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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Helen Sullivan (now); with Maanvi Singh, Anna Betts and Daniel Lavelle (earlier)

Kamala Harris delivers ‘closing argument’ in Washington – as it happened

Donald Trump Joe Biden Kamala Harris Washington D.C. Puerto Rico RFK Jr Tony Hinchcliffe Yashar Ali the White House (Organization) Hillary Clinton
harris in front of cheering crowd
Kamala Harris during a campaign rally on the Ellipse in Washington on Tuesday. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

This blog is closing now, thanks for following. Here is our full story on Kamala Harris’s major address to the nation – referred to by her campaign as her “closing argument”:

Updated

Biden clarifies 'garbage' remark

US president Joe Biden has now clarified his remarks in a post on Twitter/X.

Biden said: “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage–which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”

He says that he was referring specifically to “hateful rhetoric” made by “Trump’s supporter” Tony Hinchcliffe (who he does not name) as “garbage” and not to Trump supporters in general.

Speaking at a Trump event at Madison Square Garden, Hinchliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”.

Conservatives claimed that Biden was referring to Trump supporters in general as garbage.

Biden said, according to one transcript,

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters – his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”

According to another, he said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”

From the video of Biden speaking, it is unclear which was his meaning, but he has now clarified, saying he was referring specifically to the person and his remarks.

Updated

There is some debate going on online over the transcript of Biden’s remarks – and whether his use of the word “supporters” contained an apostrophe.

Here is one version of the transcript, where Biden appears to refer to the floating garbage being that of a single “supporter” or his supporter’s floating garbage.

This could refer specifically to the comedian who made multiple racist remarks, including saying Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage” – his garbage being, presumably, the remarks he made.

So: Trump’s supporter’s remarks demonizing Latinos are the only garbage Biden sees:

However, if what Biden said contained no apostrophe, then he was saying that it was Trump’s supporters (plural) as a whole, who were themselves floating garbage.

CNN’s transcript reads as follows: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters, his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”

So: Trump’s supporters are the only floating garbage Biden sees.

The Guardian has contacted Voto Latino, which hosted the event during which Biden made the remarks, for the full video.

Updated

Robert F Kennedy Jr has claimed that if elected, Donald Trump has promised to give him “control” of multiple health and other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

RFK Jr is an anti-vaccination activist or anti-vaxxer. He became fixated on a belief that vaccines are not safe more than 15 years ago.

He emerged as one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement and his work has been described by public health experts and members of his own family as misleading and dangerous.

RFK Jr dropped out of the presidential race to support Trump.

It is unclear whether the claim is true, but Trump has said at multiple rallies, including as recently as Sunday, that he plans to give RFK Jr a role overseeing health agencies if elected.

Kennedy has said he would expect any role would involve healthcare and food and drug policy, and reportedly sought a post overseeing health and medical issues under any new Trump administration in exchange for his support.

Here is a clip of the comments from HuffPost’s Yashar Ali:

Updated

Biden has made many gaffes, though the timing of this one – a week out from the election, and as the Harris campaign appears to be gaining support as a result of the Trump campaign going low and insulting an important group of voters – is inopportune, to say the least.

In 2016, two months before she lost the election to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton said: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?”

The comments were seized on by Trump supporters as evidence of the Democrats’ contempt for some Americans. And conservatives on Twitter/X are seizing on this as a similar remark.

Here is a history of Biden’s slips:

Updated

Biden’s comments appearing to compare Trump supporters to “garbage […] floating” was made during a Zoom webinar with Voto Latino, a non-profit that encourages young Latino voters to vote.

Biden was criticising racist comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, including describing Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage”.

In the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, most of the 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent.

Updated

Trump, in his rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, compared America to a garbage can.

“It’s like we’re a giant garbage can,” he said:

Updated

The Trump campaign has responded to Kamala Harris’s speech – in which she repeatedly said “we’re not going back” and called on Americans to “turn the page and start writing the next chapter” – as “clinging to the past”, according to a statement from Trump campaign national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Updated

Conservatives are sharing a clip of Biden appearing to cal Trump’s supporters garbage on Twitter/X.

In the clip from an interview on CNN, Biden says: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung has just shared the clip, along with unfounded and false claims saying that Harris and Biden will “hate Americans and will do everything to crush us if they every hold power again”:

Updated

NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports that the White House has sought to walk back Biden’s remarks, saying that he was referring specifically to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made the racist remark referring to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”, as himself being floating garbage – and not Trump’s supporters.

A transcript of Biden’s remarks has not been published by the White House.

Updated

The US president addressed comments made by Trump and his supporters about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, saying that the only garbage he sees “floating out there is his [Trump’s] supporters”.

The Harris campaign has called Trump supporters “weird” but has otherwise been careful to avoid insulting the Republican nominee’s base as they try to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comments.

Updated

After an event in Baltimore and a nearby fundraiser, Joe Biden returned home to the White House as the crowd gathered outside for Kamala Harris’s rally.

According to the reporters trailing the president today, cheers could be heard from the driveway as his motorcade returned to the White House, one week from an election he expected to be running in. The music is throbbing, with another 45 minutes before Harris is expected to give remarks.

According to the “pool report”, Biden was in for the night, meaning there is little chance he would make a surprise appearance at the rally.

A report in Axios suggested the Harris campaign has been trying to keep its distance from Biden, viewing the unpopular president as a liability in the final days.

Biden will campaign for the Democratic ticket on Saturday, in his home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. But there are no events scheduled for him to campaign alongside Harris, who he effectively elevated after stepping aside in July.

Updated

Meanwhile in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump distorted an ongoing voter fraud investigation in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. Officials there are investigating a batch of 2,500 voter registration forms after flagging suspicious similarities between them. Some of the registrations are legitimate.

Trump falsely said at his rally just now that there have been fraudulent votes, which isn’t true. “They’ve already started cheating, 2,600 votes, he said. Every vote was written by the same person. It must be a coincidence,” he said.

The comment is an example of how Trump is priming supporters to believe there was fraud in the election to prepare for contesting a possible loss.

Updated

Kamala Harris's national address: summary

With that, Harris’s speech is over.

Harris, speaking at the National Mall in Washington, which leads to the Capitol where the 6 January 2021 insurrection happened, invoked Trump’s actions that day to portray him – not for the first time – as a dangerous leader who cared only about himself.

She contrasted that with her history as a prosecutor and protector of all Americans, especially those who are vulnerable.

She portrayed herself as pragmatic, a leader focused on uniting Americans, and part of a new generation of leadership – Harris, who just turned 60, is a generation younger than her rival, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, who she replaced on the Democratic ticket.

She also sought to portray herself as somebody who is in touch with the struggles and aims of ordinary Americans – she watched her mother work hard to save up for a house, and watched her mother worry about bills, she said at different points.

Harris also said she has “always had an instinct to protect. There is something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that frankly just gets to me. I don’t like it.”

She said that Trump would walk into the Oval Office with a list of enemies, whereas she would walk in with a “to-do list”.

Finally, she branded Trump a “petty tyrant”, comparing the moment that faces Americans next week to the war of independence that saw America become independent from the British:

Updated

Harris calls on Americans to 'turn the page and start writing the next chapter'

“In seven days, we have the power, each of you has the power, to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told. I thank you and God bless you, and God bless the United States of America,” Harris says.

Harris calls Trump a 'petty tyrant'

“I am in this race to fight for the people, just like I always have,” Harris says.

“Nearly 250 years ago America was born when we wrested power from a petty tyrant,” Harris says.

And since then, America has proved that a “government for and by the people is strong and can endure”, she says.

The patriots at Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall “did not struggle and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms. They did not do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she says.

Updated

She sees the promise of America in women who refuse to see a future without reproductive freedom and the men who support her, for Republicans who vote Democrat, she says.

“I love our country with all my heart, and I believe in its promise, because I lived it,” she says.

She was a child of the civil rights era, and was taken to marches by her parents when she was still in a stroller.

“Growing up I was blessed to have family by blood, and family by love, who instilled in me the values of community, compassion and faith that have always defined our nation at its best. I’ve lived the promise of America. I’ve spent my life fighting for the people who have been hurt and counted out, but never stopped believing,” in the promise of America, she says.

“Here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and common-sense solutions,” Harris says.

“I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to those who disagree with me,” Harris says.

Trump wants to put those who disagree with him in jail, she says, and she will “give them a seat at the table”.

“I pledge to be a president for all Americans, and to always put country above party and self.”

Updated

Trump is, “easy to manipulate with flattery or favour”, Harris says. She says the Russian and North Korean leaders want Trump to win.

“America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind: more chaos, more division, and policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else.”

Updated

Harris moves onto the border.

She has prosecuted drug smugglers, she says. As president, she will deport criminals. She will work to end cartels.

“But at the same time, we must acknowledge that we are a nation of immigrants,” she says. She will work to help dreamers: a group of people who get their name from the Dream Act, a bill that aimed to grant legal status to young immigrants living in the United States unlawfully – because they were brought into the country by their parents who were not citizens.

Updated

Harris moves on to abortion.

“The idea that a woman who survives the crime of a violation to her body should not have the power to decide what happens to her body next is immoral,” she says.

She repeats her message that people do not have to let go of their deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not have permission to tell a woman what to do with her body.

She will sign abortion into law as president, she says, to huge cheers from the crowd.

Pro-Palestinian protesters removed from venue

Several pro-Palestinian protesters are being removed from the venue. Harris is often interrupted by protests over her refusal to call for an arms embargo against Israel following its devastating invasions of Gaza and Lebanon.

Harris did not appear to hear the protesters and kept speaking without disruption.

One woman carrying the red, black and green Palestinian flag was removed. “Free Palestine,” she shouted and was drowned out by chants of “USA! USA!”

Updated

Harris repeats her policies about care giving at home. She will change medicare so that it will cover the costs of home-based medical care, she says.

She will work to make sure “hard-working Americans can afford a place to live”, she says. She remembers her own mother saving up to buy a home.

“It’s about the pride of your hard work,” she says.

There is an obvious contrast here with Trump, who inherited wealth from his property mogul father.

Updated

So far this speech is specific and practical. Harris has sought to portray herself as someone down-to-earth and in touch, a protector who gets things done, who will walk into the Oval Office “with a to-do list”, and who will work to unite Americans.

Updated

“Our top priority as a nation four years ago was to end the pandemic and rescue the economy. Now our priority is to bring down costs,” says Harris.

She says she remembers her mother sitting at a “formica table”, worrying about bills.

Trump, she says, is going to impose a Trump sales tax on everything that is important. It would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year.

Families will pay even more if “Trump finally gets his way and repeals the affordable care act”.

“We are not going back,” she says. “We are not going back,” and the crowd goes wild.

Updated

'Trump will walk in with an enemy list. I will walk in with a to-do list,' says Harris

“In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office,” she says, and the crowd erupts into chants of “Kamala! Kamala!”

“And on day one of being elected, Donald Trump will walk in with an enemy list. I will walk in with a to-do list,” she says.

Updated

“I will always tell you the truth, even if it is difficult to hear,” says Harris.

Kamala Harris acknowledges that some voters may not “know who I am”, and she introduces herself as a prosecutor who has “always had an instinct to protect. There is something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that frankly just gets to me. I don’t like it,” she says.

Updated

'It is time for a new generation of leadership,' says Harris

“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America,” says Harris.

“And I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America.”

Harris, who just turned 60 years old, is 18 years younger than Donald Trump.

'For too long we have been consumed by division,' says Harris

Harris says that America’s motto, E pluribus unum, which is Latin for “Out of many, one”, signifies that debate, and disagreement, are important: the fact that a person disagrees with you does not make them your enemy.

“As Americans we rise and fall together,” she says.

“America, for too long, we have been consumed by division,” she says, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“We have to stop pointing fingers and start linking arms,” she says.

“That is who Donald Trump is,” Harris says, but she is here to remind America: “That is not who we are.”

Updated

Harris is highlighting Trump describing those who disagree with him as “the enemy within”.

Trump is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power”, she says.

Updated

Harris invokes January 6 storming of Capitol, 'at this very place'

Harris says the vote will be between chaos and division, or freedom.

Harris says: “At this very place, [Trump] sent an armed mob to overturn a free and fair election, an election that he lost. Americans died as a result of that attack,” she says.

She reminds the crowd that Trump was told that the mob wanted to kill “his own vice-president”, Mike Pence, and responded with “two words: ‘So what?’”

Updated

Harris says next week will be, 'the most important vote you ever cast'

“So listen: one week from today you will have the chance to make a decision that directly impacts your life, the life of your family, and the future of this country that we love,” Harris says.

“And it will probably be the most important vote you ever cast.”

Updated

Kamala Harris takes stage at National Mall in Washington for major 'closing argument' address

The US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee is walking onto the stage now at Washington DC’s National Mall.

“Good evening America,” she says, over the roars of the crowd.

The crowd starts to chant: “Kamala! Kamala!”

Updated

The event is now starting with a performance of the American national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner.

Updated

Washington’s metropolitan police department chief, Pamela Smith, said in a press conference earlier on Tuesday that as many as 52,000 people were expected to attend this evening’s address, according to Fox5DC.

We’re trying to confirm how many are there – but are seeing reports that it is now so full that people are being turned away.

CBS’s Robert Costa reports that at least 1,000 people were turned away at one entrance:

Updated

The sun has gone down over Kamala Harris’s rally in Washington DC. The stage is set, as promised with a view of the White House behind her, a site her campaign hopes will remind Americans of the gravity of their choice. The crowd stretches from the Ellipse, the park outside the White House nearly to the Washington monument behind us.

The crowd just heard from a group of battleground state voters who represent parts of the broad coalition she has built. Amanda and Josh Zurawski, a young Texas couple shared their trauma after Amanda developed complications with her pregnancy and had to wait until she was at risk of losing her life before she received a life-saving abortion. They have been traveling the country on Harris’s behalf, warning about the threat Trump poses to abortion rights.

Bob and Kristina Lange, farmers from Pennsylvania who previously supported Trump, said they would “proudly support Harris this year”.

“We deserve better,” said Bob Lange, who was met with groans when he admitted to having twice voted for Trump. “It made sense because I was a Republican.” His wife, he noted, was “way ahead of the curve” and only voted for him once.

“Enough is enough,” she said.

Jenny Poon, a small business owner and mom of two young kids in Phoenix, said she and her husband mailed in their ballots before coming to DC to speak at the rally.

“Today women run our homes. They run our businesses. They run our cities.” Poon said, surrounded by her family. “And soon they’ll run this country.”

Updated

As supporters were lined up to get into the arena for Donald Trump’s rally here, a small protest descended on the street just outside the arena.

Some waved Puerto Rican flags and held signs that said Latinos for Harris-Walz.

One of the people marching was Luis Gonzalez, a retired 65-year-old truck driver from Allentown. He wore a sweater with the Puerto Rican flag stitched on it.

“The guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” he said. “I was born in Puerto Rico. That island as well as all the other islands around it are beautiful.”

“For anybody to say that it’s a garbage island – they’ve never been to the Caribbean.”

Updated

I’ve been chatting to a few voters here at Trump’s rally about their reaction to the racist joke about Puerto Rico a comic made on Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden.

Some hadn’t heard of the joke and one woman laughed when I told her. And those who had heard it didn’t think it would matter much in the election.

“It was made in poor taste, I have to admit. But Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” said Mark Melendez, 55, who is Puerto Rican and traveled to the rally from New Jersey. “I don’t think it will affect him, it might.”

Several speakers at the rally emphasized their Puerto Rican background and gave the crowd a reason to vote for Trump. Allentown and the surrounding Lehigh valley has a huge Latino population and their remarks signaled how serious an effort the campaign is to court the Latino vote.

At least one audience member is holding a sign that says “Boricuas for Trump,” using the term to that describes people of Puerto Rican dissent.

Jackie Beller, 60, who lives near Allentown thought the joke was funny.

“If you take a comedian out of context and you look at it as a serious thing, yes you would be offended,” she said.

Updated

Kamala Harris to address nation in major, 'closing argument' speech

With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.

Harris, a former prosecutor, will deliver what her campaign has called her “closing argument” intended to persuade the vanishing slice of undecided voters, in a location she hopes will remind them precisely why Americans denied Trump a second term four years ago. The Democrat is expected to cast her opponent as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.

“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign’s chair, told reporters on a call previewing the remarks on Tuesday morning. She said many Americans were “exhausted” by the tribalism and polarization Trump has exacerbated since his political rise in 2016.

Updated

Summary

While we wait for Kamala Harris to address the nation in 20 minutes’ time – in a major speech that her campaign has described as her '“closing argument” – here is a summary of the key recent developments. This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US elections coverage.

  • Kamala Harris will warn that Donald Trump is “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power” during her speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday night, according to excerpts of her remarks released by the campaign.

  • New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin. In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%.

  • The United States Postal Service issued an alert on Tuesday urging voters who choose to vote by mail to send their ballots in by today. In the message, USPS said that they “anticipate an uptick of ballots in the mail over the coming days” and recommended that voters who want to mail their ballots do so at least a week before their election office needs them to ensure it arrives in time. “If a ballot is due on Election Day, the Postal Service recommends mailing the ballot by this Tuesday” 29 October, the postal service said. USPS said that in 2020, 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days and 98.3% of ballots were delivered within three days.

  • Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist, Bad Bunny, posted a video on his Instagram on Tuesday in celebration of Puerto Rican culture. The post comes in response to the insulting remarks made at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday against the island, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”. Bad Bunny’s eight-minute long video, posted to his more than 45 million followers on Tuesday, is captioned “garbage” and highlights Puerto Rican culture, history and people over inspirational music.

  • Puerto Rico’s Largest Newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President as of Tuesday morning. “On Sunday, continuing a pattern of contempt and misinformation that Donald Trump has maintained for years against the eight million of us American citizens who are Puerto Ricans, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted us during a Republican Party event by referring to Puerto Rico as ‘an island of garbage in the ocean’” the statement from the newspaper reads.

  • Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of George W Bush and granddaughter of George HW Bush, has revealed that she is campaigning for Kamala Harris. In an interview with People Magazine, Pierce Bush said that she is “hopeful” that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights”.

  • Donald Trump held a press conference at his Florida residence and described the marathon New York rally that he held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan two days ago – which has been widely condemned for racist remarks from speakers - as a “love fest”. He said: “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

  • JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has been rallying in Saginaw in the swing state of Michigan, 100 miles north of Detroit, and criticized opposing politicians calling Trump a fascist in the last week. That includes Harris, whom Vance, a US Senator from Ohio, called unqualified to be president.

  • Jennifer Lopez will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Harris campaign has announced. Lopez will speak on the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election, and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the Harris campaign said.

  • The White House announced that Joe Biden will travel to his childhood home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania for political engagements on Saturday. The US president has campaigned often in the city as a way of reminding the electorate of his working class roots and pro-union politics.

  • Rapper 50 Cent said that he turned down a $3m offer to perform at Trump’s controversial rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, according to Variety magazine. Deadline also reported that 50 Cent also confirmed that he was also offered money to perform at the Republic National Convention in the summer, but turned it down because he prefers to stay away from party politics.

  • New polling has found that Trump’s support among young Black men has decreased since August, while Harris’s has grown. A new NAACP survey, conducted between 11 and 17 October, found that 21% of Black men under 50 years old said they would for the former president, down from 27% in August. Harris’s support among this group jumped from 51% to 59 % over that same time frame, the researchers said.

  • Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump Maga ally, is back on air hosting his podcast after being released from prison this morning. He served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena related to the investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump who were intent on overturning his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

  • Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released today. And more than 48.6 million Americans have reportedly voted early in this year’s presidential election.

In Allentown, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign is doing damage control after a comedian made racist comments about Puerto Rico at the former president’s Madison Square Garden rally this weekend.

Several speakers in Allentown were Puerto Rican: pastor Robert Albino, Shadow US senator from Puerto Rico Zoraida Buxó Santiago and former mayoral candidate Tim Ramos.

About a quarter of Allentown’s population is Puerto Rican and voters there could play a decisive role in the election in this swing state.

At Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, Tony Hinchcliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist remarks, described Puerto Rico, home to 3.2 million US citizens, as an “island of garbage”.

Updated

Kamala Harris will call on voters to 'turn the page' in Washington DC speech

With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.

Harris, a former prosecutor, will deliver what her campaign has called her “closing argument” intended to persuade the vanishing slice of undecided voters, in a location she hopes will remind them precisely why Americans denied Trump a second term four years ago. The Democrat is expected to cast her opponent as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.

“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign’s chair, told reporters on a call previewing the remarks on Tuesday morning. She said many Americans were “exhausted” by the tribalism and polarization Trump has exacerbated since his political rise in 2016.

Although the vice-president frames the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of US democracy, her speech is expected to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone, standing in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden.

“That’s why people are exhausted with him,” Harris said before boarding Air Force Two, where she worked on the speech with advisers on the plane. “People are literally ready to turn the page.”

Updated

How a rightwing machine stopped Arkansas’s effort to roll back one of the strictest abortion bans

In July, a dedicated network of about 800 grassroots organizers in Arkansas had collected the necessary signatures to get a measure on the 5 November ballot that – if passed – would have changed Arkansas’s constitution to protect the right to abortion for any reason up to 18 weeks of pregnancy. It also would have legalized exceptions for abortion after 18 weeks, including in cases involving rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies, and life and health of the mother.

The measure did not provide the same rights that existed under Roe – which protected abortion until viability, or around 24 weeks – a fact that organizers said kept national organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU from getting involved in the effort. But organizers believed that it was a measure that even conservative voters would support. After all, voters in neighboring Kansas, another Republican stronghold, overwhelmingly voted to protect abortion rights when its ballot was put to voters in a referendum in 2022.

To the dismay and shock of the grassroots organizers, however, the Arkansas initiative was ultimately quashed before it ever reached voters. A paperwork error by organizers prompted a legal challenge by Arkansas’s secretary of state, John Thurston, who rejected the abortion amendment. On 22 August, the Arkansas supreme court upheld his decision.

For Arkansas women, there is no end in sight.

A Guardian investigation into the ballot’s demise tells a more complicated story than just a bureaucratic screw-up, revealing a confluence of rightwing actors working in parallel to ensure it never got to voters: a reclusive donor who has helped shape the anti-abortion movement across the US; the inner circle of the Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has proclaimed Arkansas “the most pro-life state in the country”; and judges who are supposed to be non-partisan but are deeply aligned with the state’s Republican party.

Updated

The Stakes: if Trump wins the election, Nato can expect more turbulence ahead

Politeness and convention dictate that European leaders try to sound noncommittal when asked whether a Donald Trump presidency would hurt Nato. But despite the rhetoric about “Trump-proofing”, Nato cohesion will be at risk from a hostile or isolationist Republican president, who has previously threatened to leave the alliance if European defence spending did not increase.

“The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter. “Take the new Nato command centre to coordinate assistance for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is inside a US army barracks, relying on US logistics and software.”

US defence spending will hit a record $968bn in 2024 (the proportion the US spends in Europe is not disclosed). The budgets of the 30 European allies plus Canada amount to $506bn, 34% of the overall total. It is true that 23 out of 32 members expect to spend more than 2% of GDP on defence this year, but in 2014, when the target was set, non-US defence spending in Nato was 24%. Lower than now but not dramatically so.

There are more than 100,000 US personnel stationed in Europe, more than the British army, a figure increased by more than 20,000 by Joe Biden in June 2022 in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. US troops have long been based in Germany, but a 3,000-strong brigade was moved by Biden into Romania, a forward corps command post is based in Poland, and US troops contribute to defending the Baltic states, while fighter and bomber squadrons are based in the UK and five naval destroyers in Spain.

Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, was recently asked whether Nato was ready for Trump. “Elections will have a result whatever,” he began, before acknowledging that much of Europe had been slow to increase defence budgets, missing the warning of Russia’s capture of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and only reacting substantively in 2022 after Russia’s full invasion. “What we did was push the snooze button and turn around,” Pistorius said.

Read the full analysis here:

Updated

In Wisconsin’s case, Kennedy had asked the supreme court to remove him from the ballot by covering his name with stickers, which officials said would be a herculean task.

The state’s law prohibits the removal of a nominee’s name from the ballot, stating that “any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination”, with the only exception being in the case of that candidate’s death.

Similarly, in Michigan, officials said that Kennedy’s request would be impossible to fulfill, requiring counties reprint and distribute new ballots, which would cause delays.

Kennedy’s arguments to have his named removed from swing state ballots run contrary to his assertions in a New York case, where he fought to remain on the ballot after he was disqualified for listing a friend’s address as his residence.

Updated

Supreme court rejects appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from swing state ballots

The highest court rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, a third-party presidential candidate that has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Kennedy wanted to have himself remove from the ballots in these key swing states, arguing that keeping him on would violate his first amendment rights. But with early voting already under way, Wisconsin and Michigan said that removing him from the ballot now would be impossible.

It is unclear how Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will affect the election, and how many voters might choose to cast votes for Kennedy who would otherwise have voted for Trump.

Updated

At the business roundtable in Pennsylvania, a woman from Puerto Rico who worked as a Medicare provider asked Trump about his plans for the health program.

The campaign’s emphasis on the questioner’s Puerto Rican heritage was, no doubt, a way to manage the fallout from a comedian’s racist comments about the island during Trump’s rally this weekend. She told the former president that Puerto Ricans stand behind him.

“I think no president said more for Puerto Rico than I have,” Trump responded, noting that the administration had approved aid for the island after Hurricane Maria. (It’s worth noting that his administration “unnecessarily” delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico due to bureaucratic obstacles, according to an internal review)

The roundtable is being hosted by Building America’s Future, an Elon Musk-funded Super Pac that has been putting out misleading campaign ads about Harris.

Updated

At a business roundtable in Pennsylvania, where he was billed to discuss issues impacting senior citizens, Donald Trump is repeating a stump speech about migrants at the US border.

He told the crowd of supporters that he doesn’t believe polls showing that the economy and inflation are the top issues for voters. “I think this is the biggest senior issue,” Trump said about migration. “They’re destroying our country, they’re ruining our country,” he said of migrants.

As his campaign seeks to manage the fallout from this Madison Square rally, where a comedian’s racist joke about Puerto Rico has unleashed angry backlash, Trump has not scaled back any of the anger, vitriol or racist rhetoric that has been at the core of his message to voters.

In his rambling comments, Trump also touched on transgender rights, lying that Democrats “want transgender operations for almost everybody in the world”.

Updated

Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.

The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.

A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.

The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.

The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.

The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”.

Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”.

But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll.

“We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.

Updated

In her remarks this evening, Kamala Harris is also expected to say that returning Trump to power will bring “more chaos” and “more division”.

“I offer a different path,” she will say, in a speech dedicated to the still-undecided slice of US voters. “And I ask for your vote.”

Harris will pledge to “seek common ground and commonsense solutions”.

“Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table,” Harris is expected to say.

The Democrat has built a broad coalition that includes conservative anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman and her father, the former vice-president Dick Cheney.

“I pledge to be a President for all Americans,” Harris will say, “to always put country above party and above self.”

Updated

Harris to warn Trump is 'unstable' and 'out for unchecked power' in Tuesday speech

Kamala Harris will warn that Donald Trump is “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power” during her speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday night, according to excerpts of her remarks released by the campaign.

“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” she will say. “But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are.”

Harris is attempting to cast herself as a unifying figure who will work for “all Americans” as president, regardless of who they voted for in the November election, drawing a sharp contrast with Trump who has threatened a campaign of retribution against his political enemies. It’s a similar approach Biden took in the waning days of the 2020 election, but healing the tribalism and polarization proved elusive.

Harris suggests that her election would “turn the page” on the Trump era entirely, though there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that Trump would accept his defeat and retreat from the national stage.

Updated

At his press conference, Steve Bannon also flirted with the idea that Democrats would try to steal the 2024 election from Trump.

He also continued to deny the results of the 2020 election, though there is no credible evidence of misconduct that undermines the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

“Were going to have a reprise of 2020 where they’re going to do everything humanly possible to nullify” Trump’s victory and “delegitimize his second term”.

“The working-class people in this country that support Donald John Trump are not going to let that happen.”

“The 2020 election was stolen,” Bannon said later.

During a question-and-answer session, some sort of apparent interloper – it was unclear whether this was a comedian or performance artist or someone else entirely – asked Bannon: “When’s the next insurrection, and can we storm the Burger King after this?”

This person appears to have been escorted out of the press conference.

Updated

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, about 12 hours after his release from prison, Steve Bannon railed against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, attorney general Merrick Garland and Harris, again claiming that he was a “political prisoner”.

“The system is broken,” he said, claiming the justice department was “weaponized” to punish Trump supporters and gut his popular podcast, in an effort to thwart Maga’s influence.

Bannon also claimed that he met a lot of “working class minorities” behind bars, saying he listened to, and learned from, them. They disliked Harris, he claimed, referring to the former prosecutor as the “queen of mass incarcerations”.

Doubling down on his War Room statements this morning, where Bannon insisted that prison had empowered him, he also said: “Nancy Pelosi, suck on that.”

Bannon also thanked the prison for giving him the opportunity to teach civics to about 100 students, noting that he had Puerto Rican and Dominican students. Bannon discussed his encounters with people of color at several points today, in an apparent effort to deflect anti-Latino commentary from Trump supporters.

Updated

Nearly 3.2 million voters have cast ballots in the 2024 general election in North Carolina as of Tuesday at noon.

The North Carolina state board of elections made the announcement on Tuesday, adding that 3.2 million voters represents a turnout of 40.7% of registered voters in the state.

Just over 3m of the votes were cast in-person, and about 170,000 were cast via mail in ballot.

Through the end of the day on Monday, more than 2.9 million voters had cast ballots in person during the first 12 days of the early voting period, which the elections officials said was an increase of 11.9% compared with 2020.

Interestingly, turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene continue to outpace statewide turnout, the election board added.

Updated

JLo to rally with Harris in Las Vegas

Jennifer Lopez will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Harris campaign has announced.

Lopez will speak on the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election, and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the Harris campaign said.

Mexican pop band Maná, will also perform at that rally.

Updated

Bad Bunny posts apparent response to racist Puerto Rico joke at Trump rally

Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist, Bad Bunny, posted a video on his Instagram on Tuesday in celebration of Puerto Rican culture.

The post comes in response to the insulting remarks made at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday against the island, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

Bad Bunny’s eight-minute long video, posted to his more than 45 million followers on Tuesday, is captioned “garbage” and highlights Puerto Rican culture, history and people over inspirational music.

On Sunday, Bad Bunny, whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, signalled his support for Kamala Harris, sharing a video of the vice-president on his Instagram just moments after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the remarks about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally.

Updated

Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice, said the speakers at Trump’s rally on Sunday makes clear that his nativist movement will never see “Latinos or immigrants are real Americans.”

Cárdenas pointed to comments made by Stephen Miller, an influential immigration adviser to Trump. Speaking at the same Sunday rally, Cardenas pointed to Miller’s declaration: “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

“These words reveal their thinking. In their eyes we are not real Americans, and as far as Trump and his team are concerned, we will never be,” she said. “It foreshadows the sort of administration they would run.”

Updated

Puerto Ricans are heavily concentrated in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia but they have a presence in all 50 states Hispanic leaders and Activists said on a call on Tuesday responding to the racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Trump’s rally on Sunday.

Alex Gomez, executive director of LUCHA based in Arizona, said there were approximately 64,000 Puerto Ricans living in the state, which was decided by 10,000 votes in 2020.

“Trump is showing us who he is,” Gomez said. “This is our warning signal of the types of policies and what he and the people that follow him believe and so our communities are not going to stand for that.”

She said her organization has a goal of knocking on 500,000 doors before election day, next Tuesday.

“We will make sure that our communities know what he has said,” she said.

A racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday was the “October surprise for the Latino community”, said Gustavo Torres, head of CASA in Action, a Latino and immigrant organization.

Torres said his organization would work to inform Latino voters every day for the next week until election day. Trump, he said, “humiliate[s] and … underestimate[s] the Puerto Rican Community and the Latino community.”

Polls suggest Trump has made notable inroads with Latino voters, particularly men and young people, despite his persistent attacks on immigrant communities and his pledge of mass deportations. The Hispanic leaders and activists on Tuesday’s call predicted a backlash that could cost Trump not only his support among Latinos but possibly the election.

“We are going to see what is going to happen on November 5,” Torres told reporters on Tuesday.

“Until he apologises and directly disavows those comments, it will leave a stain of racism and bigotry on him and his campaign for the Latino community,” said Janet Murguia, President, UnidosUS Action Fund. “If he understands the importance of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania and Georgia in particular, it would be in his interest to at least make that effort.”

Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper endorses Kamala Harris for president

Puerto Rico’s Largest Newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President as of Tuesday morning.

“On Sunday, continuing a pattern of contempt and misinformation that Donald Trump has maintained for years against the eight million of us American citizens who are Puerto Ricans, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted us during a Republican Party event by referring to Puerto Rico as ‘an island of garbage in the ocean’” the statement from the newspaper reads.

It continues, “Is that what Trump and the Republican Party think about Puerto Ricans? Politics is not a joke and hiding behind a comedian is cowardly.”

The newspaper said that Trump “has for years maintained a discourse of contempt and misinformation against the island” pointing out the time Trump, as president, threw paper towels into a crowd after Hurricane Maria, “while we suffered without electricity for months.”

Later in the lengthy piece, the newspaper asks readers, “Is this the great America we want?”.

“On Sunday, as insults rained down on Puerto Rico, the Democratic candidate offered a message of hope, promising to maintain the interagency group dedicated exclusively to strengthening and creating new opportunities” the piece states.

In its conclusion, the newspaper writes: “today we urge all those who love our beautiful island, the land of the sea and the sun, not to lend their vote to Donald Trump. To all Puerto Ricans who can vote in this upcoming United States election and represent those of us who cannot: Vote for Kamala Harris.”

Former Michigan GOP Chair Rusty Hills has spoken out against Trump in a new opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press published on Tuesday.

In the article, titled ‘Trump’s no Gerald Ford. He’s not even George W Bush’ Hills outlines the ways in which Trump is different from former Republican candidates for president.

Hills pointed to Trump’s character, rhetoric, offensive insults toward political opponents, praise of Russia, and language regarding immigrants, among other differences he sees between Trump and former GOP candidates.

He then asks the readers:

Why would any Republican in Michigan who voted for Gerald Ford – or Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush or George W Bush, Sens. John McCain or Mitt Romney – ever cast a ballot for someone like Donald Trump?

Hills, who teaches at the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, then writes:

The answer is clear – they shouldn’t.

New polling shows Harris and Trump deadlocked in Arizona and Nevada

New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin.

In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%.

In Nevada, Trump received 48% support among likely voters, and Harris received 47%.

It is important to point out that these numbers are within the margins of error for these polls.

Send your mail-in ballot today, USPS tells voters

The United States Postal Service issued an alert on Tuesday urging voters who choose to vote by mail to send their ballots in by today.

In the message, USPS said that they “anticipate an uptick of ballots in the mail over the coming days” and recommended that voters who want to mail their ballots do so at least a week before their election office needs them to ensure it arrives in time.

“If a ballot is due on Election Day, the Postal Service recommends mailing the ballot by this Tuesday” 29 October, the postal service said.

USPS said that in 2020, 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days and 98.3% of ballots were delivered within three days.

Updated

Obama says he tells young American men voting is their birthright

Barack Obama has posted a clip on X of himself on The Pivot podcast where he recalls how he regularly talks to young men and tells them “do not let people think you do not belong.”

He said that he tells them that people with power, “fancy” titles and wealth are just the same as everyone else when you get up close to them. “They just folk,” he said.

The former US president, who is currently campaigning to get Kamala Harris elected to the White House next month, said that such young men are amazed when he tells them of some of the struggles of his youth and that “I was getting high, screwing around” and understands they are sometimes “not doing what they are supposed to do”. But then he tells them they have the power to make choices.

“There is no reason why you cannot pursue the dreams you want, and politics is part of that and voting is part of that. That’s your birthright as a citizen, do not give it away,” he said.

A federal judge today threw out a lawsuit by six Republican members of Congress seeking to make Pennsylvania election officials institute new checks confirming the identity of soldiers, sailors, and others who vote from overseas and to make sure they’re eligible.

US district judge Christopher Conner said he agreed with the defendants – Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Al Schmidt, and one of his top deputies – who argued there were no grounds to sue and that the case was launched too late and too close to Election Day, the Associated Press reports.

The Pennsylvania congressmen:

Provide no good excuse for waiting until barely a month before the election to bring this lawsuit,” Conner wrote.

More than 25,000 overseas ballots had already been sent out when the case was filed in late September, the judge noted.

The lawsuit was filed by six of the state’s eight Republican members of the US House: Representatives Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, GT Thompson, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly and Scott Perry. The other plaintiff is PA Fair Elections, a group led by Heather Honey, an election researcher whose work has fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures.

Donald Trump falsely said Democrats had staged a “coup” to force Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid, as his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, planned a rally in Washington DC, that will remind voters of the violent attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.

At an event at his Florida estate, his accusation that Democrats had unfairly forced Biden out of the race recalled Trump’s false claims that he had lost the 2020 election due to fraud, Reuters reports.

They stole the presidency of the United States. You can call it a coup, you can call it whatever. But they stole it. The way they took that away from him was not right,” Trump said.

Harris is due to hold a rally this evening at the Ellipse, a park near the White House where on 6 January 2021, Trump once again urged supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the US Capitol, where lawmakers were due to certify his loss.

Four people died in the ensuing riot, and one police officer who defended the Capitol died the following day. Trump has said if he is re-elected he would pardon the more than 1,500 participants who have been charged with crimes.

Harris will call on Americans tonight to “turn the page” on Trump while stressing her plans to lower costs and make the economy work for middle-class Americans, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters.

Updated

Summary

Hello, US election live blog readers, it’s a packed day on the campaign trail for all the candidates, with just a week left before election day next Tuesday. We’ll bring you the news as it happens.

Here’s where things stand:

  • Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of George W Bush and granddaughter of George HW Bush, has revealed that she is campaigning for Kamala Harris. In an interview with People Magazine, Pierce Bush said that she is “hopeful” that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights”.

  • Donald Trump held a press conference at his Florida residence and described the marathon New York rally that he held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan two days ago – which has been widely condemned for racist remarks from speakers - as a “love fest”. He said: “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

  • JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has been rallying in Saginaw in the swing state of Michigan, 100 miles north of Detroit, and criticized opposing politicians calling Trump a fascist in the last week. That includes Harris, whom Vance, a US Senator from Ohio, called unqualified to be president.

  • The White House announced that Joe Biden will travel to his childhood home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania for political engagements on Saturday. The US president has campaigned often in the city as a way of reminding the electorate of his working class roots and pro-union politics.

  • Rapper 50 Cent said that he turned down a $3m offer to perform at Trump’s controversial rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, according to Variety magazine. Deadline also reported that 50 Cent also confirmed that he was also offered money to perform at the Republic National Convention in the summer, but turned it down because he prefers to stay away from party politics.

  • New polling has found that Trump’s support among young Black men has decreased since August, while Harris’s has grown. A new NAACP survey, conducted between 11 and 17 October, found that 21% of Black men under 50 years old said they would for the former president, down from 27% in August. Harris’s support among this group jumped from 51% to 59 % over that same time frame, the researchers said.

  • Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump Maga ally, is back on air hosting his podcast after being released from prison this morning. He served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena related to the investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump who were intent on overturning his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

  • Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released today. And more than 48.6 million Americans have reportedly voted early in this year’s presidential election.

Updated

Kamala Harris and her allies have lately stepped up their accusations that Donald Trump is a fascist.

They were aided last week by his former chief of staff John Kelly saying publicly that he believes his ex-boss met the definition of a politician who believes in the governing philosophy typically associated with the Nazis.

In Saginaw, Michigan on Tuesday, JD Vance accused Democrats of being disrespectful with that accusation, comparing it to the experience of a World War II veteran who had led the pledge of allegiance earlier in the event.

“Rather than persuade their fellow Americans, they’ve decided that they’re going to call their fellow Americans Nazis and fascists. And I think it’s disgusting ... and a person who would close out her campaign by running and attacking her fellow Americans has no business leading the greatest nation on Earth,” Vance said.

“It occurs to me that when they attack us as Nazis, it’s so disgraceful because there are people in this room right now who have grandparents, who have parents, or who they themselves fought in World War II.”

Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former Republican president George W Bush and granddaughter of former president George HW Bush, has revealed that she is campaigning for vice-president Kamala Harris.

In an interview with People Magazine, Pierce Bush said that she is “hopeful” that Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights.”

She added that over the weekend, she campaigned in Pennsylvania for the Harris-Walz campaign.

“It was inspiring to join friends and meet voters with the Harris-Walz campaign in Pennsylvania this weekend,” she said.

Updated

A woman in Minnesota has been charged with three felonies for allegedly attempting to submit a mail in ballot for her recently deceased mother, according to the Associated Press.

The probable cause statement reported by AP revealed that during an interview with a sheriff’s lieutenant, the woman admitted to filling out her mother’s ballot after her death and that her mother was an “ardent” Trump supporter who had wanted to vote for him before she died.

The Star Tribune also reported that the woman signed her late mother’s signature on two absentee ballots.

Trump defends Madison Square Garden rally as 'love fest'

During his speech on Tuesday, former president Donald Trump described his New York rally, which has been widely condemned for racist remarks, as a “love fest”.

“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden …” Trump told a crowd at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

“Politicans that have been doing this for a long time said there’s never been an event so beautiful, it was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.”

Updated

Joe Biden has been underwater in public opinion polls for most of his presidency, a problem that came to a head in his disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June, which set off a chain of events that led to Kamala Harris taking his place atop the Democratic ticket.

JD Vance’s message to voters in Saginaw today – he’s focusing most of his time talking about Harris and not her running mate Tim Walz, who he debated earlier this month – is that Harris and Biden are substantively the same – and the vice-president has nothing new to offer.

“I think the fact that so many of our fellow citizens are telling us they’re worse off, and they’re telling us that because they are, that explains why Kamala Harris is going around running as far away as she can from the policies of Joe Biden” Vance said.

He continued, “in fact, you know, between her copying Donald Trump’s policies and her pretending that she doesn’t even know who Joe Biden is, I’m half convinced that tomorrow on the campaign trail, Kamala Harris is going to show up in a long red tie and a red Maga hat, realizing that the American people just haven’t had it anymore.”

Vance mocked Harris, saying: “She’s copying all of Donald Trump’s policy, she might as well copy [his] style too. You know, just complete the bit Kamala. It’s not working so far. Just lean into it a little bit more.”

Poll after poll has shown that Americans feel the country is on the wrong path, and are looking for change. Speaking in Saginaw today, JD Vance sought to convince voters in the seat of a county that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 then Joe Biden four years later that the Democratic vice-president would not transform the country in the ways that they want:

“As much as Kamala Harris pretends that she is the candidate of change, she is the sitting vice president, she signed off, she bragged about being the last person in the room after the disastrous policies the last four years were made” Vance said.

He continued: “You cannot, Kamala Harris, pretend that you had nothing to do with the Biden administration when you are the sitting vice president. You can’t pretend you had nothing to do with the trillions of dollars in new spending when you cast the tie-breaking vote on trillions of dollars in new spending, you cannot pretend to be the candidate of change when your party has been running the show for the last four years, and the American people have suffered because of it.”

JD Vance was never involved with “The Apprentice”, the reality show that made Donald Trump even more of a household name before he entered politics.

But in his speeches, the Ohio senator and vice-presidential nominee has adopted Trump’s “you’re fired” catchphrase from the show.

During his remarks on Tuesday in Michigan, Vance said:

I think in seven days, the great state of Michigan is going to tell Kamala Harris, we don’t want any more [of] your word salad. We don’t even want any more of your broken policies. You are fired. Go back to California, where [you] already belong. We want a real president who fights for the American people.

Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are all swing states that helped put Trump in the White House eight years ago, but which Joe Biden reconquered in 2020. This year, polls show voters in all three are essentially evenly divided between Trump and Harris.

JD Vance continued on with one of several attacks he would make on the Democratic vice-president over the course of his speech.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life where, when you ask Kamala Harris what she wants to do for the American people, ask specifically Kamala Harris, how do you plan to fix the inflation that your policies have caused, how do you plan to make it more affordable for our fellow citizens to be able to buy groceries, for example? How are you going to fix the very problems that your policies created? She’ll say, Well, I grew up in a middle class family” Vance said.

He continued “and when you ask her, you know about the terrible chaos at the southern border, or the chaos that we have all over the globe, how are you going to address the problems that your policies cause? She’ll say, well, you know, when I worked at McDonald’s, I was really good at making the hash browns. And I don’t know if I even buy that.”

JD Vance just took the stage here at a city recreation center in Saginaw, Michigan, where he explained to the crowd why he believes Kamala Harris is not qualified to lead the country.

“We all agree, in this room, that politics is a little absurd from time to time, and sometimes we ought to poke fun at the absurdity of our political process. But you know what’s the most absurd thing about American politics in 2024? That a person like Kamala Harris thinks she can actually lead the United States of America,” the Ohio senator told the crowd as he campaigns in one of the “Blue Wall” swing states that Republicans are hoping to win this year.

The White House has announced that president Joe Biden will travel to his childhood home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania for political engagements on Saturday, 2 November.

Biden last visited Scranton in September to attend the funeral of one of his childhood friends.

Vice-president Kamala Harris’s campaign will become the first political campaign to advertise on the Las Vegas Sphere.

The news was first reported on Tuesday by 8 News Now in Las Vegas, which added that the ads will coincide with Harris’s visit to Las Vegas on Thursday.

The campaign hopes the imagery will reach millions of voters in Nevada and online, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign told the outlet.

Josh Marcus Blank, who does communications for the Harris campaign also posted the news on Tuesday.

Trump addresses crowd at Mar-a-Lago

Trump is now speaking to a crowd at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

The former president opened his remarks by referring to a story out of Pennsylvania this week where hundreds of ballot applications are being investigated for potential fraud.

Trump then quickly moved on to attacking vice-president Kamala Harris and is now discussing the issue of immigration in the United States.

Trump so far not addressed the controversial remarks made by a comedian at the Trump rally on Sunday at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where Puerto Rico was described as a “floating island of garbage.”

Updated

American rapper 50 Cent said that he turned down a $3m offer to perform at Donald Trump’s controversial rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, according to Variety.

In an interview on Tuesday morning on “The Breakfast Club” host DJ Envy asked the rapper whether it’s true that Trump offered him money to endorse him, to which he responded yes, adding “I got a call, but they wanted me [for] Sunday.”

“They offered three million dollars to do it,” 50 Cent added.

Deadline also reported that 50 Cent also confirmed that he was also offered money to perform at the Republic National Convention, but turned it down because he prefers to stay away from politics.

As we wait for former president Donald Trump to take the stage for his press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida – where he is more than an hour behind schedule – a new poll of voters in Michigan was released today showing how Trump and Kamala Harris are neck and neck in the key battleground state.

The survey, conducted by Emerson College Polling/RealClearWorld between October 25-27, found that among Michigan voters 49% support Trump, while 48% support Harris.

2% were undecided and 1% plan on voting for a third party.

“With one week until Election Day, the race remains a toss-up,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.

Updated

Harris support among young Black men grows as Trump's dips, poll suggests

New polling has found that Donald Trump’s support among young Black men has decreased since August, while Kamala Harris’s has grown.

A new NAACP survey, conducted between Oct. 11-17, found that 21% of Black men under 50 years old said they would for the former president, down from 27% in August.

Harris’s support among this group jumped from 51% to 59 % over that same time frame, the researchers said.

Updated

JD Vance will sit for an interview with Joe Rogan tomorrow for his podcast.

The interview is expected to drop later this week, and will be taped in Rogan’s studio in Austin, according to CNN.

This comes just several days after the popular podcast host interviewed Donald Trump.

On Tuesday morning, Rogan said on social media Kamala Harris’s campaign has not “passed on doing the podcast” but that they only offered one hour, and he would have to travel to her.

Rogan said that he feels “strongly” that the best way to do the interview is in his studio in Austin, Texas and that his wish was just to “have a nice conversation” with Harris and “get to know her as a human being.”

“I really hope we can make it happen” he added.

Updated

Trump set to deliver remarks to press at Mar-a-Lago

Any moment, Donald Trump is set to deliver remarks to the press from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The event was scheduled for 10am ET but appears to be running 20 or so minutes behind.

The press conference on Tuesday morning comes as Trump and his campaign continue to face backlash for racist and vulgar comments made at Trump’s New York City campaign rally on Sunday.

If Trump opens up the room to questions on Tuesday, it is likely that Trump will face questions about the comments at this press conference.

Updated

After being released from prison this morning, Steve Bannon, the longtime Donald Trump ally, is back on air hosting his podcast – War Room.

The live-stream podcast episode “The Return of Steve Bannon” began at 10 am ET this morning, just hours after his release.

Bannon is also reportedly planning to hold a press conference later on Tuesday in Manhattan.

Bannon spent four months behind bars after he was convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Updated

40,000 people expected for Harris speech in Washington, DC

The National Park Service has said that it is expecting about 40,000 people in attendance for Kamala Harris’s speech this evening on the Ellipse in Washington DC, according to the New York Times.

Updated

Kamala Harris will lay out her vision for the presidency in a speech this evening near the White House to underscore the “gravity” of the choice before Americans this November, her campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters in a call previewing the speech.

A former prosecutor, Harris will lay out the speech as she would a closing argument, with the American people as the jury, campaign co-Chair Cedric Richmond. She has been laying out the evidence for the last 100 days, and now she is prepared to rest her case.

Richmond said Harris will use the speech, from a site where Trump spoke to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6, to remind Americans that the former president is “so all-consumed by his grievances and his power and his endless desire for revenge that he is not focused on the needs of the American people.”

Harris is also expected to lay out her personal story and her vision for building up the economy and working across party lines to serve “all Americans” – including, in contrast to Trump, she will argue, those who did not support her.

O’Malley Dillon said the speech is dedicated to reaching voters who have yet to make up their minds- or aren’t sure they will vote – young people, those who haven’t tuned in and suburban women, and independents. O’Malley Dillon said Trump’s rhetoric in the final weeks and especially his Madison Square Garden rally appears to have created even more openings for the campaign to reach these voters. Support among their targeted Puerto Rican voters is growing.

“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” O’Malley Dillon said. The campaign, she said, considers the contes a “margin-of-error race.”

USA Today has joined the Washington Post and LA Times in not endorsing a candidate for this election — report

USA Today has reportedly joined the Washington Post and the LA Times in deciding not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

USA Today, which has over 200 US news outlets under it, including the Arizona Republic, The Des Moines Register, and the Detroit Free Press, is one of the largest daily newspapers by circulation in the country.

On Monday, the company said it would not be backing candidates “in presidential or national races” this year, a spokesperson told the Hill.

Last election, USA Today endorsed Joe Bien for president.

The spokesperson said on Monday that while the company will not endorse for president, “local editors at publications across the USA TODAY Network have the discretion to endorse at a state or local level.”

Updated

Trump claims that he didn't hear comedian's Puerto Rico comment — report

Former president Donald Trump has reportedly told ABC News that he didn’t hear any of the comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally in New York on Sunday, including when the comedian called Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage.”

When asked about the comments, Trump allgedly did not denounce them but rather repeated that he didn’t hear them.

Trump also said that he didn’t know Hinchcliffe, saying: “I don’t know him; someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”

Updated

Podcast host Joe Rogan, who interviewed Donald Trump on Friday, said on social media today that Kamala Harris’s campaign has not “passed on doing the podcast” but that they only offered one hour, and he would have to travel to her.

In a post on X early Tuesday morning, Rogan said that he feels “strongly” that the best way to do the interview is in his studio in Austin, Texas.

“My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being,” he said. “I really hope we can make it happen.”

Vice-president Kamala Harris will do five interviews today ahead of her Closing Argument speech in Washington DC this evening, according to her campaign.

The interviews will include four battleground state television interviews to reach voters in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, as well as a Spanish radio interview with Rumba in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump is set to deliver remarks from Mar-a-Lago at 10am ET today.

Later in the day, he is scheduled to travel to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, to attend a roundtable with senior citizens there where he will be joined by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

This evening, Trump is scheduled to speak at a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at 7 pm.

Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The poll, conducted between 18 October to 22, 2024, states 83% of Americans surveyed and 86% of registered voters surveyed are prepared to accept the outcome of the presidential election as legitimate, regardless of which candidate they support.

About 15% of Americans and 12% of registered voters say they are not prepared to accept the outcome of the presidential election as legitimate.

In addition, most Americans think that vice-president Kamala Harris is prepared to accept the outcome of the presidential election as legitimate, while only 30% feel Donald Trump is prepared to do the same.

More than 48 million Americans have voted early as of Tuesday morning

As of 8:45am ET on Tuesday, more than 48.6 million Americans have voted early in this year’s presidential election that’s just a week away, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.

Of the total number of early votes, 25,257,519 were cast in person and 23,469,957 were returned by mail.

Puerto Rico Republican chief demands that Trump apologises for rally’s racist remarks

As outrage continues over the remarks from Donald Trump’s Sunday rally in New York, Angel M Cintrón, the president of the Republican party’s branch in Puerto Rico, has said that he will not vote for Trump unless Trump apologises for the racist remarks made at his rally, where a speaker referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.

“Right now we have no business and no relationship with Trump,” Cintrón said on Monday during a Puerto Rican talkshow. “If Donald Trump doesn’t apologise, we won’t vote for him.”

Read more here:

A senior campaign adviser for Donald Trump has told CNN that the speeches from Sunday’s Madison Square Garden Rally, which included racist remarks and dangerous threats about immigrants, were vetted beforehand.

But, the senior campaign official, who was not named, insisted that the more offensive remarks were “adlibbed” and not on any draft given to the campaign.

Many of the remarks from Sunday appeared to be read from teleprompters, CNN reported, indicating they had been approved by someone within the event’s planning team.

Another Trump campaign adviser told the broadcaster that they were uncertain as to how the overtly racist language had made it to the stage.

Tony Hinchcliffe workshopped offensive Puerto Rico joke the night before Madison Square Garden Rally — report

Tony Hinchcliffe – the comedian who delivered offensive and racist jokes during the Donald Trump rally on Sunday in New York where he referred Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” – reportedly practised the line the night before at a Manhattan comedy club, according to a new NBC News report.

At the comedy club, the joke did not draw laughs, NBC reports, instead prompting only a few “awkward chuckles.”

During his set, Hinchcliffe reportedly mentioned to the audience that he was going to be performing at the Madison Square Garden Trump rally the next day.

Hinchcliffe allegedly stated multiple times throughout his routine that he expected to receive a better reaction “tomorrow at the rally.”

Updated

Kamala Harris set to give her closing argument address in Washington DC later today

Kamala Harris will give her closing argument speech later today at the Ellipse in Washington DC, just one week before election day.

She is expected to deliver a hopeful and optimistic message that’s focused on moving forward.

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is scheduled to deliver remarks in Georgia today.

Updated

Key event

Pennsylvania is investigating potential voter fraud after an “overabundance” of voter registration forms and requests for mail ballots were sent to the York County elections office.

The York County elections office received a “large delivery containing thousands of election-related materials from a third-party organization,” including voter registration forms and mail-ballot applications, York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler said in a statement to the York Daily Record.

“As with all submissions, our staff follows a process for ensuring all voter registrations and mail-in ballot requests are legal. That process is currently underway. If suspected fraud is identified, we will alert the District Attorney’s Office, which will then conduct an investigation.”

Wheeler told Fox 43 on Monday: “It’s not unusual to get large stacks of voter registrations or large stacks of requests for mail-in ballots; it’s just this was an overabundance of registrations from one particular organization.”

She added: “We need to do our homework before we go and make accusations when we don’t have the data to back it up.”

Updated

The Democrats are fending off a Republican offensive aimed at overturning their tiny majority in the Senate.

Retaking control of the US Congress’s upper chamber may represent the GOP’s best opportunity of success in November’s election, according to analysts, surpassing their chances of retaking the White House or even retaining control of the House of Representatives.

But with a burst of enthusiasm from Kamala Harris’s campaign, Democrats are still competitive…

Trump ally Steve Bannon released from prison week before election

Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon has been released from prison after serving a four-month sentence.

Bannon, 70, was jailed for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. When he began serving his sentence in July, Bannon called himself a “political prisoner”.

“I am proud of going to prison,” he said at the time, adding that he was standing up to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and a “corrupt” justice department.

Bannon will have to answer further charges at trial in New York. He is accused of tricking donors who gave money to help build Trump’s notorious wall along the US-Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges. The trial begins in December.

Updated

Trump claims he's 'the opposite of a Nazi' as rally fallout continues

Campaigning is ramping up in the race to the White House as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump continue to exchange barbs on the campaign trail. Only seven days remain until Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, 5 November. On Monday, Harris and Tim Waltz courted young voters in Michigan, while Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen spoke in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, Georgia, Donald Trump railed against being compared to Hitler, telling voters that he was the “opposite of a Nazi” in response to Democratic opponents, who likened him to the Nazi dictator after a slew of racist remarks were made at his rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

On Tuesday, Trump will hold a news conference at Mar-a-Lago at 10am ET – where he is likely to face questions about racist remarks about Puerto Rico at the New York event.

He is then heading to Allentown, Pennsylvania – home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans.

  • Campaigning for Harris in Wisconsin, Bernie Sanders said: “You have Mike Pence saying I can’t support the guy I worked with for four years” and “We cannot allow someone to be president of the United States who is a pathological liar and who is working night and day to undermine American democracy.”

  • Sanders also released a video addressing voter concerns over the Biden-Harris administration’s record on Gaza, saying: “After Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change US policy towards Netanyahu.”

  • Before performing at a rally with Obama in Pennsylvania, Bruce Springsteen said: “I’m Bruce Springsteen and I’m here today to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and to oppose Donald Trump and JD Vance … I want a president who reveres the constitution, who does not threaten but wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, who will fight for women’s rights … [and] create a middle-class economy that works for all our citizens.”

  • Anita Hill, a former clerk to the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has said “racist, misogynist and sexistinsults” aimed at Kamala Harris “must sting”. In a New York Times opinion piece published on Monday, the Brandeis University professor – who was famously brought before Thomas’s confirmation hearings only to have her sexual harassment allegations against him picked apart by sitting senators – wrote that she sympathises with the US vice-president.

Updated

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