalator and into presidential politics, Mr. Kennedy had publicly criticized the New York real estate mogul.

In an interview with The Boston Globe, Mr. Kennedy cast Mr. Trump’s flashy life as a poor example for Americans to follow.

“At this point we’re being sold role models like Donald Trump — television is saying this is a guy that we ought to be apprenticing for and modeling our lives after,” Mr. Kennedy told The Globe. “I think we need some positive role models as well, that stress what’s important about life — that we’re not just materialistic beings, we are spiritual beings as well.”