President Donald Trump wrongly claimed that shoppers need to show photo identification to buy groceries and accused Democrats of obstructing his agenda and his Supreme Court nominee during a raucous rally aimed at bolstering two Florida Republicans ahead of the state’s primary.

Trump, addressing thousands of supporters Tuesday night in one of the nation’s top electoral battlegrounds, also mounted a rigorous defense of his trade agenda, accusing China and others of having “targeted our farmers.”

“Not good, not nice,” he told the crowd as tensions with China continue to escalate, adding: “You know what our farmers are saying? `It’s OK, we can take it.” The Trump administration last week announced plans for $12 billion in temporary aid to help farmers deal with retaliatory tariffs from U.S. trading partners in response to Trump’s policies.

The freewheeling rally lasted more than an hour and included numerous attacks on the media, as well as one glaring false claim. Trump was railing against the idea of noncitizens voting and advocating stricter voting laws when he claimed that IDs are required for everything else, including shopping.

“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” he said at the event at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about when the billionaire president last bought groceries or anything else himself. Photo IDs are required for certain purchases, such as alcohol, cigarettes or cold medicine.

The comment came as Trump waded into Florida Republican politics, picking sides as he embraced U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis in a competitive primary for governor and backed the Senate campaign of his longtime ally, Gov. Rick Scott.

“We have to make sure Rick Scott wins and wins big,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s time to vote Bill Nelson out of office.”

Trump, who is seeking Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in the fall, also made the case that voters need to elect more Republicans, pointing to Democratic opposition to his pick.

Democrats “don’t want to give Trump any victory,” he said. “They will do anything they can to not help the Trump agenda.”

Trump has publicly threatened to shut down the federal government over his push to overhaul the nation’s immigration system and fund his signature border wall, though officials say he has privately assured staff he wouldn’t provoke a fiscal crisis before midterms. The president avoided making an outright reference to a government shutdown during the rally, saying, “We may have to do some pretty drastic things” unless Democrats support his agenda.

Instead, he spent much of the rally highlight strong economic numbers and praising DeSantis as “a tough, brilliant cookie.” He predicted DeSantis will win against Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the state’s Aug. 28 Republican primary.

Trump, who makes frequent trips to Florida and his private Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago club, criticized Nelson’s policies and claimed the only time he sees the senator is “five months before every election.”

“After a while, you forget who’s the senator,” Trump said.

Scott didn’t join Trump at the rally but appeared with him at an earlier roundtable event.

DeSantis has tied his campaign for governor directly to Trump, appearing on Fox News more than 100 times to talk about federal issues and defend the president. DeSantis has campaigned with Fox’s Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. and uses humor in a new ad to show his alliance with the president, teaching one of his two children to “build the wall” with blocks.

Putnam, a state agriculture commissioner and former congressman, has run a more traditional campaign for governor, barnstorming the state with campaign events aimed at building upon his family’s deep ties to the state.

Trump, in railing against the idea of allowing noncitizens to vote in some elections, said at the rally, “Only American citizens should vote in American elections.”

He also advocated for requiring voters to present photo identification, even though Florida already has such a law on the books.

“The time has come for voter ID like everything else,” Trump said, before making his claim about groceries.

“It’s crazy,” he added, “but we’re turning it around.”
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Firefighters struggling to contain destructive Northern California wildfires found themselves facing a new blaze that erupted Tuesday and drove through a rural area near a national forest.

About 60 homes in an old ranching and farming area near Covelo, which is about 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of San Francisco, were ordered evacuated as the blaze erupted late in the afternoon. Gusty winds quickly drove it through about a square mile of brush and grasslands, oak, pine and timber near Mendocino National Forest, Mendocino County Undersheriff Matthew Kendall said.

“We’re advised that the fire was threatening structures,” he said.

However, there were no immediate reports of homes being burned.

Firefighting aircraft were called in but it was unclear when they might arrive because many already were engaged in other fires, Kendall said.

Some 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the south, twin fires straddling Mendocino and Lake counties have destroyed at least seven homes and threatened an estimated 12,000 more, fire officials said.

Jessyca Lytle fled a fast-moving Northern California wildfire in 2015 that spared her property but destroyed her mother’s memorabilia-filled home in rural and rugged Lake County.

Less than three years later, Lytle found herself listening to scanner traffic Tuesday and fire-proofing her mother’s new home as another wildfire advanced.

“Honestly, what I’m thinking right now is I just want this to end,” Lytle said, adding that she was “exhausted in every way possible — physically, emotionally, all of that.”

Derek Hawthorne, a firefighter and spokesman for the fire crews, said the hot weather was not ideal but the wind was on their side where he was in the city of Upper Lake.

“It’s blowing into the fire, and it’s kind of blowing it back on itself,” he said.

To the east in Sutter County, a fire that erupted Tuesday night had torched about 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers) of grassland but no homes were evacuated, state fire spokesman Scott McLean said.

Elsewhere, the Carr Fire had burned 965 homes and killed six people in and around Redding. Another 413 outbuildings were also destroyed, and the blaze is now the seventh most destructive wildfire in California history, fire officials said.

The fire has burned more than 176 square miles (457 square kilometers) and is 30 percent contained.

A relative identified one of the victims as Daniel Bush, 62.

Bush had returned to his mobile home in the community of Keswick last Tuesday after undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery but he was unable to drive and would have needed help to evacuate when the fire came through the neighborhood on Thursday, his sister, Kathi Gaston, told the Redding Record Searchlight.

Gaston said her brother had wanted to stay in his own home but he had spotty cell service and with the power out, he might not have gotten word of the fire.

Gaston said she couldn’t get to her brother’s house because, with the fire approaching, sheriff’s deputies had blocked the roads and then she herself had to evacuate.

“If we’d been able to go in when we wanted to, he’d be alive right now,” she said. “I’m very upset about it.”

National Park officials said Tuesday the scenic Yosemite Valley and other areas will be closed “at least through Sunday” due to heavy smoke from the so-called Ferguson Fire. The closure began July 25 and had been tentatively scheduled to end Friday.

Park spokesman Scott Gediman said “continuing poor air quality” and ongoing firefighting operations warranted the extension.

It was the longest closure at Yosemite since 1997 when floods closed the park for over two months.

In Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, an arson fire that destroyed seven homes last week was 82 percent contained Monday.

People in Lake County, an impoverished community of 65,000, are familiar with evacuations.

The 2015 Valley Fire, which came on the heels of two other fires, killed four and destroyed 1,300 homes when it blew up unexpectedly during a September heat wave. It wiped out entire neighborhoods prized for their privacy and sense of community and turned scenic areas into charred forest.

Since then, parts of the county have been evacuated regularly due to fire, most recently in June.

Evacuation orders remained in effect Tuesday for the town of Lakeport, the county seat, although orders for some smaller communities were lifted.

Lakeport is a popular destination for bass anglers and boaters on the shores of Clear Lake. By Monday night, it was a ghost town.

Paul Lew and his two boys, ages 13 and 16, evacuated Saturday from their Lakeport home.

“I told them to throw everything they care about in the back of the car,” said Lew, 45. “I grabbed computers, cellphones, papers. I just started bagging all my paperwork up, clothes, my guitars.”

Lew, who is divorced from Lytle, is camped out at the house in the nearby community of Cobb that she fled in 2015. He is watching over her chickens, sheep and other animals. He laughs that repeated fire alerts have made him an emergency preparation expert.

“It’s like three a year,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy.”
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