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Donald Trump's campaign is "pulling out of Virginia," a move that stunned staff in the battleground state, three sources with knowledge of the decision told NBC News. The decision came from Trump's headquarters in New York and was announced on a conference call late Wednesday that left some Republican Party operatives in the state blindsided. Two staffers directly involved in the GOP's efforts in Virginia confirmed the decision. The move to pull out of Virginia shows Trump is "running essentially a four state campaign," with the focus now shifting to battlegrounds critical to his chances in November: Pennsylvania, Florida, North...

Google Consumer Surveys has Trump +3 in Ohio, Trump +2 in North Carolina and Tied in Florida. Surveys are partially post-tape and pre-debate. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/updates/

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman became the latest Republican senator to call on Donald Trump to quit the race. “While I continue to respect those who still support Donald Trump, I can no longer support him,” Mr. Portman said in a statement. “I continue to believe our country cannot afford a Hillary Clinton presidency. I will be voting for Mike Pence for president.” Mr. Portman becomes the latest in a flood of Republicans to have abandoned the party’s presidential nominee Saturday, a day after a 2005 recording emerged of Mr. Trump making lewd and degrading comments about women.

While campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Canton, Ohio, Bill Clinton was interrupted by a woman holding up a sing that read, “Bill Clinton A Rapist.” “Bill Clinton has harmed woman, and he’s raped woman,” the female protester shouted before being escorted out by security. (Great video)

Clinton took his legendary campaign skills on a tour this week through Mahoning Valley, hustling for small bunches of votes in tiny towns heavily populated with white Ohioans with relatively low levels of education and modest incomes. In other words, in this election, Donald Trump country. These are the voters Clinton won in 1992 and 1996, but who voted Republican in later years. As his bus rolled down two-lane roads and through towns with just a few stoplights but plenty of Trump signs, the trip was one part nostalgia tour, one part policy lecture, one part desperate bid to get...

Vulnerable Senate Republicans have widened their leads over Democratic challengers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, pollsters said Wednesday, though Senate contests in other swing states are dead heats or too close to call — buoying Democrats who say they’re gaining momentum after high-profile stumbles by Donald Trump and down-ballot candidates. The Quinnipiac University Poll said Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, is tied with Democratic challenger Deborah Ross at 46 percent apiece, forcing the GOP to grapple with a closer-than-expected race in the Tarheel State. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s lead over Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy has shrunk to...

Darren Rutledge missed his opportunity to vote for the first African-American president. He was in prison. Today, Rutledge, his smile flecked with gold, works trimming beards at Incredible Creations Beauty and Barber shop here in downtown Cincinnati. With Hillary Clinton on the presidential ballot in Ohio, Rutledge is eager to have his chance to make a statement with his vote. Rutledge is African-American, part of a demographic coalition that flocked to Obama but has been somewhat less enthralled with Clinton. Crucially, his very participation in the election process is owed to a black woman: His sister, an employee at Cincinnati City...

Ohio said it plans to resume executions in January with a new three-drug combination after an unofficial moratorium dating to early 2014 and blamed on shortages of lethal drugs. It said it will return to an approach it previously used to execute dozens of inmates. The state will use the drugs midazolam, which puts the inmate to sleep; rocuronium bromide, which paralyzes the inmate; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced Monday in a development first reported by The Associated Press. The drugs aren’t compounded and are approved by the U.S. Food and...

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Returning to Ohio for the first time in a month, Hillary Clinton tried to make up for lost time Monday with a fiery populist pitch aimed at upending rival Donald Trump in a battleground state where he's tapped into voters' economic anxieties. "He abuses his power, games the system, and puts his own interests ahead of the country's," Clinton said during a rally in Toledo, one of two stops she was making in Ohio.

The projected Electoral College vote count hasn't changed from last week's polls, but Donald Trump is narrowing the margin with Hillary Clinton in several states. WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Donald Trump gained support in nearly every state in the past week, expanding leads in some and gaining on Hillary Clinton in several other key swing states, a state tracking poll released by UPI/CVoter on Monday indicates. Trump gained support in 45 of the 50 states, as well as in Washington, D.C., with the biggest shifts coming in Idaho, Mississippi and Minnesota, in Monday's release, which includes polling data gathered...

LeBron James, who last season led the Cleveland Cavaliers to their first N.B.A. championship, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Sunday. Mr. James announced his decision in an op-ed article in Business Insider, saying that Mrs. Clinton understands the struggles of childhood poverty and as president would enact policies that would build on the legacy of President Obama. He also said he believed Mrs. Clinton would champion causes for children, provide more educational opportunities and “address the violence, of every kind, the African-American community is experiencing.”

RUSH: Now Hillary has pulled out of Ohio, and the New York Times dutifully says, "That's okay! Ohio doesn't matter anymore." I've got it right here. "Ohio, Long a Bellwether, Is Fading on the Electoral Map." You know why? 'Cause it's too white. Ohio is no longer the great predictor. Ohio is no longer the great indicator. It used to be that you couldn't win the presidency without winning Ohio, because Ohio had collectively a microcosm of the country's population. But now? Now Ohio doesn't matter, since Hillary is not doing well there -- and they say (paraphrased), "It's just...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The union representing Cleveland's rank-and-file police officers voted overwhelming Friday to endorse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association voted 216-68 to endorse Trump over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The balloting process took 12 hours, union president Steve Loomis said in a statement to members. Several officers told cleveland.com this week that they worried a vote to endorse Trump could risk eroding the relationship between officers and minority communities. The department has been working to rebuild those relationships after a series of controversial deaths involving police.

Donald Trump is now leading in five battleground states following the first presidential debate on Monday. trump train rally Trump now leads in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina – all states Barack Obama won his first term – according to Real Clear Politics averages. (Ed Henry, Fox video..."Trump still surging") https://youtu.be/MoHWjPNgMvk

It's been months since the passing of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but Democrats are still seemingly celebrating his death because it paves the way for their political purposes. At The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas Forum on Thursday, Labor Secretary Tom Perez casually noted that Scalia's death helped pave the way for union membership across the country. ... Unfortunately, Perez's comments are not isolated. In August, Ohio Senate Candidate Ted Strickland actually said “the death of Scalia saved labor” at an AFL-CIO event.

The New York Times, the so-called “paper of record,” has declared that the all-important swing state of Ohio is no longer an important battleground in the presidential election — now that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is winning it. Trump pulled ahead of Clinton in the Buckeye State in the RealClearPolitics poll average on Sep. 13, and has never looked back. The latest average, as of Sep. 24 — prior to the first presidential debate on Sep. 26 — has Trump ahead of Clinton by 2%. Now that Trump is winning the “must-win,” the Times has revised its view of...

When asked to explain why the father would shoot his own daughter, family members blamed a medical condition; they said Mansour is a diabetic. Yes, that’s it — diabetes. And not only did no one in the media question this, they actually deliberated whether the medical case could be made. That’s how sick, broken and subdued our fourth estate has become. “Neighbors: Family ‘kept to themselves’ at home where police say dad shot his daughter”, FOX 19, By Denise Zarrella, Reporter, September 27th 2016: ROCKY RIVER, OH (WOIO) – A 63-year-old father is facing murder, felonious assault, and domestic violence...

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D., Ohio) discredited multiple polls conducted in Ohio that show Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton in the Buckeye State during an interview Wednesday with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall. Hall cited “actual, credible polls” that have Trump beating Clinton in the key battleground state, despite the lack of an endorsement from Republican Gov. John Kasich. . . . Fudge reiterated that she did not know who they were polling, but they were not polling voters in her county. “When our people vote, they are going to vote for her,” she said. “So, I don’t know how the poll–who they’re...

Donald Trump now leads in polling in swing states Virginia, Florida and Iowa. All of the Iowa polls the last few weeks have shown Trump with a significant lead in the Hawkeye state. Trump is also up in Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

A federal judge ruled Monday that a school district in Ohio must treat a transgender boy “like the girl she is” and allow him unfettered access to a girl’s bathroom, according to local reports. Judge Algenon Marbley, a Bill Clinton appointee, also said that Highland Local School District must treat the boy as a girl in all other aspects, using his chosen female name and referring to him with female pronouns at all times, reports The Blade, in Toledo, O.H. Highland sued the federal government in June after the Obama administration ordered it to allow the boy, identified only as...