Trump and Vance team up to campaign in Minnesota, a state that hasn't backed the GOP in 52 years

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — As the presidential campaign enters a critical final 100 day stretch, Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, rallied supporters on Saturday in a state that hasn’t backed a GOP candidate for the White House since 1972.

The rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was designed as a sign of the campaign’s bullishness about its prospects across the Midwest, particularly when President Joe Biden was showing signs of weakness ahead of his decision to exit the campaign. Trump, who won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to lose them four years later, has increasingly focused on Minnesota as a state where he’d like to put Democrats on defense.

The rally is something of a gamble, potentially forcing the likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats to devote resources in a state they would likely otherwise ignore. But it could also be a risk for Trump if he spends time in places that might prove to be a reach with Harris leading the ticket when he could otherwise focus on maintaining his support in more traditional battlegrounds.

Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half to cheering crowds holding signs supporting police and calling for the deportation of migrants in the country illegally. He continued a pattern of escalating attacks against Harris on immigration and crime.

He called her a “crazy liberal” and accused her of wanting to “defund the police," while he said by contrast, he wants to “overfund the police.”

“She has no clue, she's evil,” Trump said, suggesting Harris had failed at her tasks related to the border as vice president. “Kamala Harris’ deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president.”

Trump called out Harris for a 2020 post she made after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police. The post had encouraged people to help protesters by donating to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which had been working on reforming the bail system and posted criminal bail for people as part of a campaign to address inequities in the system.

Though Harris did not contribute to the fund herself, her tweet was among those from celebrities and high-profile people that helped donations flow into the cash-strapped nonprofit, helping it quickly raise $34 million. In the immediate aftermath of the protests and unrest, the group actually spent little bailing out protesters.

Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, called Trump's attack line “a desperate lie from a desperate campaign" that can't change the fact that its candidate has been convicted of multiple felonies.

Trump also knocked Harris as an “absolute radical” on abortion, seemingly sensing an opening to attack her on the issue after she has become the Biden administration's most vocal proponent of abortion rights. He wrongly suggested Harris wants abortion “right up until birth and after birth.” Infanticide is criminalized in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.

Yet the former president also recycled much of his past material targeting Biden, showing how his campaign has sought to keep Biden's pitfalls fresh in voters' minds even after the president has ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris.

Trump's remarks followed a spirited speech from Vance, in which he leaned heavily into issues that animate the GOP base, particularly security at the U.S.-Mexico border and crime. He also took a broadside against the news media, arguing that journalists were comparing the first Black woman and person of south Asian descent to lead a major party ticket to Martin Luther King, Jr.

In May, Trump headlined a GOP fundraiser in St. Paul, where he boasted he could win the state and made explicit appeals to the iron-mining range in northeast Minnesota, where he hopes a heavy population of blue-collar and union workers will shift to Republicans after years of being solidly Democratic.

Appealing to that population has also helped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz land on the list of about a dozen Democrats who are being vetted to potentially be Harris' running mate.

Walz posted on the social platform X on Friday poking fun at Trump's visit to his state.

“Donald Trump is coming back to the State of Hockey tomorrow for the hat trick,” Walz wrote. “He lost Minnesota in ’16, ’20, and he’ll lose it again in ’24.”

Saturday's rally took place at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, a 5,159-seat hockey arena. After surviving the July 13 assassination attempt on him at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump has only had events at indoor venues. But he said in a post on his social media network Saturday that he will schedule outdoor stops and the “SECRET SERVICE HAS AGREED TO SUBSTANTIALLY STEP UP THEIR OPERATION."

Secret Service officials would not say whether the agency had agreed to expand operations at Trump’s campaign events or had any concerns about him potentially resuming outdoor gatherings. “Ensuring the safety and security of our protectees is our highest priority,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday. “In the interest of maintaining operational integrity, we are not able to comment on specifics of our protective means or methods."

Earlier Saturday, Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, laying out a plan to embrace cryptocurrency if elected and promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower.”

Trump didn’t always support cryptocurrency but has changed his attitude toward the digital tokens in recent years and in May, his campaign started accepting donations in cryptocurrency.

Also Saturday, Harris ramped up her campaign for president with her first fundraiser since becoming the Democrats’ likely White House nominee.

The event in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday was expected to raise more than $1.4 million, her campaign announced, from an audience of hundreds at the Colonial Theatre. That would be $1 million-plus more than the original goal set for the event before Biden dropped out of the race.

Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Brian Slodysko in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.

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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference Saturday, July 27, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference Saturday, July 27, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrive at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrive a campaign rally, Saturday, July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

ATLANTA (AP) — The mother of a student in class with the boy accused of killing four people in a Georgia high school shooting says information that school officials were warned that the boy was having a crisis shows the shooting could have been prevented.

“The school failed them, that they could have prevented these deaths and they didn’t,” Rabecca Sayarath said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I truly, truly feel that way.”

Sayarath’s daughter, Lyela, told reporters on Wednesday, the day of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, that administrators appeared to be looking for Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who has been charged with four counts of murder, before the gunfire began.

Others, though, are declining to blame school or law enforcement officials.

"I’m not going to referee or second-guess what happened with the authorities the other night," U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said on CNN's “State of the Union" on Sunday. “I applaud our first responders. When others are running away from danger, they run toward the danger in order to do the best they can.”

Officials say Gray shot and killed students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and a teacher were injured — seven of them shot — and are expected to recover.

Annie Brown told The Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and warned staff of an “extreme emergency” before the killings. Brown said Marcee Gray urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school at 9:50 a.m. Warrants for Gray's arrest say the shooting started at 10:20 a.m.

Brown confirmed the reporting to The Associated Press on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.

Marcee Gray expressed remorse for the shootings Saturday to The Washington Post and The New York Post.

“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” Gray told The Washington Post in a text.

“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” Gray told The New York Post outside her father’s home in Fitzgerald, Georgia, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Atlanta.

Charles Polhamus, the boy's grandfather, has told multiple news outlets that Marcee Gray got a text from her son on Wednesday saying he was sorry. Polhamus told CNN that Marcee Gray drove to Winder, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Fitzgerald, immediately after the shooting.

The Washington Post also reported that texts show relatives contacted the school about the boy's mental health a week before the shooting, and that Brown told a relative he was having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.” The newspaper reported that the teen's grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, met with a school counselor to request help.

The boy "starts with the therapist tomorrow,” Polhamus wrote in a text to Brown after that meeting.

Investigators haven't said what they believe might have motivated Gray or whether they believe he targeted particular victims.

Authorities have said Gray's father, Colin Gray, gave him access to the semiautomatic AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting. It's not clear how Gray brought the gun to campus or what he did with it in the two hours between school starting at 8:15 a.m. and when shots first rang out.

Colin Gray became the first parent of a school shooting suspect to be charged in Georgia, District Attorney Brad Smith said Friday. He’s accused of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children for providing his son with the rifle.

Colin Gray is jailed in Barrow County after declining to seek bail in a brief court hearing Friday in Winder. Colt Gray is being held in a juvenile detention center after declining to seek bail. Neither has been indicted or entered a plea.

Lyela Sayarath said Wednesday that Colt Gray had left her algebra classroom and that she believed he was skipping class.

In the minutes before the shooting, a female administrator came to her class looking for a student with the same last name and almost identical first name as Gray, she said. That other student was in the bathroom, but the administrator demanded to see his bag. That student returned with his bag moments later, Sayarath said, and told her that administrators had concluded he wasn't the student they were looking for.

Someone also called the teacher on the intercom, apparently asking about Gray, Sayarath said. She said as the intercom buzzed a second time, the teacher responded, “Oh he's here,” seeing Gray outside the classroom door.

When students went to open the door, which automatically locks from the inside when closed, Sayarath said they backed away. She said she saw Colt Gray turn away through the window of the door and then she said she heard gunshots — “10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back.”

Rabecca Sayarath, Lyela’s mother, has said she believed the school erred by sending an unarmed administrator to look for Colt Gray instead of one of Apalachee High's armed school resource officers.

When she questioned Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith about her daughter’s account at a Wednesday night news conference, Smith cautioned, “With all due respect, ma’am, I think your information is incorrect.”

It's unclear if Barrow County school authorities knew before the shooting that Colt and Colin Gray previously had been interviewed by a sheriff's deputy in neighboring Jackson County in May 2023 after a report of an online threat to shoot up a middle school that Colt Gray, then 13, attended.

Colt Gray told the deputy that “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” according to a report filed by investigators. No action was taken because of inconsistent information about the social media account used to make the threats.

Colin Gray told the investigator back then that Colt had access to unloaded guns in the house but knew “how to use them and not use them.” He also said his son had struggled since he and his wife separated and that Colt was picked on in school.

Nicole Valles, a spokesperson for the Barrow County school district, declined to comment Sunday in response to emailed questions seeking more details about what may have happened before the shooting.

“Because this is an active investigation and now court proceedings have begun, we are not commenting on specific details,” Valles wrote, referring questions to the district attorney.

Smith didn't immediately respond to emails Sunday with similar questions, while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation referred requests for comment to the district attorney.

Colin Gray, 54, the father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, 14, sits in the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Colt Gray sits in the Barrow County courthouse during his first appearance for the Wednesday shooting at Apalachee High School, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, Pool)

Mark Gorman holds a candle during a candlelight vigil for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People embrace at a makeshift memorial after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)