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      US presidential election updates: Republicans in damage control after racist Puerto Rico comments at Trump rally

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      The fight for Puerto Rican voters emerged as an unlikely campaign theme on Sunday, after superstar Bad Bunny backed Kamala Harris for president, minutes after a speaker at Donald Trump’s triumphalist New York rally made racist remarks about the US territory.Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, speaking ahead of Trump at the rally in Madison Square Garden, said “there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”Millions of mainland US residents with Puerto Rican heritage will be voting on 5 November and the Trump campaign was quick to distance itself from the joke. A slew of Republicans also condemned the remarks, including Rick Scott and María Elvira Salazar from Florida, the state with the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the United States mainland.Here’s what else happened on Sunday:Kamala Harris election news

      Harris made a pitch for Puerto Rican voters, addressing the need to drive economic growth and job creation. The US territory has struggled after several hurricanes smashed the power grid and faced austerity measures after the local government filed for bankruptcy. Harris promised more effective use of recovery funds for the territory and discussed her plans while visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Pennsylvania. Of the swing state’s eligible Latino voters, 580,000 are of Puerto Rican descent.

      Harris was in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, on her 14th trip to the state since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. The vice-president spoke at a church service in west Philadelphia and answered questions on student loan debt at a nearby barbershop.

      At a rally on Sunday evening, Harris told supporters “no one can sit on the sidelines” ahead of the election, adding: “make no mistake: we will win.” Harris also targeted younger voters in the crowd. “You are rightly impatient for change,” she said. “You, who have only known the climate crisis … You, who grew up with active shooter drills. You, who right now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers.”

      Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, released statements acknowledging the sixth anniversary of a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. “Six years ago today, a white supremacist committed the deadliest attack on American Jews in our nation’s history,” Emhoff wrote. “We honor the lives of those lost on that horrific day by continuing our fight against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.”

      Governor Tim Walz joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to play the American football video game Madden on a Twitch livestream and talk about the election. The unconventional campaign appearance came as the Harris-Walz campaign tried to drum up support among young male voters.
      Donald Trump election news

      Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants. Businessman Grant Cardone said Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country”, while Tucker Carlson mocked Harris’s racial background: “As the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ, former California prosecutor to ever be elected president, no, she’s not impressive.” Wrestler Hulk Hogan, Dr Phil star Phil McGraw, and a rare surprise appearance from Melania Trump also garnered cheers from the 20,000 attenders.

      Trump promised to introduce a new tax credit for family caregivers and doubled down on his anti-immigration rhetoric. He said his administration would pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill Americans and that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

      Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, avoided calling Russia an “enemy” in an interview on Meet the Press. Vance said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly an adversary” but “we have to be smart about diplomacy”.

      Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures, including an unnamed campaign adviser of Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Various media outlets reported on Friday that the Trump campaign was made aware last week that the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate JD Vance were among a number of people inside and outside government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      Harris’s campaign has delayed taking up Joe Biden’s offers to campaign for his vice-president, Axios reports. “President Biden wants to campaign for vice-president Harris in the last days before the election,” the outlet writes. “Harris’ campaign keeps responding: We’ll get back to you, three people familiar with the dynamic told Axios.” The president will cast his early-voting ballot in the presidential election on Monday, according to the White House.

      An array of big tech executives have spoken with Donald Trump in recent days, seeking to rekindle their relationships with the ex-president as the possibility of his return to office looms, CNN reports. In recent weeks, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Andy Jassy have all called Trump. Earlier this summer, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also reached out to Trump after his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Trump fills Madison Square Garden with anger, vitriol and racist threats

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      Anger and vitriol took center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants.Nine days out from the election, Trump used the rally in New York to repeat his claim that he is fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the largest deportation program in American history”, amid incoherent ramblings about ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land.The event at Madison Square Garden, in the center of Manhattan, had drawn comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, said there was a “direct parallel” between the two events, and the Democratic National Committee projected images on the outside of the building on Sunday repeating claims from Trump’s former chief-of-staff that Trump had “praised Hitler”.There was certainly a dark tone throughout the hours-long rally, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2m US citizens, as an “island of garbage”; Tucker Carlson mocking Harris’ racial identity; a radio host describing Hillary Clinton as a “sick bastard”; and a crucifix-wielding childhood friend of Trump’s declaring that Harris is “the antichrist”.The Puerto Rico comments, made by Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist remarks, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican popstar who has more than 18m followers on Instagram, wrote in a post: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”View image in fullscreenBut that could prove problematic in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing state’s 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both campaigns have been trying to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the campaign, and Harris had visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia earlier on Sunday, where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico.The pugnacious mood didn’t change once Trump began speaking, as the former president quickly repeated his pledge to “launch the largest deportation program in American history”.Trump continued his frequent rants about immigration and claimed that a “savage Venezuelan prison gang” had “taken over Times Square”, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has recently visited the New York landmark. The former president also stated, wrongly, that the Biden administration did not have money to respond to a recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent all of their money bringing in illegal immigrants, flying them in by beautiful jet planes”.Trump’s usual dystopian threats were on offer, as the 78-year-old expanded on his claims about “the enemy within” – a group of political opponents that he has said he will set the military on if elected.“We’re just not running against Kamala. I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know this. She means nothing, she’s purely a vessel that’s all she is,” Trump said.“We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious radical-left machine that runs today’s Democrat party. They’re just vessels.”Trump’s appearance at Madison Square Garden – home to the New York Knicks and Rangers, and venue for countless legendary acts including Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and John Lennon’s last concert appearance before his murder – marks the culmination of his peculiar love-hate flirtation with his native city. Despite the fact that he has no chance of winning New York state – Harris is 15 points ahead in the Five Thirty Eight tracker poll – this was his third rally here this year.View image in fullscreenIn May he made an audacious attempt to woo Black and Latino voters in the south Bronx, just a few miles from his childhood home in Queens. Then in September, he pitched up in the New York City suburbs in Long Island.What Trump intends by staging this trilogy of seemingly pointless electoral appearances is unclear. He has used his rambling speeches to take a nostalgic walk down memory lane to what he sees as the golden days of his life as a New York real estate magnate.But he has also portrayed New York City in the most dark and dystopian terms, as a rat-infested haven for drug addicts, gangs and “illegal aliens” housed in luxury apartments while military veterans shiver on the sidewalks. His toxic language is perhaps a reflection of his bitterness towards the city of his birth, which in separate court cases has convicted him of 34 felonies, found his company the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud, and found him personally liable for sexual abuse.On Sunday Trump again criticized his home town, claiming that the Biden administration had forced “hundreds of thousands of really rough people” into the city and telling New Yorkers, despite police saying crime has declined: “Your crime is through the roof. Everything is through the roof.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe pugnacious tone had been set earlier in the afternoon, when several of the opening speakers made obscenity-laced and hate-filled remarks.Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico – he also made lewd sexual innuendos about Latina women – were met with big laughs from the crowd. A comment from radio personality Sid Rosenberg that Hillary Clinton is a “sick bastard” was similarly well received, as was Rosenberg’s claim that “the fucking illegals get everything they want”.David Rem, a Republican politician who the Trump campaign described as a childhood friend of the former president, called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist”, to loud cheers. Rem later took a crucifix out of his pocket and announced that he was running for New York City mayor.View image in fullscreenAs soon as Trump announced his intention to stage a rally at Madison Square Garden just days before the election, critics leapt to point out historical parallels with one of the most notorious events in New York history. On 20 February 1939, just seven months before Germany invaded Poland, the pro-Hitler German American Bund held a mass Nazi rally in the exact same arena.The organizers chose George Washington’s birthday as the date to parade their vision of an Aryan Christian country dedicated to white supremacy and American patriotism. They erected a giant portrait of Washington, which they flanked with swastika flags alongside the stars and stripes.More than 20,000 American Nazi sympathisers attended, many dressed in storm trooper uniforms and giving the Sieg Heil salute. The “Führer” of the American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, told the crowd that America would be “returned to the people who founded it”, and decried the “Jewish controlled press”.Hillary Clinton had noted the similarities between the two events in an interview with CNN last week, and at a rally in Nevada earlier on Sunday, Walz was happy to continue the comparison.“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said.“There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”The Trump campaign reacted furiously to the accusations, describing Clinton’s comments as “disgusting”. One of the few people to reference the 1939 rally on Sunday was Hulk Hogan, who emerged to wrestling music, spent several seconds struggling to rip off his shirt, then claimed: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here”.After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to the American voters to decide. More

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      Racist remarks and playing to the base: key takeaways from Trump’s MSG rally

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      Donald Trump reveled in what advisers called his happy place at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, as he enveloped himself in the adulation ahead of the final stretch of campaigning until the November election.The capacity rally at the Garden – something Trump had talked about for years – was essentially a reboot of the Republican national convention this summer, widely seen as Trump’s most confident moment.Trump had the more polished speakers from the convention double down on crude and xenophobic rhetoric, while he had Hulk Hogan rip his shirt on stage again, and got Melania Trump to appear again.The rally was a safe space for Trump and the campaign to lean into their most caustic impulses: speakers falsely saying Kamala Harris allowed migrants to “rape and kill” Americans or questioning whether Harris was Black or “Samoan-Malaysian”.There was nothing about trying to broaden his base. The rhetoric of Trump and his speakers was designed to give the crowd what they wanted to hear, doubling down on immigration rhetoric which Trump thinks his supporters love to hear the most.That disinterest to reach undecided voters by moderating the rhetoric also underscored the confidence of the Trump team with fewer than nine days until the election – they have long seen their path to victory as juicing turnout.The Trump team in recent days have in hushed whispers suggested privately they might even get close to winning the popular vote, which Trump lost in 2016, describing him as a comeback story with momentum on his side.Here are the key takeaways from perhaps Trump’s final major rally before election day:1. Racist and crude remarksTrump’s warm-up speakers appeared to feel particularly emboldened to take shots at Latinos and African Americans at the rally, in an apparent attempt to copy the former president.From the very first speaker, Tony Hinchcliffe, the host of the Kill Tony podcast, there was a push to stoke racial animus. Latinos “love making babies … there’s no pulling out. They come inside, just like they do to our country.”He added: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”The radio host Sid Rosenberg leaned into attacking Democrats, using ad hominem slurs to describe Hillary Clinton – a villain to Trump supporters who lapped it up.“Hillary Clinton. What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party. A bunch of degenerates. Lowlives, Jew-haters and lowlives. Every one of ‘em. Every one of ‘em,” Rosenberg said.And Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who lost his prime time perch in the wake of the network getting sued for defamation over promulgating false 2020 election fraud claims, went after Kamala Harris.“As the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ, former California prosecutor to ever be elected president,” Carlson falsely said in a mocking tone of Harris’s racial background. “No, she’s not impressive.”2. Anti-immigration rhetoricTrump himself doubled down on his anti-immigration rhetoric, promising to pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill an American and that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.Trump’s actual border plans are filled with rhetoric but light on details. For instance, he has pledged mass deportations without saying how it would logistically happen or how it would be funded. The Alien Enemies Act allows for summary deportations of people from countries with which the US is at war, that have invaded the country or have engaged in “predatory incursions” – but it requires a link to actions by a foreign government.But Trump has noted to advisers his crowds seem most energized when he talks about deporting illegal immigrants, and his speech repeatedly veered back to immigration even as he touched on other campaign messaging.3. Light on economic agendaTrump kept himself disciplined enough to throw out a new economic promise as he competes with Harris to increase disposable incomes for Americans: to introduce a new tax credit for family caregivers.He also promised to cut energy prices in half if he was re-elected and to lower corporate tax rates for businesses.Trump was again light on details for his economic agenda, given changes to the tax code would require the approval of Congress and it is unclear whether Republicans will retain control of the House or take the Senate majority. More

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      Puerto Rican stars Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin back Kamala Harris after racist comments at Trump rally

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      Puerto Rican stars star Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin have thrown their support behind Kamala Harris on the same day that a comedian appearing at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.On Sunday international reggaeton star Bad Bunny- whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – shared a video of the Democratic presidential nominee to his more than 45 million followers on Instagram. His support could be a boost for the Harris campaign as it tries to bolster its support with Latino and Puerto Rican voters.Bad Bunny signalled his support for Harris moments after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the remarks about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally in New York. Hinchcliffe also made crude remarks about Latinos.The comment was immediately criticised by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, another Puerto Rican pop star, wrote in a post to his 18m followers on Instagram: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”Later, Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said: “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”Other Latino singers who had already expressed support for Harris – including Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony – also shared the video from Democratic candidate.Bad Bunny has won three Grammy awards and was the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2020, 2021 and 2022, only surpassed by Taylor Swift in 2023. He was named artist of the year by Apple Music in 2022.The artist has increasingly waded into politics, especially in his native Puerto Rico, where he purchased billboards in protest of the pro-statehood New Progressive party and has been critical of the electric system, which was leveled by Hurricane Mario.The video he shared on Sunday shows Harris saying: “There’s so much at stake in this election for Puerto Rican voters and for Puerto Rico.”He then shared another part of the clip where Harris says: “I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” she says.Puerto Rican voters are crucial to both Trump and Harris, and Trump has recently been making inroads with the group. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, the majority of the 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent.Harris on Sunday visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico.She also recognized the need to urgently rebuild Puerto Rico’s energy grid, promising to work with local leaders to ensure all Puerto Ricans have access to reliable electricity, and cut red tape to ensure disaster recovery funds are used quickly and effectively.A year after the storm, public health experts estimated that nearly 3,000 perished because of the effects of Hurricane Maria.Trump’s actions and policies towards the island have repeatedly drawn criticism. He repeatedly questioned the number of casualties, saying it rose “like magic”. His visit to the island after the hurricane elicited controversy such as when he tossed paper towels. His administration released $13bn in assistance years later, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. And a federal government watchdog found that officials hampered an investigation into delays in aid delivery.Bad Bunny also shared a part of the clip showing Harris saying that Trump “abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults”.A representative for the artist confirmed his endorsement. More

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      Chinese hackers collected audio from a Trump campaign adviser’s calls – report

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      Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures, including an unnamed campaign adviser of Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported Sunday.Various media outlets reported on Friday that the Trump campaign was made aware last week that the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate JD Vance were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems.The FBI and the US cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency confirmed they were investigating unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by people associated with China, though they did not not name the Trump campaign in the statement.Reuters later reported that Chinese hackers also targeted phones used by people affiliated with the campaign of Kamala Harris.The Post now reports that the hackers were able to access audio from a phone call from a Trump campaign adviser, as well as unencrypted communications such as text messages of the individual.Trump’s campaign and the FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Trump campaign was hacked earlier this year. The US justice department charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with the hack, accusing them of trying to disrupt the 5 November election.Verizon said on Friday it was aware of a sophisticated attempt to target US telecoms and gather intelligence and is working with law enforcement.Congress is also investigating and earlier this month US lawmakers asked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to answer questions about reports Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers.The Chinese embassy in Washington DC said last week it was unaware of the specific situation but said China opposes and combats cyberattacks and cyber thefts in all forms. More

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      Trump to speak at Madison Square Garden after Harris rallies in Philadelphia – US politics live

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      Hulk Hogan, the retired WWE wrestler, has taken the stage, sporting yellow sunglasses and a red “Trump-Vance” tank top. He took a few jabs at Vice President Kamala Harris.“Kamala is responsible for the border crisis, and Kamala is also responsible for inflation,” he said. “She acts like she’s the victim, and then all of a sudden, she flips, she flops, she spins and turns it around and acts like she’s gonna be the damn hero.”The disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is expressing his support for former president Donald Trump at a campaign event in New York City.“He’s liberated us in the deepest and truest sense,” Carlson said about Trump. “And the liberation he has brought to us is the liberation from the obligation to tell lies. Donald Trump has made it possible for the rest of us to tell the truth about the world around us, and that’s the single most liberating thing you can do for people.”Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in that order, took the stage at Donald Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Garden. Ramaswamy made transphobic remarks, while Gabbard listed some of the ways she believes Vice President Kamala Harris will harm the country.“A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for economic hardship, high cost of living, poverty and homelessness,” Gabbard said. “And a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for economic prosperity and opportunity for every single one of us as Americans.”So far, the speakers at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City have resorted to lewd language and racist remarks in their speeches.A stand-up routine from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, for example, was filled with racist stereotypes of Latinos, Jews and Black people.“I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” said Hinchcliffe, whose joke was flagged by Democrat Kamala Harris’ campaign.Speaker Mike Johnson made an appearance at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City.He said he felt a resurgence of the Republican party and pointed to a widespread dissatisfaction with current policies under the Biden administration.“We’re in a battle between two completely different visions for who we are as a nation and who we’re going to be,” Johnson said. ‘“This is not your father’s Democratic Party. They are now full on Marxism and socialism.”The vice-president said she would create an “opportunity economy taskforce” in efforts to foster economic growth in the Caribbean archipelago by creating more jobs.She also recognized the need to urgently rebuild Puerto Rico’s energy grid. The US territory is still facing the aftermath of several hurricanes that ravaged the power grid. Puerto Rico is also undergoing the effects of austerity measures imposed by a non-elected fiscal board after the local government filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.“I will cut red tape to ensure disaster recovery funds are used quickly and effectively, and work with leaders across the island to ensure all Puerto Ricans have access to reliable, affordable electricity,” she said.“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and incompetent leader,” she said. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” she added.Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, wrapped up her nearly 15-minute speech in Philadephia.She encouraged the crowd to convince their families and friends to get out and vote, using similar phrases to those in her campaign ads.“There is too much on the line, and we must not wake up the day after the election and have any regrets about what we could have done in these next nine days,” she said.Vice President Kamala Harris directed her remarks toward younger voters in the Pennsylvania crowd.“Is Gen Z in the house?” she asked. “You are rightly impatient for change. You are rightly impatient. You who have only known the climate crisis, you are leaders in what we need to do to protect our planet.”
      “You, who grew up with active shooter drills,” she said. “You, who right now know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers understand the importance of fighting for the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do.”
      The Vice President spoke about the war in Gaza less than five minutes into her speech.“We must seize this opportunity to end this war and bring the hostages home,” she said. “I will do everything in my power to meet that end.”Jacob Roberts, a 26-year-old voter from Westchester attending Harris’ rally in North Philadelphia, has already voted early for her.He told the Guardian that he feels optimistic about the outcome of the election, even as polls show a tied race in Pennsylvania.“I’m seeing a lot of Kamala yard signs around,” Roberts said. “I actually just drove out to western Pennsylvania. I didn’t see a lot of Trump signs on barns or anything, so I think we’re looking good.”Asked whether he was disappointed to miss some of the Eagles game to attend the rally, Roberts said it was well worth it.“This is our country we’re talking about,” Roberts said.Brenda Exon, a 60-year-old voter from Wallingford known as the “Philly Pride Lady,” is at Kamala Harris’ rally in Philadelphia with her “timeline to liberty” apron.The apron tells the story of Philadelphia, from the founding of Pennsylvania to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the civil rights movement.“Our Philly story is our nation’s story, and that’s what we’re fighting for really. We don’t want Donald Trump to take this away,” Exon said.“We’re coming up on our 250th [anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence], and who should be president celebrating that in 2026? Kamala Harris.”Trump approved Rudy Giuliani to be on the stage tonight at the Madison Square Garden rally, according to a person familiar.Giuliani walked into the stage at the Trump rally to the loudest cheers so far of the event and a standing ovation from a capacity Madison Square Garden.Giuliani opened by referencing when Pope John Paul came to NY in 1995, a visit Giuliani presumably recalls because it took place while he was mayor.It’s the kind of anecdote that will play well with most of the crowd here but there are many younger Trump supporters here who have no idea what that’s about.Governor Tim Walz joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York, on a Twitch livestream as the two played the American football video game Madden and talked about the election.The unconventional campaign appearance comes as the Harris-Walz campaign tries to drum up support among young male voters. In 2020, Ocasio-Cortez’s first appearance on Twitch was one of the platform’s most-watched events at that time.Here’s Michael Sainato with more on the stream:On the six-year anniversary of a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff have released statements acknowledging the mass shooting.“Six years ago today, a white supremacist committed the deadliest attack on American Jews in our nation’s history,” Emhoff wrote. “We honor the lives of those lost on that horrific day by continuing our fight against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.”A federal judge blocked the state of Virginia from removing suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, CNN reported.The court cited potential violations of a federal ban on “systematic” removals within 90 days of an election.The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision paves the way for a potential Supreme Court battle as early voting begins in Virginia. Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have rallied around the case, arguing that noncitizen voting is a significant election risk, despite its rarity.The order clarifies that Virginia can still prevent noncitizen voting by canceling registrations on an individual basis or prosecuting noncitizens who vote.Today so farThanks for joining us this morning. As I hand over to my colleague Coral Murphy Marcos, here are the main headlines we’ve been following today so far:

      In a bevy of Sunday morning talk show appearances, JD Vance defended Donald Trump against claims from former Trump staffers that the ex-president has authoritarian tendencies. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris described her choice to deliver her closing argument speech at The Ellipse, Lindsey Graham denounced attacks against Trump’s character and Bernie Sanders said Trump has “strong tendency toward authoritarianism”.

      This morning, Kamala Harris campaigned “neighborhood-to-neighborhood” in Philadelphia, kicking off the morning by attending services at a predominantly Black church before heading to a nearby barbershop to speak with young Black men. She’ll be stopping at a Puerto Rican restaurant later this afternoon before speaking at a rally this evening.

      Supporters of Donald Trump’s have already begun gathering at Madison Square Garden as the ex-president prepares to deliver his closing arguments there. Campaigning in Nevada today, Tim Walz has criticized the rally as “a direct parallel” to a Nazi rally held at the venue in 1939.

      Following the news that the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times will not endorse a presidential candidate this year, the New York Times opinion section has published a full page image reminding readers that it endorsed Kamala Harris last month. Earlier this week, our own editorial page strongly endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

      In the final days of the 2024 election, Harris’s campaign has slowballed Joe Biden’s offers to campaign for his vice-president, Axios reports. More

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      Harris and Trump lean into their faith in appeals to Christian voters in Georgia

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      Two Georgia megachurches hosted presidential candidates last week, highlighting the stark differences between how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump speak about faith and what Georgia’s Christian religious congregations expect of them.Though Trump and Harris communicate differently to the public about their faith, religious leaders on the left and the right are casting this election in apocalyptic terms. And both candidates know religious voters will be essential to winning swing states like Georgia.“It is so good to be here with everyone today and to worship with you,” Harris said from the pulpit to thousands gathered at New Birth Missionary Baptist church in south DeKalb county last Sunday. “On this day, then, I am reminded, with everything that we reflect on, on the parable from the Gospel of Luke.”Four thousand people packed the pews of the predominantly-Black megachurch outside of Atlanta, one of the most prominent and powerful Black churches in America – a point of which pastor Jamal Bryant regularly reminds his congregation. New Birth owns more land than any Black church in America. It gave away $83m in college scholarships last year, he said.It wields its political clout deftly. New Birth’s congregants include many of Atlanta’s most powerful political figures – mayors, sheriffs, members of Congress. Bryant said it has hosted appearances by five presidents.But people who attend New Birth aren’t there for a stump speech. And Harris didn’t give one.“You don’t want to give political speeches in a sanctuary, because you’re there to worship God,” said state senator Emanuel Jones, a DeKalb Democrat who attended church at New Birth last week. “To me, it is not a good use of a sanctuary to try and politicize – particularly on a Sunday, by the way – to try and mix politics with religion. I think she does a really good job of keeping them separate. She did that today, and we all should.”View image in fullscreenHarris campaigned in Georgia with her pastor Rev Dr Amos Brown, pastor at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco and a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr and other luminaries in Atlanta’s civil rights history. She told a CNN townhall a few days later that her first call after learning that Biden would be withdrawing was to Brown.“I do pray every day,” she told Anderson Cooper. “Sometimes twice a day.”Harris will discuss her faith when it comes up, but doesn’t go out of her way to portray her campaign as religiously motivated. Conversely, she never mentioned her campaign directly while speaking at New Birth. She shied away from the political themes common to her political rhetoric – abortion rights, the cost of living and the general unfitness of her opponent. She used the word “faith” 16 times in her 14-minute address.“Faith is a verb,” she said. “We show it in action, in our deeds and in our service.”Though she had not come to deliver a political speech, in a church with the flags of dozens of countries lining the balconies, the subtext was clear enough – a repudiation of conservative xenophobia about immigrants.Elaine Montgomery heard it.“Like she said, when you don’t help people like my neighbors and we all in this world,” Montgomery said. “Everything belongs to God.”Montgomery, 69, from Stone Mountain, Georgia, was wearing a pink hat big enough to see from space that Sunday. She was on her way to vote. Her disdain for Trump’s expression of faith was plain.“He’s a man speaking on a level that’s below God, I will say that,” Montgomery said. Her voice lowered. “I don’t really think Donald Trump had faith. I really don’t. I’m serious, you know, because if he had faith and he believed in Jesus Christ, he wouldn’t be doing the things he does.”Faith matters in Georgia. White Christian evangelical beliefs correlate with the strongest support for Donald Trump, and about 38% of Georgians fall into that category, according to the Pew Research Center. Black voters in Georgia are also much more likely to be religious than the baseline, and Black voters represent about 30% of the electorate.Georgia, in the heart of the Bible Belt, has one of the highest rates of regular church attendance in America at 42%.View image in fullscreenLast Sunday, 42,694 voters cast a ballot in Georgia, many going in a “souls to the polls” push regularly organized by churches, particularly in metro Atlanta. In the flurry of conservative election legislation that followed the 2020 election in Georgia, a plan to eliminate Sunday early voting floated through the legislature. Outcry from pastors across the state ended that gambit. Mobilizing religiously-motivated voters is a necessary, if insufficient, requirement for any candidate to win a Georgia election.Trump found himself in Zebulon, Georgia, last week, doing just that.He was 45-minutes late to the faith townhall held at Christ Chapel church. Thousands of people packed its hall and sprawled into a parking lot ringed by semi-truck trailers with snipers on the roofs.“You know, without religion, it’s like the – it’s like the glue that holds it all together. This would be a different country,” he said, noting a declining trend in religious participation, suggesting that “people started thinking a little bit differently and they got used to a different way of life” after the pandemic. He spoke about how Christians – particularly Catholics – faced unspecified “persecution” today in America.But most of Trump’s comments at the “Believers and Ballots” townhall were campaign fodder about illegal immigration, how great his rallies have been and attacks on Harris and the Biden administration.About 1,100 people live in Zebulon, about an hour-and-a-half south of Atlanta. Christ Chapel has about 1,600 members, with more at satellite campuses in middle Georgia.Brian Hood, a congregant at Christ Chapel, said he expected Trump to speak about the border and inflation, but also freedom of religion.“Donald J Trump professes to be a born-again Christian. Does that mean that he’s perfect? Of course not. None of us are. Anybody who says they are is a liar. He appeals to, not just Christians, but all the American people. He loves God and loves people, all walks of life.”Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, a Republican and ally of the former president, asked Trump about coping with the assassination attempts and the pressure of the campaign. “How do you lean into your faith and your family to deal with this?”“I say this. Faith – when you have faith, when you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people that don’t have that. It’s a big advantage,” Trump replied.It was the only substantial reference Trump made to his own faith in the abbreviated 40-minute forum for faith voters.View image in fullscreenRalph Reed, chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a longtime activist on the Christian right, succinctly laid out the stakes for antiabortion conservatives as he warmed up the crowd before Trump’s arrival.Harris is “going to pass a federal law to impose abortion on demand on all 50 states,” Reed said. “And when she’s done doing that, she’s going to repeal the filibuster and then she’s going to pass a federal law imposing term limits on the supreme court which will instantly remove justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts from the court and she’s going to replace them with the most leftwing radical extremist justices ever nominated. That’s her agenda.”The first accomplishment listed on the campaign’s “Believers for Trump” website is how Trump appointed three supreme court justices, “which led to the end of Roe v Wade and broader protections for religious liberties.” Ending legal abortion is central to the religious conservatism of many of his supporters.“I believe that life begins in conception. I cannot follow the dictates of being able to abort at any time,” said Carol Whitcomb of Stockbridge, a conservative who attended the Trump forum.But it also may be a losing political position, even in Georgia. In every state where abortion rights have been a ballot referendum since the end of federal protections, voters have taken the more pro-choice position. Trump has generally avoided talking about abortion on the campaign trail, with no mention of it at all in a later appearance in Georgia last week.Sandra Stargel of McDonough, Georgia, who attended the forum, has registered a change in Trump’s posture toward abortion, she said. “But, you know, I believe God has been talking to him, too. God has him here for a reason. I understand that women want to be in charge of their bodies. I get that. But in that case, they make birth control. Use it. Don’t just keep killing babies.”Reed highlighted the stakes of the election: “We gather in this sanctuary 13 days before not only the most important election of our lifetimes but one of the most important elections in American history,” he said.While Harris was at New Birth a few days earlier, the church’s pastor Bryant used similar rhetoric, likening this political moment to the biblical story of Esther and her obligation to save Jews from death. “If you are silent in this moment, your family will not survive,” Bryant said. “This is not the time for y’all to be bougie and stuck up. Generations of your unborn family are waiting to see what you do next.” More

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      Bezos faces criticism after executives met with Trump on day of Post’s non-endorsement

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      The multi-billionaire owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, continued facing criticism throughout the weekend because executives from his aerospace company met with Donald Trump on the same day the newspaper prevented its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of his opponent in the US presidential election.Senior news and opinion leaders at the Washington Post flew to Miami in late September 2024 to meet with Bezos, who had reservations about the paper issuing an endorsement in the 5 November election, the New York Times reported.Amazon and the space exploration company Blue Origin are among Bezos-owned businesses that still compete for lucrative federal government contracts.And the Post on Friday announced it would not endorse a candidate in the 5 November election after its editorial board had already drafted its endorsement of Kamala Harris.Friday’s announcement did not mention Amazon or Blue Origin. But within hours, high-ranking officials of the latter company briefly met with Trump after a campaign speech in Austin, Texas, as the Republican nominee seeks a second presidency.Trump met with Blue Origin chief executive officer David Limp and vice-president of government relations Megan Mitchell, the Associated Press reported.Meanwhile, CNN reported that the Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, had also recently reached out to speak with the former president by phone.Those reported overtures were eviscerated by Washington Post editor-at-large and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. On Saturday, he argued that the meeting Blue Origin executives had with Trump would not have taken place if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice-president as it planned.“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do – and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told the Daily Beast on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”The Post’s publisher Will Lewis, hired by Bezos in January, defended the paper’s owner by claiming the decision to spike the Harris endorsement was his. But that has done little to defuse criticism from within the newspaper’s ranks as well as the wave of subscription cancelations that has met the institution.Eighteen opinion columnists at the Washington Post signed a dissenting column against the decision, calling it “a terrible mistake”. The paper has already made endorsements this election cycle, including in a US senate seat race in Maryland. The Washington Post endorsed Hillary Clinton when Trump won the presidency in 2016. It endorsed Joe Biden when Trump lost in 2020, despite Trump’s pledges to retaliate against anyone who opposed him.In their criticism of the Post’s decision on Friday, former and current employees cite the dangers to democracy posed by Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration for authoritarian rule amid his appeals for voters to return him to office.The former Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story, called the decision “disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process”.The former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a post on X, “This is cowardice with democracy as its casualty”.The cartoon team at the paper published a dark formless image protesting against the non-endorsement decision, playing on the “democracy dies in darkness” slogan that the Post adopted in 2017, five years after its purchase by Bezos.High-profile readers, including the bestselling author Stephen King as well as the former congresswoman and vocal Trump critic Liz Cheney, announced the cancellation of their Washington Post subscriptions with many others in protest.The Post’s non-endorsement came shortly after the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, refused to allow the editorial board publish an endorsement of Harris.Many pointed out how the stances from the Post and the LA Times seems to fit the definition of “anticipatory obedience” as spelled out in On Tyranny, Tim Snyder’s bestselling guide to authoritarianism. Snyder defines the term as “giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian” before the authoritarian is in position to compel that handover.Bezos is the second wealthiest person in the world behind Elon Musk, who has become a prominent supporter of Trump’s campaign for a second presidency. He bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250m.In 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon, claiming during a podcast interview that he intended to devote more time to Blue Origin.The New York Times reported Bezos had begun to get more involved in the paper in 2023 as it faced significant financial losses, a stream of employee departures and low morale.His pick of Lewis as publisher in January seemingly did little to help morale at the paper. Employees and devotees of the paper were worried that Lewis was brought on to the Post despite allegations that he “fraudulently obtained phone and company records in newspaper articles” as a journalist in London, as the New York Times reported.Nonetheless, in a memo to newsroom leaders in June 2024, Bezos wrote, “The journalistic standards and ethics at the Post will not change.” More