Closing Summary
This blog is closing now, thanks for following along. You can read our US elections coverage here. Here are the major developments from today:
Barack Obama campaigned alongside Kamala Harris at a star-studded rally in Atlanta today. The ex-president and vice-president were joined on stage by Samuel L Jackson, Spike Lee, senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof, Bruce Springsteen and Tyler Perry. Over the course of the evening, speakers repeatedly criticized Donald Trump for comments made by past members of his administration who said Trump fits the definition of fascist.
The family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Black 28-year-old mother who died just weeks after Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect, was in attendance at the rally. Tomorrow, Harris is expected to make another high profile appearance, this time alongside Beyoncé in Houston, where the vice-president hopes to rally support for Senate candidate Colin Allred.
Donald Trump rallied supporters in Tempe, Arizona, today, where he spoke alongside Senate candidate Kari Lake. Earlier in the day, Trump made news when he vowed that, if elected, he would immediately fire Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel who is prosecuting him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents.
Phoenix police arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a mailbox there, damaging mail-in ballots. The news comes just days after Tempe police arrested another man in connection with three shootings at Democratic party campaign offices in Tempe. An Arizona prosecutor said the second man had more than 120 guns and more than 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.
Harris picked up the endorsement of two Republicans, one a former congressman from Michigan, the other a mayor in a pivotal county in Wisconsin.
Joe Biden announced he will issue an apology tomorrow for the US government’s role in forcing thousands of Indigenous American children to attend Indian boarding schools – a policy which has been widely recognized as an element of genocide. The news comes as Harris is trailing in the polls in Arizona, a state that Biden famously won in 2020, largely due to the support of Indigenous American voters.
More than 29 million people have voted already in the 2024 election, at least partly driven by Republicans embracing early voting at Donald Trump’s direction. So far, Republicans have cast 32% of ballots, up from 27% at this point in 2020. Whereas Democrats have cast 42% of the votes, down from 47% at this point in the last presidential election.
Updated
JD Vance, who is currently speaking with Chris Cuomo on News Nation, called John Kelly a “disgrunted ex-employee” at a campaign event in Waterford, Michigan earlier today.
“John Kelly was fired by Donald Trump, and he’s pissed off about it and won’t stop talking about it,” Vance said. “You’ve got three or four people who were allegedly in the room when it happened saying he’s making it up. Even Mike Pence’s chief of staff said that John Kelly is making up a bunch of crap about Donald J. Trump.”
