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After standing on stage swaying while various songs play for more than 20 minutes, Trump finally leaves the stage. It is unclear what that was about, although we are trying to find explanation that makes sense.
Trump has already answered questions at this town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania – it is unclear whether he plans to speak again, or just stand on stage listening to his rally playlist.
The large screen behind Trump on stage says “Trump was right about everything.”
Here is that clip from Harris a short while ago:
At her Erie, PA rally, Harris plays multiple clips of Trump's threats, then says "he considers anyone who doesn't support him, or who will not bend to his will, an ENEMY of our country." pic.twitter.com/j9KBMZ1qHR
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) October 15, 2024
Trump is also in Pennsylvania, in Oaks.
At the moment he is standing on stage swaying side to side as Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” plays.
Harris has finished speaking. She makes her way through the crowd, shaking hands with supporters.
Harris reminds the crowd that the way people from Erie county vote “often predicts the national vote”.
People start chanting “Erie! Erie!” – where Harris is speaking.
She reminds the crowd that they can vote early.
Erie is a bellwether county – the way it has voted has been the way the country voted in the last four elections:
2008 Presidential Election: Erie County voted for Barack Obama, who won the presidency.
2012 Presidential Election: Erie County voted for Barack Obama, who won re-election.
2016 Presidential Election: Erie County voted for Donald Trump, who won the presidency.
2020 Presidential Election: Erie County voted for Joe Biden, who won the presidency.
Trump meanwhile, according to MSNBC:
Trump is just standing at his rally swaying as hallelujah (jeff buckley) plays. He's tapping his chair. The crowd is standing. just listening to music
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 15, 2024
“When freedom is on the line, Americans always answer the call,” she says.
The crowd chants “Vote! Vote!”.
Trump is 'Increasingly unstable and unhinged', Harris says
“I’ve said for a while now, watch his rallies, listen to his words. He tells us what he is, he tells us what he will do if he is elected president,” she says.
Harris plays clips from several Trump events, including, “The worst people are the enemies from within … those people are more dangerous than Russia and China … Now if you had one really violent day, one rough hour, and I mean really rough”.
“He’s talking about the enemy from within Pennsylvania,” Harris says, and anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
“He is saying that he would use the military to go after them,” she says. “And we know who he would target, because he has attacked them before. Journalists whose stories he doesn’t like. Election officials who refuse to cheat … Judges who follow the law instead of bending to his will,” she says.
“A second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous,” she says.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchekced power,” she says.
Updated
Harris now takes aim at Trump calling for the “termination” of the constitution of the United States.
The crowd chants “lock him up” and Harris says, “The courts will handle that,” and that voters must handle 5 November – voting day.
Harris turns now to abortion.
“One in three women lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban,” she says.
Abortion will also be on the ballot in at least ten states on 5 November:
These measures are known as down-ballot measures. Here is an explainer:
Measures on the ballot other than the vote for US presidential ticket are down-ballot measures, and a third or more of the roughly half of Americans who usually turn up to vote don’t fill out the entire ballot, according to the US Vote Foundation. Voters do not have to vote for any down-ballot measures for their ballots to count.
“You gotta read the plan.” says Harris, “I mean the fact that they put it in writing is a whole other thing to be discussed,” she says, referring to the Project 2025 document.
More on this subject:
Harris turns now to Project 2025.
She repeats her criticism of Trump as an “unserious man” – but that the consequences of him being president again are very serious.
Some trivia: “Don’t forget healthcare” was one of the three rules Democrat campaign veteran James Carville came up with for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign – along with “It’s the economy, stupid” and “Change vs. more of the same.”
Harris is talking about taking care of her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer.
It’s about trying to cook something for them that they might enjoy eating, trying to find something for them to wear that won’t irritate their skin, trying to find something that will make them smile or laugh, it’s about dignity, she says, to applause.
She says her plan is that Medicare (not Medicaid) helps pay for home healthcare.
The election is about two very different visions, one focused on the past, one on the future, Harris says. It has been one of her key messages this campaign.
So far, she is repeating well-worn messaging. “We need a president who works for all the American people,” she says.
We’re expecting this rally to portray Donald Trump as a potential tyrant-in-waiting who wants to jail his political opponents by seizing on his threat to use US armed forces against those he has branded “the enemy within”.
“We are the underdogs, we have some hard work ahead of us, but here’s the thing: we like har work,” Harris says.
“In 22 days, we will win.”
Just over three weeks left…
Kamala Harris on stage in Pennsylvania
The Democratic presidential nominee and US vice-president is on stage in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Here is the pool report on the number of people there – about 7,000:
The Harris campaign is using about three-quarters of the arena, which has a total concert capacity of about 9400, and appears to have filled it, except for the obstructed seats directly behind the media riser and the space on the floor set aside for press.
The crowd is chanting “Kamala! Kamala!”
And here is a refresher on the electoral college:
The electoral college is a group of 538 people, called electors, who officially cast their votes for the US president after citizens have voted. This is a requirement outlined in the US constitution. The electors are chosen by political parties in each of the US’s 50 states ahead of the election.
Different states have different numbers of electoral college votes, with the number decided based on the census. The number of votes is equal to its total congressional delegation: the number of senators plus the number of representatives. While not a state, the District of Columbia – as in Washington DC – is allocated three electoral college votes.
This is why the total is 538: 100 senators plus 435 representatives plus three for DC.
A candidate needs more than half – or at least 270 – of the electoral college votes to win. In most states, all of the electoral college votes from the state go to the same candidate. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which allocate two electoral votes to the state popular vote winner, and then one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each congressional district.
The party that wins a state has its electors formally vote for its candidate. This happens a few weeks after the November election – and after US states have certified their election results – on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.
In 2020 Donald Trump tried to remove electors in some states before the electoral college vote but the US supreme court rejected that attempt the week before.
Here is a refresher on swing states – Pennsylvania is the largest of the swing states:
A red state is a one that tends to vote Republican, a blue state one that tends to vote Democrat, and a swing state one that swings between the two major parties from one election to the next.
Swing states, or battleground states, are where campaigns tend to spend the most money trying to win over undecided voters, or voters who they hope might be convinced to switch from supporting the other team to theirs.
Voters in the seven swing states are likely to decide the election this year. The states, and the number of electoral college votes up for grabs, are Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10). Together they account for 93 electoral college votes, or more than a third of what a candidate needs to win.
Swing states are less commonly referred to as “toss-up” or “purple” states – the latter referring to a mix of blue and red.
The Harris campaign event in Erie, Pennsylvania has started, but she is not yet on stage.
In case you missed this earlier:
Kamala Harris has revealed a plan to give Black men more economic opportunities, as anxiety mounts among her supporters that some in the Black community are less enthused by the Democratic presidential ticket than in recent elections, and may sit this one out – or support Donald Trump.
The vice-president’s plan includes forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships, and studying sickle cell and other diseases that disproportionately affect African American men. It also includes ensuring that Black men have more access to shaping a national cannabis industry and to invest in cryptocurrency.
Harris presented the so-called “opportunity agenda for Black men” on Monday, before speaking in the north-west corner of Erie, Pennsylvania, the country’s largest battleground state. It will be Harris’s 10th visit to Pennsylvania this election season.
Political support among Black men for the Harris-Walz campaign has been wavering somewhat. Last week, Barack Obama suggested that some Black men “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president”.
Kamala Harris will be speaking in a few minutes’ time in Pennsylvania. We’ll bring that to you live.
Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, is speaking now in Wisconsin, a swing state with 10 electoral college votes.
He is talking about the cost of insulin, small business tax credits, and the sandwich generation – people who are sandwiched between caring for their children and their parents.
Updated
When asked about Joe Biden’s comment on the possibility of election day “chaos”, Trump dismissed them, saying the real threat comes from within the country, specifically from radical leftists. “The enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries,” said Trump.
Here is the video clip of those remarks:
While we wait for that Harris rally to start in Pennsylvania, the Guardian’s Tom Breihan argues that if you want to understand Trump, you should watch 80s action movies.
He writes:
There’s a real possibility that Donald Trump sees no distinction between the terms “strongman” and “strong man”. At the presidential debate last month, Kamala Harris said world leaders were “laughing” at Trump. In response, Trump brought up his endorsement from the autocratic Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán: “One of the most respected men – they call him a strong man. He’s a tough person, smart.”
Two months before that debate, the Republican national convention played host to a strong man – or, at least, to a man who exemplified a certain 80s-kitsch version of strength.
Kamala Harris, who has embarked on a late-campaign round of high-profile interviews after being accused for weeks of avoiding the media, is seeking to highlight the increasingly authoritarian tone Trump has been striking at his rallies.
At a speech in Coachella in California on Saturday, he referred to Democratic opponents as “the enemy within”, saying they posed a bigger threat to the US than the country’s foreign foes, and targeted Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman who is running for the US Senate.
In an interview on Fox News the following day, he repeated the phrase to describe those he claimed were planning to create “chaos” on the day of the presidential election. He said the military should be deployed against them.
Trump’s use of extreme language has coincided with an increase in his vitriol to describe Harris, who he last week described as “mentally impaired”. He called her “retarded” while addressing Republican fundraisers in September, the New York Times reported.
Harris’s campaign is also trying to draw attention to what it says a dearth of mainstream interviews given by Trump, who instead has chosen to make himself available to sympathetic interviewers, such as the rightwing radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“As of today, it has been **one month** since Trump’s been interviewed by a mainstream media outlet, as he has backed out of 60 Minutes and refuses to debate again,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams posted on Twitter/X.
By contrast, Harris is due to be interviewed on Wednesday by Bret Baier on Fox News, an outlet that is usually a go-to platform for Trump but unfriendly terrain for Democrats.
Kamala Harris will this evening seek to portray Donald Trump as a potential tyrant-in-waiting who wants to jail his political opponents by seizing on his threat to use US armed forces against those he has branded “the enemy within”.
The US vice-president and Democratic nominee will hone in on the former president’s darkening campaign rhetoric at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, widely deemed the most crucial battleground state in a presidential race that multiple polls suggest will go down to the wire.
At the same time, Harris’s campaign is releasing a new campaign advert, titled The Enemy Within, featuring some of Trump’s recent ominous comments about his adversaries and warnings from two former members of his presidential administration about the danger he would pose if elected president again.
The 30-second video, complete with footage of Trump walking in front of a row of helmeted riot officers and showing troops on the street during his presidency, tries to concentrate voters’ minds with contributions from Olivia Troye, a one-time national security adviser to Mike Pence, and Kevin Carroll, a former senior counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.
“I do remember the day that he suggested that we shoot people on the streets,” Troye says in the ad, which is accompanied with a dramatic musical soundtrack.
Carroll adds: “A second term will be worse. There will be no stopping his worst instincts. Unchecked power to no guard rails. If we elect Trump again, we’re a terrible danger.”
Kamala Harris will be speaking at a rally in the all-important state of Pennsylvania (the swing state with the highest number of electoral college votes – 19) in just over an hour and fifteen minutes’ time, or 7.35pm ET.
This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage, and I’ll bring that to you as it happens.
Today So Far
Here are the major developments so far today:
Kamala Harris unveiled new policy proposals aimed at black men that include forgivable small business loans and access to a new legal recreational marijuana industry. She’ll speak about that policy in greater detail at her rally in Erie, Pennsylvania shortly – where she’s also expected to denounce Donald Trump’s statements calling for military force against “the enemy within.”
Meanwhile, Trump is also expected to speak in Pennsylvania today, at a rally just outside Philadelphia. The former president’s social media company, Truth Social, is also experiencing a resurgence as its stock value soars ahead of the election.
Harris will appear on Fox News for her first formal sit-down interview with the network on Wednesday.
Tim Walz campaigned today in Wisconsin, with senators Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin and governors Gretchen Whitmer and Tony Evers. At a stop at the University of Wisconsin, Walz warned students that Trump’s threats against the “enemy from within” meant them.
Gwen Walz, an educator and wife of the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, shared the couple’s fertility journey today in Women’s Health.
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Democratic National Committee announced that it will launch a “six-figure ad campaign” aimed at turning out Native American voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Montana and Alaska. It is the party’s third Native-focused campaign this year, and “the most the DNC has ever spent on a campaign targeting Native voters
Tim Walz is continuing his tour of Wisconsin today with Michigan and Wisconsin governors Gretchen Whitmer and Tony Evers.
Earlier in the day, Walz spoke with students at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, before touring Lambeau Field, where the Packers play, and meeting with a small contingent of Oneida Nation members.
Updated
Harris to warn of Trump presidency targeting "the enemy from within"
As Kamala Harris’ rally in Erie, Pennsylvania gets under way, the vice-president is expected to warn voters of what a future Trump presidency could look like, seizing upon the former president’s recent comments that he would deploy military force against “the enemy from within”, according to a senior campaign official.
On that theme, Harris’s campaign is also releasing a new ad, featuring Donald Trump’s former national security aides Olivia Troye and Kevin Carroll. Troye recounts an instant where Trump suggested “we shoot people in the streets” and Carroll concludes “the second term would be worse.”
Here’s Robert Tait with more:
Updated
As the Democratic National Committee announces its largest ad campaign focused on turning out Native American voters, Kamala Harris has shared her own message on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Her post on Twitter/X shows a meeting she held with young Indigenous leaders while campaigning in Arizona last week.
This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I am thinking about the young Indigenous leaders I met in Arizona last week.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 14, 2024
I am counting on their leadership and looking forward to our partnership. pic.twitter.com/jZbWxeHEkQ
Our latest polling indicates that Donald Trump holds a two-point lead over the vice-president in Arizona. In 2020, Native voters were largely credited for swinging the long-red state blue for Joe Biden.
Updated
Elon Musk’s America Pac has spent $10.1 million supporting Republican candidates across 18 competitive House races, Business Insider reports. The political action committee has spent more than $100 million this election cycle in total, the majority towards supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy.
Elon Musk's @America super PAC has now hit the $10 million it planned to spend across 18 different House races.
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) October 14, 2024
More than $100 million spent on the election overall (mostly on Trump/Harris).
Highest sum in one district was $1.2 million in NY-17 (Lawler vs. Jones). pic.twitter.com/WMdXNNLSP1
According to Business Insider, which cites FEC filings, the top three races that the Pac has funded are in New York’s 17th district, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler faces former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones; California’s 41st district, where Republican Rep. Ken Calvert faces Democratic candidate Will Rollin, and Ohio’s 13th district, where Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes faces Republican candidate Kevin Coughlin.
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called out the Biden administration for arming Israel as increasingly dire images emerge from northern Gaza.
“The horrors unfolding in northern Gaza are the result of a completely unrestrained Netanyahu gov, fully armed by the Biden admin while food aid is blocked and patients are bombed in hospitals,” she wrote on Twitter/X. “This is a genocide of Palestinians. The US must stop enabling it. Arms embargo now.”
The horrors unfolding in northern Gaza are the result of a completely unrestrained Netanyahu gov, fully armed by the Biden admin while food aid is blocked and patients are bombed in hospitals.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 14, 2024
This is a genocide of Palestinians. The US must stop enabling it. Arms embargo now.
Kamala Harris has differentiated herself from Joe Biden by expressing more sympathy for Palestinians since she joined the presidential race in July, but she’s also maintained strong support for Israel.
Here are Guardian columnists Moira Donegan and Mohamad Bazzi on how Harris should position herself on Gaza:
Updated
Walz: Trump 'crossed a line' by saying army should be used against his enemies
Speaking in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, today, Tim Walz denounced Donald Trump’s comments that armed forces should be deployed against his opponents, who he called “the enemy within”, after the election. Trump made the statement on Fox News yesterday.
Gov. Walz: Trump just crossed a line that I have to tell you, in my lifetime, I would have never imagined. He said he would deploy the military against Americans who disagree with him. He called it the 'enemy within.' To Donald Trump, anybody who doesn't agree with him is the… pic.twitter.com/aL37tWX7yz
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 14, 2024
Speaking to students at the University of Wisconsin, Walz said: “Trump just crossed a line that I have to tell you, in my lifetime, I would have never imagined. He said he would deploy the military against Americans who disagree with him. He called it the ‘enemy within’. To Donald Trump, anybody who doesn’t agree with him is the enemy.”
Read more about Trump’s comments here:
Updated
As news of Kamala Harris’s upcoming appearance on Fox News broke this morning, another headline from the network passed more quietly: former friend of Donald Trump’s and Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera announced he will be voting for Harris.
Sore Loser
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) October 14, 2024
With three weeks to go until Election Day, Donald J. Trump stands a reasonable chance of becoming the 47th President of the United States. Despite assassination attempts, impeachments, special counsels, felony convictions and hundreds of millions in civil penalties,…
On Twitter/X, Rivera shared a long post explaining his decision:
“As President [Trump] was a loyal friend, who allowed regular access. My resulting coverage gave him the benefit of most doubts. His presidency was underrated. Throughout his first big scandal in office, the 2017-2019 Mueller Investigation into allegations Trump conspired with Russia to undermine our political process, I stuck with him, deeply suspicious of constant efforts to undermine his Administration.”
“If you are a Republican, Donald Trump has made a liar of you. He has coaxed and intimidated tens of millions into pretending he was reelected in 2020, and that the election was stolen,” Rivera continued. “Former President Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution. That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris to be our 47th President.”
Updated
With both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump traveling to Pennsylvania today, CNN reports that one-fifth of all advertising money that has been spent on the race since Harris became the nominee has targeted the state.
Out of a total of nearly $1.5B that has been spent on presidential advertising since Harris became the Democratic nominee, more than 1/5 – about $312M – has targeted the PA. That’s almost $90M more than the state that has seen the next most ad spending, MI, @DavidWright_7 reports
— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) October 14, 2024
According to Guardian polling, Harris holds a narrow one-point lead in the state, while a recent New York Times report shows her four points ahead of her opponent there.
Updated
Tim Walz is campaigning today in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with senators Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin.
Joking about the support from across the political spectrum that Kamala Harris has received in recent weeks, Klobuchar told students at the University of Wisconsin: “We’re gonna see like a bus going through western Wisconsin with – I want you to picture this – Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney together holding a sign that says brat fall.”
Sens. Klobuchar & Baldwin have joined Gov. Tim Walz for a students event at UW Eau Claire.
— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) October 14, 2024
Klobuchar: “We're gonna see like a bus going through Western Wisconsin with — I want you to picture this — Bernie Sanders & Dick Cheney together holding a sign that says brat fall.” pic.twitter.com/cdpIFQ6rIV
Updated
If you were looking for a break from the election cycle this weekend, you may have taken a trip to the movies – only to find no such break to be had. The Apprentice, a two-hour biopic focused on Donald Trump’s early life, hit theaters on Friday. Here’s Victoria Bekiempis on the former president’s less-than-thrilled reaction:
Donald Trump railed against a just released biopic about his life in a social media screed early on Monday, calling it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” meant to thwart his presidential candidacy.
The Apprentice portrays how Trump created his real estate empire under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, a notoriously cutthroat attorney and power-broker in 1970s and 1980s New York City, Intelligencer notes. Trump is played by the Marvel actor Sebastian Stan and Cohn by the Succession star Jeremy Strong.
Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump is played by Maria Bakalova – whose breakout role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm landed her an Academy award nomination. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of The Apprentice indicating that portions were “fictionalized for dramatic purposes”, Intelligencer notes.
In his rant Trump described the film as “fake and classless”. Trump said he hoped it would “bomb” and alleged that it was “put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country, ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”
Updated
This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Democratic National Committee has announced that it will launch a “six-figure ad campaign” aimed at turning out Native American voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Montana and Alaska. It is the party’s third Native-focused campaign this year, and “the most the DNC has ever spent on a campaign targeting Native voters”, according to the committee.
In 2020, Native voters were crucial to swinging Arizona – a traditionally Republican state – for Joe Biden.
“Native American people will absolutely help decide the results of this election,” Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, said in a statement announcing the ads. If Kamala Harris wins the election, making Minnesota governor Tim Walz her vice-president, Flanagan would become the first Native American woman to serve as a state’s governor.
Democratic and Republican leaders have celebrated today’s holiday in markedly different ways. While the Trump campaign has tweeted “Happy Columbus Day” while saying “Radical left Marxist Kamala Harris thinks that this holiday celebrating the discovery of the Americas and the birth of western civilization is a bad thing,” the vice-president has yet to make any statement on the holiday.
Updated
A Gallup News poll released today found that Americans’ trust in the media is still at record lows, as has been the case since 2016. For the third year in a row, Gallup found that more adults have no trust at all in the media than trust it a great deal or fair amount. The news is particularly profound as election day approaches: Gallup found the media is the least trusted group among 10 civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process, such as state and local governments, the judiciary and Congress.
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. pic.twitter.com/Eg1Xy1ZHCa
— Gallup (@Gallup) October 14, 2024
In the 1970s, Gallup first reported that trust in the media hovered around 70% – though that percentage began to fall in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as about 50% of Americans reported trusting the news. Only about a third of Americans said they trusted the media in 2016.
Trust in the media correlates with party affiliation and age, Gallup reports. Currently, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Meanwhile, older Americans trust the media at higher rates than their younger peers (only 31% of Democrats between the ages of 18 and 29, versus 74% of those 65 and older).
Updated
Ex-president Bill Clinton has been campaigning for Kamala Harris in Georgia this weekend. At a campaign stop today, he told voters: “You have to realize it is literally possible that the whole election could be decided here.”
Former President Bill Clinton is in Columbus today trying to fire up Georgia Democrats ahead of the first day of early voting tomorrow. “You’ve just got to decide how bad you want this.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/YTrSMohxG9
— Jill Nolin (@jillnolin) October 14, 2024
According to our most recent polling, Donald Trump is currently leading Kamala Harris by one point in the Peach state. A recent poll from the New York Times shows the same. The state’s elections have been in the spotlight since 2020, when then Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger refused to change the election results in Trump’s favor.
For more on the state of the election, and election interference, in Georgia, consider:
Updated
Harris agrees to first-ever sit-down interview with Fox News
Kamala Harris will appear on Fox News for her first formal sit-down interview with the network on Wednesday.
BIG! VP Harris to sit down with @BretBaier on Weds, her first with FOX (and something Biden hasn’t ever done). pic.twitter.com/xIkn0f30Zg
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) October 14, 2024
The interview, with the network’s chief political anchor Bret Baier, will air Wednesday at 6pm ET.
NEW: Kamala Harris has agreed to her first-ever Fox News sit-down interview on Wednesday with @BretBaier, outside Philadelphia.
— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) October 14, 2024
Tapes in afternoon & airs at 6 p.m. Eastern. https://t.co/UV7jJwK5wN
Although the conservative outlet generally airs content that supports Republican nominee Donald Trump, the vice-president’s appearance signals the inroads she is attempting to make among Republicans. In campaign events across the country, Harris has spoken in front of banners reading “Country Over Party” and alongside guests such as Liz Cheney. Her running mate, Tim Walz, has appeared on Fox News Sunday twice this month, and other Democratic proxies such as Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, have spoken on the network in recent weeks as well.
Updated
With election day nearing, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are closely tracking every potential vote in hotly contested swing states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona. But, according to the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, there’s an issue with the Trump campaign’s software that’s made it difficult for them to know whether their ground game operation is reaching target voters. Here’s Hugo:
The Trump campaign this cycle is targeting so-called low propensity Trump voters, who are often in rural areas, as part of their bet that hitting those people who don’t typically vote but would cast a ballot for Trump if they did, could make a difference in a close election.
But the Trump campaign and the Elon Musk-backed America Pac, which is now doing an outsized portion of the Trump ground game, use a management app called Campaign Sidekick that struggles in areas with slow internet and means canvassers have to use an offline version.
The Campaign Sidekick app effectively forces canvassers who have less than 40mbps of internet – sufficient to stream 4K video – to use “offline walkbooks” which have no geo-tracking feature and do not always upload after a route is completed, the people said.
As a result, the Trump campaign and America Pac then have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or whether they are cheating – for instance, by “speed-running” routes where they literally throw campaign materials at doors as they drive past.
For more, continue reading here:
Updated
Black lawmakers are calling for an investigation of Tom Barrett, a Republican running for Michigan’s vacant seat in the House of Representatives, after his campaign published an ad in a Black-owned newspaper incorrectly listing election day as 6 November.
The complaint, filed by the Michigan Legislative Black caucus, accuses Barrett of purposely attempting to mislead Black voters to suppress their vote: “At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing. And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”
Barrett’s campaign told the Washington Post the mistake was “nothing but a proofing error”, noting other mailers it has sent to Black voters with the correct date.
Barrett is currently running against Democrat Curtis Hertel to fill the seat left vacant by Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who is running for Senate. The outcome of the race could determine which party controls the House in the new year.
Updated
Gwen Walz, an educator and wife of the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, is sharing the couple’s fertility journey today in Women’s Health.
“It’s never easy to tell this story, and I think all of us who speak about our reproductive challenges wish we didn’t have to,” Gwen Walz told the magazine.
“Earlier this year, Tim and I were in his office at the Minnesota State Capitol, getting ready to do a press conference, when we heard the news that the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that embryos have personhood, which effectively halted IVF treatments in the state as clinics and hospitals tried to figure out what to do. We looked at each other, and we were both just right back there, all those years ago, when we were trying to start our own family and going through our own fertility treatments.”
Walz goes on to describe the couple’s experience trying intrauterine insemination (a fertility treatment that her husband incorrectly referred to as IVF earlier in the campaign) and the joy they felt when they learned they had conceived their daughter Hope, who today is 23. She concludes by speaking about her sadness that Hope will not have the same reproductive freedoms, and worry that that will worsen if Donald Trump is re-elected in November, before urging readers to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket.
Updated
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both returning to Pennsylvania today – a state they and their proxies have frequented over the past month. Last week, former president Barack Obama rallied voters in Pittsburgh to vote blue downballot, while also specifically calling on Black men to support the vice-president. Meanwhile, earlier on 5 October, Trump held one of his largest rallies in Butler, the site of his near-assassination in July.
Today, Harris will rally voters in Erie – in the state’s far north-west corner – while Trump speaks just outside Philadelphia.
Although the state’s leadership is largely Democratic – Pennsylvania has elected a Democratic governor three times in a row, and both of the state’s senators are also Democrats – the margin for victory in Pennsylvania is narrow. The state’s natural gas industry could sway the election in a state that holds 19 electoral votes – the most of any swing state.
Current Guardian polling shows Harris leading the state by a narrow one-point margin, while a recent New York Times poll shows the vice-president leading in the Keystone state by four points.
We’ll be following both campaigns’ appearances in Pennsylvania today and keep you apprised of any developments.
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White House press aides scrap – Axios
Take a break for a moment from the endless campaign coverage and feverish polls speculation and enjoy an old fashioned gossipy report on in-house bickering at the White House.
The protagonists are Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security spokesperson John Kirby. Apparently, Axios gleefully reports, KJP has been “blocking” Kirby from appearances at the press podium.
“Having both of them at the podium was what Biden wanted, but Jean-Pierre thought that Kirby’s presence gave the impression she needed a chaperone, people familiar with her thinking told Axios.”
Full details here.
Truth Social stock rallies
CNN is reporting on a recent stock market rally in Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social. Truth Social has far more often been the subject of mockery and schadenfreude as its value has largely headed downwards since its stock market debut.
But CNN reports that recently it has soared.
“Up until very recently, Trump Media & Technology Group had been in meltdown mode. Its share price dropped to a record low of $12.15 on September 23, marking a stunning 82% crash from its high.
But the owner of Truth Social is enjoying a massive rebound, more than doubling its share price in less than three weeks. It spiked nearly 50% last week alone. It’s a remarkable turnaround, even for a notoriously-volatile stock that has been described as a meme stock on steroids.”
The reason? Market speculation that Trump could be heading back to the White House.
Voter registration worries for Harris in key swing states
The incredibly right races in the seven crucial battleground states have been a feature of the 2024 election almost from the start – and especially since Kamala Harris entered the race.
But Democratic jitters – already at peak intensity – are unlikely to be soothed by a Hill report showing worrying signs re – Democrat voter registration.
Key points: “Democrats’ voter registration advantage has dropped in three key battleground states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada – raising a red flag for Vice President Harris as experts cite a lack of enthusiasm for the Biden administration brand and the Democratic Party, generally, as problems.
In Arizona, another key battleground state, Republicans have seen their voter registration advantage increase substantially, which could make it tougher for Harris to carry a state that President Biden narrowly won in 2020.”
A full report here.
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Good news for Democrats in Senate
Suffice to say, that in recent days the mood among many Democrats has turned a little sour as November’s election date gets ever closer. There is deep nervousness about the state of the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, especially as poll after poll shows the crucial swing states are on a knife-edge.
But Politico has a little cheer for Democrats with an internal memo from a Repuplican Super Pac showing the party’s chances of extending power in the Senate is looking grim.
“The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states, a pattern that could sharply limit their ability to build a sizable majority unless they can force a change in the final weeks of the election,” the memo says.
More details and a full report here.
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Harris and Trump making regular appearances in key battleground state of Pennsylvania
Harris and Trump have both been making regular appearances in Pennsylvania, the country’s largest battleground state. Today will be Harris’s 10th visit to Pennsylvania this campaign, and just last week Trump made stops in both Scranton and Reading in the state.
AP provides some background on the key battleground state where both candidates will speak today:
Pennsylvania’s energy industry and natural gas fracking are likely topics as they compete for the fraction of the state’s voters who have not made up their minds. Mail-in voting is well underway in the state where some 7 million people are likely to cast votes in the presidential race.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania on his way to winning the presidency in 2016, but native Scrantonian Joe Biden edged Trump by about 80,000 votes in the state four years ago.
Harris will be holding a rally in Erie, a Democratic majority city of about 94,000 people bordered by suburbs and rural areas with significant numbers of Republicans. Erie County is often cited as one of the state’s reliable bellwether regions, where the electorate has a decidedly moderate voting record. Trump visited Erie on Sept. 29.
Trump plans a town hall Monday at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds in suburban Oaks, hoping to drive up turnout among his supporters.
Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, the most of any swing state, have long made it a center of presidential electioneering. Democrats have won three straight elections for governor and both current U.S. senators are Democrats, but its legislature is closely divided and both parties have had recent success in statewide contests.
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Three polls released yesterday show the candidates locked in a close battle for the White House.
A New York Times poll found that Harris is underperforming the last three Democratic candidates for the White House among Latino voters.
An NBC News poll showed the candidates in a “dead heat” nationally at 48% support. The poll found that voters are reassessing Trump’s first term more favourably – but also that voters view reproductive rights as a top motivating issue, which could hurt the former president after three of his US supreme court appointees eliminated the federal right to abortion.
A CBS News poll found that the presidential race is more than just two conflicting ideologies – but about a fundamental disconnection.
Each poll contained positive signs for Harris, including a five-point advantage on “looking out for middle class” (ABC); abortion being “#1 motivating issue” (NBC), with Democrat up 19 points on the issue over Trump (New York Times); Trump’s Latino support at the same level from 2020 (CBS), and also Harris matching Biden in 2020 with Black voters.
You can read more analysis of the latest polls by Edward Helmore in the story below.
In the Middle East, Iran has said it sees “no grounds” for indirect talks with the US via Oman.
“Currently we don’t see any ground for these talks, until we can get past the current crisis,” Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday, adding the process had been halted “due to the specific conditions of the region”.
It comes amid expectations that Israel could launch an attack on Iran.
On Sunday it was announced that the US will send an antimissile system to Israel as well as a crew of US military personnel to operate the system. In a statement released on Sunday, Pentagon press secretary Maj Gen Pat Ryder said that the US will send an “associated crew of US military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel’s air defenses”.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump offer two starkly different visions for the country with much at stake – from pocketbook economic issues and reproductive rights to the strength of the country’s global alliances and existential questions about the future of American democracy and the planet.
As they compete for the White House, both candidates have laid out their plans in speeches, campaign ads and media interviews. Most of it amounts to a wish list, sketched out in broad strokes and lacking concrete details about how they would be implemented or paid for. A number of Trump’s proposals raise legal questions, while some of Harris’s would probably require Democratic control of Congress.
You can see where they stand on the key issues here:
Like Trump, Kamala Harris will be in Pennsylvania this evening. The vice-president will attend an evening campaign rally in Erie, where she is to appear with Democratic senator John Fetterman.
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Kamala Harris unveiled new policy proposals aimed at black men on Monday that include forgivable small business loans and access to a new legal recreational marijuana industry, Reuters reports.
The Harris campaign and Democrats – including former president Barack Obama – have expressed deep concern about whether black males will turn out on 5 November in numbers seen in past elections and whether they will support Harris or her Republican rival.
The new policies, directly pitched at the black male electorate, include one million loans that are fully forgivable of up to $20,000 to entrepreneurs in underserved communities, and a promise to legalise recreational marijuana and help ensure black entrepreneurs have access to the new industry.
Other proposals include boosting access to the cryptocurrency industry for black Americans and launching a national health equity initiative focused on black men that addresses diseases like sickle cell, which disproportionately impacts the community.
Reuters provides more detail on the man who was arrested at a security checkpoint near a Trump rally on Saturday.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said he believed his department halted an assassination attempt, though he acknowledged that was “speculation”.
The man faces gun charges after he was found in possession of loaded firearms, multiple passports and a fake license plate. The suspect was released on bail on Saturday, jail records showed. A federal official said on Sunday that a federal investigation was underway.
“What we do know is he showed up with multiple passports with different names, an unregistered vehicle with a fake license plate and loaded firearms,” the sheriff said at a news conference yesterday. “I truly do believe that we prevented another assassination attempt.”
The 49-year-old man, identified as Las Vegas resident Vem Miller, was stopped in a black SUV by sheriff’s deputies around 5pm local time on Saturday and taken into custody without incident, according to the sheriff’s office. Trump had not yet taken the stage.
Jail records show Miller was released on $5,000 bail on Saturday after being charged with possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine.
“The incident did not impact the safety of former President Trump or attendees of the event,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
The US Attorney’s Los Angeles office, in a statement on its web site on Sunday, also said Trump was not in danger, citing the US Secret Service.
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Donald Trump will speak in Oaks, Pennsylvania, later today. News of the event, posted on Trump’s website, gives a flavour of what the candidate might speak about:
Pennsylvania voters are no stranger to the disastrous policies of the Harris-Biden administration. Pennsylvanians are paying nearly $1,000 extra per month for the same basket of goods due to Kamala’s inflation crisis. At the same time hardworking Pennsylvanians are bringing home real wages worth less and racking up more credit card debt. Gas and diesel prices hit historic highs thanks to the Harris-Biden administration’s crackdown on American energy and Pennsylvania fracking.
More broadly, Pennsylvania has been on the receiving end of America’s lopsided trade deals that have allowed foreign adversaries to hollow out our industry. Countless factories have shuttered, and countless more quality American jobs have been lost thanks the nonsensical dogma of ‘free trade.’
A Trump-Vance administration will pick up where the first Trump administration left off to fuel an American revival of strong job growth, low inflation, and prosperity for everyday Pennsylvanians. President Trump will unleash Pennsylvania energy and get back to re-writing America’s faulty trade agreements to support the Pennsylvania industrial prowess that built America.
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US officials said they were monitoring China’s military drills around Taiwan.
China launched its latest war games around the democratically-governed island in response to a speech made by Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te last week. Lai said China and Taiwan are not “subordinate to each other” and China has “no right to represent Taiwan”.
“We call on the PRC to act with restraint and to avoid any further actions that may undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, which is essential to regional peace and prosperity and a matter of international concern,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China, China’s official name.
Trump pledges an extra 10,000 border agents if elected
Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to hire an extra 10,000 border patrol agents if he is reelected as president as he steps up his hardline rhetoric on immigration, Reuters reports.
The Republican presidential candidate said he would meet the goal by asking Congress to fund a 10% pay rise for border patrol agents and a $10,000 retention and signing bonus, at a rally in the border state of Arizona, an election battleground. There are currently about 20,000 border patrol officers, so the pledge would see a sizeable increase in the force.
Flanked on stage by leaders of the Border Patrol union, who have endorsed Trump, the former president said: “This will ensure that we can hire and keep the Border Patrol agents that we need.”
Trump has noticeably hardened his anti-immigration rhetoric in the final weeks of the campaign. Last month he called immigrants in the US illegally who commit violent crimes “monsters,” “stone-cold killers” and “vile animals.” On Friday he called for the death penalty for “any migrant” who kills a US citizen.
Critics say Trump’s rhetoric reinforces racist tropes – studies generally find there is no evidence immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
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Good morning and welcome to the US elections blog with a little over three weeks to go until Americans head to the polls.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were speaking last night and are back on the campaign trail today with both expected to hold events later in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Here’s a round-up of what happened overnight in the US.
A man with a shotgun, loaded handgun, ammunition and several fake passports in his vehicle was arrested at a security checkpoint outside Donald Trump’s rally Saturday night in the Southern California desert, police said. He was released the same day on $5,000 bail. The suspect, a 49-year-old resident of Las Vegas, was driving an unregistered black SUV with a “homemade” license plate that was stopped by deputies assigned to the rally in Coachella, east of Los Angeles, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said at a news conference.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent Sunday trying to shore up political support among what they perceived to be must-have voting blocs. Polls show them locked in a tight 5 November presidential race.
Trump pledged on Sunday to hire an extra 10,000 border patrol agents if he is reelected as president. The Republican presidential candidate said he would meet the goal by asking the US Congress to fund a 10% pay rise for border patrol agents and a $10,000 retention and signing bonus, at a rally in the border state of Arizona, an election battleground.
Harris held a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, where she attacked her rival for spreading misinformation related to hurricanes Helene and Milton. “From him, we are just hearing from that same, old tired playbook,” she said. “He has no plan for how he would address the needs of the American people. He is only focused on himself.”
Both Harris and Trump will be in Pennsylvania later today. Harris is speaking in the city of Erie and Trump is on the stump in Oaks, a small community about 20 miles from Philadelphia.
Speaker Mike Johnson said that passing additional hurricane aid for states impacted by hurricanes Helene and Milton “can wait” until Congress is back in session after the election.
Three major polls were released Sunday, showing Kamala Harris either ahead of Donald Trump or running a head-to-head race.
