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      US presidential election briefing: Early voting records smashed as Trump urges Republicans to head to polls early

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      Nearly 25 million Americans have already voted, less than two weeks out from the US election, with records broken in multiple battleground states, at least partly driven by Republicans embracing early voting at Donald Trump’s direction.Either through in-person early voting or mail-in ballots, more than 1.9 million voters have cast early votes in Georgia, where Trump lost by a mere 11,779 votes four years ago to Democrat Joe Biden, while North Carolina also set a new record of more than 1.7m despite the chaos caused by Hurricane Helene last month.At an event in Georgia, Trump celebrated the state’s record-breaking vote levels, and at a separate rally urged his supporters to “just vote – whichever way you want to do it.”Here’s what else happened on Wednesday:Donald Trump election news

      A former model who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men. The Trump campaign called the allegations by Stacey Williams “unequivocally false”, calling it a fake story “contrived by the Harris campaign”.

      Trump appeared in Zebulon, Georgia, with lieutenant governor and 2020 election denier Burt Jones, at a faith-focused event his campaign dubbed a “Believers and Ballots town hall”. Trump praised tech mogul Elon Musk, for providing hurricane relief where he claimed the federal government did not.

      Trump stayed in Georgia for a rally in Duluth with guests Tucker Carlson, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. He escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris, saying she was “crazy” and inviting voters to tell his opponent: “‘You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The world is laughing at us because of you.’”

      The US justice department warned Musk’s Super Pac that the billionaire and Tesla CEO’s $1m-a-day giveaways may violate federal law, according to multiple reports. Musk, who has thrown his support behind Trump, announced on Saturday while speaking before a crowd in Pennsylvania that he was giving away $1m each day until election day to someone who signs his online petition supporting the US constitution.

      Writing on Truth Social, Trump assailed John Kelly as a “a bad general” gripped by “pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred”. Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and a retired Marine general, on Tuesday said he believed Trump met the definition of “fascist” and was “certainly an authoritarian”. Two retired army officers said they agreed with Kelly, while Republicans including the governor of New Hampshire dismissed the comments.
      Kamala Harris election news

      Kamala Harris denounced Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to him. In a surprise speech from her Washington DC residence, the Democratic nominee jumped on Kelly’s claims. Joe Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the president also agreed with those calling Trump a fascist.

      Harris repeated the fascist claim during a televised town hall with undecided voters in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In response to CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asking her: “Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?”, Harris answered: “Yes, I do.” Trump was invited to attend the same town hall but declined.

      Harris’s campaign announced she will deliver a major “closing argument” address next week in the same location that Donald Trump rallied January 6 rioters before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021.

      Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz voted early along with his wife, Gwen, and son, Gus. Leaving the voting booth in St Paul, Minnesota, Walz said his vote was “an opportunity to turn the page on the chaos of Donald Trump and a new way forward”.

      Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, rallied Democrats in Florida, marking a break from his recent stumping in more competitive states including Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both parties expect the Sunshine state to once more swing for Trump, but the Harris campaign’s rare foray drew attention to the close Senate race between the Republican incumbent and Democratic challenger.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      The Los Angeles Times opinion editor resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the masthead from endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Mariel Garza said she was standing up against the decision by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s billionaire owner. In a social media post, Soon-Shiong wrote that the Los Angeles Times editorial board had rejected a proposed alternative to a typical presidential endorsement editorial, which he described as “a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House”.

      China-linked social media bots are targeting Republicans including Marco Rubio, according to new research from Microsoft, while a senior US intelligence official said groups in Russia created and helped spread viral disinformation targeting Tim Walz.

      Pennsylvania’s highest court allowed people whose mail ballots were rejected on technicalities to cast provisional ballots, likely affecting thousands of early voters. The decision was another defeat for the Republican National Committee’s legal campaign, after it argued some provisional ballots cast during the April primary should have been rejected.
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      Harris praises John Kelly for sending ‘911 call’ to the US over Trump’s fitness to serve

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      Kamala Harris praised Donald Trump’s former chief of staff for sending a “911 call” to the nation about the former president’s unfitness to serve a second term, attacking her opponent as a “fascist” who would send the nation down a dangerous path.Harris participated in a CNN town hall with undecided voters in Delaware county, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, as the battleground state appears poised to play a potentially decisive role in the presidential race. While taking voters’ questions on everything from the cost of living to abortion access, Harris repeatedly steered the conversation back to questions over Trump’s fitness for office.The town hall came a day after the Atlantic published a story detailing former Trump advisers’ accounts of the then-president expressing a wish for “the kind of generals that Hitler had”. The article quoted Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, who described the former president’s consistent pattern of demeaning members of the military. The Trump campaign has denied these accounts.“I do believe that Donald Trump is unstable, increasingly unstable, and unfit to serve,” Harris told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper at the town hall. “The people who know Donald Trump best, the people who worked with him in the White House … they have said explicitly he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. They have said he should never again serve as president of the United States.”Harris predicted that, if elected to a second term, Trump would not have advisers like Kelly who might help put guardrails around the former president’s behaviour in office.“[Kelly] is just putting out a 911 call to the American people,” Harris said. “And this time, we must take very seriously, those folks who knew him best and were career people are not going to be there to hold him back.”When asked explicitly by Cooper whether she considered Trump to be a fascist, Harris said, “Yes, I do.”View image in fullscreenWhile criticizing Trump’s character and platform, Harris sometimes sidestepped difficult policy questions from Cooper and audience members. In one of her most substantive answers of the night, Harris said she believed Democrats needed to “take a look at the filibuster” to expand abortion access in the country.Democrats have pledged to reinstate Roe v Wade if they win the White House and regain full control of Congress, but such a proposal could be blocked by the Senate filibuster, which requires the support of at least 60 out of the chamber’s 100 members to advance bills. The filibuster became a fundamental obstacle to implementing much of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and could present more challenges if Harris were to win the presidency.While Harris’ openness to amending the filibuster might prove popular with the Democratic base, some of her other answers may fall short for the progressives she needs to turn out on election day. Harris reiterated her opposition to a ban on fracking and offered a somewhat muddled answer on ending the war in Gaza.Voter Annalise Kean asked Harris, “What would you do to ensure not another Palestinian dies due to bombs being funded by US tax dollars?”Harris replied, “Far too many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed. It’s unconscionable, and we are now at a place where, with [Yahya Sinwar’s] death, I do believe we have an opportunity to end this war, bring the hostages home, bring relief to the Palestinian people and work toward a two-state solution.”Although much of the town hall focused on criticism of Trump and policy questions, the discussion occasionally turned to the personal. Harris talked about the role of religion in her life, noting that she prays every day and spoke to her pastor the day Biden withdrew from the presidential race.Toward the end of the town hall, Anderson asked Harris about her experience grieving her mother, who died from cancer 15 years ago.“You don’t stop grieving,” Harris said. “It is important to try and remember them as they lived, not as they died.”With less than two weeks left before election day, Harris and Trump appear locked in a neck and neck race that will come down to a handful of battleground states, including Pennsylvania. In her closing message at the town hall, Harris returned to Trump’s stability, pointing to his recent comments describing Democrats as “the enemy from within” as evidence of his unfitness to serve.“He’s going to sit there – unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution, creating an enemies list,” Harris said. “My list will be a list of how I address and continue to address the issues that you all are raising this afternoon and evening. It will be a to-do list about how we can impact the American people.” More

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      Trump escalates insults against Harris as he faces scrutiny over alleged praise of Hitler

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      Donald Trump escalated his personal insults against Kamala Harris at a Wednesday evening rally in Georgia as he faces growing scrutiny over reports of his praise of Hitler and alleged sexual misconduct.“This woman is crazy,” the former president said at an event in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, hosted by Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group. He said voters should stand up to the vice-president and tell her: “You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The world is laughing at us because of you.” He also said that in her recent interview with CBS, she “gave an answer that was from a loony bin”, later adding: “She’s not a smart person. She’s a low IQ individual.”The rally, less than two weeks before election day, came after the Guardian published an interview with a former model who accused Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in 1993 after notorious sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein introduced them, an allegation the Trump campaign denied. Stacey Williams said it felt as if the unwanted touching was part of a “twisted game” between the two men and that it appeared Epstein and Trump were “really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together”.

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      Williams’s account put the spotlight back on the roughly two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct throughout his career. Harris, campaigning with Republican former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has sought to encourage Republican women to support the Democrat.The Georgia rally also came after Harris’s surprise speech in Washington DC on Wednesday, when she denounced the former president as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power”. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and a retired Marine general, told the New York Times this week that he believed Trump met the definition of “fascist” and was “certainly an authoritarian”. He also said Trump repeatedly commented: “Hitler did some good things, too.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a characteristically rambling speech, Trump went on meandering tangents about Google (“Google is treating us much better. Do you notice that? What happened to Google?”); McDonald’s (“McDonald’s was one of the most viewed things that [Google] ever had”); Emmanuel Macron (“I stopped wars with France”); Richard Nixon (“That was not good when they found out he taped every single conversation”); and the vice-president’s name (“You can’t call her ‘Harris’ because nobody knows who the hell you’re talking about”).He threatened to sue CBS’s 60 Minutes, repeating false claims that the station manipulated Harris’s interview after Trump backed out of his planned interview with the program. He reiterated the threat a second time about an hour later in his speech.Robert F Kennedy Jr, former independent presidential candidate, also rallied for Trump in Georgia, calling Kelly a “known liar”. Trump did not address Kelly at the rally, but on Truth Social called his former chief of staff a “LOWLIFE” and “total degenerate”.In a “faith-focused” town hall in Zebulon, Georgia earlier on Wednesday, Trump praised Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister who has been condemned for undermining democratic institutions and aligning with Moscow and Beijing.Asked about his faith, Trump responded: “When you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people that don’t have that.” He went on to falsely suggest he has endured more investigations than notorious gangster Al Capone. More

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      China-linked bots targeting Republicans including Marco Rubio in run-up to election, Microsoft says

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      An army of Chinese-controlled social media bots is attempting to influence voters in Alabama, Texas and Tennessee, while denigrating US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, according to new research published on Wednesday by Microsoft.The operation represents a coordinated interference effort against down-ballot races, experts say, in which the fake accounts are denigrating representative Barry Moore of Alabama, representative Michael McCaul of Texas, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and Rubio, all Republicans.The troll network has “parroted antisemitic messages, amplified accusations of corruption and promoted opposition candidates”, according to Microsoft.The group allegedly responsible is known as Taizi Flood, which has been previously associated with China’s Ministry of Public Security, researchers say. The lawmakers were each targeted because they had denounced Chinese government policies historically, the report noted.A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington said China “has no intention and will not interfere in the US election” and that such claims are “full of malicious speculations”.Among other things, the bots criticised Moore’s support for Israel and used antisemitic language. Another collective of related accounts claimed Rubio was part of a financial corruption scheme.The bots amplified support for Blackburn’s election rival while spreading claims she took money from pharmaceutical companies. With McCaul, they pushed narratives that he engaged in insider trading.A spokesperson for Moore, Madison Green, said his office was aware of the campaign.“We know that the CCP is antisemitic, so it isn’t surprising that they are targeting me and other politicians who support Israel to try to sow division in advance of the most important election in our lifetime,” said Moore, referring to the Chinese Communist party.“China has made it clear they will use every weapon in their arsenal, including offensive cyber capabilities, to try and destroy democracy across the world,” he added.In an emailed statement, McCaul said he considered the targeting a “badge of honour” as he’s made “standing up to the CCP a central part of my career”.Spokespeople for the other two lawmakers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is coordinating the federal effort to defend the election from foreign influence, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Moore, McCaul and Blackburn are all running for re-election next month. Rubio, who serves as vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, is not up for re-election until 2028.The Microsoft researchers found the influence effort did not result “in high levels of engagement”. The report did not provide any metrics for how many Americans viewed the relevant social media posts. More

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      ‘We can win Florida’: Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff rallies for VP in red state

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      In terms of presidential elections at least, Florida has fallen a long way since its heady days as the ultimate swing state. Seven cycles on from the 537-vote cliffhanger in 2000 that was finally resolved when the US supreme court placed George Bush in the White House, Florida is so reliably red, and Donald Trump so confident of picking up its 30 electoral college votes, that he has barely campaigned here.For the same reason, the Sunshine state has not featured on Kamala Harris’s schedule either. So some eyebrows were raised when second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the vice-president’s husband, rolled up on Wednesday to rally Democrats in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, on a break from stumping in the battleground states of the north-east.Publicly, at least, Emhoff believes the state is still in play. “We can win Florida. We should win Florida!” he told a lively gathering of supporters at a Get Out the Early Vote rally at the OB Johnson Center in Hallandale Beach, a Fort Lauderdale suburb in the Democratic stronghold of Broward county.Polling would suggest otherwise: Trump leads Harris by about six points in the latest FiveThirtyEight.com average in a state he won handily in both 2016 and 2020.But even under the specter of a Florida defeat in the presidential contest, Democrats at the national and state levels see extra value in his visit because of a tighter US senate race in Florida between incumbent Republican Rick Scott and his Democratic challenger, former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.Much of the sparring in that contest has been over women’s healthcare rights, and especially Amendment 4, the ballot initiative that will overturn Florida’s draconian six-week abortion ban if approved by a 60% majority.It’s an issue that has caused outrage among advocates largely because of ultra-conservative Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to interfere. He has been accused of sending law enforcement to the homes of people who signed a petition in support, illegally spending taxpayers’ money on TV ads opposing it, and threatening legal action against networks that broadcast ads supporting it.Emhoff, unsurprisingly, had thoughts. Attacking Trump as the architect of the downfall of Roe v Wade, he said: “Make no mistake, Donald Trump is no friend to women. He has proven himself to be a threat to women. Now he claims to be a friend to women. Would he protect you? Of course not. Trump is proud of it. He brags about stripping away Roe v Wade.”His comments prompted chants of: “Yes on 4!”Mucarsel-Powell was among the speakers and also addressed it. “I will protect healthcare and people with pre-existing conditions. I will stand for women, and children, to make sure we protect them against the attacks on their reproductive freedom,” she said.

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      Also on Emhoff’s agenda was gun violence, the economy and immigration, as well as the Republicans’ extremist Project 2025 agenda. He laid out how Harris would address these issues from the White House, and expressed disappointment that polling, less than two weeks from election day, showed a tightening race.“It shouldn’t be this close,” he said.Some had thought the back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton, that ravaged parts of Florida in recent weeks would be addressed. Harris had sparred with DeSantis over the storms, with the governor reportedly refusing to take her calls because, he said, they “seemed political”.But Emhoff did cover a number of other familiar recent Democratic talking points in his half-hour speech, including Trump’s reported admiration for Adolf Hitler’s military generals, which, as he pointed out, Harris addressed earlier Wednesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We really need to listen to what Donald Trump is saying, what’s coming out of his mouth. We lived through it when he was president. Somehow we got through it. This time around, he poses an even greater threat – to the economy, to women, and our very lives,” he said.“We can’t look away from this. This is as real as it gets. This is right in front of our faces. He’s completely unfit, unhinged and un-American. We need to turn the page on this chapter of American history.”He also referred to Trump’s “weird” references to Arnold Palmer, and the size of his genitalia. “What is that?” Emhoff said.Following his address in Hallandale, Emhoff headed for a Wednesday night rally and fundraiser in Coral Gablers, Miami, close to where Trump spoke directly to Latino voters earlier this week. Both sides are desperately courting south Florida’s sizeable Hispanic community in the final stages of the race.Supporters speaking before the Hallandale Beach event welcomed Emhoff’s visit. Democratic voter Anthony Hill, of Lauderdale Lakes, said it showed Democrats had not given up on Florida.“Every weekend, the Trump supporters are out here on street corners with their flags. It gets depressing,” he said. “I don’t think Kamala is going to win here, but if we can win some of the down-ballot races we can show that we’re still alive.” More

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      Kamala Harris denounces Trump as ‘fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked power’

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      Kamala Harris has denounced Donald Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to himself after allegations emerged about the former president’s repeatedly-voiced admiration for Hitler.On Wednesday, the vice-president gave a surprise speech from her Washington DC residence, doing so in the aftermath of reports that John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recalled how Trump lamented not having generals who swore loyalty to him in the same manner as military commanders served Hitler in Nazi Germany.“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in,” Harris said.Harris said that the remarks relayed by Kelly showed that Trump “does not want a military that is loyal to the United States constitution”.“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the constitution of the United States,” she said.Posing the question as a stark choice for US voters going to the polls for the presidential election on 5 November, she added: “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American people want.”

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      Harris’s address came after she had spent more than a week highlighting Trump’s earlier branding of his political opponents as “the enemy within” and demands for the military to be deployed those who cause election “chaos”.In on-the-record taped conversations with the New York Times, Kelly – who was White House chief of staff for 18 months during Trump’s presidency – said his former boss repeatedly praised Hitler, even when contradicted, and fitted the dictionary definition of a fascist.“He commented more than once that: ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” said Kelly, who also said that Trump would rule as a dictator if elected again.Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, made similar remarks in an interview with the Atlantic.Referencing the various reporting, Harris said: “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”She added: “It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, certainly falls into the general definition of fascists, who, in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”It was the second time in a week that Harris had, in effect, labelled the Republican nominee a fascist. Last week, she answered affirmatively when a Detroit radio interviewer who asked if Trump’s vision amounted to fascism – although she did not utter the word directly.Trump’s spokesperson has denied Kelly’s claims that Trump said this, calling it “absolutely false”.Harris’s remarks on Wednesday were the clearest sign yet that she had changed tactics from a previous approach initially adopted after becoming her party’s nominee, when she and her surrogates attempted to play down and belittle Trump. In one example, by mocking his obsession with crowd sizes at his rallies.Theories abound as to what Harris could do to turn voters away from Trump’s appeal, which has centered on vows to lower prices that rose during Joe Biden’s presidency and throw immigrants out of the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an interview earlier today on CNN, the noted Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that the very sort of message Harris pushed this afternoon was not working.“What’s interesting is that [when] Harris focused on why she should be elected president, that’s when the numbers grew,” Luntz said.“And then the moment that she turned anti-Trump and focused onto him and said, don’t vote for me, vote against him, that’s when everything froze.”Kelly’s characterisation of Trump as a fascist echoes that of Gen Mark Milley, the retired former chair of the armed services joint chiefs of staff. Milley, who Trump has said should be executed, is quoted by the journalist Bob Woodward in a recently published book as calling Trump “a total fascist” and “fascist to the core”.Later on Wednesday, it was reported that Harris told NBC News that she was preparing for the possibility that Donald Trump will declare victory before the election is complete, saying: “We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that.”Also, at the White House daily media briefing, the press secretary. Karine Jean-Pierre, acknowledged that Biden agreed with those who say Trump is a fascist.“I mean, yes,” Jean-Pierre replied, when a reporter put the question to her in the White House briefing room. She went on to argue that Trump himself has made no secret of how he would like to govern, saying: “The former president has said he is going to be a dictator on day one. We cannot ignore that … we cannot ignore or forget what happened on January 6 2021.”Cecilia Nowell contributed reporting More

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      US warns Musk’s Super Pac $1m-a-day giveaways may be illegal, reports say

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      The US justice department has sent a letter to Elon Musk’s Super Pac warning that the billionaire Tesla CEO’s $1m-a-day giveaways may violate federal law, according to multiple reports.A letter from the department’s public integrity section, which investigates potential election-related law violations, went to the Pac, reports in CNN and the New York Times said. The justice department and Musk’s America Pac did not immediately respond to a request for comment.South African-born Musk, who has thrown his support behind Donald Trump in advance of the 5 November election, announced on Saturday while speaking before a crowd in Pennsylvania that he was giving away $1m each day until election day to someone who signs his online petition supporting the US constitution.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe handed $1m checks to two separate people over the weekend: one to a man in Harrisburg on Saturday and another to a women in Pittsburgh on Sunday. Another voter in North Carolina has won $1m. Between in-person campaign events in support of the Republican presidential candidate, Musk has tweeted his congratulations to the winners and urged other registered voters in swing states to sign his petition and enter the lottery.Election law experts had called the sweepstakes potentially illegal. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, had called on law enforcement to investigate.Musk, ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest person, so far has supplied at least $75m to America Pac, according to federal disclosures, making the group a crucial part of Trump’s bid to regain the White House. More

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      No Labour wrongdoing in Kamala Harris campaign row, says ex-Tory minister

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      Labour did nothing wrong when party officials campaigned for Kamala Harris in the US election, a former Conservative minister has argued, after Downing Street faced fury from Donald Trump about the move.Robert Buckland, who has also campaigned for Harris due to his distaste for Trump, said it appeared that Labour activists who knocked on doors had volunteered and covered their own expenses, which would not be a breach of US laws on overseas involvement in elections.Trump’s campaign filed a legal complaint alleging that apparent efforts by Labour’s head of operations to organise volunteers amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions”, and hit out at what it called Keir Starmer’s “far-left” party.After Starmer said he believed the row would not affect his relationship with Trump, Labour officials insisted that the party had no role in organising or funding staff who joined US campaigning efforts, and that such volunteering was by no means unusual.The Trump legal letter, sent to the US Federal Election Commission in Washington, also complained about what it called “strategic meetings” at August’s Democratic national convention in Chicago between Harris’s team and Morgan McSweeney, now the prime minister’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s communications director.Labour officials said that the pair were at the event only as observers. The party paid for McSweeney to attend, and Doyle’s costs were covered by the Progressive Policy Institute thinktank.Buckland, a former justice secretary, who stepped down as an MP at the general election, said a since deleted LinkedIn post by Labour’s head of operations offering to arrange housing for 100 current and former party officials campaigning for the Democrats in swing states was “unfortunate”.However, he told the Guardian he did not see any sign of wrongdoing. “It doesn’t look like it to me,” he said. “If these individuals are going under their own steam, paying for their own flights and doing their own thing, and their accommodation is either they’re staying with friends or they’re paying for it, there’s not a problem. But they’ve played into the Trump-Vance campaign hands, and that press release was the sort of politicking that you’re going to see this close to an election.”Starmer, speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, said such volunteering had happened at “pretty much every [US] election”. He said: “They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.”Asked if it risked jeopardising his relationship with Trump if he becomes president again, Starmer said: “No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him, and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did.”There was some muted criticism of the government from the Conservatives, although Oliver Dowden, the party’s deputy leader, did not raise it with Angela Rayner when she filled in for the absent Starmer at prime minister’s questions.John Lamont, the shadow Scotland secretary, told BBC Radio 4 that Labour had created a “diplomatic car crash” that risked undermining relations with Trump.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, told GB News that the LinkedIn post seemed to show a “very clear breach of American electoral law” and he did not believe the Labour staffers had covered their own costs.Farage attended the Republican national convention in Milwaukee in July. His entry in the MPs’ register of interests says the near £33,000 costs for him and a staffer were paid for by a Thai-based British businessman, Christopher Harborne. Farage listed the purpose of the trip as “to support a friend who was almost killed and to represent Clacton [his constituency] on the world stage”.The former prime minister Liz Truss also attended the event, although by then she was no longer an MP.One Labour MP, Ruth Cadbury, used a holiday in September to campaign for Harris in New Hampshire, while no sitting Conservatives are known to have volunteered in the same way. Almost none have publicly endorsed Trump.Buckland said this did not surprise him, calling Trump “not a Republican”. He said: “I think most Conservatives would identify themselves with Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower and George HW Bush, and even George W Bush, not this character.” More