paying visit

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Understanding the Idiom: "pay a visit" - Meaning, Origins, and Usage

The meaning of “pay a visit”.

“Pay a visit” means to go and see someone for a short period of time. It could be to check on their well-being or simply to catch up with them. The phrase is often used when referring to visiting friends or family members, but it can also be used in professional settings such as visiting clients or colleagues.

Usage Examples

Here are some examples of how “pay a visit” can be used:

• I’m planning to pay a visit to my grandparents next weekend.
• The doctor advised me to pay a visit if my symptoms persist.
• We should pay a visit to our new neighbors and welcome them.

Origins and Historical Context of the Idiom “pay a visit”

The phrase “pay a visit” is an idiom that has been used for centuries to describe the act of visiting someone. This expression has its roots in Old English, where it was commonly used to refer to the act of paying tribute or homage to someone.

Over time, the meaning of this phrase evolved, and it began to be used more broadly to describe any type of social call or visit. Today, we use this idiom in many different contexts, from visiting friends and family members to making professional visits for business purposes.

Throughout history, paying visits has been an important part of human interaction. In ancient times, people would often travel long distances just to pay their respects or seek advice from respected leaders or scholars. As societies became more complex and interconnected over time, the practice of paying visits became even more common.

Today, we continue to value the importance of face-to-face interactions with others. Whether we are catching up with old friends or meeting new acquaintances for the first time, paying a visit remains an essential way for us to connect with one another on a personal level.

Usage and Variations of the Idiom “pay a visit”

When we want to see someone or something, we often use the idiom “pay a visit” . This phrase has many variations that can be used in different contexts. Let’s explore some of these variations and how they are commonly used.

One common variation is “make a visit” , which has the same meaning as “pay a visit”. Another variation is “drop by” or “drop in”, which implies a casual or unexpected visit. We can also say “call on” when referring to visiting someone at their home, office, or other location.

The idiom “pay a visit” is often used to describe visiting friends, family members, colleagues, or acquaintances. For example: “I’m going to pay a visit to my grandmother this weekend.” It can also be used in more formal situations such as business meetings: “The CEO paid a surprise visit to our office yesterday.”

“Drop by” and its variations are commonly used when referring to informal visits with friends or acquaintances: “I’m going to drop by Sarah’s house after work today.” Similarly, we might say: “I just wanted to drop in and say hello.”

“Call on” is typically reserved for more formal occasions such as job interviews or professional meetings: “I need to call on Mr. Smith at his office tomorrow.” However, it can also be used in everyday conversation when referring to visiting someone’s home: “We’re planning on calling on our neighbors this weekend.”

Synonyms, Antonyms, and Cultural Insights for the Idiom “pay a visit”

Instead of saying “pay a visit” , you could use phrases like “drop by”, “stop in”, or “pop in”. These expressions convey the same meaning but with different nuances. For example, if you say you’re going to “drop by” someone’s house, it implies that your visit will be brief and casual. On the other hand, if you say you’re going to “stop in”, it suggests that your visit might be longer or more formal.

Antonyms for “pay a visit” include phrases like “avoid”, “ignore”, or simply not visiting at all. Of course, these expressions have negative connotations and are not appropriate when talking about friendly visits.

Culturally speaking, paying visits is an important social custom in many countries around the world. In some cultures, such as Japan and Korea, it is customary to remove one’s shoes before entering someone’s home as a sign of respect. In other cultures, such as Italy and Spain, it is common to bring small gifts or treats when visiting friends or family members.

Practical Exercises for the Idiom “pay a visit”

Exercise 1: fill in the blanks.

In this exercise, you will need to fill in the blanks with appropriate words from the given options:

• It’s been a while since I last _______ my grandparents.
• We decided to _______ our friends who live across town.
• I’m planning to _______ my old school teacher next week.

Exercise 2: Create sentences

In this exercise, you will need to create sentences using “pay a visit” in different contexts:

• Create a sentence using “pay a visit” when talking about visiting someone at their workplace.
• Create a sentence using “pay a visit” when talking about visiting someone who is sick or unwell.
• Create a sentence using “pay a visit” when talking about visiting an unfamiliar place for sightseeing purposes.

Exercise 3: Role-play activity

In this exercise, you will need to role-play different scenarios where you would use the idiom “pay a visit” . This could include situations such as visiting family members during holidays or dropping by someone’s house unexpectedly. You can practice with friends or family members and try out different variations of the idiom based on context and tone of conversation.

By practicing these exercises regularly, you’ll soon become more confident in using the idiom “pay a visit” in your everyday conversations.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using the Idiom “pay a visit”

When using idiomatic expressions, it’s important to understand their meaning and usage in context. The idiom “pay a visit” is commonly used to describe visiting someone or somewhere, but there are some common mistakes that people make when using this expression.

Using the Wrong Preposition

One of the most common mistakes when using “pay a visit” is using the wrong preposition. The correct preposition to use with this idiom is “to”. For example, you can say “I’m going to pay a visit to my grandmother.” Using other prepositions like “at” or “in” would be incorrect and sound unnatural.

Misusing the Word Order

Another mistake people make with this idiom is misusing the word order. The correct order should be subject + verb + object. For example, you can say “I’m going to pay a visit to my friend.” Incorrectly saying something like “To my friend I’m going to pay a visit” would be grammatically incorrect and confusing.

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pay (someone) a visit

Definition of pay (someone) a visit

Examples of pay (someone) a visit in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pay (someone) a visit.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Dictionary Entries Near pay (someone) a visit

pay (someone) a compliment

pay someone no mind

Cite this Entry

“Pay (someone) a visit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pay%20%28someone%29%20a%20visit. Accessed 15 Sep. 2024.

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pay a visit

• 1.1 Pronunciation
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Pronunciation

pay a visit ( third-person singular simple present pays a visit , present participle paying a visit , simple past and past participle paid a visit )

• 2020 September 25, Reuters Staff, “Thai republican hashtag trends after constitution change delayed”, in Reuters ‎ [1] , Reuters, retrieved 2020-09-25 : Some protesters say the constitution also gives too much power to the king, who paid a rare visit to Thailand on Thursday for ceremonies honouring his grandfather, Prince Mahidol Adulyadej. The king has spent most of his time in Europe since taking the throne nearly four years ago.
• 2022 November 16, Paul Bigland, “From rural branches to high-speed arteries”, in RAIL , number 970 , page 55 : Brighton station is awash with people paying a visit to the seaside.
• ( idiomatic , euphemistic ) To go to the toilet .

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pay a visit

Idioms and phrases.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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Idiom:  pay a visit

Meaning .

Idiom:  pay a visit to someone/something (pay someone/something a visit)

• to go see someone or something

Example sentences

• I haven’t heard from my father in two weeks so I’m going to pay him a visit and make sure he’s okay.
• There are very few doctors who will pay a visit to patients' homes these days.
• It's been a few months since we've seen my mother-in-law so we need to pay a visit this weekend.
• My best friend was in town and decided to pay a visit but we were at the shopping mall so I missed her.
• Let's pay a visit to the cemetery on Veterans Day and lay down some flowers at my grandfather's grave.
• You'll be paying the dentist a visit  soon if you don't stop drinking so many sodas and eating those sugary candies.
• If you have a chance to pay a visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial while you're in the Dakotas you will not regret it.
• A couple of police officers paid our office a visit this afternoon and I'm dying to know what they questioned my boss about.
• Every Memorial Day we pay a visit to my uncle's grave to pay our respects.
• come around

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Example sentences pay a visit

Just pay a visit to the link below.

Few politicians have dared to pay a visit to a concentration camp during their re-election campaign.

If you've been feeling low for more than a couple of weeks pay a visit to your doc.

Pay a visit to the newspaper editor and treat him to a knuckle sandwich?

Contact your local environmental health or planning department and ask it to pay a visit .

Definition of 'pay' pay

Definition of 'visit' visit

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• pay a visit to

verb as in visit

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• come around
• look around

Related Words

Words related to pay a visit to are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word pay a visit to . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

verb as in pay a visit

verb as in be a guest of

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

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Meaning of pay a visit in English

Pay a visit, pay someone a visit | intermediate english, pay someone a visit.

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'Making peoples' lives hell': When he couldn't pay for cancer treatment, the hospital sued

In 2012, Terry Belk’s beloved wife, Sandra, died after a yearslong battle with breast cancer. The car salesman in Charlotte, North Carolina, had quit work to take care of his wife, and the bills for her treatment were more than he could pay, even with health insurance. Adding to his burden, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that year, generating additional bills for his own treatment.

Atrium Health, the nonprofit hospital treating the Belks, pursued them aggressively for their debts. Without fully understanding the consequences, Belk said, he agreed to what’s known as a deed of trust under which the hospital will receive roughly $23,000 when he sells his home, an amount that will cover outstanding amounts owed for his wife’s treatments. “We weren’t trying to abscond from the bills,” he said. “I wanted to pay but I couldn’t.”

It didn’t end there. In 2022, the hospital sued Belk for the roughly $6,000 he still owed for prostate cancer care. Belk said he knew he couldn’t win in court so he agreed to pay off the debt, which has grown to around $8,000 with interest. Belk said he is paying $100 a month to whittle it down and keep bill collectors away.

“I’ve been battling this for over 20 years,” Belk, 68, said of his medical debt . “This has been like an albatross around my neck, like an anvil I’m dragging around every day.”

Americans owe at least $220 billion in medical debt , according to KFF , a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization. The top three states for medical debt are South Dakota, where 18% of the population is affected, followed by Mississippi at 15% and Belk’s home state of North Carolina at 13%, KFF  says . The burden of medical debt has contributed to financial anxiety among voters and has become an issue in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Medical debt is a “problem that is uniquely American,” said Berneta  Haynes , senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit organization, and an expert on the topic. “Even if you have insurance, if you have chronic health conditions that require you to interface more often with the health care system, you are putting yourself at greater risk for medical debt every single time you make" an appointment.

Asked about Belk’s situation, a spokesman for Atrium Health said it has used litigation against patients “as a last resort.” Belk signed both the deed of trust and the other judgment voluntarily, the spokesman said, “and presumably on the advice of his attorney.”

The Atrium spokesman also provided a statement saying: “As the leading, nonprofit health system in the Southeast, Atrium Health works to ensure access to high-quality care for everyone in each community we’re privileged to serve. For us, there are no profits — just outcomes, in the form of improving health, elevating hope and advancing healing — for all.” 

Incorrect bills and a lack of help

Almost 18% of our nation’s gross domestic product goes to health care — far more than other developed countries--with roughly  one-third  of those dollars spent on hospital care, according to National Health Expenditures data.

With costs so elevated, it’s no surprise that medical expenses are a leading cause of  bankruptcy  in the United States, according to a 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Residents of southeastern states have been especially hard hit by medical debt because their state governments have often blocked the expansion of Medicaid.

Nonprofit hospitals are supposed to offer financial assistance programs to patients who can’t afford care, according to a provision of the  Affordable Care Act . But patients don’t always receive information about these programs, experts say.

Compounding the challenge posed by medical debt is the fact that hospital or health care bills are hard to decipher and often incorrect, according to Cynthia Fisher, founder of  PatientRightsAdvocate.org , a nonprofit seeking transparency in health care prices. Fisher’s organization routinely analyzes patient records and told NBC News: “We have not yet had an accurate bill.”

A new  study  by The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research organization focusing on health care, confirmed that inaccurate bills are a big problem. Some 45% of U.S. adults say they’ve received a medical bill that they were surprised was not covered by their insurance, the research found. Many of those polled did not challenge the bills, the report said, but 38% of those who questioned them had the bills reduced or eliminated. 

Even when bills are accurate, prices can vary significantly for the same service in the same hospital, Fisher’s organization found. For example, last year PatientRightsAdvocate.org studied costs of five common services, including appendectomies, cesarean sections and cataract surgery, at hospitals in 10 states. The  research  found an appendectomy in the same hospital can cost as much as 32 times on the upper end what that facility’s lowest cost is for the service; cataract surgery can cost nine times and cesareans eight times the lowest cost at the same facility. The average variation in price across the procedures at the same hospital was almost 11 times, the research determined. 

8% interest rates

In 2023, Darcy Guill, 52, underwent emergency hernia surgery. She had health insurance with a marketplace plan but later that year received a $4,000 bill from the hospital for the amount her plan didn’t cover. Guill, who has multiple sclerosis, lives in Aiden, North Carolina, a rural community just south of Greenville. She said she is paying approximately $123 a month on the bill. 

“I didn’t ask to have a hernia,” she said. “I used to be an elementary school teacher and have not had a lot of money in recent years.”

Guill said she is especially grateful that North Carolina recently expanded Medicaid coverage for residents, which she can now access. She volunteers with a nonprofit called  Down Home North Carolina  to help her neighbors gain access to Medicaid. “We have a ton of people with medical debt in the state because our insurance plans didn’t cover our medical bills,” she said. 

Guill’s view is confirmed by 2021  research  from the Urban Institute, which found that three of the top 10 U.S. counties with residents holding medical debt were in North Carolina. In those counties, more than 40% of residents carried medical debt, versus 13.9% nationwide, the study said.

North Carolina residents shoulder high amounts of medical debt because recent mergers among hospitals in the state have curtailed competition among facilities, said  Harold Miller , president and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. As hospitals consolidate, he said, their increased market power drives up the costs of care, especially in rural areas. “When hospitals merge, prices go up,” he said.

Adding to the burden are North Carolina laws allowing hospitals to sue patients for medical debts with legal judgments lasting up to 20 years. In addition, those judgments can carry 8% interest rates and can automatically act as liens against patients’ homes.

“When you have medical problems, there’s a whole cascade of consequences,” said Ed Boltz, a lawyer who represents North Carolina patients being sued for medical debt. “It takes people who have been on the knife’s edge and pushes them over. People end up losing their homes.” 

From January 2017 through June 2022, North Carolina hospitals sued 7,517 patients and their family members to collect medical debt, according to a recent  study  by Duke University School of Law faculty and North Carolina’s Office of State Treasurer. Many of the legal actions resulted in default judgments in state district courts; interest charges and other added fees accounted for an astounding 35% of the $57.3 million in total judgments owed by patients.

“Part of what we’re seeing is a real court failure where inaccurate bills are automatically compounding themselves and wreaking financial havoc on patients,” said Barak Richman, visiting professor of law at George Washington University Law School and a researcher on the study.

Another problem for patients who are being pursued is one Belk experienced, said  Sara Sternberg Greene , a professor at Duke Law and one of the study’s researchers. “A lot of these people were eligible for charity care and didn’t get it,” she said. 

‘Paying into the afterlife’

In mid-August, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said 99 of the state’s eligible hospitals had signed on to a medical debt relief  program  he recently initiated. The hospitals participating in the program, including the largest systems in the state, agreed to forgive medical debts dating back to Jan. 1, 2014, for Medicaid beneficiaries, as well as medical debt considered uncollectible for patients whose income is at or below at least 350% of the federal poverty level. Past medical debt that exceeds 5% of a person’s annual income will also be relieved under the program. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris praised the North Carolina program when she held a rally in the state in July.

Unfortunately, Belk said, the program will not help him. Guill said she has not yet determined whether it will affect her.

In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a  rule  that would remove medical debt from most consumers’ credit reports, aiming to solve the problem of lower scores associated with the obligations. Almost $50 billion in medical debt would be removed under the rule.

Haynes of the National Consumer Law Center said many states aren’t waiting for the federal government to address the medical debt burdens among their residents. Delaware recently passed a law prohibiting interest and late fees on medical debt   and   Maryland requires hospitals to reimburse patients who were eligible for financial assistance but did not receive it .  In 2023, Oregon passed a law requiring patients to be screened for financial assistance if they owe more than $500.

“There’s a lot of interest in resolving the medical debt crisis,” Haynes said. “A lot of states have been tackling medical debt and going far beyond what the federal government is doing.”

Belk is hopeful that Americans everywhere will benefit from people speaking out about medical debt. “This is a national problem, people are getting millions and millions of these bills,” he said. “They are making peoples’ lives hell. I’ll probably be paying this into the afterlife.”

Gretchen Morgenson is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" reporting on Wall Street.

Harris and Trump Keep Up the Pace, With Events in Washington and Utah: Sept. 14 Campaign News

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington on Saturday night, while former President Donald J. Trump is in Salt Lake City for a fund-raiser.

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Chris Cameron

Here’s the latest on the presidential race.

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned in Washington on Saturday, attending a fund-raiser where she told the crowd that, while former President Donald J. Trump might be an “unserious man,” the effects of his words and actions are “extraordinarily serious.” Later on Saturday, she addressed an annual awards ceremony hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, where, in a reversal of standard protocol, she spoke after her boss, President Biden.

Mr. Trump will also fund-raise on Saturday. He is scheduled to attend a donor event in Salt Lake City in the evening.

Ms. Harris had been in Pennsylvania — perhaps the most critical battleground state — for a majority of the week. She campaigned in strongly pro-Trump regions in the state on Friday, capping off a busy stretch that included a prime-time debate on Tuesday with Mr. Trump and a visit to North Carolina , another swing state, on Thursday.

For his part, Mr. Trump visited the battleground state of Nevada, giving a meandering speech in Las Vegas on Friday night that stoked fears over immigration, dwelled on unproven theories about his debate with Ms. Harris and raised familiar unsubstantiated accusations about the prevalence of fraud in U.S. elections.

There are now 52 days until Election Day. Here’s what else to know:

Trump’s news conference in California: At his golf club near Los Angeles, Mr. Trump threatened to withhold federal wildfire aid from California, if elected as president, unless Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to divert more water to farmers rather than allowing it to flow to the ocean. He also said that if elected to a second term, he would begin his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in two cities in Ohio and Colorado that have been the center of his baseless and exaggerated claims about migrants.

A campaign controversy : Mr. Trump drew attention for traveling this week with the far-right activist Laura Loomer , who has made provocative and bigoted remarks, including a recent racist comment about Ms. Harris. After defending Ms. Loomer to the press earlier in the day, Mr. Trump said on social media that she did not work for his campaign, adding, “I disagree with the statements she made,” before seemingly excusing her behavior by saying that she was “tired of watching” Democrats attacking and smearing him.

Biden slams Trump : President Biden denounced Mr. Trump on Friday for continuing to traffic in false rumors about Haitian immigrants’ eating cats and dogs, unfounded tales that have inflamed the presidential campaign. “It’s simply wrong,” Mr. Biden said, his voice rising in indignation. “There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing.”

Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.

Kellen Browning

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, told Spectrum News in Wisconsin on Saturday that he had previously exchanged messages with Senator JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, but that he had never met him in person. That will change when the two meet for the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 1. Walz told Spectrum that ahead of the matchup he had been reading up, “continuing to try to learn the issues,” but that he had not yet had a debate prep session with someone portraying Vance.

Nicholas Nehamas

The vice president also complimented the hip-hop knowledge of the House Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was in the audience. “Nobody knows how to quote Biggie better than Hakeem,” she said, referring to the ’90s rap legend Notorious B.I.G.

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Harris, the first Black woman to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, received a raucous welcome from this gathering of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I truly believe that America is ready to turn the page on the politics of division and hate,” she told the crowd.

Vice President Kamala Harris will speak after Biden, the second time in recent weeks that the president has addressed a crowd before his No. 2, a reversal of the normal protocol.

President Biden is addressing a dinner hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members have been his longtime allies. “You put your trust in me,” Biden told the roughly 3,500 people in attendance at the Washington Convention Center. “You’ve always had my back, and I never forget it.”

Michael Gold

Trump, in an interview with a Nevada television station, dismissed the idea of doing outreach to Republicans who were considering backing Harris. “I probably wouldn’t tell them anything because maybe it would be a personality problem,” he said to KTNV, the ABC station in Las Vegas. “Maybe they don’t like the way I was tough on China.”

Jazmine Ulloa

Reporting from Washington

Gabriel Luna, America Ferrera and other Latino celebrities join a push to mobilize Latino voters.

The Voto Latino Foundation is gearing up to begin its biggest push yet to encourage Latino voters to head to the polls in November with a star-studded cast of Latino celebrities and influencers.

Th $5 million initiative, titled “ Vota con Ganas ,” or “Vote with Enthusiasm,” is set to start on Wednesday and will feature voter-registration drives and workshops, along with a social media campaign and public service announcement-style videos from actors and online personalties that underscore the importance of casting a ballot this election. The list of stars so far includes America Ferrera, Gina Torres, Gabriel Luna, Jessica Alba, Wilmer Valderrama, DannyLux and Xochitl Gomez, among others.

Voto Latino leaders said the ads and online content would be amplified by the group’s 300 partner organizations and businesses, including the National Football League, Sony Music and Universal Music, and by Voto Latino chapters on 100 college campuses.

María Teresa Kumar, the foundation’s co-founder and president, described the push as “more than just a call to action,” saying in a statement, “It is a movement to harness the power of the Latino community.”

Mr. Valderrama, who produced and directed all of the campaign’s videos, described the campaign as critical to a Latino community that continues to grow and contribute to so many aspects of the United States.

“To ensure our safety, opportunity and future in this country, we have to be involved,” he said in an email. “Without our involvement, there will be a paraphrasing of our existence in this country.”

Latinos are a growing slice of the U.S. electorate: An estimated 36.2 million are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center . But in 2020, a Pew survey found that Latinos were less likely than white or Black voters to be contacted by campaigns or organizations supporting candidates.

Latino voter outreach groups have been trying to counter dampened enthusiasm and disillusionment among young voters struggling with housing, food and education costs. And in Texas , Latino voting activists and political organizers have been raided as part of election fraud inquiries, which some of those who were targeted have said appeared to stem from efforts to curb ballot-box access. Leaders with more than two dozen Black and Latino voter outreach groups recently met with Biden administration officials to discuss the challenges, according to several participants.

The “Vota con Ganas” campaign is part of the group’s nonpartisan educational arm, and celebrities are not endorsing particular candidates, though some may later do so through their own personal channels.

In a launch video, Ms. Gomez, who plays America Chavez in the movie “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” appears with other young Latinos, citing a statistic from 2020 census data .

“Every 30 seconds,” Ms. Gomez says, “a new Latino is eligible to vote.”

In an interview, Ms. Gomez, who turned 18 this year, said she counted herself as one of those newly eligible voters.

“So many elections are won by just a few thousand votes,” she said of why she decided to participate when Mr. Valderrama invited her. “We need to vote for candidates who care about the issues we care about.”

Tim Walz’s wife, Gwen Walz, led the audience in a “turn the page” hand gesture indicating they’re ready to move ahead to a new generation of leadership. “You know what else that looks like? Buh-bye,” she said at a campaign rally in Superior, Wis. “Buh-bye, Donald Trump!”

Tim Walz also took a dig at Donald Trump when he shouted out female officeholders in Wisconsin and women in his family, and then said, “It’s really great to have all these women help us beat the smallest man in the world.”

Vice President Kamala Harris hosted a fund-raiser Saturday at the Washington Hilton, where she told attendees that while Donald J. Trump was an “unserious man,” the consequences of “what he says and does are extraordinarily serious.”

Several hundred people attended. Tickets started at $500 and went all the way up to $250,0000, according to an invite shared by one attendee. Those who gave $25,000 or more could take a photo with Harris.

Bomb threats continued for a third straight day in Springfield, Ohio, closing medical buildings in the area on Saturday, according to the city manager, Bryan Heck. The city said the affected buildings had been investigated and deemed safe. In the days since Donald J. Trump baselessly claimed in the debate on Tuesday that immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ pets, bomb threats have caused closures of the City Hall and local schools.

Andrew Duehren

Trump’s proposal to end taxes on overtime pay could cost billions.

Former President Donald J. Trump is calling for exempting overtime pay from taxes, the latest in a string of vague tax proposals that have befuddled tax experts, worried fiscal hawks and seemingly charmed voters.

Mr. Trump floated the idea this past week during a campaign rally in Tucson, Ariz., telling the crowd that it would supercharge incentives to work more and put money back in the pockets of many Americans.

“It’s time for the working man and woman to finally catch a break, and that’s what we’re doing because this is a good one,” he said.

The pitch is part of what has become Mr. Trump’s playbook during the presidential race: tossing out potentially huge tax cuts , defined in just a few words, to try and win over middle- and working-class voters. He has also vowed to exempt tips from taxes and end taxes on Social Security benefits, two ideas that have proven popular. At the same time, he has said he would further cut the corporate tax rate.

As with his promise to end taxes on tips, though, Mr. Trump left many key details about the overtime plan unaddressed, making it hard to estimate its costs. Among the open questions is whether overtime pay would be exempt from just the income tax or if the exception would also apply to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare.

There is also the issue of how many Americans could benefit from Mr. Trump’s idea. More than 34 million Americans worked over 40 hours a week in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but only a subset of that group are owed time-and-a-half pay for overtime under federal law. The rules are complex, but in general Americans earning a salary of more than $43,888 a year may not be owed overtime, depending on their job. Americans paid by the hour, currently about 55 percent of the work force, are broadly eligible for overtime pay.

“The vast majority of hourly workers are automatically overtime eligible, regardless of how much money they make,” said Heidi Shierholz, who was the chief economist at the Department of Labor under the Obama administration.

The relative ease with which hourly employees can earn overtime could create a huge tax incentive for more Americans to reclassify themselves as hourly workers. The cost of the tax cut would depend on whether such legislation limited the ability of corporate executives or high-paid lawyers to modify their own compensation and make a chunk of it tax free.

Arthur Laffer, a father of supply-side economics who at times advises Mr. Trump on tax policy, said in an interview that any final plan would need to include guard rails. Overall, it should encourage Americans to work more, he said. Alabama earlier this year began excluding overtime pay from its state income tax.

“It should not be a serious problem to be able to devise a system that works well,” he said. “This is a good first shot.”

The Tax Foundation, a think tank that generally favors lower taxes, produced a range of estimates for the cost of Mr. Trump’s idea. Assuming the exemption only covers pay currently considered overtime, the think tank said the plan would cost roughly $227 billion over 10 years if applied to the income tax — and an additional $145 billion if Americans also did not owe payroll taxes on overtime earnings.

The cost could be far higher if all pay earned after working 40 hours a week were not taxed. The Tax Foundation analysis estimated that cost at $1.1 trillion over 10 years.

Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, said the potential fiscal cost of the plan was not justified.

“The outlook for the U.S.’s fiscal situation is dire and therefore any additional tax cuts should have a very strong economic argument to support them,” Mr. Strain said, listing benchmarks for boosting economic growth.

“And I don’t see any reason to think that eliminating taxes on overtime, or eliminating taxes on tips, serve any of those goals,” he said.

Much of Mr. Trump’s tax agenda could be budget busting . He is also seeking to extend tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, a move that could cost roughly $4 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Ending taxes on Social Security benefits could cost roughly $1.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and plans to cut the corporate tax rate and end taxes on tips would cost hundreds of billions more.

Mr. Trump’s main proposal to bring money into federal coffers is a dramatic expansion of tariffs on imports into the United States. The tariffs could raise substantial revenue, but probably not enough to plug the fiscal hole created by his proposed tax cuts, according to budget analysts.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign attacked Mr. Trump’s idea on overtime pay as cynical, pointing to a move by the Trump administration in 2019 to roll back an expansion of overtime eligibility .

“He is desperate and scrambling and saying whatever it takes to try to trick people into voting for him,” Joseph Costello, a Harris spokesman, said.

While the Harris campaign attacked Mr. Trump, it did not criticize the merits of the proposed tax cut. Both candidates are trying to convince working-class Americans that they will cut their taxes. Mr. Trump’s previous proposal to not tax tips, also widely criticized by economists, was eventually endorsed by Ms. Harris .

Simon J. Levien

Donald Trump Jr. piled on with racist comments about Haitians.

Amid fallout from Donald J. Trump’s debunked claim about immigrants from Haiti stealing and eating people’s pets in a small Ohio city, the former president’s oldest son weighed in with his own aspersions on Haitians.

Donald Trump Jr. suggested on Thursday that Haitian immigrants were less intelligent than people from other countries, and claimed that there was demographic evidence to back this up. He provided none.

“You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average I.Q. — if you import the third world into your country, you’re going to become the third world,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, a conservative broadcasting network. “That’s just basic. It’s not racist. It’s just fact.”

Claims inherently linking race, nationality and intelligence have long played a role in scientific racism, which uses pseudoscience to try to justify false claims of racial inferiority or superiority. And intelligence quotient testing, a commonly used measure of intelligence, has long been criticized as unreliable.

Mr. Trump has emerged as a key campaign surrogate for his father. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Both Trumps have recently advanced the debunked claim that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio. On their social media accounts, they have each posted memes of cats and dogs, nodding at the false claims and implicitly reminding people of the Trump campaign’s hard-line immigration stance.

At the presidential debate on Tuesday, the former president repeated these claims to the tens of millions watching, giving them their widest platform yet. His assertion drew an incredulous look from his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in,” he said, referring to Haitian migrants. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

In the aftermath of the debate, there were a number of bomb threats in Springfield , closing its City Hall, schools and a motor vehicles office.

Mr. Trump’s fixation on Springfield drew a heated rebuke on Friday from President Biden, who noted that Haitian immigrants were “under attack in our country right now” and who appeared to denounce Mr. Trump without naming him.

“It’s simply wrong,” Mr. Biden said. “There’s no place in America. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”

The National Haitian American Elected Officials Network, a nonpartisan group for Haitian American politicians, rejected Mr. Trump’s comments about Haitians and intelligence.

“That is so sad,” said Mary Estimé-Irvin, the group’s chairwoman. “The campaign is desperate.”

In a statement, the group added that many Haitian Americans will “vote overwhelmingly as one bloc to send a loud message to this racist-political nonsense.”

The Haitian population of Springfield has grown significantly in recent years . During the last census, in 2020, a little more than 58,000 people lived in the city; since the pandemic, between 12,000 and 20,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived, according to estimates by city officials. Most Haitians in Springfield and elsewhere in the United States are in the country legally, many having received temporary protected status from the Biden administration under a program started by President George W. Bush for citizens of countries in turmoil.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, will campaign in the South early next week. On Tuesday, he will give remarks at an event in Macon, Ga., and later hold a rally in Asheville, N.C., according to the campaign.

Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for North Carolina governor , said in an interview on Friday with WSOC-TV that he would sign a six-week abortion ban if elected. He has made inflammatory remarks about women who get abortions but said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. At a campaign event a few weeks ago, Robinson said that he wanted abortion restrictions “down to zero” weeks . His Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, has seized on Robinson’s anti-abortion stance.

Simon J. Levien and Michael Gold

Simon J. Levien reported from Las Vegas.

Trump sticks to his favorite jabs at rally in Las Vegas.

Former President Donald J. Trump capped off the week of his first, and possibly only, presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris with an unfocused speech at a rally in Las Vegas on Friday night, where he baselessly accused her of cheating, repeated a number of falsehoods on a wide range of topics and continued to try to stoke fear about immigration.

Over the course of an hour and 20 minutes, Mr. Trump ranted about the moderators of Tuesday’s debate, made unfounded accusations that Democrats “cheat like hell” in elections and insisted that President Biden, whom he spent years attacking as a weak president, “would have been better than” Ms. Harris.

And even as Mr. Trump continued to insist that he had been victorious in the debate — though some of his allies have acknowledged he had a rough outing — he accused Ms. Harris of wearing an earpiece in their matchup, a baseless claim that has proliferated on right-wing social media. And he said that Ms. Harris had obtained the questions in advance, an assertion for which there has been no proof.

Mr. Trump insulted his Democratic opponents, calling Ms. Harris “Kambabla,” a mispronunciation of her given name, and he called her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, “the vice president,” as he did in a speech on Thursday.

And in a bid to characterize Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz as overly liberal, he repeated false claims that he has frequently made since Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee. Mr. Trump said Ms. Harris supported states’ taking minors from their parents to perform gender-affirming surgeries on them. No state allows such surgeries to be performed without parental consent.

And Mr. Trump once again insisted that Democrat-led states allow babies to be executed after birth. Infanticide is illegal everywhere in the country.

Mr. Trump lost Nevada, a critical battleground state, in 2016 and 2020, and he has announced policies that would benefit the state. Nevada has the highest concentration of tipped workers, and Mr. Trump has proposed ending federal income taxes on tipped wages. He has also said that, if elected, he would open up new tracts of federal land to development, with few regulations and “ultralow taxes,” in part to build more housing. A majority of Nevada is federal land.

At an event on Thursday in Arizona, Mr. Trump pledged to eliminate taxes on overtime pay , part of an effort to win the support of working- and middle-class voters.

“What, is she going to say now ‘no tax on overtime,’ too?” Lee Ward, a Las Vegas rallygoer from New York City, said, mocking the fact that Ms. Harris announced support for cutting taxes on tips after Mr. Trump had.

Many recent polls have shown Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris in a tight race in Nevada, with Democrats gaining ground since Mr. Biden exited the race and Ms. Harris became her party’s nominee. A survey conducted last month by The New York Times and Siena College found Mr. Trump up 48 percent to 47 percent over Ms. Harris. In May, he led Mr. Biden, 50 percent to 41 percent.

At one point in his rally in Las Vegas, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that Ms. Harris wanted to bring back the military draft — a position she has not taken — and to go to war with Russia, part of an effort to style himself as a foreign policy expert who could end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza with a phone call.

Yet Mr. Trump also vowed aggressive action within the country’s borders as he insisted that the United States was “under invasion” by migrants whom he likened to “an army, except in many ways, it’s more difficult because they don’t wear a uniform.” He promised to deploy federal law enforcement officials to “liberate” Aurora, Colo., a city about which he has made exaggerated claims regarding migrant crime.

“We will deploy ICE, D.H.S. and other federal officials to go in and liberate Aurora,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he would create a law enforcement task force to dismantle transnational gangs operating in the United States. “We are going to liberate parts of our country.”

Soumya Karlamangla

Reporting from San Francisco

Trump threatens to cut wildfire aid if California doesn’t deliver more water.

Donald J. Trump on Friday threatened to withhold federal wildfire aid from California, if elected as president, unless Gov. Gavin Newsom agrees to divert more water to farmers rather than allowing it to flow to the ocean.

Mr. Trump, during a news conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., claimed that the state’s devastating wildfires could be prevented by shifts in how California manages its limited water supply.

“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Newsom authorizing water diversions to farmers. “And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems.”

In his remarks, Mr. Trump, the former Republican president, repeatedly called the Democratic governor “Newscum.”

Soon after, Governor Newsom posted a clip of Trump’s comments on X and said that every American voter should pay attention.

Mr. Trump “just admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas,” Governor Newsom said. “Today it’s California’s wildfires. Tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump doesn’t care about America — he only cares about himself.”

Most of California’s water is contained in Northern California, thanks to runoff from the Sierra Nevada and heavier precipitation each winter. The state ships much of that water to the Central Valley and Southern California through massive canals. But California also has been required by court decisions to send water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which eventually heads to San Francisco Bay, to preserve wildlife — most notably a small fish known as the Delta smelt but also salmon and other species.

In 2019, Mr. Trump as president battled with California leaders over how much water should go to farmers rather than through the Delta. Five years later, he seems intent on reviving that fight and using federal aid as leverage should he become president.

California has had a tough fire year, with nearly a million acres torched across the state so far. Three major fires are burning in Southern California that have destroyed dozens of houses and displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Many of the state’s worst fires this year have been in rural and mountainous parts of California that are heavily Republican. Kern, Tehama and Tulare counties have all suffered massive blazes this year, and in the 2020 election all went for Mr. Trump.

Fire experts say that the state’s fire seasons are generally becoming worse because of a century of fire suppression that allowed thick and unchecked growth of vegetation. Those forests and shrubs are especially ready to burn as climate change makes the weather warmer and hotter.

But Mr. Trump erroneously blamed California’s fires on forests becoming desiccated because the state’s water supply has been allowed to flow into the Pacific Ocean. He said that diverting the water to farmers would dampen the land while helping the agricultural industry. Most of California’s fires occur on forest land, on hillsides and in canyons that are not used for farming.

“You’d stop many of these horrible fires that are costing billions and billions of dollars,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “One thing I’m going to do for California — vote for me, California — I’m going to give you safety. I’m going to give you a great border. I’m going to give you more water than almost anybody has, and the farmers up north are going to be able to use 100 percent of their land, not 1 percent of their land.”

Biden briefly put on a Trump hat, and the conservative internet flipped its lid.

Biden’s moment wearing a trump hat, during a visit to the shanksville volunteer fire department in pennsylvania, the president joked with the crowd as he placed the hat over his own..

“There you go, man. I I need that hat.” “You want my autograph?” “Hell, no.” “Put it on.” “Come on.” “I ain’t going that far.” “There you go. Hey, I’m proud of you now.”

No, it wasn’t A.I. But it was no endorsement, either.

A smiling President Biden really did wear a Trump hat — for about five seconds — while visiting firefighters for an event commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks.

The unlikely moment, which played out on Wednesday at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department in a Republican-leaning area of rural western Pennsylvania, soon turned into another example of America’s split-screen political culture.

It started as Mr. Biden exchanged friendly banter with a man wearing a red “Trump 2024” hat, offering him a blue cap with the presidential seal to put on instead. The man asked if the president would autograph the blue hat.

“Sure, I’ll autograph it,” Mr. Biden said. The man replied, “You remember your name?”

“I don’t remember my name,” the president joked. “I’m slow.”

The man teased, “You’re an old fart,” and Mr. Biden immediately agreed: “Yeah, I know, man, I’m an old guy.”

Then, after signing the blue hat, Mr. Biden told him, “I need that hat.”

The man took off his red Trump cap and handed it over, and Mr. Biden, at the urging of the crowd, put it on his head, over a baseball hat he was already wearing. The crowd — including the smiling and clapping Trump supporter — let out a cheer as the president grinned, displayed the hat to the firehouse and then took it off and shook the man’s hand.

Mr. Biden couldn’t resist one political jab, though: “Just remember, no eating dogs and cats,” he said to the crowd, referring to former President Donald J. Trump’s debunked debate claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating residents’ pets.

To those in the firehouse, and many who watched videos of the full exchange online, the moment was one of unity and levity by Mr. Biden, who has long prided himself on his ability to reach across the aisle.

But the still images of the Democratic president wearing the hat of his chief Republican antagonist quickly took on a life of their own in online conservative circles. Political attacks and conspiracy theories abounded, with some Republicans casting Mr. Biden’s move as a statement of real support, or painting him as a doddering fool who did not know what he was doing.

Perhaps trolling or perhaps not, Mr. Trump’s campaign joined in, saying on social media that Vice President Kamala Harris had done “so bad” in Tuesday night’s debate that “Joe Biden just put on a Trump hat.”

Trish Regan, a conservative television host who left Fox Business in March 2020 after calling concerns about the coronavirus an anti-Trump “scam,” declared in a post that the video offered evidence that Mr. Biden “doesn’t like” Ms. Harris, repeating a claim Mr. Trump had made on Tuesday at the debate. (Mr. Biden, whose full-throated endorsement of his vice president cleared her path to the Democratic nomination, told her he loved her at an event after she took over his teetering campaign in July.)

And Tim Young, a conservative commentator, wrote that Mr. Biden seemed “totally lost” during the encounter at the firehouse in Shanksville, near where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, after its passengers fought back against hijackers.

A day after the fire station visit, Mr. Biden’s White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said his message had been one of bipartisanship — not, of course, one of support for Mr. Trump.

She told reporters that at the event, Mr. Biden had been recalling that the “country did come together” after the Sept. 11 attacks and had been trying to show that the United States should revive the spirit of that era.

“It didn’t matter what political party you were a part of,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

Brad Shober, the president of the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department, said in an interview on Friday that he was not so sure Mr. Biden had been trying to make a point about unity when he donned the cap.

But Mr. Shober, a Republican, scoffed at efforts to portray the president as having offered support to Mr. Trump, saying such characterizations were predictable but ridiculous. The exchange between Mr. Biden and the Trump supporter was “all in good fun,” Mr. Shober said.

“Anybody that’s trying to say different isn’t real smart, because they know darn well he isn’t going to endorse Trump,” he said, adding, “The dude put a hat on to make fun with the guy.”

Still, in a campaign awash with A.I. imagery and misleadingly edited or presented photos and videos, a sliver of voters might be confused by the pictures and not understand that it was a playful moment, said Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who briefly led an agency at the Department of Homeland Security created to fight disinformation.

Without watching the video in full or reading more about the exchange, she said, “there’s a possibility that some people will take it at face value.”

Mattathias Schwartz

A Pennsylvania court threw out a ruling requiring misdated ballots to be counted.

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Friday threw out a lower-court ruling that would have required election officials in the state’s two most-populous counties to count otherwise valid mail-in ballots that had the incorrect date or no date at all on the outer envelope.

In a brief, two-page order , the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to rule on the merits of the case, which was brought by a coalition of voters’ rights groups. Instead, it found that the lower court, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, lacked jurisdiction in its order last month because the lawsuit named only Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, and not all of the state’s 67 counties, as defendants.

Friday’s ruling means that state election officials will not be counting misdated or undated ballots in the general election unless the courts decide to intervene again between now and Nov. 5. The plaintiffs could file a new lawsuit that tries to address the jurisdiction issue, but whether they will do so is unclear.

Three of the court’s seven justices dissented, writing that the State Supreme Court should have exercised its special jurisdiction as Pennsylvania’s highest court to decide the case because “a prompt and definitive ruling” on the date question “is of paramount public importance.”

In a statement, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State called the ruling “disappointing,” saying that it “leaves unanswered the important question of whether the dating requirement violates the Pennsylvania Constitution, as the Commonwealth Court found.”

The ruling could have a substantial impact on the presidential race in the battleground state. With about seven weeks to go until the election, most polls show Pennsylvania to be a tossup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. President Biden won the state by just over 81,000 votes in 2020.

State election officials disqualified nearly 16,000 mail-in ballots for irregularities in April’s primary election. Almost half were disqualified because of issues like missing signatures and wrong dates on outer envelopes. In July, Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, directed counties to print ballot-return envelopes with the full year so that voters would have to fill in only the month and day.

The state Republican Party, which had appealed the case to the State Supreme Court and argued that enforcement of the date requirement was legal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The fight over the date rule stems from Act 77, a 2019 state law that allows all Pennsylvanians to cast their votes by mail. The law requires voters to “date and sign” the back of the outer envelope that holds the “secrecy envelope” containing their ballot. While the statute doesn’t specify what to do about ballots with missing or incorrect dates, courts have ruled in the past that misdated ballots should not be counted.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania had ruled last month that using an undated or incorrectly dated envelope as the basis for throwing out otherwise timely and eligible ballots would violate a State Constitution clause guaranteeing “free and equal elections” and pose a “substantial threat of disenfranchisement.” Friday’s ruling vacated that decision.

“Thousands of voters are at risk of having their ballots rejected in November for making a meaningless mistake,” said Mimi McKenzie of the Public Interest Law Center, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs.

Reporting from Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles, in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Trump, who spent the Sept. 11 anniversary with Laura Loomer, said he had not seen her previous claim that the attacks were an ‘inside job.’

Former President Donald J. Trump, whose recent travel with the far-right activist Laura Loomer has alarmed some of his Republican allies in Congress, defended her on Friday as a “free spirit.”

Mr. Trump said that he did not know she had spread conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks when he commemorated their anniversary with her earlier in the week. And he defended Ms. Loomer, who has a history of making racist, anti-Muslim, homophobic and transphobic comments, as an outspoken supporter.

“Laura has been a supporter of mine, just like a lot of people are supporters,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at his golf club near Los Angeles. He added that Ms. Loomer praised his campaign before saying, “I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She’s a free spirit.”

Reporter: “What do you say to your Republican colleagues or your allies who are concerned about your close relationship with Laura Loomer?” “Well, I don’t know what they would say. Laura’s been a supporter of mine, just like a lot of people are supporters, and she’s been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign. I’m not sure why you asked that question, but Laura is a supporter. I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. I mean, look, I can’t tell Laura what to do. Laura is a supporter. I have a lot of supporters, but so I don’t know what exactly you’re referring to.”

Hours later, Mr. Trump distanced himself from Ms. Loomer in a post on his social media site, Truth Social, where he noted that she did not work for his campaign and then pivoted to criticizing his political opponents.

“She’s a private citizen and longtime supporter,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I disagree with the statements she made but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me.”

Mr. Trump drew criticism from Democrats and concern from some close Republican allies after he traveled with Ms. Loomer to Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia, and she then accompanied him on Wednesday to Sept. 11 memorial events in New York City and Shanksville, Pa. Ms. Loomer had previously called Sept. 11 “an inside job.”

Before Mr. Trump’s debate against Ms. Harris, Ms. Loomer posted a racist joke on social media, saying that if Ms. Harris, who is Black and Indian American, won in November, the White House would “smell like curry.”

Mr. Trump’s travel with Ms. Loomer drew criticism this week from several of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told a reporter for HuffPost on Thursday that she was “really toxic.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told reporters that she did not think that Loomer “had the experience or the right mentality” to advise the campaign.

And in a post on social media on Friday , Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote: “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”

Asked about Ms. Loomer flying on his plane this week, Mr. Trump said only, “A lot of people do. It’s a very big plane.”

Ms. Loomer declined to comment about the controversy on Thursday , saying in a text message that she was “not interested in speaking to the media so they can further their conspiracies about me.” But on social media, she took on her critics.

She addressed it again in a post on social media on Friday . “The media continues to make this more than it is,” she wrote. “I’m simply a ride or die supporter of President Trump.”

When Mr. Trump was asked directly about Ms. Loomer’s curry comment, he waved off the question and said, “that’s OK.” It was not clear whether he was referring to the comment or dismissing the question. Seconds later, he added, “I just don’t know. Laura’s a supporter, I don’t know.” But he went on to praise Ms. Loomer as “a strong person,” saying “she’s got strong opinions, and I don’t know what she said.”

When a reporter asked Mr. Trump whether he disavowed the racist remarks that Ms. Loomer had made about his opponent or her conspiracy theories about Sept. 11, Mr. Trump said: “Well, I have to see what the remarks are,” adding that he did not know what the reporter was talking about.

“I do know that she may have said something based on what you’re telling me, but I don’t know what she said,” he said. “But I’ll go take a look and I’ll put out a statement later on.”

A few hours later, he issued the statement on Truth Social. It was not immediately clear from Mr. Trump’s statement which of Ms. Loomer’s comments he disagreed with. In the past, Mr. Trump has sometimes reposted some of Ms. Loomer’s posts.

Taylor Robinson

Early voting is beginning in these states. Here’s what to know.

Election Day is still about two months away, but many voters have options to cast their ballots before Nov. 5. Some have already started receiving mail-in ballots.

Early voting became widespread in the 2020 election, when over 100 million voters cast their ballots by mail or in person before Election Day. With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing that fall, early voting let people avoid crowding into polling stations — and many states have kept those voting options in place.

Here’s a rundown of key dates, deadlines and ways to vote early.

What is early voting, and how does it work?

Early voting lets people cast their ballots in advance of Election Day. Most states offer in-person and mail voting, though options vary by state.

With mail-in voting, people can request a ballot be sent to them or, in some cases, automatically receive one. Eight states, including California and Nevada, send mail-in ballots to all registered voters, and so does the District of Columbia.

Historically, voters who were unable to make it to the polls on Election Day had to request an absentee ballot. But mail-in and absentee ballots now function effectively the same in many states, and the terminology used varies. But in 14 states — including Texas, South Carolina and Indiana — voters must still provide a valid excuse to cast an absentee ballot.

There’s also in-person early voting. In some states, this can take the form of in-person absentee voting — voters can visit their polling places, fill out a mail-in ballot and submit it, all in the same visit. In others, the process mirrors Election Day procedures, with votes cast on polling machines.

Which states offer early voting?

All states offer mail voting in some form, and all but three states offer in-person early voting; the District of Columbia as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands offer in-person early voting, too. The three that do not offer it are Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire, but they provide options for absentee voters in certain cases.

Here’s a timeline for September:

Sept. 11 — Alabama became the first state to begin early voting, sending absentee ballots to eligible voters who provided a justification to receive one. North Carolina would have been the first to send out mail ballots, but was delayed by legal wrangling over the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name after he dropped out of the race.

Sept. 19 — Wisconsin starts mailing ballots to voters who requested them.

Sept. 20 — Minnesota and South Dakota start mail and in-person early voting; Virginia begins in-person early voting.

Sept. 21 — The federal deadline for all absentee ballots to be mailed to military and overseas voters. Eleven states will send out their mail-in ballots by this day, and North Carolina is expected to as well.

Sept. 23 — Mississippi will send absentee ballots to voters who applied for them.

Sept. 26 — Mail-in voting begins in Michigan (voters have to request mail ballots).

Sept. 30 — Nebraska will send mail ballots to eligible voters who requested them.

The rest of the swing states start in-person early voting in October:

Oct. 7 — Georgia begins sending mail ballots to eligible voters.

Oct. 9 — Arizona starts both in-person and mail-in voting. To receive a ballot by mail, voters must request to be placed on the state’s Active Early Voter List.

Oct. 15 — In-person early voting begins in Georgia.

Oct. 16 — Nevada sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

Oct. 17 — North Carolina starts in-person early voting.

Oct. 19 — Nevada starts in-person early voting.

Oct. 21 — The in-person early voting period begins in Texas.

Oct. 22 — Wisconsin starts in-person early voting. Counties in Pennsylvania must begin sending mail ballots to voters who applied for them, if they have not already done so.

Oct. 26 — Michigan opens in-person early voting, the last battleground state to do so.

Where can I find more information about early voting?

States take different approaches to early voting. To read about the options available to you, go to your state or local election office’s website; you can search for that here .

When do I need to register? Where can I check my voter registration?

Most states allow registration until October, and some offer same-day registration at polling places. Check the status of your voter registration on vote.org . To find out when you need to register by, go to vote.gov and select your state or territory.

How can I update my voter registration?

There’s a portal on vote.gov that will show you how to do that. Enter your state or territory to get started.

Where can I check my state’s voting deadline?

Most states require mail-in ballots to be postmarked or dropped off in person on or before Election Day. Check your state’s policy on vote.org by selecting your state or territory. You can also find this information on the website of your state’s election or secretary of state’s office.

An earlier version of this article misstated Pennsylvania’s mail voting timeline. Counties must begin mailing ballots by Oct. 22 and because of legal challenges, it is unclear when in-person early voting will begin; counties are not required to begin both efforts on Sept. 16.

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