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      Seth Meyers on ex-president’s alleged admiration of Nazi generals: ‘Trump is a fascist’

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      Late-night hosts talk the former White House chief of staff John Kelly calling Donald Trump a fascist and Tucker Carlson’s bizarre rant about spanking on the campaign trail.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers devoted his Thursday Closer Look segment to the bombshell political story of the week: a New York Times interview with John Kelly, in which the former White House chief of staff said Donald Trump expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals. “I’m not sure we as a society have fully absorbed the magnitude of this story, given the way the media has been covering it,” the Late Night host said before a clip of CNN following up the story with a report on Eminem campaigning for Kamala Harris.“You can’t follow up a story as insane as ‘presidential candidate praises Hitler’ with fun wordplay about Eminem,” said Meyers. “If the first story is the next president could be a Hitler-lover, then just don’t have a second story. That’s enough to fill an hour.”“I get it can be tough to figure out how to cover something like this, because like all Trump revelations it’s both shocking and not at all surprising,” he added. “So we’re left in this weird middle ground where you’re reporting something that everyone basically knows already, but it’s also still insane. It’s like going through a haunted house with a group of friends that used to work there.”Naturally, Republicans are scrambling to normalize the situation. Meyers played a clip of the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, who said on CNN: “Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It’s kinda par for the course. It’s really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s really baked into the vote.”“His love of Adolf Hitler is baked in?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like saying, ‘Look, that dead rat is baked into this loaf of sourdough. What are you going to do, go all the way back to the bakery?’ If it’s baked in, then don’t eat the thing it’s baked into!“This is not a complicated story,” he concluded. “Trump is a fascist who likes other fascists and wants to emulate fascism. If you’re shrugging that off as baked in, then you’re just saying that you’re OK with fascism. If you’re still supporting Trump, just admit that you think fascism is cool.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert noted that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden this weekend. “Just what New Yorkers need – more garbage around Penn Station,” he joked.The rally is “confusing”, as “New York is not what you call a swing state,” he said. Trump trails Kamala Harris by 19 points in the state – “or as the New York Jets say, not bad!” Colbert quipped.Given the interview with Kelly this week, in 10 days, “we all get to find out whether we live in a fascist country”, said Colbert. “I’m not saying that’s a good feeling, but definitely the feeling. And if you’re feeling the same way, you’re not alone.”Colbert played a clip from CNN’s presidential town hall in which Anderson Cooper asked Harris whether she thought Trump was a fascist; she replied: “Yes, I do.”Meanwhile, Trump was joined on the campaign trail by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who made his case for the former president with a bizarre rant about spanking. “Dad comes home. He’s pissed. Dad is pissed. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,’” he told the crowd.“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters,” Colbert deadpanned. “Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy is the one who likes to get spanked.”Overall, “that was an upsetting little monologue,” Colbert concluded. “Angry Daddies punishing little girls? I’m guessing when Tucker wrote that, he was vigorously spanking something.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, the guest host Michael Kosta also mocked Carlson’s bizarre spanking speech. Carlson began his speech with a cackle, delighting in what he said was his first appearance at a political rally. “I don’t want to be a hater – he’s excited for his first political rally. Seems like a perfectly reasonable time to laugh like an old-timey villain who tied a woman to the railroad tracks,” Kosta joked.And then he played one of Carlson’s most offending lines: “You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now.”“This might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before,” said Kosta. “You see, America, these Trump people, they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big, strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff! I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy – ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” More

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      Trump really could be the next president. So it’s time to call his instincts what they are: fascist | Jonathan Freedland

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      There is a good chance that in 10 days’ time, Americans will elect the first fascist president of the United States. It sounds hyperbolic, it sounds hysterical. Indeed, for exactly those reasons, many of his opponents long held back from using that word about Donald Trump. But the hour is late. Voting is already under way. It’s time to spell out what Trump has said and done, what he threatens to do, what he is.Put aside the personal grossness, on display again in recent days with his reference to the size of the late Arnold Palmer’s manhood. Put aside the fact that he’s a twice-impeached, four times indicted, convicted felon who has been found liable by a court for rape. Put aside the latest accusations from a former model who says she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein, and that the former president groped her in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Focus instead on the F-word. In recent days, the taboo on that word has been broken, starting with a warning from a former head of the US military, Mark Milley, that the president he once served is a “fascist to the core”. In an interview a few days later, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi told me she shared that view, and Kamala Harris herself has spoken in similar terms. But this week came perhaps the most detailed, and therefore persuasive, deployment of that term.It came from a man who worked exceptionally closely with Trump, serving as his White House chief of staff: General John Kelly. Like Milley, Kelly did not use the word “fascist” to mean racist or really rightwing, as some loosely throw around that term, but rather to describe Trump’s attitude to power. Indeed, Kelly took pains to be precise.In an interview with the New York Times, he read aloud a definition of fascism: “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said, adding that Trump fitted that description. “In my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”It’s not a stretch to speak of “autocracy”. Kelly and others have told how Trump believed all power should reside in him, how he bridled at the insistence by senior officials in the government or military, including those he called “my generals”, that their loyalty was to the constitution rather than to him personally. Trump saw that and all such constraints on his authority, including the law, as irritating – if not illegitimate.That was troubling enough in his first term, but it would be more alarming in a second. For one thing, Trump will not repeat his mistake of appointing lieutenants who believe their duty is to serve the country rather than him, even if that means thwarting his will. Next time, he will be surrounded by loyalists. Some of them have been remarkably candid about their plans. In the words of one, Russell T Vought, speaking of how Trump aims to take direct control of every corner of the US federal government, “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”An obvious early target will be the department of justice. Trump has left little doubt that he will not respect that body’s independence. Instead he will use it as a weapon to get the “retribution” he has promised by prosecuting his enemies. What’s more, a second-term Trump will be emboldened by an extraordinary ruling of the supreme court. In July that bench, remade in his image with three Trump-appointed judges, granted the president sweeping legal immunity.What especially alarms the retired generals is Trump’s repeated threats to use the US military against American citizens, to crush dissent. When the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in Washington DC in 2020, Trump sent in the national guard, but now he talks, explicitly, about going much further, promising to use the army against those he calls “the enemy from within”. When pressed to say who he had in mind, he did not cite terrorists or criminals but Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California.The same instinct animates his serial threats to the free press. “CBS should lose its license,” Trump posted on social media last week, after the network displeased him with an interview with Harris: “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” Earlier he had called for ABC’s licence to be “terminated” because he didn’t like the way his debate with Harris had gone. Presidents cannot block TV networks on a whim, but they do appoint the board that hands out broadcast licences – so it’s not an empty threat.This, remember, is a man who gushes like a teenager in his admiration for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, but rarely has a good word to say for America’s democratic allies. This is a man who has promised to be a dictator “on day one”. What more does he have to do to tell us who he is, short of dressing up in jackboots and doing a Hitler salute? And before you dismiss that as a joke, recall Kelly’s confirmation that, more than once, Trump spoke positively of the Nazi dictator: “You know, Hitler did some good things, too,” he would say.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiven all this, it should be shocking that Trump is even a contender for the White House, let alone one who, polls suggest, is locked in a tie with his opponent. But too many Americans are fed up with high prices and fearful about immigration; too many blame the incumbent Democratic administration and see Harris as part of that status quo. In that context it didn’t help that, when asked if she would have done anything differently from Joe Biden these last four years, Harris replied, “Not a thing that comes to mind.”In her closing argument, Harris is rightly focusing on the threat Trump poses to democracy and freedom. But she has to make that threat ever more concrete. Polls show she is losing ground among Black and Hispanic voters, especially men. Why not, as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein has argued, remind those voters that Trump threatens to cut federal funding to police departments that don’t implement “stop-and-frisk”, a practice that disproportionately targets Black men? Or that Trump plans a door-to-door operation against undocumented immigrants, a programme of mass deportation that could see the rounding up of 11 million people? This is not a niche issue: there are 4 million young US citizens with at least one undocumented parent. And if you’re wondering where they would all go, recall that Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisers, has said that “illegals” awaiting deportation will be sent to massive internment camps.On Monday, Donald Trump will address a rally at Madison Square Garden. Others have already noted the uncomfortable echo of the vast America First rally held in that same venue in 1939, when an earlier variant of American fascism was at its height. The US, and the world, got lucky then, as that movement was steadily eclipsed by events. On 5 November, America and the world desperately need to get lucky again – and time is running out.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Can this Trump-backed car dealer unseat the Ohio Democrat and win Republicans the Senate?

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      When the Democrat Sherrod Brown was first elected to the US Senate in 2006, Ohio, with its large urban populations and manufacturing industries, was fairly reliable territory for Democrats.Barack Obama claimed the state in 2008 and 2012 on his way to the White House. Democrats boasted strong representation in Ohio’s politics. Analysts zealously watched its voting patterns, such was its prominence as a bellwether state.In the years since, the state has become older, whiter and more conservative. Manufacturing has shrunk and population has stagnated.Brown is now the only Democrat holding a statewide seat in Ohio. And he is weeks out from a crucial Senate election against former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno, a contest that could reshape US politics for years to come,For one, keeping Brown’s seat is crucial if Democrats hope to maintain their control of the US Senate.If Brown can win re-election, it would be notable in a state where Republicans have engineered a gerrymandering process to their advantage. They hold a supermajority in the state’s house of representatives and senate, and control the offices of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general as well as the state supreme court. Ohio’s second US senator is none other than Trump’s pick for vice-president, JD Vance.Brown is facing his most formidable on-comer yet – not because his Republican challenger has resonated particularly effectively with the Ohio electorate, but because Brown has, until now, never run in a year when Donald Trump was also on the ballot.For James Spencer, who has lived in Moraine, a working-class suburb of Dayton, for 27 years, the former president’s endorsement of Moreno is enough to secure his vote.As a retired construction contractor, he was unhappy to see the nearby General Motors plant that once employed thousands of blue-collar workers taken over by a Chinese auto glass manufacturer, Fuyao Glass. He believes the perceived problems associated with the company, including a raid by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies investigating allegations of financial crimes and labor exploitation in July, have only worsened since.In the past, he said, “Everything went around the plant. Your friends, your family. It was like a big GM community … We’ve lost so much in this area.”The declining fortunes experienced by white working-class Ohioans such as Spencer have been seized on by Trump and Moreno.However, Brown, the incumbent, is hoping his longstanding position as a champion of workers’ rights can carry him over the line.His campaign and supporters have largely disassociated Brown from the Biden administration and Kamala Harris campaign, despite the former helping to bring billions of dollars in infrastructure funding to rural parts of the state.“Brown has crossover appeal among Ohioans. The labor vote, which has increasingly gone to Trump, has also gone to Brown,” said Thomas Sutton, a political science professor and acting president of Baldwin Wallace University.“He shares some of the same positions as Trump when it comes to protecting local industry, manufacturing [and] support for farmers.”Ohioans have been bombarded with ads featuring Brown riding a speedboat while wearing a bullet-proof vest, a scene meant to depict his tough-on-immigration stance.Critics of Brown say that despite him being an apparent champion of the working class, he has mostly never held a non-political job himself (he worked as a teacher for a few years in the 1970s and 80s).A representative of Brown’s campaign said he was not available for comment for this article. Emails sent to Moreno’s campaign were unanswered.Trump’s endorsement of Moreno, a relative political novice, has energized Ohio’s Maga electorate.“Moreno is doing a pretty good job in handing his campaign over to the professional ad people. They’re using the scare tactics against Brown, tying him to the Biden administration,” said Sutton.A cryptocurrency industry Pac has spent $40m on Moreno’s campaign, while polling conducted for Moreno’s campaign suggests their candidate has a three-point lead over Brown. Other polls suggest a very close race.But Moreno’s run, and his record, are not flawless.Last year, he settled more than a dozen wage-theft lawsuits and was forced to pay more than $400,000 to two former employees of his car dealership.Recently, he has been criticized for telling attenders at a town hall that women over 50 shouldn’t be concerned about reproductive rights.“When you take away women’s abortion rights, you take away healthcare, and we in Ohio have voted that that’s none of your business,” said Amy Cox, a Democrat who is running this year to unseat a Republican incumbent in the US House of Representatives in a district that includes Moraine, Dayton and Springfield.Last year, Ohio Democrats and liberals were revitalized by a rare win at the ballot box when voters decided by a 13-point margin to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.“Women and men are really energized by the fall of Roe, and Project 2025 is really motivating people to get out and vote,” said Cox.A bribery scandal involving a failing energy company and leading Ohio Republicans hasn’t helped them.The former speaker of the statehouse, Larry Householder, was jailed for 20 years last year for racketeering.“This is going to be won and lost in the three C’s,” the cities of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, said Sutton.And the election will be about “whether more typically Democratic areas have better mobilization and turnout to counteract what would be normal voter turnout in the Republican-leaning rural and small-town areas”, he added.For Spencer, who lives near the Fuyao Glass factory in Moraine, Moreno’s attack ads that feature Brown’s alleged failures on immigration have hit home.“I’m hoping that if Trump and JD Vance get in, they will deal with what’s going on over there,” he said. 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      ‘Fascist’, ‘conman’, ‘predator’, ‘cheat’: what 11 former Trump staffers say about him now

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      They range from top generals to reality stars to lawyers, but one thing all these people have in common: they have worked closely with Donald Trump and have gone public with their warnings on what they really think of him.John KellyChief of staff, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US Marine Corps general, Kelly served first as Trump’s secretary of homeland security in 2017, then was appointed White House chief of staff, a role he held from July 2017 to January 2019. Kelly’s departure from the White House followed reports of the general’s declining relationship with Trump and alleged frequent disagreements. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told an associate to “stop calling John for anything”. According to the veteran journalist Bob Woodward in his 2018 book Fear, Kelly called Trump an “idiot” and the head of a “Crazytown” administration.What he says now: Kelly recently said his former boss fitted “into the general definition of fascist” who “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government”.Mark MilleyChair of joint chiefs of staff, 2019-23View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US army general, Milley served as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump and Joe Biden. Under Trump, Milley became the national focus in June 2020 when he participated in Trump’s photo op at St John’s church in Washington DC wearing military fatigues, amid ongoing demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd. He publicly apologized for the appearance, saying: “I should not have been there.” Reports later emerged that Milley “yelled” at Trump and refused to be in charge of the federal response to the racial justice protests.What he says about Trump now: Milley has called Trump a “fascist to the core” and was doing “great and irreparable harm”.Mark EsperSecretary of defense, 2019-20View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: The politician and marketing executive served as defense secretary under Trump from July 2019 until November 2020, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his tenure Esper repeatedly clashed with Trump, refusing to send “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs” and to to deploy troops across the country amid the 2020 racial justice protests. Esper publicly opposed Trump’s threat to levy the military against protesters using the 1807 Insurrection Act, telling journalists: “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used … in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations.”What he says about Trump now: Esper said Trump “has those inclinations” towards fascism: “I think it’s something we should be wary about.”James MattisSecretary of defense, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: As Trump’s first defense secretary, Mattis clashed with Trump over the US’s treatment of allies and its approach to “malign actors and strategic competitors” across the world. He resigned in December 2018 a day after Trump announced the abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Syria. In 2020, Mattis publicly condemned Trump’s handling of the racial justice protests, saying: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”What he says about Trump now: Mattis said Trump makes a “mockery of our constitution”.John BoltonNational security adviser, 2018-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Bolton served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Trump reportedly began excluding him from meetings about the Afghanistan war, and eventually ousted him completely after Bolton attempted to stop Trump from inviting the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks (an idea Trump eventually scrapped).What he says about Trump now: Bolton has said Trump is “unfit to be president” and “hasn’t got the brains” for a dictatorship.Rex TillersonSecretary of state, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, Tillerson served as secretary of state under Trump from February 2017 to March 2018, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his time as secretary of state, reports emerged that Tillerson once called Trump a “moron”, leading Trump to challenge him to an IQ test. The two men also publicly disagreed on US foreign policy surrounding North Korea, with Tillerson saying: “We do talk to them.” In response, Trump tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.What he says about Trump now: Tillerson has called Trump “pretty undisciplined – doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports” and added: “His understanding of global events [and] his understanding of US history was really limited.”Omarosa Manigault NewmanWhite House aide, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former participant on The Apprentice, the TV show Trump hosted, Newman was hired as top aide for Trump in January 2017 until she was fired a year later by John Kelly. She later released secretly recorded White House conversations, including one in which Trump expressed his surprise at her being fired.What she says about Trump now: “I fell for a conman – a conman who turned out to be the biggest fraud.”Mike PenceVice-president, 2017-2021View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Pence served as Trump’s vice-president and was his closest confidant for years. Following the January 6 Capitol Hill riots in 2021, a crowd of Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” after Trump egged them on because he was angry Pence had refused to overturn the election results in Trump’s favor by refusing to certify the vote (a power the vice-president does not even have).What he says about Trump now: “Anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president again.”Michael CohenTrump’s former lawyer and fixerView image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Once Trump’s attorney and fixer, Cohen had such a tight relationship with the billionaire real estate mogul that he once described himself as Trump’s “attack dog with a law license”. Cohen later became the star witness in Trump’s criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, in which Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.What he says about Trump now: “A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator and a conman.”Cassidy HutchinsonAide to Trump’s chief of staff, 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Hutchinson became the focus of national attention in 2022 when she testified to the January 6 House investigative committee that Trump knowingly directed armed supporters to storm the Capitol.What she says about Trump now: “As an American, I was disgusted” she said of Trump’s role in the mob’s attempt to overturn the election. “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”Alyssa Farah GriffinWhite House communications director, April-December 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: Griffin, the former communications director for Trump, joined the White House in April 2020 and served until her resignation in December of that year. Describing her resignation to Politico in 2021, Griffin said: “I made the decision to step down in December because I saw where this was heading, and I wasn’t comfortable being a part of sharing this message to the public that the election results might go a different way.”What she says about Trump now: She has called his messaging to women “creepy” and “infantilizing”, and predicted Trump is “going to try to steal the election” again. More

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      Harris holds rally with Obama while Trump calls US a ‘garbage can’ – US election live

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      Good morning and welcome to the US election live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest from the campaign trail over the next couple of hours.We start with news that vice-president Kamala Harris appeared with Barack Obama for the first time, offering closing arguments targeting Black voters in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, a vibrant, symbolic part of Georgia.“Ours is a fight for the future,” Harris said at the rally in Clarkston. She touched on familiar themes – reducing the costs of drugs, housing and groceries. “I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.Harris said she believes “healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it”, and said Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act and roll back the $35 cap on insulin.The Democratic nominee also reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, referring to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman whose death was recently found to be a result of the state’s abortion ban. Harris said: “Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused … women are being denied care during miscarriages.”For more on the rally, see George Chidi’s full report here:Meanwhile, in other news:

      The family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Black 28-year-old mother who died just weeks after Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect, was in attendance at the Harris rally. Harris is expected to make another high profile appearance today, this time alongside Beyoncé in Houston, where the vice-president hopes to rally support for Senate candidate Colin Allred.

      Donald Trump rallied supporters in Tempe, Arizona, where he spoke alongside Senate candidate Kari Lake. Earlier in the day, Trump made news when he vowed that, if elected, he would immediately fire Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel who is prosecuting him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents.

      Trump called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration. “We’re like a garbage can, you know, it’s the first time I’ve ever said that,” Trump said in Tempe, the home of Arizona State University. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angry. First time I’ve ever said garbage can, but you know what, it’s a very accurate description.”

      Phoenix police arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a mailbox there, damaging mail-in ballots. The news comes just days after Tempe police arrested another man in connection with three shootings at Democratic party campaign offices in Tempe. An Arizona prosecutor said the second man had more than 120 guns and more than 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.

      Harris picked up the endorsement of two Republicans, one a former congressman from Michigan, the other a mayor in a pivotal county in Wisconsin.

      Joe Biden announced he will issue an apology for the US government’s role in forcing thousands of Indigenous American children to attend Indian boarding schools – a policy which has been widely recognized as an element of genocide. The news comes as Harris is trailing in the polls in Arizona, a state that Biden famously won in 2020, largely due to the support of Indigenous American voters.

      More than 29 million people have voted already in the 2024 election, at least partly driven by Republicans embracing early voting at Donald Trump’s direction. So far, Republicans have cast 32% of ballots, up from 27% at this point in 2020. Whereas Democrats have cast 42% of the votes, down from 47% at this point in the last presidential election. More

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      US presidential election updates: Polls show historic gender split between Trump and Harris voters

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      Donald Trump has been working tirelessly to win over male voters and by some measures his efforts appear effective, but it may have come at the cost of female support. According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, Trump is besting Kamala Harris among men by 53% to 37%, while the Democratic candidate is winning among women 53% to 36%.But despite multiple polls showing the gender gap among voters widening to historic levels, Harris has said she doesn’t see the phenomenon borne out at her rallies. “What I am seeing is in equal measure, men and women talking about their concerns about the future of our democracy.”Both Harris and her Republican challenger spent the past day at rallies across battleground states. With only days to go until the election, a poll from Bloomberg News and Morning Consult finds that the 2024 presidential race is still too close to call.Here’s what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news

      Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama appeared alongside Harris at a star-studded campaign event in Clarkston, Georgia. The event launched the Democratic campaign’s series of battleground state concerts. The actor Samuel L Jackson, director Spike Lee, senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and actor Tyler Perry also spoke at the rally.

      About 20,000 people attended the Georgia event, according to the Harris campaign, which would make it her largest political rally yet. Bruce Springsteen urged voters to back Harris in the presidential election, warning that Trump is a would-be “tyrant”. Early voting totals have been breaking records in Georgia, with about 30% of the electorate having already cast ballots.

      Beyoncé will reportedly join Harris at her rally in Houston on Friday, continuing the celebrity pile-in. Harris is rallying in Texas, a Republican stronghold, to highlight abortion rights and support the Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred, who trails the Republican Ted Cruz in opinion polls.

      Harris picked up the endorsement of two Republicans: one a former congressman from Michigan, the other a mayor in a pivotal county in Wisconsin. The former congressman Fred Upton said Trump was “totally unhinged”, adding: “We don’t need this chaos. We need to move forward, and that’s why I’m where I am.”
      Donald Trump election news

      Trump said he would order the immediate firing of the special counsel Jack Smith if he were re-elected in the clearest expression of his intent to shut down the two criminal cases brought against him. The power to fire the special counsel formally rests with the attorney general, but Trump has made no secret of his intention to appoint a loyalist in that role.

      Trump, campaigning in the border swing state of Arizona, called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration. He laid out a host of policies including invoking the death penalty for any migrant who kills an American citizen and hiring 10,000 more border agents and increasing their pay.

      Later, Trump appeared at another rally organised by the conservative group Turning Point Action in Nevada. The United for Change event in Las Vegas drew thousands of supporters. The group, founded by conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk to engage young conservatives, has been working to help turn out voters on Trump’s behalf.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Mail-in ballots have been damaged after a man set fire to a postal collection box in Arizona. Phoenix police arrested Dieter Klofkorn, who admitted to the crime and said his actions were not politically motivated.

      Elon Musk gave another $44m to his pro-Donald Trump spending group during the first half of October, federal disclosures showed. The contributions, disclosed in a filing to the Federal Election Commission by Musk’s America PAC group, come after a prior report showed he gave the group around $75m over three months between July and September.
      Read more about the 2024 US election

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