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US election answers the question: how do you spend a billion dollars?
It was one of the most striking images of the final full week of the presidential election campaign: a giant projection of Kamala Harris’s face on the 516ft-wide, 366ft-tall Las Vegas Sphere.At a reported $450,000 per day for what is believed to be the first political ad to appear on the futuristic new attraction, it was also one of the most expensive. But even at those rates, it barely made a dent in the staggering election war chest of almost $1bn that Harris has built since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket this summer.What the Vegas investment did answer, in part at least, was the question of how a campaign spends a billion dollars – an amount larger than the gross domestic product of at least 14 countries, according to the World Bank – in a single election season.Cash-hungry stunts such as this one in battleground Nevada are often targeted at undecided voters in specific swing states and regions; and Republicans and Democrats alike have shown a penchant for splashing out on costly endeavors to try to reach those who are still persuadable, and therefore the most high-value. Bang for the buck, in other words.As another example, the campaigns of Harris and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, booked pricey prime-time spots during games involving Pennsylvania’s two professional NFL teams – the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers – on Sunday and Monday nights.Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes could tip the election one way or the other, and with polling showing the state on a knife edge, Democrats in particular have made younger, male voters – a demographic they see as politically less engaged – a priority. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported, the Democratic National Committee paid “a six-figure sum” to fly pro-Harris banners over four NFL games involving teams from six of the seven key swing states, Pennsylvania among them.“It is an extraordinary amount of money that the candidates are raising, and there’s no shortage of places to spend it,” said Steve Caplan, a professor who teaches a course on political advertising at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.“Back in the stone age before the explosion of digital media, there were four TV networks in the US, and even after cable there was only so much what we would call inventory, or space, to get your message out.“Now, because of an explosion of channels and media outlets, there’s countless ways to spend that money, to slice and dice it by audience and by demographic, whether it’s on digital advertising, YouTube, Facebook and other social media. Interestingly, Snapchat has become a really big channel for Kamala Harris. It’s very cost-efficient and can reach younger voters.”Caplan said campaigns had invested in honing their digital content creation, from videos to podcasts, into a powerful and effective messaging tool.“There’s an entire infrastructure of producers, writers, editors and ad makers who just crank these things out for every conceivable audience, almost 24 hours a day for weeks and weeks,” he said.“We’ve also seen massive changes in the last few years where more consumers are cutting the cord: you get a smart TV and can stream through your provider. Those sort of platforms were really in their early stages just four years ago, and now they’ve become massive and very important. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are now being spent on these platforms in swing states. It was virtually zero in 2020.”Other expenses that campaigns must cover include staff costs, printed materials and advertising, staging rallies and transportation. But broadcast advertising, especially television, remains king.Analytics company AdImpact says Democrats have spent $1.1bn on aired ads and future reservations alone since Harris became the candidate in July, $400m more than Republicans. Jointly, the two presidential campaigns have spent an eye-watering $2.1bn since March.For the entire election cycle, including Senate, House and partisan down-ballot races, plus ballot initiatives in many states, political advertising is expected to reach a record $10.7bn, a 19% increase from 2020, AdImpact says.Democrats have significantly out-raised and outspent Republicans in this cycle, disclosures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show, in both campaign funding and money raised by and for political action committees (Pac), which are allied with the presidential candidates but, by law, are set up and run independently of them.Up to 16 October, the most recent date for which returns were available, Democrats hauled in $1.05bn and spent $883m, leaving almost $120m in hand. Republicans, by contrast, raised $565m and spent all but $52.6m of it.When Pac money is included, however, the figures swell exponentially. While individual contributors are limited to $3,300 donations directly to the presidential candidates, there are no such limits for Pacs, which raised $13.5bn between January 2023 and the end of last month, according to the FEC.The rules, framed by the 2010 Citizens United v FEC supreme court ruling, allow corporations, special interest groups and wealthy individuals – such as the billionaire Elon Musk through his controversial Trump-aligned America Pac – to make eye-popping and almost unrestricted contributions, and to buy oversized influence in elections and their aftermath.“Citizens United, and subsequent other cases, opened the door for corporate contributions to related entities to campaigns, and allowed for what are commonly referred to as dark-money groups to spend money on politics without disclosing who that money came from,” said attorney Noah Bookbinder, president and chief executive of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).“Wealthy people have always been a political force, but a small group of billionaires have become just a huge part of the machine, fueling political campaigns now, both in terms of giving to dark-money organizations and giving to Super Pacs. In the case of Elon Musk, his Super Pac is essentially operating as an unchecked piece of the Trump campaign apparatus.“It’s troubling because we don’t want this country to slide into being the kind of oligarchy you see in a place like Russia where a small number of very wealthy individuals have outsize influence over the people in charge.”Musk’s self-funded Pac reported $130m in receipts, the latest FEC disclosure showed. Democratic-aligned Pacs ActBlue, the Harris Victory Fund and the DNC, filled three of the top four places with receipts of more than $5bn. The leading Republican Pac, WinRed, reported $1.4bn.A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), meanwhile, shows Musk in third place among individual donors, behind banking and oil magnate Tim Mellon ($172m) and the Las Vegas-based Adelson family of hoteliers ($137m). All three donated to Republicans.In all, the ATF said, 150 billionaire families have so far contributed $1.9bn among them to Pacs supporting presidential and congressional candidates in the 2024 cycle, a 60% rise from the 2020 total given by more than 600 individual billionaires.“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.Bradley Smith, professor at Capital University law school and FEC chair during the administration of George W Bush, said it was wrong to blame Citizens United for the cash swishing around in Harris’s, or Trump’s, coffers.“The vast majority of the money is coming from individuals subject to campaign finance limits. All the money Kamala Harris has raised directly in her campaign comes from individuals in amounts of $3,300 or less,” he said.“The law has played a part but more than that, it’s maybe a little bit of a cultural zeitgeist. People seem to really feel there’s a lot at stake in this election and one of the few ways people can participate in a campaign beyond voting is by giving money.“Most people don’t have time to go knock on doors, and a lot of it has been supercharged by the internet, which makes it really easy and low-cost to get small donors to contribute: ‘Click on this button, send us $20.’ Some of these people do that 30, 40, 50 times, and all of a sudden you’re talking real money.” More
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US presidential election updates: false videos of voter fraud spread as election approaches
The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said a video that claimed to show a Haitian immigrant who voted multiple times is “false”, “targeted disinformation” and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us,” said Raffensperger, who also asked that “Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms … take this down.”Meanwhile, Musk has deputised his followers on X to spot and report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”. The election integrity community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.As Americans race towards the presidential election, claims of voter fraud – as well as real example of political violence – are growing, with burning vote boxes, attempts to steal ballots and online hoaxes all reported this week.Here is what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news and updates
Kamala Harris said on Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.
Harris, who has been receiving a slew of celebrity endorsements, got an A-list boost from pop star and movie actor Jennifer Lopez in Las Vegas, after basketball great LeBron James endorsed her earlier in the day. “I like Hollywood endings. I like when the good guy, or in this case the good girl wins,” said Lopez.
The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies also came out in support of Harris. In a video posted first on Vanity Fair, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.
Donald Trump election news and updatesTrump acknowledged that Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr could be “influential figures” in a potential second administration as he sat for a lengthy interview with conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in battleground state Arizona. Trump also called Liz Cheney a “war hawk” who should be placed in the line of fire to “see how she feels about it”. The former congresswoman has become one of his most prominent Republican critics.
Trump made stops in New Mexico, a traditionally Democratic state, and the swing state of Nevada. Trump predicted he would defy experts who said campaigning in New Mexico was futile. “They all said ‘Don’t come. You can’t win New Mexico.’ I said, ‘Look, your votes are rigged. We can win New Mexico,’” Trump said.
Trump’s refusal to publicly acknowledge his defeat in 2020 and suggestion that if he loses this year, he will once again claim fraud, have changed the lives of many formerly low-key election offices and secretaries of state nationwide, who now regularly face threats and harassment, Chris Stein reported from Arizona.
Elon Musk failed to show up to a required hearing in a Philadelphia case challenging his $1m-a-day sweepstakes. His absence would have risked contempt of court had the case continued in Pennsylvania court, but it was moved to federal court in response to a motion filed by Musk’s attorneys, who did attend the hearing. No hearings were immediately scheduled in the federal case.
Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort for Donald Trump has come under renewed scrutiny after paid canvassers reported not knowing beforehand that they were being hired to support the former president. Workers recruited by Musk’s America Pac to canvass in the battleground state of Michigan only discovered they were working for the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur to drum up voter turnout for Trump after signing non-disclosure agreements, Wired reported.
Elsewhere on the campaign trailPractising witches from around the world gathered in Salem by the hundreds on Thursday night to honour Stormy Daniels at their annual “magic circle” ceremony recognising loved ones who have died. Daniels – the adult film actor who allegedly had an affair with Trump and was at the centre of his May criminal trial that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felonies – was chosen to be honoured in the Halloween ceremony as the organisers believe that she has been the victim of a modern-day witch-hunt.
White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the Associated Press.
Read more about the 2024 US election:Presidential poll tracker
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White House press officials altered transcript of Joe Biden ‘garbage remark’ call: report
White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the Associated Press.Biden created an uproar earlier this week with his remarks to Latino activists responding to racist comments at a Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the US island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president.The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by the AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “Our Stenography Office transcript – released to our distro, which includes the National Archives – is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”The edit of the transcript came as the White House scrambled to respond to a wave of queries from reporters about Biden’s comments. The president’s remarks clashed with vice-president Kamala Harris’ near-simultaneous speech outside the White House in which she called for treating Americans of differing ideologies with respect.The Trump campaign quickly moved to fundraise off the quote, and the next day, Trump himself held a photo op inside a garbage truck to try to capitalize on Biden’s criticism.Harris on Wednesday distanced herself from Biden’s comments – making the clearest break from the president since she took over for him at the top of the Democratic ticket just over three months ago. “Let me be clear,” she told reporters, “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm. Biden himself took to social media to say that he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage and that he was referring specifically to the “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.”The stenographers office is charged with preparing accurate transcripts of public and private remarks of the president for preservation by the National Archives and distribution to the public.The two-person stenography team on duty that evening – a “typer” and “proofer” – said any edit to the transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of stenographers’ office.The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story.White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates that evening also posted on X the edited version of the quote and wrote that Biden was referring ”to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.’”The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action – but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit – in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.“Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release,” the supervisor wrote.The supervisor declined to comment to the AP and referred questions about the matter to the White House press office.Asked to comment, Bates did not address the alteration of the transcript and said: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”House Republicans, meanwhile, were debating launching an investigation into the matter. House Republican Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican of New York, and House Oversight and Accountability chairman James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, on Wednesday accused White House staff of “releasing a false transcript” of Biden’s remarks.In a letter to White House counsel Ed Siskel on Wednesday, they called on the administration to retain documents and internal communications related to Biden’s remarks and the release of the transcript.“White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” the lawmakers wrote to Siskel.Stefanik and Comer said the action could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. More
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Avengers stars assemble to endorse Kamala Harris – by brainstorming an election catchphrase
The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies have come out in support of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris less than a week before the US election.In a video posted first on Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.The video, which runs for just over 90 seconds, opens with the actors taking an incoming video call from Johansson. On screen, they brainstorm ideas for a catchphrase for Harris, landing on the dubious “Down with Democracy”, which they spin into a brief Marvel-style Harris/Walz campaign video with dramatic music and comic-style graphics. The final frame of the video encourages viewers to vote on November 5.Sharing the video on X, Ruffalo, a vocal Democrat supporter who is best known for his role as the Hulk, wrote: “Don’t sit this one out. It’s the one where we will lose big: Project 2025, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, LGBTQIA+ rights, public education, student debt relief, Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and as of today, life saving vaccines. This shit is real and it’s going to come for you.”Speaking to Vanity Fair about the making of the video, Johansson, who played Black Widow in the Marvel films, said, “It just immediately turned into people trying to one-up each other with one-liners,” and joked that Downey Jr and Ruffalo were “bickering like two old ladies. And, of course, I’m the person that’s just trying to organise everybody. It’s very similar to what our dynamic is in the films. It was wonderful to feel everybody assemble around it, and hopefully it will engage our fans in the process of voting.”Johansson initiated the project, reaching out to her fellow MCU alumni via their group chat and reminding them: “We’ve got a lot of powerful people on this thread, and it would be great to unite … in hopefully creating a bit of a viral moment for Kamala.”The Avengers cast join a list of celebrities who have endorsed the Harris/Walz campaign, including Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah. In the last week alone, Beyoncé, Madonna, Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, LeBron James and the former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger have all come out in support of Harris. More
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Harris hits out at Trump for calling himself protector of women ‘whether they like it or not’ – US election live updates
Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has endorsed Kamala Harris, writing: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me.”The endorsement isn’t a surprise – James has supported Democrats before, and been critical of Donald Trump.Supporters of Donald Trump, gathering for a campaign rally in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are confident that he will win next week’s presidential election – and some refuse to contemplate defeat.Bob Diaz, 69, who is Latino and teaches at a college, said Trump is doing “a lot better” with Latino voters this time. “People will be blown away about how much he actually won by,” he said. “He’s going to get the electoral votes and the popular vote as well.”His wife, Audrey, also 69, a homemaker and mediator, added: “Polls are just polls. I believe he’s going to win. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been involved with other campaigns. I’ve never seen so many age groups, so many cultures, so many countries, so many languages. I’ve never, ever seen this before.”She believes that border security is a winning issue for the Republican nominee. “I wish he didn’t cuss, I wish he didn’t say weird things, but he’s going to protect our borders and clean it up from the inside and protect it from the outside. Bottom line.”Some here say they would not accept a Trump defeat. Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneu, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “We won’t. None of us will. We know he didn’t lose in 2020 either.“God’s going to bring it in and take down the wicked. The righteous will be lifted up and the wicked will fall and those who support the death of innocent children in America and around the world will not survive in this nation. They will not be in power for much longer.”Enrique Lopez, 32, a physical therapy student and military veteran, warned: “No matter what happens, there’s going to be a lot of chaos on both sides. Whether Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be so much chaos.”Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”Donald Trump has baselessly claimed that Democrats are acting like the “gestapo” in forcing people to adopt electric vehicles, during a rally in New Mexico today.In his latest broadside against electric cars, the former president said that trucks made 50 years ago are better than electric versions today but that people are being forced to switch by a Joe Biden administration that is using tactics he likened to Nazi Germany.“So, I said, did you explain that to the authorities as they burst into your office to demand that you go all electric?” Trump said, in reference to a conversation he’d had with someone. “He said: ‘I explained it.’ ‘What did they say?’ ‘We don’t give a damn. We want you to go all electric.’“This is what we’re dealing with. It’s like gestapo stuff, OK? They use that term. It’s like gestapo stuff. What they’re doing to our country is unbelievable.”Trump’s accusation is based on a falsehood – there is no obligation to switch to electric cars nor any ban on gasoline or diesel cars. Despite this, Trump’s campaign has repeatedly claimed otherwise, assailing Kamala Harris in TV adverts for adopting an “EV mandate”.Electric cars have long stirred antipathy in Trump, who has said incentives to buy them are “lunacy” and that their supporters should “rot in hell” even as Elon Musk, the billionaire chief of electric car giant Tesla, has become one of Trump’s most prominent backers.The president acknowledged this incongruity in August when he said: “I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”The ceasefire against electric vehicles now appears to be over, however. Should he win next week’s election, Trump is expected to roll back vehicle pollution standards that nudge people to buy electric alternatives, as well as repeal tax rebates for people to buy electric models.Gasoline cars, trucks and other forms of transport are the largest sectoral contributor of planet-heating gases in the US, as well as a major source of the air pollution that routinely causes tens of thousands of respiratory and cardiovascular health problems, and deaths, among Americans each year.Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is quite present at this Quakertown voting location, where there’s a long line of people waiting to vote.They have a table set up with coffee and donuts, and volunteers are going up and down the line giving voters the forms they need to fill out to request their mail-in ballots on demand.I chatted with Betsy Cross, a Trump campaign volunteer from New Jersey who was handing out forms to people in line to request their mail-in ballots on demand. She had been there since 2.30 and estimated people were waiting two hours to vote. Was she surprised that so many people were there? “No,” she said. “People want to bank their vote for president Trump.”I just stopped by a voting location in Bucks county, a Pennsylvania battleground where a local judge extended the deadline for voters to cast ballots after a Trump campaign lawsuit.Voters here can request and return an absentee ballot on the spot – Pennsylvania’s clunky version of early, in-person voting – until Friday. The deadline for the rest of the state was Tuesday, but the Trump campaign successfully sued the county to get voting extended until Friday. The county had been wrongly preventing people from voting if they weren’t in line by 5pm.I arrived a little after 3pm at the government offices in Quakertown and saw that there was a pretty long line stretching around the corner. Just before he went into vote, a man at the front of the line told me he had been waiting about an hour.One of the people in the back of the line was Phil Haegele, a 47-year-old plumber who was celebrating his sixth wedding anniversary. He said he was supporting Donald Trump and that he’d heard about voting being extended on the radio yesterday and got “probably 50 text messages” encouraging him and his wife to come vote.Haegele usually votes on election day but said that he had decided to come out and cast his ballot early.“We had saw that on a lot of the news agencies that we follow, they were saying that they were trying to get as many Trump supporters to vote early to try and ward off as much fraud as they could,” he said.He predicted that the election would be a “blowout”, even though the polls show an extremely tight race in Pennsylvania and across the country.“If they call the election on election day, it’s gonna be a blowout,” he said. “If they need to take a week to print more ballots, then yes, it’s gonna be tough.”Supporters of Donald Trump in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are giving short shrift to a controversy over his remark on Wednesday that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not”.Awaiting a Trump campaign rally, Patty Periva, 74, a retired education worker, said: “I don’t care. The Democrats do not protect women. They allow abortions. How many of those abortions are women? They’re killing women and they don’t protect women. It’s a lie.”Lisa Consigilo, 60, a retired personal trainer, added: “My family’s from New York. Some things he says people take literally but I know how he speaks: it’s how my dad spoke. You don’t need to take stuff so literally.“All their campaign is running on lies. He’s not going to ban abortion across the country. You can’t: it’s impossible. He’s not for that. Everything that they’re running on is not true about Project 2025. He’s a dad, he’s a grandfather, it wasn’t literal like: ‘I’m going to protect women.’”Opinion polls suggest a historic gender gap in the presidential election, with women supporting Kamala Harris by a wide margin. But Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneur, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “They’ve weaponised the women against this party but the truth is that they’ve also held down the women in this nation by calling us Karens.“We’re not allowed to stand up and speak for our beliefs. They call us a Karen every time we speak up. So the American woman needs to stand up – and they will – and they’re going to realise that Trump is for American women. He’s for women all over the world.”Raids and mass deportations lie at the heart of the former president’s second-term vision – a web of policies so vast that critics say their collective implementation would challenge the very ideal of the United States as a nation of immigrants.Should he win in November, the Republican nominee has vowed not only to restore many of his most controversial immigration policies, but to go even further. While a number of his first-term plans were stymied by the courts and Congress, immigration rights leaders believe a second Trump administration would likely be more sophisticated and strategic.“It is different this time. There’s a plan. There is a sense of urgency that they’ve created around this issue,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “And they know how to use the levers of government in a way they didn’t in 2016.”Donald Trump would also be operating in a changed political landscape. Since leaving office, the political center of gravity has shifted rightward, amid a post-pandemic rise in global migration that saw a record number of people arriving at the southern border and claiming asylum. Americans have become less tolerant of illegal immigration while a growing minority is increasingly concerned about its impact on the country’s economy and national identity.Though border crossings have plummeted this year following the president’s asylum clampdown, a sense of disorder persists. Voters continue to broadly disapprove of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the situation. Trump and his team are confident immigration remains a potent political issue for voters – and one that he has long played to his advantage.When Trump first descended a golden escalator in 2015, he pledged to construct a “great wall” along the south-west border with Mexico to keep out immigrants he disparaged as “rapists” and drug dealers. Now, in the final weeks of his third presidential race, Trump has again escalated his threats against immigrants, but this time he is turning his vitriol inward toward those already here.“The United States is now an occupied country,” Trump claimed recently at a rally in Atlanta. “But on November 5, 2024, that will be liberation day in America.”The vice-president will be appearing in Phoenix alongside the musical group Los Tigres del Norte.Then, she’ll be heading to Las Vegas, where she will be campaigning alongside Jennifer Lopez and Maná.In both cities, Harris will seek to energize Latino voters, who could help decide the outcome of the race in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada.Happy Halloween! There are barely five days left in the 2024 US presidential election and polls show the candidates – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – remain neck and neck in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. More than 60 million Americans have cast ballots so far.Harris and Trump are traveling across the western half of the country in states like New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona in the final days of their campaigns.Here’s a summary of the day so far:
Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit. The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Trump is banned from rallying in the city over the unpaid bill – his event is being held instead at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.
Billionaires have flushed the election with cash – roughly $1.9b to be exact, largely to the benefit of republican candidates like Trump. “Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.
Voter enthusiasm is at a historical high for a presidential election, a Gallup poll found. Similar to November 2020, 70% of registered voters nationwide said that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting now compared to March, when only 56% expressed enthusiasm.
Trump’s former attorney Kenneth Chesebro has been suspended from practicing law in New York. Chesboro was indicted on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia.
Harris has received more endorsements today. Former New York mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and the Economist have publicly expressed their support.
Harris said on Thursday that Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”. “I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Harris will be joined by Jennifer Lopez for her rally in Las Vegas, Nevada – a critical swing state.
Ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona before the former president heads to his own rally in Nevada.
Of the more than 60 million Americans who have gone to the polls early – some 32 million and counting did so in person. Here are some of the best pictures of early voting from the newswires:Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit.“Trump now owes almost a half a million dollars to the city of Albuquerque … We’ve had collection agencies calling and so forth for about two years now,” Keller said.The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Since the Trump campaign still allegedly hasn’t paid its bills, he was banned from rallying there. Instead, the rally is being held at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.The general manager for the Albuquerque convention center, Ray Roa, confirmed to the Albuquerque Journal on Monday that members of the Trump campaign contacted them to try to rent the convention center but were denied.Trump called his supporters smarter than “crooked Joe’s or lyin’ Kamala’s” and denounced Joe Biden over his “garbage” remark.Trump took several digs at his opponent, telling his crowd that Harris “doesn’t have the stamina, the intellect or that special quality” that certain leaders have. More - in US Politics
Elon Musk’s ‘election integrity community’ on X is full of baseless claims
While Elon Musk faces his own election integrity questions offline, the X owner has deputized his followers to spot and report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”. The community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.Musk opted not to show up to a required court appearance Thursday in Philadelphia to respond to a lawsuit challenging his political action committee’s daily $1m voter giveaway. Meanwhile, online, he has started a dedicated community space on X, formerly Twitter, where he’s asked users to share any issues they see while voting. Users posting on the self-contained feed, the “election integrity community”, quickly began pointing out what they deemed as evidence of fraud and election interference.Tweets showing everything from ballots that arrived ripped, an ABC news system test, a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail-in ballots were all presented as evidence that the upcoming presidential election had been compromised. Some users posted videos of individuals they deemed suspicious, despite providing little or no proof of suspicious activity and asked others in the community to help identify them.Among the tweets are attempts at doxxing and identifying people who users falsely accuse of ballot box stuffing or preventing Trump supporters from voting. In one case, a post with 14,000 shares and 31,000 likes includes a video of a postal worker bringing ballots into a polling location in Northampton county, Pennsylvania.The same video had been shared throughout X and other forums and retweeted by rightwing influencers like Alex Jones. The user asks for help identifying the man. “He says he’s with the post office but idk if I buy that,” the post reads. “He wouldn’t talk to us and was acting very suspect.” The man in question was the acting postmaster and a 25-year-veteran of the US Postal Service, the Northampton county executive Lamont McClure confirmed to NBC News. McClure told NBC News that the postal worker was already being harassed over the video.Experts say the community, which has more than 50,000 members, follows the same playbook used in feverish online forums after the 2020 election to fuel claims that votes were stolen. In 2020, it was the “Stop the Steal” Facebook group, Telegram groups and message boards on alt-right social media firm Parler.These groups amassed hundreds of thousands of followers who perpetuated the baseless claim that the election was being stolen from Donald Trump. Much of the anecdotal and often unfounded stories shared in these groups by individuals were leveraged by rightwing influencers and other figures to create the narrative that the election was compromised, according to a report by the Election Integrity Partnership.“These are real rumors by real people that are being picked up and used by a propaganda machine that really wants to get that view out there,” said Renee DiResta, an associate professor at Georgetown University and former research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory. “That’s what happened in 2020. [It was the same] process of ‘stop the steal.’ The slogan came from the top but it was ordinary people who provided the ‘evidence’ to back up the idea that the election was stolen.”Before anyone can determine whether the claims are true or false, users seize on the posts and assume the often unsuspecting person being shown are guilty or doing something bad, said DiResta. “Unfortunately the people who bear the costs are the random people whose photographs they take.”
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The “election integrity community” provides another glimpse into the echo chamber of individuals across the country who believe the election will be or has already been rigged against Trump. Though the space is separate from the normal X feed, Musk has also shared some of the concerns posted in the community on his own page.Among the narratives being pushed in the community is one that has become a pet conspiracy theory of Musk’s. The SpaceX CEO has loudly and often made the false claim that the Biden administration was “importing voters” in the form of “unvetted illegal immigrants”. In the last few days, a Musk-funded super Pac has been pushing a fake pro-Kamala Harris initiative called Project 2028. The initiative has posted fake pro-Harris ads and sent texts to voters that include claims that Harris will be opening the country’s borders and is pushing for undocumented immigrants to be able to vote. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in the US, and there is no available evidence they are voting in droves as claimed. Users in the community are sharing videos they say provides evidence that Democrats are “bussing” undocumented immigrants to cast votes in their favor. More
