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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Helen Livingstone (now); Lois Beckett, Léonie Chao-Fong, Chris Stein and Yohannes Lowe (earlier)

Trump and Harris hold final rallies in Pennsylvania – as it happened

Donald Trump Kamala Harris United States Michigan Pennsylvania Bobby Robert F. Kennedy Jr
Supporters of Kamala Harris cheer as she speaks during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Supporters of Kamala Harris cheer as she speaks during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Photograph: Rebecca Droke/AFP/Getty Images

This live blog is now closed, but you can follow the latest updates on our 2024 US election day live blog here.

Updated

A dispatch from Philadelphia: Sonya Harris, 53, a sales manager in Montgomery County, said she plans to vote for Kamala Harris as soon as polls open on Tuesday morning.

Harris, no relation to the woman she hopes is the next president of the United States, came to the Philadelphia rally with her son because she believes that the vice president will help bring an end to the “division, hate and chaos” fanned by Trump over the last decade.

Harris has gotten involved for the first time. This year, she volunteered to canvas and phonebank for Harris – something she has never done for a political candidate before.

She fears what Trump would do if given four more years, especially to abortion access. She said:

I think he’s going to roll back women’s rights to way back when.

But Harris is not feeling anxious about the results tomorrow, quite the opposite.

I’m feeling joy and happiness. I don’t think the world is as dire as the other side says ... And [vice president Harris] has run a very happy campaign. It’s been very positive, it’s been very motivating and inspirational. You feel, we’re not stuck where we think we are, and the world is not coming to an end.

Her neighbor leaned over and chimed in: “She’s gonna win in a landslide.”

Donald Trump was supposed to start speaking at 10.30pm local time in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Well, he didn’t - he isn’t even here yet - and according to a police officer I just spoke to it’s probably going to get to midnight before Trump actually appears.

In the meantime the campaign is desperately filling time. We’ve had an appearance from a local congressman – “Who the hell is that?” a Trump supporter behind me commented – and some lackeys just wheeled out a sort of T-shirt machine gun, which entertained people for a bit.

In contrast to Trump’s other rallies today, the Van Andel Arena, in downtown Grand Rapids, is actually almost full. “And let me tell you,” one of the speakers said just now, “There’s the same number of people waiting outside who couldn’t get in!”

I was a bit bored so I got up and went and looked outside. There is not a single person out there.

Updated

Security agencies say Russia election disinformation efforts risk inciting violence

Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the extraordinarily close US presidential election, authorities have warned hours before Election Day. AFP reports:

Success in the seven swing states is key to winning the White House for rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and those states have previously been the focus of unsupported accusations of election fraud.

“Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday.

“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through Election Day and in the following weeks.

It was the latest in a series of warnings from the ODNI about foreign actors - notably Russia and Iran - allegedly spreading disinformation or hacking the campaigns during this election.

Tehran and Moscow have both denied such allegations in the past.

We’re expecting Kamala Harris on stage in Philadelphia in a few minutes for her final rally of the campaign.

Meanwhile in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Donald Trump was due on stage half an hour ago but is running late after his last rally in Pittsburgh went way over.

A succession of surrogates – including the mayor of Dearborn Heights, Bill Bazzi, congressman John Moolenaar, congressman Bill Huizenga, and former Trump ambassador to Germany Rick Grenell, have instead been stumping for Trump.

We’ll bring you updates on these final rallies as they come in.

The Blue Wall governors are rallying for Harris in Pennsylvania. From the stage set at the iconic “Rocky Steps” at the Philadelphia Museum of the Arts, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro invoked the city’s legacy as the birthplace of American democracy.

“248 years ago, it was here in Philly just down the street that we declared our independence from a king, and hear me on this. We are not going back to a king in this country,” Shapiro said in a rousing speech.

“Big Gretch is calling on you to get out and vote,” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer told voters in a speech from Detroit, Michigan.

Updated

As Trump and his surrogates have increased talk of election fraud, fears are growing among some that Trump’s supporters could again turn to violence in the aftermath of a defeat.

At the Trump rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, however, many are convinced that it would actually be Democrats who would cause trouble, should they get an unwanted result.

“I think Republicans take loss better than the Democrats do. So I think if we win, if Donald Trump wins, the Democrats will cause more harm than if the Republicans lose,” said Payton VanSickle, a 25-year-old Michigander who said he had already cast his vote for Trump.

Asked to square that view with what happened after Trump losing in 2020, when he attempted to overturn the result and hundreds of his supporters staged a violent insurrection at the US Capitol, VanSickle said that “some shenanigans” had occurred during the election, and suggested the reaction to the January 6 insurrection was exaggerated.

“I don’t condone it, but I believe they blew it up bigger than what it was. I think there was obviously bad actors, but from what I’ve seen, I think there was a few people here and there that were starting things, and it was kind of follow the leader,” VanSickle said.

A dispatch from Kamala Harris’ final rally in Philadelphia: “It’s all about pride,” Fat Joe said, a proud “Boricua”. He said Trump’s xenophobia was evident from the moment he descended the golden staircase to announce his presidential campaign in 2015.

He recalled Trump throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria, and insulting Haitian Americans, and Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, when a shock jock comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

Addressing “mi gente Latino”, he asked: “Where’s your pride?”

“You don’t know who you’re voting for? You gotta be kidding me at this point,” he said.

Then Fat Joe introduced Puerto Rican Ricky Martin and the crowd went wild.

Summary of the day so far

If you’re just joining us now, here’s a quick roundup of where we stand as we wait for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to hold their final rallies in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania respectively.

  • Kamala Harris put all her chips on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania on Monday, as polls indicate an extremely close contest. She held several rallies and events including a stop at a Puerto Rican restaurant with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and directly joined canvassing in a residential area in Reading, telling voters at one home: “I wanted to go door-knocking!”’

  • Harris sought to strike a positive tone, saying she wanted to be a “president for all Americans”. A sign of a “strong” leader is someone willing to listen to the experts, the stakeholders and those who disagree, she said at a rally in Pittsburgh.

  • Donald Trump meanwhile held rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, but his tone was much darker, focusing on painting migrants as dangerous criminals while also launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. “They’re killing people. They’re killing people at will,” he said at one rally, giving gruesome details of specific murders allegedly committed by undocumented migrants. In North Caroliana he called Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi a “crazyass bedbug” and attacked former first lady Michelle Obama, saying: “She hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.”

  • The influential podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”. Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”

  • The $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk’s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled on Monday. The common pleas court judge Angelo Foglietta – ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance – did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.

  • A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s position on Gaza, a strategy by Trump allies aimed at peeling off Democratic support for the vice-president. Texts, mailers, social media ads and billboards targeting heavily Arab American areas in metro Detroit paint Harris as a staunch ally of Israel who will continue supplying arms to the country. Meanwhile, residents in metro Detroit or areas of Pennsylvania with higher Jewish populations have been receiving messaging that underscores her alleged support for the Palestinian cause.

  • The Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who are the third largest donors in this year’s US presidential election, have sought information about who employees at their company Uline will be voting for in Tuesday’s ballot. A screenshot seen by the Guardian shows how employees at the private Wisconsin paper and office products distributor were asked to take part in what was called an anonymous survey to track who the employees were voting for on 5 November.

  • Betting markets have narrowed significantly on the eve of Tuesday’s presidential election, eroding Donald Trump’s lead over Kamala Harris as Americans cast their vote. The former president and his allies have touted the betting market forecasts as more accurate than traditional polling in recent weeks, as the top platforms put him way ahead of Harris. As election day nears, however, Trump’s victory odds have faded, and Harris even retook the lead on one platform this weekend.

Updated

At the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip, Democratic senator Jacky Rosen, congresswoman Susie Lee and a number of party and local officials were riling up a modest crowd ahead of a performance by Christina Aguilera later tonight.

Many in the crowd – like most everyone at the Grand and out on the Strip – were from out of town. Some had come to help get out the vote. Louis LeGrand, a field director with the Service Employees International Union (Seiu) had come from California – to make sure that Nevada workers knew how important their votes were in this crucial swing state. “I think we’ve turned out a lot of folks,” he said. “Just by talking to people and making them realize this is a battleground, it makes a difference.”

Others in attendance were tourists. Damian DJ Jackson of Georgia was staying at the MGM hotel, and wandered over after spotting signs for the rally and concert. He had already voted early for Kamala Harris in Clayton County – a key district in another key swing state.

“I’m excited, just because she’ll be the first African American, as well as the first woman to do it,” he said. “I believe a woman who knows what she’s doing, that can be, that can be a leader, will lead us to the water. That’s what we need in the US.”

Updated

From a watch party in Atlanta, Avery Davis Bell shared her deeply personal and still raw story of being delayed abortion care under her state’s ban after six weeks of pregnancy.

Two weeks ago, Davis Bell, a genetics researcher and mother of one, was 18 weeks pregnant with her “very wanted second baby”. Then she began hemorraging.

“At the hospital my doctors were clear. My water had broken prematurely. My baby would not survive and what was happening could kill me,” she said, her voice catching.

“I’m sorry,” someone shouted.

“Because of Georgia’s extreme abortion ban my doctors had to ignore their years of training and wait until I was near enough to death to intervene. No doctor should be put in that situation. No mother, no family should either. An abortion ban nearly took my life,” she said.

Abortion rights is one of the most salient issues this election, and it appears to be driving high turnout. Across the country, women have been speaking out and sharing their stories to raise awareness of the harm caused when abortion is inaccessible.

“This loss is so very fresh for me and my family but I am here anyway because our lives depend on it,” she concluded, as the crowd started chanting “Never again.”

Key event

Returning to the news that Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump here’s a bit of background, courtesy of Reuters:

Trump’s recent interview with Rogan lasted about 3 hours and was released on YouTube and Spotify in late October. The two discussed a range of topics and the interview got over 45 million views on YouTube.

The former president criticized Rogan in August on Truth Social, his social media platform, after the podcaster praised then-independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has since pulled out of the race and endorsed Trump. Trump later called Rogan a “good guy.”

Trump and Harris have courted voters with appearances on podcasts, in addition to more traditional rallies and media interviews.

Spotify said in March “The Joe Rogan Experience” had 14.5 million followers, almost triple the platform’s second most popular program. Rogan also has more than 19 million followers on Instagram and 18 million followers on YouTube.

A poll by YouGov last year found that 81% of his listeners are male and 56% are under 35 years old, a demographic that tends to support Trump over Harris.

Harris’ team had been in touch with Rogan’s program about a possible appearance but her campaign said in late October she would not appear on his podcast.

At an election eve concert for Harris and Walz supporters at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip, Iesha James, 34, said she was sending out some last minute texts to people she knew had not yet voted.

“I just need to feel like I’m doing something,” she said, in the minute before the band Los Tigres del Norte took the stage. This election, more than any other she remembers, feels “terrifying”, she said.

“I’ve never been so afraid that a Republican will win office and all my rights will be taken away,” she said.

James, a physician’s assistant, said she was most worried about the consequences a Donald Trump presidency would have on reproductive rights, and healthcare over all. The former president spent much of his term trying to tear down the Affordable Care Act.

James said she also felt Harris would be the better of the two presidential candidates on Gaza. “As vice president she’s only able to say so much,” James said. “But at least she has signaled that she’s going to try to get more aid and do more to stop the suffering in Gaza.”

Having grown up in Vegas, in a state that had voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every race since 2004, James said she was shocked that the race was so close. But the sprawling, diverse state was hard to poll, she said. “I’m hoping it won’t be as close as the polls say.”

James had come to the concert with her mother, Carol James, who had also cast her ballot for Harris. Her 94-year-old grandmother who lives in Alabama, she said, was also excited to vote for a woman of color for president for the first time.

Updated

At his Pittsburgh rally, Trump has returned to the auto-cue and is delivering what appears to be the closing argument of his Pennsylvania rally.

“This nation belongs to you. It was hard-working patriots like you that built our country and tomorrow, it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country.”

After almost two hours of speaking, Trump ends the rally to the strains of YMCA, waving to supporters and bopping about on stage with his signature dance moves.

Updated

Trump has now been speaking for more than an hour and a half in Pittsburgh. He is now speaking about the brother of one of his supporters who was killed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.

The Republican candidate is still set to speak in Michigan later this evening.

In Pittsburgh, Kamala Harris declared: “America is ready for a fresh start.”

“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States,” she said, speaking from the Carrie Furnace, an outdoor historical landmark.

But she said the election wasn’t over yet. “We’ve still got some work to do,” she said, encouraging everyone who hasn’t voted yet to do so tomorrow and to bring a friend.

Harris reminded the crowd of the stakes, as she has laid them out over the last 100 days.

“We are fighting for our democracy,” Harris said at the high-energy rally. A sign of a “strong” leader is someone willing to listen to the experts, the stakeholders and those who disagree, she said. She pledged never to vilify those who disagree with her, instead she said she would give them a seat at the table.

It was time to move past the”fear and division” of the past decade – an implicit but not explicit – reference to Donald Trump. “We are done with that. We’re done,” she said. “We’re exhausted with it.”

Harris was introduced at the Pittsburgh event by Cedric the Entertainer who said Harris was “not a demagogue and yet she is not demure.”

Updated

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh, Trump is still speaking. He’s been calling out prominent supporters at his rally, including Mike Pompeo (“He lost all that weight, he’s so thin now”), Tulsi Gabbard (“A woman of great common sense”) and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (“She’s doing a great job”).

“Momentum is on our side” Kamala Harris has said at her penultimate rally in Pittsburgh, and without naming Donald Trump, immediately sought to draw a contrast with her Republican rival.

“Instead of stewing on an enemies list I will spend everyday working on my to-do list” she said, adding “ours if not a fight against something it is a fight for something.”

“I will listen to people who disagree with me” and in fact “I will give them a seat at the table” she added.

Other soundbites included “when you know what you stand for you know what to fight for” and “your vote is your voice and your vote is your power.”

She also highlighted the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies, but other than that stayed away form particular policies or themes.

Then, after just 10 minutes, she made her exit to the sound of Beyonce’s Freedom and Katy Perry took the stage.

Updated

In an election that has been defined by deep gender divides, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly spoke directly to these concerns: “He will not look at our boys like their second class citizens,” she said.

Kelly warmed up her brief guest appearance at Trump’s Pittsburgh rally by talking about the dangers of open borders and reciting a list of anti-trans talking points. But she also got big cheers by talking about what Trump will do for boys and men.

“He will look out for our boys too, our forgotten boys and our forgotten men,” Kelly said. “Guys like you, guys like these guys, who have got the calluses on their hands, who work for a living with the beards and the tats… [men who] don’t want to be judged by people like Oprah and Beyoncé, who will never have to face the consequences of her disastrous economic policies.”

“And ladies out there who want a bit of girl power in this election, let me tell you something: How can you win when the sons and the husbands and the brothers and the dads you love are losing It’s not a win.”

Tim Walz is speaking from Milwaukee, where his speech is being broadcast live at Harris’s rally in Philadelphia.

He told the crowd that a Harris-Walz presidency would make the country “more free” but that they couldn’t let up yet. They needed to keep pushing to get out the vote in battleground Wisconsin until polls closing on Tuesday night.

“This thing’s tied but we got the damn ball,” Walz, a former football coach, told the crowd.

He remarked that Harris had transformed the race in just over three months. “Imagine what she’ll do in four years.”

He added of Harris: “She has brought back the joy to our politics,” the crowd in Philadelphia erupted in applause.

Updated

In Nevada, where one in five potential voters are Latino, the progressive group Make the Road Nevada had dispatched canvassers all over Las Vegas as part of their final efforts to get out the vote.

Josie Rivera, an organizer and communications associate for the organization, which focuses on turning out Latino voters, said he was feeling cautiously optimistic ahead of Election Day.

Polls ahead of the election suggested that Donald Trump had more support among Latino voters, especially men, than in previous elections. Anecdotally, he said, swing voters here have been upset after a comedian at a Trump rally in New York made a joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage”.

“I don’t know why it took so long,” Rivera said, for voters to pay attention to Trump and his allies’ offensive comments about Latinos and immigrants. “But this seems to have made an impact.”

Updated

Donald Trump told supporters in Pittsburgh: “It’s just come over the wires that Joe Rogan endorsed me.”

The crowd erupted in a huge roar.

Minutes earlier the rally heard a speech from rightwing media personality Megyn Kelly, who said she had voted for Trump because of immigration and keeping boys out of girls’ sports.

Kelly added: “He got mocked by the left for saying he would be a protector of women. He will be a protector of women, and that’s why I’m voting for him.”

Updated

Joe Rogan endorses Trump

Trump celebrated the endorsement from the powerful podcaster, who has a massive male audience, at his Pittsburgh rally.

Rogan tweeted that he agreed with “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.

Updated

Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Pittsburgh, where she’s holding her penultimate rally of the day.

In Philadelphia, Nicole Hinton said she is channeling Kamala Harris’s confidence and feeling good about the vice-president’s prospects.

“In my mind, it’s like she’s won already,” said Hinton, carrying a poster with a photo of MLK, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.

The 21-year-old said she’s already cast her ballot for Harris and because she wants “women to have the right to do whatever they want with their body”.

Hinton worries that a second Trump presidency would erode abortion access even further and would make it even more difficult for women to access reproductive healthcare.

Harris’s historic candidacy is important, but it’s not why Hinton is supporting the vice-president, Hinton said.

“It’s about whoever brings us all together and what is best for us as a whole,” she said.

Updated

Donald Trump had a rare moment of self-reflection in Pittsburgh as he summoned sons Don Jr and Eric, daughter Tiffany, daughter-in-law Lara Trump and son-in-law Michael Boulos to the stage.

The former president sounded wistful as he recalled the hundreds of rallies he had done and how this is the penultimate one (he finishes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, tonight). He insisted that son Barron and daughter Ivanka were watching.

But what might have been a heartwarming family moment for any other candidate inevitably veered off track as Trump, wildly digressing from topic to topic, launched a bitter attack on Barack Obama as “divisive” and scorned his wife Michelle.

Then he let rip at Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, describing him as “evil”, “human scum” and “watermelon head”. Trump’s children laughed, as did the crowd. It was hardly an uplifting closing argument at the end of a long campaign.

As it approaches 9pm in Pittsburgh, there is now a steady flow of people leaving the rally.

Updated

One of the viral comments from Trump’s Pittsburgh rally tonight is when he referenced third party presidential candidate Jill Stein as “one of my favorite politicians”.

Updated

A Reuters journalist shares a Reuters photo from Washington, DC today:

If you’re on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, you’re probably seeing cascades of misinformation about the election, some of it shared by the platform’s owner, Elon Musk.

NBC News did an analysis of Musk’s own posts, and found that what he shared got more attention when it undermined trust in the integrity of the voting process:

My colleague Johana Bhuiyan has more context on this issue:

In Pittsburgh, Trump is now ranting about his frustrations with Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, who led the first Trump impeachment trial. Schiff is expected to cruise to victory in the US senate race in California, running against a Republican former baseball player with no political experience.

Schiff’s opponent in California, Steve Garvey, is no close Trump ally: he refused to say whether or not he was voting for Trump in the California primary.

It seems likely there are some Republican members of Congress who wish Trump were using this primetime speech to talk about their very close races, not about an un-winnable US senate race in California.

Updated

A veteran correspondent with an estimate of Trump’s crowd side in Pittsburgh:

In Pittsburgh, Donald Trump, sounding hoarse and looking more orange-faced than ever, kicked off his final Pennsylvania rally by returning to his pet obsession: crowd sizes.

The Republican presidential nominee, speaking to a near capacity crowd in Pittsburgh, noted that rival Kamala Harris also has a rally in the city tonight.
Harris’s event had not yet started but Trump brazenly lied: “It’s quite embarrassing, it’s all over the internet, she’s screaming and the people – there’s about a 100 people – they’re not moving, they just want to go home, just be done with it.”

Stretching his arms wide, he added: “It’s not quite this!”

Trump also mocked Harris’s recent joint appearance in Houston with singer Beyoncé, whose name elicited angry boos from the crowd. The former president said: “There were no songs, there was no happiness, it was just like, ‘Give me my cheque, I want to get out of here.’”

He falsely claimed: “They booed both of them the hell out of the stadium.”

Updated

There’s not much sympathy for the press here at Donald Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with responses to his comments that he wouldn’t mind if an assassin shot his way through the media to reach him varying from indifference to actual endorsement.

“After people lie so long and so much you’re bound to get to where you don’t care. And I agree with him,” said Doug Ayers, 73. “Because they don’t tell the truth. And if somebody can’t write a true story and tell the truth to people about what’s going on, I’ll back him [Trump’s comments] 100%.”

Ayers, a Vietnam war veteran, lives in Ionia, a 40-minute drive from Grand Rapids. He has already cast his vote for Trump, whose chances he rated as 50-50. Ayers lamented that the US has gone “down the wrong path with our leadership”.

“When the borders are open this much and everything else … I fought in Vietnam, we fought our hearts off for this country to eliminate communism. [Now] we got more going on in the United States than what we ever did in our life,” he said.

Updated

Donald Trump is now saying he would like to stage a wrestling match between Penn State’s college wrestlers or UFC champions and the immigrants he has accused of stealing jobs from US citizens.

“Oh, those Penn State guys, I wanted them to wrestle the migrants,” Trump says, referencing a campaign visit to Penn State, which has a famous wrestling team.

He also referenced Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White: “I told Dana, you ought to set up your league of champions – unbelievable, best fighters in the world – and a migrant league.”

“At the end I want the migrant to go against the champions, and I think the migrant might actually win. That’s how nasty some of those guys are.”

Trump went back and forth between reminiscing about his Penn State visit and dreaming of a wrestling match involving immigrants to the US.

“I felt very comfortable with those big Penn State wrestlers,” Trump said. “I said to them, ‘Fellas, you might be the only guys in the country who could beat the hell out of the migrants. It’s true. They’re the only ones who could beat the migrants in the fight.”

Updated

At the penultimate rally of his campaign, Donald Trump is now complaining that TV stations covering his live campaign rallies do not air the videos that he plays. “They don’t put it on television,” he said. “They don’t treat me good.”

“It’s a terrible thing – a terrible thing,” he said. “We have to get them to straighten out. Without a free and fair press, it’s very hard to do what we want to do … it’s a very hard thing.”

Updated

In his speech, Trump is now repeating debunked claims about the Olympic women’s boxing event this summer.

The Washington Post has a fact-check of how Trump’s final election ad featured similar debunked claims:

Updated

More than two dozen states have indicated they are willing to send national guard troops to Washington in the coming weeks following the election and in the run-up to the inauguration, national guard officials said.

Col Jean Paul Laurenceau, chief of future operations for the National Guard Bureau, said it was not yet clear how many Guard troops will be needed or requested this year, Associated Press reported.

Washington DC has not yet made any formal request for guard troops.

But officials across the government have been meeting and preparing for the possibility that the US Capitol could once again be rocked by violence around the certification of the election.

Updated

Trump is now comparing the crowd numbers at his rally versus Kamala Harris’s Pittsburgh rally tonight, saying hers is a “little rally going on – and when I say little, I mean little.”

(Harris is not due to speak at her Pittsburgh rally for at least another hour.)

The Trump crowd boos at Trump’s mention of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, and her endorsement of Harris, which Trump suggests she did “for a check”. (Forbes estimated the singer’s net worth at more than $700m.)

“We don’t need a star,” Trump goes on. “We don’t need a star, because we have policy. We have great policy.”

Updated

Candace Valenzuela, 40, had flown in from Texas to canvass in Las Vegas, she said, to make sure women here don’t lose their reproductive rights here the way they have in Texas.

“I’m the mother of two young sons. I have a five-year-old and a nine-year-old,” she said. “But I’ve also had a couple of miscarriages.”

Since Texas enacted its abortion ban, with the threat of prison time for medical interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, Valenzuela has been afraid to try for a third child, she said.

“Nevada is a key to making sure that laws like we have in Texas don’t become the law of the land,” she said, before heading out to door-knock for Kamala Harris and Democratic senator Jacky Rosen.

Harris and Rosen have both promised to help restore abortion rights, emphasizing that Republicans could further restrict abortion access if they gain control of the White House and Senate.

“If they win in Nevada, maybe we can reverse the atrocious things happening to women all over the country,” Valenzuela said.

Last week, a pregnant teenager died in Valenzuela’s home state after being denied proper care at two emergency room visits. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm her fetus had died before intervening.

Updated

Kamala Harris is canvassing for her own presidential campaign in Reading, Pennsylvania, a sign of just how critical the commonwealth’s 19 electoral votes are to her prospects of becoming the next president.

According to a pool report, Harris’s motorcade pulled into a residential neighborhood in the city. She was joined at the door by two campaign volunteers holding signs and a clipboard.

“I wanted to go door-knocking!” Harris told the man, woman and their adult son, who came to the door.

Harris then walked to a second home a few doors down. At that house the vice-president rang the doorbell. A woman answered and hugged Harris and enthusiastically told her that she had already voted for her. She indicated that her husband planned to cast his ballot for her tomorrow.

Her team has been leading a remarkable get-out-the-vote operation, part of the reason they feel confident heading into the final days of the election.

On Saturday, the campaign said it knocked 807,000 doors in Pennsylvania – more than 10 times Biden’s margin of victory in the state.

Updated

“For a person that they hate, they sure do show up,” Trump says, referencing the “fake news” journalists in Pittsburgh there to cover the major pre-election speech.

“It shows that ratings are more important than hatred, I’ve always said that.”

“Many people say that God saved me in order to save America,” Trump says, revisiting the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. “Many, many people are saying that, and with your help, we will fulfill that extraordinary mission together.”

The Pittsburgh crowd tonight booed when Trump first mentioned the assassination attempt, which left one of his supporters dead.

“That brush with death did not stop us. It only made us more determined to finish the job,” Trump said, of himself and his movement.

Updated

“Only one day – does that sound nice – one day from now,” Trump says, of tomorrow’s election, and the victory he’s anticipating. “We’ve been waiting four years for this.”

“Tomorrow”, Trump says, to cheers. He is standing in front of a crowd of people in plastic hard hats.

Updated

Donald Trump is now on stage at his rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and will begin speaking shortly. Both he and Harris will be rallying supporters in Pittsburgh tonight.

Updated

Among the crowd at the Democrats’ East Las Vegas office was Regina Houston, 60 – she had come out to see senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto.

“I’m nervous and anxious. I’m nervous about this election, because there’s so much on the line,” she said. “I came down here by myself, because it’s better than sitting home and watching the news.”

Houston votes in every election, but this year has felt especially “heavy,” she said.

Polls show that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race, and even seasoned analysts have been struggled to predict the outcome in this key swing state.

Nevada has gone for the Democratic candidate in every presidential race since George W Bush in 2004, but in recent years, Trump appears to have gained support.

Houston said she has her fingers crossed that her state will go blue once again.

“I can’t imagine America operating and functioning at the level that candidate Trump wants to take us to,” she said.

How active are the Proud Boys ahead of another furiously contested election?

Top leaders of the Proud Boys are still in prison for the far-right group’s key role in storming the US capitol on 6 January. But the violent group, known for misogyny, street fighting, and receiving the instruction from Donald Trump in 2020 to “stand back and stand by,” has not collapsed since 2020. NBC News’ Ryan Reilly reports that the Proud Boys are weakened, but still “clearly active,” ahead of the 2024 election.

On Telegram, at least 30 channels run by Proud Boys chapters are sharing pro-Trump election information, according to nonprofit Advance Democracy, Reilly reports.

While most chapters of the Proud Boys and other active militia groups had not made explicit calls to interfere with the election as of Monday, NBC News reports, there were two notable exceptions.

Two Ohio-based Proud Boys chapters have posted that “they’ll be watching the polls on Election Day,” with the Proud Boys of Columbus recently posting “a claim that they had enrolled members as poll watchers and poll workers,” Reilly reports, citing posts reviewed.

“It’s not clear whether claims that they are watching the polls or are embedded as election volunteers will result in any real-world action,” Reilly notes. Far-right groups often make exaggerated public claims about the actions that they’re going to take, or the access that they have, and don’t follow through. Making the public afraid of what they might could is sometimes victory enough.

On election eve, Democrats in Nevada are doubling down on door knocking efforts – making last pitches to get out the vote.

In East Las Vegas, Democratic senator Jacky Rosen gave canvassers one last pep talk. “We’re at the finish line now, and whatever you do, it makes a difference,” Rosen said. “One last call, one last door knock.”

Rosen is leading in polls as she fights for reelection against Republican Sam Brown. But more Republicans than expected have voted early, and a PAC associated with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has recently spent $6m on ads to promote Brown.

Canvassers for Rosen and the Harris/Walz campaign have been deployed across the state to make final pleas to voters.

Rosen appeared alongside her fellow Nevada senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, at an afternoon canvass launch.

“This is how we win in Nevada, Because of all of you!” Said Cortez Masto. “We organize our way to victory, right?”

The few dozen canvassers cheered. And a few who were standing near a call in the campaig office knocked on wood.

Kamala Harris has been canvassing in Pennsylvania this evening, where she went door knocking in Reading in an attempt to win over voters just hours before polls open on Tuesday.

“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your vote,” Harris told one person, who informed the Democratic candidate “you already got my vote.”

Harris visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading earlier on Monday, joined by Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Harris initially said she wanted to order a “spicy taquito” but later said she also wanted the rice, plantains, pork and cassava, Associated Press reported.

“I’m very hungry. I don’t get to eat as often as I like,” she said.

Jazmine Sullivan, the R&B star, just took the stage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, addressing supporters: “Are we ready to make history tomorrow?”

She encouraged Pennsylvanians to vote for Kamala Harris when polls open tomorrow.

“I feel safer when there’s a woman in leadership,” she said.

Abortion rights were under assault across the country, she said, dedicating her rendition of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On to the cause.

“Because what’s going on?” she said.

Updated

JD Vance is once again being condemned for misogyny after repeatedly calling Kamala Harris ‘trash’ at campaign rallies.

The Republican vice-presidential nominee compared Harris with trash at a New Hampshire rally yesterday, then did it again today in Flint, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia:

Mainstream political commenters have not been complimentary to Vance’s choice to make the closing argument for the Trump campaign so explicitly “nasty”.

“Oh, JD Vance, you just effed up in a way that I’ve never seen in my political life, and I worked for Sarah Palin,” MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace said.

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Hours before election day, a crowd has amassed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Kamala Harris will hold the last rally of her lightning-fast presidential campaign.

The 72 “Rocky Steps” were illuminated in blue lights with scrolling LED signs that say Vote for Freedom and Vote. The DJ is spinning Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer.

The lines to get in wrapped for ages and people came prepared for a long night. Harris will appear at a rally in Pittsburgh before landing in the city of Brotherly Love for what is expected to be a star-studded event.

Updated

After Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, TikTok and Instagram saw the emergence of a particularly vicious kind of misinformation – that Harris stole someone’s husband, specifically Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco.

This is false. But these rumors were soon translated into Chinese and posted on X, with the language becoming “even more inflammatory”, according to the Chinese factchecking group, PiYaoBa. One Chinese influencer, whose tweet garnered more than 60,000 views, translated “stole a woman’s husband” as “mistress”.

This translation spread to other Chinese platforms like WeChat, accumulating more than 100,000 views and leading some users to refer to her using the word “chicken”, which in Mandarin is often a slur for sex workers.

It suggests how English-language misinformation is not only spreading in other languages – it also takes new, culturally specific forms.

Read the full story here: Chinese Americans targeted with ‘misogynistic and insulting’ election misinformation

Trump ally Nigel Farage says ex-president should accept result and 'play golf' if he loses

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK’s Reform party, said Donald Trump should accept the result of the election and “go play golf” if he loses decisively to Kamala Harris.

In an interview with the Telegraph at Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, Farage said: “If it was clear and decisive then maybe it’s time [for Trump] to go and play golf at Turnberry.”

Farage said he has “never gone along with” Trump’s 2020 stolen election narrative, adding that “let’s hope and pray that is not an issue this time. If it [the outcome] was clear then Republicans have to accept the result.”

He suggested that Harris could move to quell any potential unrest if she wins the election by pardoning Trump once in office. “If she gets in on Tuesday I hope she pardons him. She could look magnanimous and it would dampen down potential tensions,” he said.

However, he added: “It’s all hypothetical and I still think he is going to win.”

Farage attended Trump’s rally earlier today in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he hailed his “special relationship” with the Republican presidential candidate.

Updated

As Shasta county, California, grapples with a thriving election denialism movement that has amplified conspiracy theories about voter fraud and made life increasingly difficult for election workers, residents of one of California’s most conservative counties are bracing for a contentious election.

In recent weeks, some residents of Shasta county, home to 180,000 people in the state’s far north, have urged the county not to certify the election results while one official warned that if Donald Trump is “cheated” out of the election, there would be “a price” to pay.

The first Muslim woman elected to public office in North Carolina has shared a thread on why she is voting for Kamala Harris, and how the tone of her brief conversations with Harris about Gaza have changed over the course of this year.

Nida Allam, the chair of the Durham Board of county commissioners, and an organizer in the state Democratic party, wrote today about why she is voting for Harris over Jill Stein.

Allam’s engagement with politics began when three Muslim college students, her friends, were murdered by a white man in a horrific 2015 shooting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Updated

Here are some of the latest images from the newswires on election eve from across the country.

Nevada county puts panic buttons in polling places after threats

After threats, one county in Nevada has put panic buttons in all polling places

Threats against election workers have gotten so bad that all polling places in Washoe County, Nevada, have a “panic button” that workers can hit to automatically call 911, the Associated Press reports.

But Andrew McDonald, the deputy registrar of voters in the swing county of half a million people, says there’s only been one incident in nearly two weeks of in-person early voting that required someone to hit the panic button.

That incident, McDonald said at a press conference, involved a voter at one of the county’s 24 early voting sites who would not remove his hat when asked by a worker, who was following state law prohibiting campaign signs or paraphernalia within 100 feet (30 meters) of a polling station.

“A few other voters in line sort of ganged up on the site manager,” McDonald said. But when police arrived, he added, “they calmed down and were able to vote.”

Washoe has become a hotbed for election conspiracy theorists who believe Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Still, McDonald noted that the panic button incident is the only significant one that’s happened during the early vote period, when 90,000 people cast their ballots.

“I get an incident report daily,” McDonald said, “and there haven’t been that many incidents.”

Updated

The intense international attention on Maricopa county, Arizona – one of the few swing counties in a swing state – was made clear during a press conference today, when officials said they had given media credentials to more than 600 journalists from around the world and a reporter from Estonia asked about democracy issues.

The county’s elections officials detailed how they would count a long, two-page ballot and report results, reminding voters that as more ballots are tabulated, leaders in races can change.

Given the close nature of races here and large amounts of lengthy ballots, it’s likely we’ll be watching results from Maricopa well beyond election night.

It’s also no stranger to mis- and disinformation campaigns. Several of the county’s elections officials have seen threats against them prosecuted by the federal government.

Knowing this environment, assistant county manager Zach Schira said the county would be aggressive in correcting any bad information that affects a person’s ability to vote, but that overall, “we will not be playing whack-a-mole” with every piece of misinformation.

The county has nearly 2.6 million registered active voters and has received more than 1.5m early ballots turned in already, most of which came by mail though others voted in person early at the polls.

Updated

Jon Ralston, a Nevada journalist with a track record of accurately predicting state election results, says he believes Kamala Harris will narrowly win Nevada, but that the results will not be clear until after election night.

Ralston’s full explanation here:

US readers: share which issues have shaped your vote the most in this election

As we cover the outcome of the 2024 election, we’re interested in hearing from Guardian readers across the US about what issues influenced how you think about voting, and what decisions you’ve made when it comes to your vote.

Have recent developments or events – in the world or in your personal life – affected your thinking? Have your existing views hardened? Have you become more ambivalent about certain issues?

Whatever your politics and how they’ve changed, we want to know.

Philadelphia rapper and prison reform activist Meek Mill released a track saying he will vote for Kamala Harris, even as he invoked her record as a prosecutor in an unjust criminal justice system, the Associated Press reports.

Meek Mill surprise released the new track, “Who You Voting For” on Monday afternoon, sharing a snippet of the song with the caption, “I made this last night … who you voting for???” on TikTok.

“My homie say vote for Trump / You want that stimulus / I wanted two from him but the way he movin’ venomous,” he starts the song. “I’m going probably vote Kamala.”

“It ain’t fair when your lawyer look like Trump / DA lookin’ like Kamala,” he continues, critiquing Harris’s past as a prosecutor. “We Thanksgiving to the system / They’ve been eating us for lunch / And it’s the last supper / Hope you be with us for once, Mrs Harris.”

Updated

The $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk’s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled on Monday.

Common pleas court Judge Angelo Foglietta – ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance – did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.

More details on this news from my colleague Richard Luscombe:

Georgia’s highest court on Monday ruled ballots in the state’s third-largest county must be returned by election day, the Associated Press reports.

A previous lower court ruling would have allowed certain voters in Cobb county who received their absentee ballots late to return them after the deadline as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.

The county, just north of Atlanta, didn’t mail out absentee ballots to some voters who had requested them until late last week. Georgia law says absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls on election day.

The Georgia supreme court ruling means the affected residents must vote in person on election day, or get their absentee ballots to the county elections office by 7 p.m. that day.

The high court ruling instructs county election officials to notify the affected voters by email, text message and in a public message on the county election board’s website. And it orders officials to keep separate and sealed any ballots received after the election day deadline but before 5pm on Friday.

Updated

Donald Trump brought some of his children on stage during his rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he said “this is our last time now, for forever”.

Trump’s children Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany, as well as Eric’s wife and Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump, and Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, all appeared on stage on Monday.

The Republican presidential candidate’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, made a rare speech during the Reading event, hours after she posted to X that her father “will NOT sign a national abortion ban”.

Updated

Despite it being a work day, a long queue formed outside the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh for Donald Trump’s final Pennsylvania rally.

There was the usual Maga paraphernalia including T-shirts saying, “I’m voting for the outlaw and the hillbilly” and “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president”, plus a photo of Trump with the legend “Pet Lives Matter”.

Michael Barringer, 55, a fifth generation coalminer, was standing in line wearing a miner’s helmet. I asked why he supports Trump.

“My grandfather was a the second world war vet,” Barringer replied. “He served in the navy from 1942 to ‘45. He taught me to love this country, pledge allegiance to your flag – the greatest country in the world. I love this country.

“You’ve got millions and millions of illegal aliens crossing the border. They don’t speak English. They don’t say a pledge allegiance to the flag. They freeload off of us. I’m all for legal immigration but not coming across the border illegally, taking American jobs, undercutting us.

“I believe that Trump, his first term in office, he renegotiated Nafta, he’s for the American people and that’s why I vote him. I think he’s one of the greatest presidents ever to run for office and hold office.”

I wondered if Barringer had read the reports of Trump calling Americans who died in war “suckers” and “losers”. He insisted: “That’s all garbage. I don’t believe a word of it. Listen, my grandfather’s rolling over in his grave today to hear these people kneeling for the flag and everything else.

“How about the fake news media? They call Trump Hitler. His son-in-law is a Jew. His grandchildren are Jewish. He’s the first president ever to put an embassy in Jerusalem. They call him a fascist. Do I believe he’s for America first? Absolutely. That’s who I want running my country.”

Pennsylvania judge rejects legal challenge of Elon Musk’s $1m giveaway

A Pennsylvania judge has rejected an attempt to shut down Elon Musk’s $1m giveaway scheme, the New York Times reports from Philadelphia:

More from the Associated Press:

The $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk ‘s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday.

Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta — ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance — did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had called the sweepstakes a scam that violates state election law and asked that it be shut down.

The winners of the sweepstakes did not win by chance but are instead paid spokespeople for the group, Musk’s lawyers said in court Monday.

Musk lawyer Chris Gober said the final two recipients before Tuesday’s presidential election will be in Arizona on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Updated

“We need to finish this strong,” Harris says during her rally in Allentown.

Harris has just wrapped up her remarks, which lasted a little under 30 minutes here.

She has two more rallies in Pennsylvania scheduled today.

A demonstrator just interrupted Kamala Harris’s speech and staffers quickly got the section around the woman to start chanting “USA”.

The protester was escorted out by staff.

“We are fighting for our democracy right now. We love our democracy and democracy can be a bit complicated sometimes. But that’s OK,” Harris said.

These demonstrations, many over the war in Gaza, have become common at Harris’s rallies in the last week.

Updated

In Allentown, speakers are focusing hard on a pro-Trump comedian’s racist comments about Puerto Rico and Latinos at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York.

Elizabeth Strong, a Latino Affairs Commissioner for Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, just introduced Kamala Harris in Allentown as “someone who will be president for all Americans – including Puerto Ricans!”

Updated

Harris: 'I will be a president for all Americans'

Kamala Harris has taken to the stage here in Allentown.

“I stand here proud of my longstanding commitment to Puerto Rico and her people and I will be a president for all Americans,” she says.

Harris opens her speech by saying: “We have momentum on our side. Can you feel it?”

The crowd here in a gymnasium at Muhlenberg college hasn’t sat down since she walked in.

Harris is tearing into Trumpism without mentioning Donald Trump himself by name.

“We have the opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division – we’re done with that,” she says.

“America is ready for a fresh start.”

Updated

'Where's your pride as a Latino?' Rapper Fat Joe condemns Trump rally 'joke' at Harris event

The rapper Fat Joe just took the stage and is ripping into Donald Trump for his treatment of Puerto Ricans and urging Latino voters to support Kamala Harris.

“Where’s your pride? If you’re still out there talking about, you might be voting somebody or you’re not decided, where’s your pride as a Latino,” he said.

“The man went and blocked the aid for Puerto Rico for Hurricane Maria, what are we do here? The man blocked aid for Puerto Rico,” he said.

“If I’m speaking to some undecided Puerto Ricans, especially in Pennsylvania, what more do they have to do to show you who they are?” he added.

Fat Joe’s comments are the latest in a series of speakers today to appeal to Allentown’s heavily Latino population.

Updated

Kamala Harris speaks in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Watch Kamala Harris speak live in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as the Democrat focuses her attention on turning out supporters in what her campaign believes is their must-win swing state.

Updated

Kamala Harris is expected to speak soon in Allentown, Pennsylvania. More soon from my colleague Sam Levine on Democrats’ focus on the anti-Puerto Rican remarks at a Trump rally.

Updated

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, delivered remarks at a campaign event in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where said Americans were about to elect a “new generation of leadership with Kamala Harris, a new way forward”.

“Just tell yourself how great it’s going to be,” Walz said, as he again reiterated his confidence in the US electoral infrastructure. “Our system is secure, our elections are safe.”

The Minnesota governor spoke about the “incredible journey” that he has been on since he was invited to join as Harris’s ticket.

“Look at the movement, and look at the energy that Kamala Harris has built in 107 days,” Walz said. “Imagine what she can do for the next eight years.”

Updated

Donald Trump on stage in Reading, Pennsylvania

Donald Trump is now on stage in Reading, Pennsylvania, his second of four campaign rallies planned for today.

His speech thus far has focused on his claims that migrants are dangerous, and that he will deport them, if elected:

November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America. And on day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in American history. We’re going to get them out.

Trump heads to Pittsburgh after this, then to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for his last appearance of the day.

Updated

How will the vice-president spend her election day?

With her ballot already posted and her campaign stops finished, Harris will return to Number One Observatory Circle in Washington in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, following a late-night rally in Philadelphia.

Throughout the rest of the day, the campaign said she will be “on the airwaves” – calling into local radio stations in the seven battleground states.

The eleventh-hour calls are about “making sure that those final voters who are on their way to work, on their way home, taking a lunch break, understand the stakes, but understand her vision for where she wants to take this country over the course of the next four years,” Harris’s communications director, Michael Tyler, told reporters.

“And most importantly, make sure that they understand when, where and how to vote … she’s going put in the work that it takes to hit 270, and that’s until polls close tomorrow.”

Updated

This is the second Kamala Harris rally I’ve attended this week in Pennsylvania, and I have noticed that speakers are bringing up the racist joke about Puerto Ricans made at a recent Trump rally much more often than they were before.

“I want a president of the United States who looks to the 500,000 Puerto Ricans who live in our communities and strengthens our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said to loud cheers.

The Harris campaign also says it’s prepared to combat any attempts by Trump to challenge the election results.

“We have hundreds of lawyers across the country ready to protect election results against any challenge that Trump might bring,” said Dana Remus, a senior campaign adviser and outside counsel. “This will not be the fastest process, but the law and the facts are on our side.”

Remus said the Trump campaign’s legal efforts were designed to undermine faith in the electoral process.

“Keep in mind that the volume of cases does not equate to a volume of legitimate concerns. In fact, it just shows how desperate they’re becoming,” she said.

Updated

Harris campaign expects 'near complete results' from Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan on election night

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris campaign, offered a rundown of when the team is expecting to learn the results from key states on election night.

By the end of election night, the campaign expects to have “near complete results” from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, and “partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona”, she said.

“By Wednesday morning, we expect most results in from Wisconsin and additional results from Pennsylvania and potentially Michigan,” she said. More results from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada will come after that.

Pennsylvania is seen as an all-but-must-win for Harris, who is spending the final day before the election barnstorming the commonwealth.

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro gets loud ovation when he takes stage

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro just received a loud ovation when he took to the stage a little after 3pm.

“This race is about something deeper that a policy or a bill,” he said. “It’s about the character of this great nation.”

Updated

The last time battleground state Nevada went red was in 2004, when George W Bush was on the ballot. But Republicans hope that this year, Donald Trump will end Democrats’ streak.

As with all the other swing states in this election, polls have shown Trump neck and neck with Kamala Harris in Nevada – an encouraging sign for the GOP, considering its recent history of Democratic strength. But Jon Ralston, a veteran political forecaster and editor of the Nevada Independent, released his projections for the year, and does not think Trump can pull it off.

From his article:

The key to this election has always been which way the non-major-party voters break because they have become the plurality in the state. They are going to make up 30 percent or so of the electorate and if they swing enough towards Harris, she will win Nevada. I think they will, and I’ll tell you why: Many people assume that with the GOP catching up to the Democrats in voter registration that the automatic voter registration plan pushed by Democrats that auto-registers people as nonpartisans (unless they choose a party) at the DMV had been a failure for the party. But I don’t think so. There are a lot of nonpartisans who are closet Democrats who were purposely registered by Democrat-aligned groups as nonpartisans. The machine knows who they are and will get them to vote. It will be just enough to overcome the Republican lead – along with women motivated by abortion and crossover votes that issue also will cause. I know some may think this reflects my well-known disdain for Trump, heart over data. But that is not so. I have often predicted against my own preferences; history does not lie. I just have a feeling she will catch up here, but I also believe – and please remember this – it will not be clear who won on Election Night here, so block out the nattering nabobs of election denialism. It’s going to be very, very close. Prediction: Harris, 48.5 percent; Trump 48.2 percent; others and None of These Candidates, 3.3 percent.

Updated

Allentown mayor Matthew Tuerk is the first speaker at this rally.

He is the city’s first Latino mayor and is laying into Donald Trump after a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico an island of garbage.

There is a huge Puerto Rican population in Allentown, and there were loud boos in the crowd, and then cheers, when some people in the audience held up a big Puerto Rican flag.

“Puerto Rico se respeta, Allentown se respeta,” Tuerk said.

Updated

Kamala Harris holds a slight lead over Donald Trump in the final national PBS News/NPR/Marist poll published today, just hours before election day.

The poll shows Harris holding a four-point lead over Trump, with the support of 51% of likely voters compared with Trump’s 47%. The lead lies just outside the study’s 3.5-point margin of error.

A little more than half of independents support Trump, a 5-point lead over Harris, according to the poll.

Mostly notably, the poll shows that the gender gap has shrunk significantly in the last month of the campaign. Trump’s lead over Harris among male voters has dropped to just 4 points, down from the 16-point advantage in October.

At the same time, 55% of women said they will back Harris in the latest poll, meaning that her lead among women has dropped from 18 points to 11 points since last month.

Updated

Before Kamala Harris took the stage here at Muhlenberg college in Allentown, I chatted with Elizabeth Slaby, an 81-year-old, who was the first person in line this morning.

She said she got here at 6am – so early that she had to circle the block before getting in line.

She was a registered Republican for more than 50 years. But after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 she changed her voter registration.

She’s her with her son and grandson. “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so so excited,” she said.

Updated

'Let's get this done': Harris rallies supporters in Pennsylvania

Kamala Harris sought to reassure her supporters during a campaign stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania, telling them “we’re good” and urging them to “enjoy this moment” during the final 24 hours of her campaign.

“I’m telling you guys, we’re good,” Harris addressed Democratic canvassers. “We’re good. So we’re going to keep doing this work.”

Harris recalled campaigning with her ironing board when she first ran for office as district attorney for San Francisco. “No one thought I could win,” she said.

“I like to say that when you love something, you fight for it.”

She told her supporters she could “feel the energy” and called for them to go and knock on neighbors’ doors, “even if you’ve not met them”.

“As we’re getting out the vote, let’s be intentional about building community, about building coalitions and reminding people, we all have so much more in common than what separates us.”

“We love our country and that’s what this fight is about,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”

Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, also appeared at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Monday where he said the decisions made over the next days “will shape not just the next four years, they will shape the coming generations”.

Walz, who was joined at the rally by his wife, Gwen, and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, said the election “quite literally could be won through the state of Wisconsin”.

“This is a generational opportunity for us to turn the page for us to take this momentum going forward,” he said.

Walz also spoke about his confidence in the country’s election security, arguing that the US has “the fairest, the most secure elections in the world”.

“We will count the votes. We will win on the votes, and we will be able to know, too, that we have a part in not only moving on from nine years of what we’ve seen, but charting, truly, a new way forward. The rest of the world is watching, so I have one request: win this for America.”

Updated

While we’re on the subject of Katy Perry, the pop star posted to X to say that she has officially voted for Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris will close out the final day of campaigning with a series of star-studded events featuring Oprah, Lady Gaga and … Katy Perry.

For anyone at the Javits Center in New York City on Election Night 2016 – and for those who were not, picture a glass-ceilinged convention hall with hordes of women and young girls blissfully unaware that the US was not, in fact, about to elect its first female president – Perry’s election eve appearance may be jarring.

Not just because her solo Woman’s World debuted this summer to brutal reviews – The Guardian asked: what regressive, warmed-over hell is this? – but because Perry’s song Roar was the anthem of Hillary Clinton’s doomed presidential bid in 2016.

Perry was due to perform at the Democrat’s election night watch party in 2016. But as the results began to turn irrevocably against Clinton, Perry arrived on stage, not to sing but to implore voters in California to stay in line if they had not voted yet. The urgency in the pop star’s voice, especially about votes in a deep blue state, shattered hopes in the room and confirmed what few had even considered at the beginning of the evening: that the “highest, hardest” glass ceiling would not shatter – at least not that night.

Perhaps Perry’s presence on the campaign trail on its final day will prove cathartic.

Updated

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on the popular Jubilee YouTube channel where he attempted to win over 25 undecided Michigan voters.

In one clip posted on Instagram, Buttigieg faced a young voter who said they were trying to decide between voting for Kamala Harris or the Green party presidential candidate, Jill Stein. “I want to see something different,” the undecided voter said.

Buttigieg argued that neither the Democratic nor Republican party is “perfect” but that “Jill Stein is not going to become the president of the United States. Donald Trump is, or Kamala Harris is”.

“From an environmental perspective … you’ve got one side that is saying climate change is a hoax,” Buttigieg said, adding that Trump would “tear up” the Clean Water Act if he is re-elected.

“You keep mentioning stuff about Trump, but I’m trying to tell you that I’m between Jill and Kamala,” the voter responded. “I I have lost a lot of faith in our two party system, and I want to see something different.”

Prior to the debate, six of the 25 voters said they were leaning toward Harris, four toward Trump, five leaning third parties and 11 said they were leaning toward not voting at all.

After hearing from Buttigieg, 12 of the participants said they planned to vote for Harris. Five said they would vote for Trump, six for third parties and three said they did not intend to vote.

Arizona senate race: Democrat Ruben Gallego polling ahead of Republican Kari Lake

Ruben Gallego is polling well ahead of his competitor, Kari Lake, while Donald Trump is slightly ahead of Kamala Harris in most polls in Arizona.

I’ve spoken with people who are voting for both Trump and Gallego, who is a progressive member of the US House – an unlikely voting combination.

Gallego told me this morning that he’s winning over Republicans and independents because he’s been showing up for nearly two years in places they didn’t expect to see him.

“We went to rural Arizona. We went to the boardrooms. We went to the rodeos,” he said.

“I reached out to my veterans out there and made sure for them to understand that no matter what party I am, I’m still a Marine Corps veteran first, and that I would be here to fight for them.

As far as the Trump-Gallego voter? “I think it’s not a sizeable amount of people, but they’re there, and we’re proud to have them part of our coalition.”

Updated

At a house in the suburbs outside Phoenix this morning, US representative Ruben Gallego fired up his supporters for one more day of getting out the vote for Democrats in Arizona as he seeks the US Senate seat, one of the crucial races nationally to keep the chamber.

The group of a dozen or so volunteers circled up with Gallego to first chant “si se puede,” or “yes we can”. “The other side does not have this,” he told them. The Republicans aren’t hitting the doors for dozens of canvasses every day like Democrats are, he said.

“Their IE is being funded by billionaires like Elon Musk. Ours is being funded by people. We have people, and that’s what’s going to win the day,” he said.

Voters say they’re most concerned about three issues, Gallego said: abortion access (the state has a measure to restore Roe on the ballot), cost of living and border security.

Updated

I just got on a shuttle bus from the parking area for Kamala Harris’s rally in Allentown and you can already feel the excitement.

People are cheering as strangers get on the bus bringing their children to the rally (schools in Allentown are closed today because of the visit).

Harris earlier stopped by a canvas in Scranton and is set to hold two more rallies in Pennsylvania today.

The fact that she’s spending the entire last day of the campaign in Pennsylvania underscores how important the state’s 19 electoral votes are to the race.

While in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance stopped by a set of giant storage tanks billed as the “world’s largest six-pack” of beer.

“This is a six pack under the leadership of Kamala Harris,” Vance said in a clip posted to his X account, while holding a six-pack of a beer.

Pointing to the 54ft-tall tanks, Vance said: “This is a six pack under the leadership of Donald J Trump. Let’s make America great again.”

Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, made one final visit to the key swing state of Wisconsin before election day where he urged voters to back the Republican ticket even if “you don’t agree with everything that Trump says.”

“Our message to the swing voters of the state of Wisconsin is very simple: it doesn’t have to be like this,” Vance addressed supporters in La Crosse on Monday.

“You don’t have to agree with everything that I say, every policy proposal that we have. But what we know is that when Donald Trump was president, you could afford to pay your bills.”

Vance delivered a tight speech about border security and the economy, arguing that Americans were “playing by the rules” but have been “falling farther and farther behind” thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies.

“When Donald Trump is president, we get back to an old age of American prosperity,” Vance said.

The day so far

The final day of campaigning before Tuesday’s election is here, and Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz will be on the road rallying voters all day. We already heard from the former president, who told supporters in North Carolina that he would put tariffs on Mexico to force them to stop migrants from entering the United States, while distorting his economic record and attacking Barack and Michelle Obama. Harris, meanwhile, will be spending her time in Pennsylvania, and has so far today avoided talking about her opponent in what will be one of her last chances to reach the voters who could send her to the White House.

Here’s what else has been going on today:

  • We can expect to see some of the final polls of the presidential race released today. One survey that came out, from Emerson College and The Hill, confirms that the two candidates are ties in the swing states.

  • Election administrators have stepped up their security as they face threats and harassment connected to Tuesday’s vote.

  • If recent history is any guide, tomorrow’s election may take days to call – or merely hours. Here’s a look at why calling election winners can be so unpredictable.

An official in Washoe has raised concerns about a new voter registration system in Nevada.

Cari-Ann Burgess, the former interim Washoe County registrar who has been on administrative leave since September and is facing charges of insubordination and poor job performance, has said that the county’s new voter registration and management system that went live eight days before the early voting in Nevada started has issues that still needs to be worked out. Her complaints are detailed in a recent article by ProPublica.

Burgess has alleged that the new system lacked safeguards to keep non-citizens from voting, and that issues with transferring data from the old to the new system could have left some registered voters off.

But the secretary of state’s office has strongly denied any issues, and noted that a lack of issues with early voting are a sign that things are working well.

Early voting ballots are being tallied in Washoe County, Nevada – and observers from both major parties have been holed up in the plexiglass observation room to watch the count.

Washoe, which includes the mountain city of Reno, is what many locals call the “swingiest” county in a key swing state, one that could help determine the outcome of the presidential election. During the midterms this year, the county’s Republican commissioners voted against certifying the election, spurring legal action, before reversing course.

Ahead of Election Day, the office has been fielding a deluge of questions and public information requests, working to reassure the public that the vote count is coming along smoothly.

Bob Blackstock, who is one among several observers with the local Democratic Party, said he was compelled to get involved in the elections process in 2022. “It’s not even that I’m so passionate about being a Democrat, it’s that I’m passionate about democracy,” said Blackstock, who is an organizer with the Washoe Democrats, but was speaking from his personal capacity.

“If we lose our democracy I don’t know what is left.”

Blackstock anticipates that his biggest responsibility will be to testify at the commission’s vote to approve the canvass – and providing a counterpoint to election deniers.

“It really seems like people have already made up their minds,” he said. Even though those who believe there is fraud have been able to watch the count and ask officials detailed questions, he worries that those looking for anything suspicious will think they see it.

“It’s self-confirmation bias,” he said.

Updated

Despite presiding over mass layoffs, Trump makes false claim about employment

Donald Trump just told a whopper of a lie about the economy, saying that the most recent employment numbers were “the worst … in modern history”.

In fact, that distinction goes to April 2020’s data, which showed more than 20 million people had lost their jobs and unemployment had skyrocketed to 14.7% due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Who was president then? Trump, whose administration was roundly criticized for mishandling the pandemic.

Last month’s jobs report was indeed weak, though it remains to be seen if the trend will persist, or if the data was just reflecting the impact of an industrial strike and two major hurricanes:

In something of a throwback to his first presidential campaign (and many years of Republican attacks before that), Trump made a point to mention Barack Obama’s middle name, and also attacked former first lady Michelle Obama.

“Barack Hussein Obama, I call him the great divider,” Trump said during his ongoing speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hussein is Obama’s middle name, but Republicans, including Trump, have made a point of mentioning it while simultaneously propagating baseless claims that he is Muslim, or was born outside the United States.

Trump then complained that Michelle Obama insulted him: “Michelle hit me there. I was so nice to her, out of respect. I was saying she hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.”

Michelle Obama recently appeared with Kamala Harris at a rally in swing state Michigan:

As he has campaigned this year, Trump has become known for his lengthy speeches that typically run around 90 minutes.

The former president is clearly aware that much has been written about his penchant to go on and on, saying at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina: “By the way, the press will say, Oh, he rambled.”

“That was genius,” he said of his speech. “The rest of it I don’t really even have to talk about.”

Trump has dubbed his rambling speaking style “the weave”, and called his speech in Raleigh “the ultimate weave”. He added: “And think of it, isn’t it nice that you can have a president that doesn’t need to use a teleprompter?” Trump definitely uses a teleprompter, but often does not follow what’s on it.

Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs if they don't stop migrants from entering US

Donald Trump has finally taken the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, and announced a new policy: he would impose tariffs on Mexico if the United States’s southern neighbor does not stop migrants from crossing their shared border.

Referring to Mexico’s recently inaugurated president Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said: “I haven’t met her, and I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America.”

“It’s only got a 100% chance of working, because if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 50, and [if] that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. For the tough guys, and I’ll make it 100,” Trump said, predicting Mexico will deploy soldiers to its southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop migrants heading north.

“You know, their southern border’s where they come in, they come right through. And by the way, there’s 100% chance of working. It’s only a question,” he said. He called Mexico America’s top trading partner, which isn’t quite right – according to the US trade representative, it is the number-two supplier and purchaser of American goods.

Donald Trump is a bit late to his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, but his son Donald Trump Jr just came onstage to give voters a pep talk, one angled on encouraging them to look for the voter fraud that Republicans claim, without much evidence, mars elections in the US.

“So, you guys, at this point is up to each and every one of you. So, whatever you would do if you woke up on November 6 and Kamala Harris was president-elect, whatever you would do to stop that disaster for our country, for the world and for Western civilization, whatever you would do, do it now,” Trump Jr said.

“Do it till the polls close tomorrow night, and then start calling your friends on the west coast to make sure they’re doing it, too. Get in line, dear friends, stay in line. If you see nonsense, video it, show it to everyone. Do not let them play their games.”

Conspicuously absent from Kamala Harris’s closing argument? Donald Trump.

At least in name. In the campaign’s closing ad and in the final days on the campaign trail, the vice-president has made no explicit reference to her opponent, instead opting to end on a positive, forward-looking note.

“Our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” Harris said at a high-energy rally in Michigan on Sunday night. “A fight for a future with freedom and opportunity and dignity for all Americans.”

At a Black church in Detroit, Harris appealed to “Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice” and declared the country ready to “turn the page and write the next chapter of our history.

It’s a shift from just a few days ago, when the vice-president focused on Trump’s threat to American democracy and agreed with Trump’s former aides who said he was a “fascist.”

But in the final days, the Harris campaign is betting that the slice of undecided voters left need an affirmative reason to vote for Harris. If they were scared of the threat Trump poses, they’d likely have made up their minds long ago.

Trump to rally in North Carolina, first of four events in final day of campaigning

We expect Donald Trump to soon take the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, kicking off his final sprint of campaigning before polls open in tomorrow’s presidential election.

The former president has four events scheduled today. After Raleigh, he’s set to appear in Reading, Pennsylvania at 2pm, then in Pittsburgh at 6pm, and finally in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 10.30pm.

The presidential election is being held tomorrow, but it may take days to count the ballots necessary to determine the winner, and the story may not end there. Evidence is mounting that Donald Trump and his allies are planning to once again cast doubt on the result, should he lose. The Guardian’s Sam Levine explains how:

Donald Trump has left little doubt that he will contest the results of the 2024 election if he loses.

Election lawyers and voting rights experts are bracing for an aggressive effort by the former president in the days after the election to challenge the results while votes are still being counted. But unlike 2020, when Trump’s effort after the election seemed a bit haphazard, experts say they’re seeing a much more organized effort that stretches from the courts to local groups organizing election deniers to work the polls.

Here are a few key ways Trump is preparing to contest the 2024 vote:

We can also expect some final polls of the presidential race to be released today, though what has come out doesn’t show much.

The Hill and Emerson College surveyed all seven swing states and found, as many, many other polls before it have shown, that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in an effective tie:

We will soon hear from Donald Trump, when he holds his first campaign event of the day in Raleigh, North Carolina at 10am.

And we may also see some of his supporters turn up wearing trash bags, as they have started doing recently:

If you missed this latest bizarre turn in the presidential campaign – which could have real impacts on the allegiances of a key voters group – the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe explains what it is and why it matters in the below piece:

Walz to campaign in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan

Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz also has a busy day of campaigning ahead of him.

He starts in St Paul, Minnesota, capital of the state he governs, where he and his wife Gwen Walz will greet their neighbors, before heading to Wisconsin for rallies in La Crosse, Stevens Point and Milwaukee. At that last rally, they’ll have Eric Benét as their musical guest, the campaign says.

They finish the day with a rally in Detroit where they will have even more musical guests, specifically the Detroit Youth Choir, Jon Bon Jovi, and The War and Treaty.

Updated

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance will campaign in four different swing states today.

Specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. His press secretary just posted a video of him dressed all casual and he and his wife set out for the day:

Harris spends final campaign day blitzing Pennsylvania with events

Kamala Harris is spending all day campaigning in Pennsylvania, which is seen as potentially the most important state to win this election.

Her first stop is in Scranton, Joe Biden’s childhood hometown, where she’ll participate in a kickoff for canvassers, he campaign said. After that, she heads to Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia before finally returning to Washington DC.

Biden is not scheduled to join her in Scranton. He’s spent the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and is heading to the White House this morning, where he will have a private call with military members involved in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Updated

US election offices increase security measures amid ongoing threats

Elections offices in the US have hardened their security measures this year, anticipating potential violence based on experience since 2020 and during an ongoing rise in threats and harassment focused on election workers.

Many offices have now trained their workers on de-escalation tactics. They’ve run drills for active shooters or other disturbances. They have a process for flagging the threats that could be criminal and seeking law enforcement help when needed.

Hundreds of election offices have been reinforced with bulletproof glass and steel doors. Some have increased their security details or locked down their social media in case people come looking into their lives. And new laws and added enforcement of prohibitions on such harassment have added to the response to the increased hostility.

Authorities are concerned about the rise of the right-wing election denial movement, which originated in 2020 following Trump’s rejection of his defeat to Joe Biden. Trump’s propagation of unfounded theories regarding the election mobilized large crowds to participate in “Stop the Steal” protests, which reached a climax on January 6, 2021, when supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to impede Congress’s confirmation of the election outcomes.

Trump has not committed to accepting the outcome, claiming without evidence that Democrats will cheat to install his opponent, Kamala Harris.

Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said her concern for her personal safety increased after Elon Musk, the owner of X, attacked her online. Before she responded to his claims about Michigan voting and her office, she called her security team to “make sure my family was safe,” she said on NBC.

You can read the full story by my colleague, Rachel Leingang, here:

Updated

What would a Trump victory mean for the UK-US 'special relationship'?

Eleni Courea is a political correspondent for the Guardian:

A Trump victory would be awkward for the Labour party, which has close links with the Democrats and has seen droves of members voluntarily head to the US in recent months to campaign for Kamala Harris.

Last month, Trump’s campaign filed a formal complaint accusing Labour of foreign interference in the US election after a social media post by the party’s head of operations Sofia Patel said nearly 100 current and former staffers were travelling over to support Harris and offered to help them with accommodation.

The row was deeply frustrating for Keir Starmer, who has sought to build a good working relationship with Trump since becoming prime minister in July and was one of a few world leaders to speak directly to the former president after he suffered an assassination attempt in mid-July. The pair met in person in September for a two-hour dinner while Starmer was in New York for the UN General Assembly.

David Lammy, the UK’s foreign secretary, was present at the dinner in New York and has actively been developing links with Republican politicians. But there are questions over whether Lammy can remain in his role if Trump wins, given his strident criticism of the former president in past years — he has branded him a “neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath,” a “dangerous clown” and “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathizer”.

If Trump is elected, Starmer would need to try and convince him of the importance of supporting Ukraine in its defence against the Russian invasion. Trump has censured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not making concessions to Russia and has made clear he wants to see a quick end to the war.

Secretaries of state ask social media companies for moderation plans on election day

Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter focused on misinformation for Guardian US

A group of Democratic secretaries of state are calling on social media companies to detail their plans to moderate inflammatory content and artificial intelligence on their platforms during and after election day.

Seven secretaries of state – representing Maine, Rhode Island, Illinois, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and New Mexico – sent the letters to Google, X and Meta on Friday. Secretaries of state typically play some role in overseeing elections in their states.

The officials note that violent threats against election officials and disinformation about elections are already spreading online, saying they are “deeply concerned about the failure of major social media companies to clearly lay out their plans to moderate inflammatory claims and AI-generated election-related content ahead of, during and following election day”.

Throughout the 2024 election, false and misleading claims about elections have spread widely, playing on frequent myths like that noncitizens are voting en masse or that tabulation machines aren’t secure. Donald Trump often elevates these claims, as does X owner Elon Musk, as part of an ongoing narrative that Democrats can only win the election if they cheat.

Republicans in Congress and in the courts continue to go after attempts to flag misinformation during previous elections and call it censorship. In response, many platforms have taken a less active approach to moderating or removing content, and some have far fewer staff dedicated to trust and safety than they did in previous years.

Some of those signed on to the letters have been targets of threats and harassment personally for doing their jobs.

You can read the full story here:

Updated

The Reuters news agency has pulled together a list of people Donald Trump has suggested he would investigate or prosecute if he is reelected for a second presidential term (having lost a reelection bid in 2020 against Joe Biden – a result he still falsely claims was rigged against him):

The ‘enemy from within’

  • Asked on Fox News last month whether he expected chaos on Election Day, Trump responded that the bigger problem was “the enemy from within”. “We have some sick people, radical left lunatics ... and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

Political adversaries

  • Trump has called for investigations into Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and Liz Cheney, a former Republican congressman and vocal Trump opponent. Trump has shared posts on his Truth Social media platform calling for military tribunals to try Cheney and Obama.

  • At a September rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said Harris, the US vice president, was responsible for the “biggest crime story of our time,” referring to illegal border crossings. “She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” Trump said.

Election workers

  • Trump and his allies have been laying the groundwork to contest a potential loss in November by stoking doubts about the election’s legitimacy. Trump has portrayed Democrats as cheaters, called mail-in ballots corrupt and urged supporters to vote in such large numbers to render the election “too big to rig”.

  • “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,” Trump posted on Truth Social last month. “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country,” he added.

Protestors

  • Following pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the USs this year, Trump told Fox News in July that anyone who desecrates the American flag should get a one-year jail sentence. “Now, people will say: ‘Oh it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people who say that,” Trump said, adding that he wants to work with Congress to allow the jail sentences. Trump has said he would arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.

Tech sector

  • Trump has also warned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google over what he claims is potential election interference on their tech platforms. Trump has accused Meta of suppressing content that would have hurt Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and has also criticised Zuckerberg’s donations to bolster election infrastructure. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison,” Trump wrote his recently published Save America coffee table book, according to media reviews of the book.

  • Trump has also threatened to instruct the Department of Justice to criminally investigate Google for “only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump,” according to a Truth Social post last month. “I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election,” Trump wrote, without providing evidence for his assertion about Google.

Prosecutors

  • Trump said earlier this month that if elected he would fire Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor leading the criminal probes into his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. That follows an April 2023 speech by Trump - after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg convinced a New York grand jury to bring the first criminal charges ever against a former US president, in which he said Bragg was “the criminal”. “He should be prosecuted or at a minimum he should resign,” Trump said.

Updated

Memorable images from the 2024 US presidential campaign

Here is a look back at some of the more memorable pictures of the 2024 US presidential campaign:

Updated

In an interview with NBC News, Donald Trump did not rule out banning certain vaccines if he was elected to a second presidential term.

Trump told the outlet in a phone interview that he is open to some of the more controversial ideas of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a nephew of President John F Kennedy and son of the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy.

Trump said recently that he wants the vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr “to take care of health”, including “women’s health” if the former president wins back the White House in this election.

Asked on Sunday whether banning certain vaccines would be an option if he was elected, Trump told NBC News: “Well, I’m going to talk to [Kennedy] and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.”

Trump refused to say what specific role Robert F Kennedy Jr may play in his administration but sources close to his campaign told NBC News he might play a prominent role in battling “chronic childhood disease”.

It comes as Robert F Kennedy Jr, who ended his independent White House bid in August and endorsed Trump, said the former Republican president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected. He said fluoride was “an industrial waste” linked to a variety of health conditions.

Where does Donald Trump stand on some of the key election issues?

Here are some of the stances former Republican president Donald Trump has on key election issues. You can read more in this explainer by my colleague Lauren Gambino.

Economy

  • Much of Trump’s inflation-reduction plan hinges on his vow to slash energy costs by expanding oil and gas drilling and deregulation. He has also been highly critical of high interest rates, the Federal Reserve’s main inflation-fighting tool.

  • Trump said recently that he thinks the president should have a say in decisions made by the Fed, which traditionally operates independently from politics.

  • Trump has vowed to extend and expand a suite of tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, while pledging to cut the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21% for companies that make their products in the US. He has also said he would exempt Social Security benefits and overtime pay, in addition to tips, from income taxes.

  • He has suggested an across-the-board levy of perhaps 10% and up to 20% on virtually all foreign-made goods, as well as slapping tariffs of 60% – or more – on goods from China.

Abortion

  • Trump has said abortion access should be left to the states, and has vowed that as president he would not sign a national abortion ban (weeks before making that pledge, he refused to say whether he would veto such a ban).

  • Trump has said that if he wins he would make IVF free for women, though has provided few specifics and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked legislation that would protect the treatment.

Immigration and ‘border security’

  • Trump has promised to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in US history, a policy that would face many logistical, legal and financial hurdles.

  • Trump has said he would reinstate several controversial policies from his first term, including the Remain in Mexico program, Title 42 and a travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations.

  • He has vowed to rescind programs that shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, including children, while revoking the legal status of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the US under the federal temporary protected status program.

  • Trump has also suggested he would end birthright citizenship for the US-born children of undocumented immigrant.

Climate and energy policies

  • Trump has questioned established climate science, previously dismissing the climate crisis as “mythical” and an “expensive hoax”.

  • As president, Trump claims he will prioritize clean air and water for Americans. Yet he has also promised to continue to roll back environmental regulations, including all of the ones put in place by the Biden administration.

  • In a May meeting with oil bosses, he reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. He is especially opposed to wind power – falsely claiming wind turbines kill birds and cause cancer.

Updated

Where does Kamala Harris stand on some of the key election issues?

Lauren Gambino, a political correspondent for Guardian US, has done this useful explainer about where the two presidential candidates stand on key issues. Here are some extracts from the piece:

Kamala Harris

Economy

  • Harris says she wants to build up the “opportunity economy,”, focused on the middle class, with plans to combat price gouging, boost housing development, aid first-time homebuyers, expand tax credits for parents and expand Medicare to cover in-home senior care.

  • Harris has pledged to cut taxes for tens of millions of middle- and low-income families, while saying she supports tax breaks for entrepreneurs and small business owners. She also backs a proposal championed by Trump to eliminate taxes on tips. Harris has called for the corporate tax rate to be raised to 28%, up from 21%.

  • Harris is expected to maintain the Biden administration’s approach, relying on tariffs and export controls to boost domestic competitiveness with China.

Abortion

  • Harris has called on Congress to pass legislation to restore the protections of Roe v Wade, which the supreme court overturned in 2022. Doing so would reinstate the Roe-era status quo, in effect blocking states from banning abortion before fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

  • As president, Harris has vowed she would veto any nationwide abortion ban, Harris has pledged to protect the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, including access to contraception and other fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Immigration and ‘border security’

  • During a visit to the border in September, Harris laid out a plan to enact stricter penalties for people who attempt to claim asylum between lawful ports of entry.

  • Harris has long championed comprehensive immigration reform, including pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, especially those who were brought to the US as children.

Climate and energy policies

  • Harris has walked back her support for the progressive Green New Deal proposal and a fracking ban. She is a proponent of electric vehicles – though does not support a mandate – and backs clean-energy tax credits.

Updated

In the 60th US presidential election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs along with 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate, which together will decide the membership of the 119th Congress.

Republicans hold a majority in the House, while Democrats control the Senate, both by narrow margins. But the polls – if to be believed – suggest Democrats could win back the House and Republicans retake the Senate.

The Republican House majority leader, Steve Scalise, has told Axios that multiple GOP members have been “angling” for senior posts in a potential administration led by Donald Trump.

Scalise, a hardline conservative representing Louisiana, told the outlet:

I’ve heard from a number of members that have been having conversations whether they’re on a short list or a long-short list.

And we saw it in 2017 where a number of House colleagues got pulled into Cabinet secretary positions and other positions, and so I wouldn’t expect anything different this time.

Hopefully we have a large enough majority where that option is available to them, but that’s going to be up to President Trump.

Scalise said he is “very confident” House Republicans will hold or grow their majority, adding that a margin of 8-12 seats would be a good one for the party (Democrats need to flip only four seats to win back a House majority this year).

“You know, with the way redistricting is, these aren’t the days we can get a 30-seat majority anymore. So whatever majority we have is going to be slim,” Scalise told Axios.

Updated

Donald Trump said with two days until the presidential election that he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot, dredging up grievances that overshadowed his attack lines against Kamala Harris.

The closing themes of the former president’s campaign at a rally in Lititz in the battleground state of Pennsylvania brought him full circle with his 2016 campaign that went after the news media and his 2020 campaign that was defined by his attempts to overturn the result.

Trump stayed on message for the first part of his remarks but could not resist reverting to resentments he has held on to for years, describing Democrats as demonic and lamenting the 2020 election – an issue that polls badly and his aides privately said they thought he had been convinced to drop.

“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off.

The remark reflected what Trump told aides and allies in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat, a loss he has never conceded, and how he sat in at least one meeting at the end of his first term where he mused about refusing to leave the White House, a person familiar with the matter said.

You can read the full story by my colleague, Hugo Lowell, here:

As we mentioned in the opening summary, the US vice president and Democratic presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris, pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday.

Many Democratic voters, including Michigan’s large Arab American and Muslim American population, have expressed anger at the Biden administration over its support for Israel’s war on Gaza (and now Lebanon).

The US continues to be the biggest arms supplier to Israel and is its most powerful diplomatic ally. Harris has not signalled a significant shift from Biden’s policy. Both have condemned the high civilian death toll (according to Gaza’s health ministry over 43,000 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since last October) but continue to insist on Israel’s right “to defend itself”.

Harris said at the Michigan rally:

We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon.

It is devastating, and as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.

Updated

How long it will take to know the winner and where to find early clues about how the contest might unfold

Election Day in the US is now often considered election week as each state follows its own rules and practices for counting ballots that can delay the results. There is also the possibility of legal challenges to counts that could cause delays.

In 2020, The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner on Saturday afternoon — four days after polls closed. But even then, The AP called North Carolina for Donald Trump 10 days after Election Day and Georgia for Biden 16 days later after hand recounts.

Four years earlier, the 2016 election was decided just hours after most polls closed. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner on election night at 2:29 a.m.

The tightness of the race this year makes it hard to predict when a winner could be declared – but North Carolina and Georgia could give an early indication as results in these swing states come in relatively quickly.

The Associated Press has pinpointed areas in swing states that could give us a clue on how the race will unfold:

In North Carolina, Harris’ margins in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, home to the state capital of Raleigh and the state’s largest city, Charlotte, respectively, will reveal how much Trump will need to squeeze out of the less-populated rural areas he has dominated.

In Pennsylvania, Harris needs heavy turnout in deep blue Philadelphia, but she’s also looking to boost the Democrats’ advantage in the arc of suburban counties to the north and west of the city.

She has campaigned aggressively in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties, where Biden improved on Clinton’s 2016 winning margins. The Philadelphia metro area, including the four collar counties, accounts for 43 percent of Pennsylvania’s vote.

Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Trump needs to blunt Democratic growth in Michigan’s key suburban counties outside of Detroit, especially Oakland County. He faces the same challenge in Wisconsin’s Waukesha County outside of Milwaukee.

Updated

What is the current state of the polls?

The Guardian US has been averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring. Nationally, Kamala Harris has a one-point advantage, 48% to 47%, over Donald Trump, virtually identical to last week.

The election will be decided in the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In these states, the polls are too close to call.

Harris has an 8% lead among those who have already voted, while Trump is ahead among those who say they are very likely to vote but have not yet done so. The poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, also found Harris was slightly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with Trump up in Arizona and the other three too close to call.

Many Democrats are worried Trump is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, in a sign the former president thinks Harris may win on election day tomorrow.

Updated

Harris and Trump begin blitz of rallies across battleground states on election day eve

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the 2024 US presidential election.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will begin a blitz of rallies and media appearances across the vital battleground states in the rust belt, as the final day of campaigning gets under way.

Harris is set to appear in the Pennsylvania cities of Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, in a sign of how crucial the state will be to securing victory. Trump will start his day in North Carolina before making appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Opinion polls show the pair locked in a tight race. More than 78m Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, approaching half the total 160 million votes cast in 2020, in which US voter turnout was the highest in more than a century.

Here are some of the latest developments:

  • Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election. Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Joe Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.

  • Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night.

  • Donald Trump said he should never have left the White House after his defeat in 2020 and joked darkly he would be fine with reporters getting shot. “We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said at a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania. “I shouldn’t have left, I mean honestly, we did so well, we had such a great – ” he said before abruptly cutting himself off. In other comments, as he denigrated the media, he said: “To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, because, I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”

  • Donald Trump again suggested he would give a role on health policy to Robert F Kennedy Jr at a rally in Macon, Georgia. “I told a great guy, RFK Jr., Bobby — I said, ‘Bobby, you work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything,” he said. Kennedy, a well known vaccine sceptic, on Saturday said that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.

  • Harris dodged a question on whether she voted for California’s Proposition 36, which would make it easier for prosecutors to send repeat shoplifters and drug users to jail or prison, after submitting her ballot. The measure would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanors.

  • The Trump campaign claimed that recent polling by the New York Times and the Des Moines Register is designed to suppress Trump voter turnout by presenting a bleak picture of his re-election prospects. The memo claims that the Times’s polls have biased samples and overrepresent Democratic voters compared with actual voter registration and turnout trends.

  • Trump also disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%. “No President has done more for farmers, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on the Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, by a lot”.

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