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US presidential election updates: Poll shows Harris ahead in early voting as Trump jokes about reporters being shot
With less than 48 hours to go in the US election and more than 77.6m votes already cast, new polling shows Kamala Harris leading among early voters in the country’s battleground states.The Democratic candidate has an 8% lead among those who have already voted, while her opponent, Donald Trump, is ahead among those who say they are very likely to vote but have not yet done so. The poll, from the New York Times and Siena College, also found Harris was slightly ahead in three swing states, with Trump up in one and the other three too close to call.With only hours of campaigning left, Harris was speaking in Michigan, while her Republican opponent used a rally in Pennsylvania to complain about gaps in the bulletproof shields surrounding him and suggested he would have no concerns about reporters being shot at if there were another assassination attempt against him.“To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news and I don’t mind that so much,” he said, adding the press were “seriously corrupt people”. Trump’s communications director claimed in a statement the comments were supposedly an effort to look out for the welfare of the news media.Here’s what else happened on Sunday:Donald Trump election news and updates
The Trump campaign claimed the NYT polling and Saturday’s Selzer poll of Iowa for the Des Moines Register were designed to suppress Trump voter turnout by presenting a biased, bleak picture of Trump’s re-election prospects. “No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.
In Pennsylvania, Trump told supporters that he should have stayed in the White House, despite his losing the 2020 election. “We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left,” Trump said.
At a rally in Macon, Georgia, Trump kept up anti-migrant rhetoric and again suggested he would give a role on health policy to Robert F Kennedy Jr. Trump said he told Kennedy: “You work on women’s health, you work on health, you work on what we eat. You work on pesticides. You work on everything.”
After RFK Jr proposed removing fluoride from drinking water on the first day of a new Trump administration, the former president appeared to approve the idea. “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump told NBC News. “You know, it’s possible.”
Trump also spoke in Kinston, North Carolina, where he criticised Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader. “Hopefully we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” Trump said. Republican voters in Kinston told the Guardian they are ready to fight a “stolen election”.
Kamala Harris election news and updatesIn her final rally in Michigan, Harris pledged to do everything in her power to “end the war in Gaza”, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population. Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the administrations stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.
Harris dodged a question on whether she voted for a controversial tough-on-crime measure that would make it easier for prosecutors to imprison repeat shoplifters and drug users to jail or prison, after submitting her ballot in California. Proposition 36 would roll back provisions of Proposition 47, which downgraded low-level thefts and drug possession to misdemeanours.
At Michigan’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional church of God in Christ in Detroit, Harris told the congregation that God’s plan was to “heal us and bring us together as nation” but that they “must act” to realise that plan.
Elsewhere on the campaign trailA US government communications regulator has claimed that Harris’s appearance on Saturday Night Live violates “equal time” rules that govern political programming. Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the federal communications commission (FCC), said “the purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.”
Iowa can continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens, a federal judge has ruled. The state has targeted illegal voting but critics said the effort threatened the voting rights of people who have only recently become US citizens.
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Harris vows at Michigan rally to ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’
Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election.Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, and polling suggests that these voters are gravitating towards Jill Stein, the Green party candidate.With Harris and the former president essentially tied in Michigan, a drop in voting numbers for either could be critical, and Harris made a clear appeal at the beginning of her speech.“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon,” Harris said.“It is devastating, and as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.”Speaking at the Michigan State University campus, Harris repeated her campaign promise to “turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division”. Harris did not mention Trump by name in East Lansing, as she gave an address that struck a hopeful tone for the future.“America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.“We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.”
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Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. The state is key to her chances of success, but the result is likely to be close. Trump won Michigan by about 10,000 votes in 2016 as he demolished Democrats’ “blue wall”, and Biden also carried the state by a narrow margin in 2020. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night, but Harris was defiant.“We need to finish strong. So for the next two days we still have a lot of work to do but here’s the thing: we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said.“And make no mistake, we will win.”It was a raucous atmosphere at the rally, Harris’s final stop in Michigan before Tuesday’s vote. She repeatedly had to pause for loud chants of “Kamala, Kamala” from a diverse crowd who seemed enthusiastic about voting for her“I feel more energized and more excited in this election than I have in a while,” said Latonya Demps, 40, a small business owner and a Michigan State alumna.“I’m very excited to vote for Harris. As a woman she speaks for my rights and the rights of women that we have fought for for a very, very long time: the right to choose, the right to have equity and access, also freedom for all of us in terms of climate change, in terms of our economy, the type of neighbors we want to have, the families that we want to raise, I think she represents the values that are really important to me.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week Democrats have fought to counter the gains made by Stein among Arab American and Muslim American voters in Michigan, with the Democratic National Committee launching a series of ads on Instagram and YouTube aiming to discourage people from voting for Stein and Cornel West, who is running as an independent and is also a critic of Israel.The ads highlight recent comments by Trump that he likes Stein “very much”, because: “She takes 100% from [Democrats].” The pro-Democrat organization MoveOn has also been running a “seven-figure” ad campaign this week, which it said was designed to appeal to people who are yet to decide on a candidate and “third-party curious voters”.Polling on the issue has yielded inconsistent results. Last week a national survey of Arab Americans, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit, found 43% supporting Trump compared with 41% for Harris, and 4% backing Stein, while a survey of Muslim Americans, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of American Muslims, found that 42.3% plan to vote for Stein, 41% for Harris and 9.8% for Trump.Despite that uncertainty, Harris supporters left buoyant on Sunday night.“She’s going to be the first Black woman president that we’ve had. She’s actually going to fight for our rights. She’s fighting for women’s reproductive rights, she’s also fighting for the middle class, for entrepreneurs, and business owners like myself,” said Zay Worthey, 19.Worthey said he was “100%” confident that Harris will win the White House on Tuesday.“Because she has something that Donald Trump doesn’t: community,” Worthey said.“She’s really working and fighting for the people of America, and Donald Trump is just only working for the people of the rich.” More - in US Politics
Trump disputes Iowa poll showing Harris ahead in red state: ‘It’s not even close!’
Donald Trump has passionately disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%.“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”Trump continued, in all caps: “I love the farmers, and they love me. And they trust me.” More than 85% of Iowa’s land is used for farming and it produces more corn, pigs, eggs, ethanol and biodiesel than any other state.On Saturday, the Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed the vice-president ahead of her Republican rival by three points. Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa; she shot to polling fame in 2008 when she predicted that a virtually unknown senator, Barack Obama, would beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.The pollster told MSNBC on Sunday that Harris was leading in early voting in Iowa “because of her strength with women generally, even stronger with women aged 65 and older. Her margin is more than 2-to-1 – and this is an age group that shows up to vote or votes early in disproportionately large numbers.”Earlier on Sunday, Trump’s campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.
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The Emerson poll found 53% of likely voters support Trump and 43% support Harris, with 3% undecided and 1% planning to vote for a third-party candidate.The Trump campaign, which many Democrats believe is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, also said in an email that the Des Moines Register poll and a subsequent New York Times swing state poll that found Harris ahead in four of the seven states, is “being used to drive a voter suppression narrative against President Trump’s supporters.“Some in the media are choosing to amplify a mad dash to dampen and diminish voter enthusiasm,” the statement added.Last week, Trump said: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before” but did not provide evidence for the claim. A Harris campaign official said that the “cheating” claim was an example of how Trump was trying to sow doubt in the electoral system because he was afraid he would lose.The claims come as a federal judge plans to rule on whether Iowa officials can continuing trying to remove hundreds of potential noncitizens from its voting rolls despite critics saying the effort could keep recently naturalized citizens from voting.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he is confident that Trump is “going to confidently win Iowa”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if Trump has a problem winning over women voters, Burgum said: “I’d be surprised, completely shocked if that comes anywhere close to being the fact in Iowa.”Burgum pointed to national polling which shows Harris and Trump tied.“I think that’s the feeling that I get on the ground. It’s a very tight race. It’s going to be decided on Tuesday,” Burgum added.But speaking to MSNBC, Maryland governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, said the Des Moines Register poll putting Harris ahead Iowa, but still within margins of error, “lines up with what we’re seeing on the ground”, particularly among women voters.Moore continued: “We’re watching an energy that I think has not been there for a while, where we continue to see where women understand firsthand, what is at stake, that they understand the dynamics and the distinctions between these two candidates literally could not be more stark about when you’re talking about a future vision for the country.” More - in US Politics
FCC regulator claims Harris appearance on SNL violates ‘equal time’ rule
A US government communications regulator has claimed that Vice-President Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live violates “equal time” rules that govern political programming.Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the federal communications commission (FCC), claimed on the social platform X that Harris’s appearance on the show “is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule”.Carr made the claim in response to an Associated Press alert to Harris being on the show that night.“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns,” said Carr, who was nominated by both Trump and Biden and confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.FCC guidelines state: “Equal opportunities generally means providing comparable time and placement to opposing candidates; it does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate.”A spokesperson for the FCC issued a statement: “The FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”Harris joined comedian Maya Rudolph at the start of the show in a sketch that skewered Donald Trump for his recent rally speeches, including wearing an orange and yellow safety jacket, a riff on the ongoing garbage controversy, and pretending to fellate a broken microphone.Harris began her “mirror image” sketch opposite Rudolph, the SNL cast member selected to impersonate her, on the other side of a mirror.“I’m just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent can’t do – you can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, seemingly referring to a video from earlier in the week in which Trump had struggled to reach the handle of a garbage truck he briefly rode in to a Wisconsin rally.That came after a comedian at a Trump rally in New York made a joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” that was widely deemed racist. Trump disavowed the comedian but did not apologize.On a video call to Latino voters, President Biden appeared to call Trump supporters garbage. The White House later denied he had and released a transcript with “supporters” altered to “supporter’s”, changing the meaning. White House stenographers appealed against the alteration.“The American people want to stop the chaos,” Rudolph said in the SNL sketch, with Harris adding, “And end the drama-la.”“With a cool new step mom-ala. Get back in our pajama-las. And watch a rom-com-ala,” Rudolph said, with the two later touting their “belief in the promise of America”.Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of SNL, which is celebrating its 50th season NBC, told the Hollywood Reporter in September that neither Harris or Trump would themselves appear on the show.“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Michaels told the outlet.“You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”In the interview, Michaels said Republicans were easier to characterize than Democrats who have been offended by certain skits.“It’s not personal in the sense of an attack, it’s just, you did say that and you did do that, so were you thinking it would be rude for us to comment on it? That’s what we do, and we’re going to do it again,” he said.The Trump campaign complained about Harris’s appearance, saying Harris “has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity”, spokesperson Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital.Some viewers also noted that Harris’s “mirror image” comedy sketch was conceptually identical to a sketch Trump featured in with ex-SNL comedian Jimmy Fallon on Fallon’s the Tonight Show in 2015. “I knew that SNL sketch with Kamala Harris looked familiar…” radio host Ari Hoffman said in an Instagram post linking to the Fallon-Trump skit. More
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In Florida, the future of abortion might come down to men
When Maxwell Frost bounded on stage at a Saturday morning rally in support of Florida abortion rights, the 27-year-old congressman was quick to explain why he had shown up.“I’m so proud to be here as an ally and partner in this fight!” he yelled to the roughly hundred-strong crowd who had gathered in an Orlando church courtyard, clutching handwritten sings with messages like “abortion bans are killing us” and “womb-tang clan ain’t nothing to fuck with”.His biological mother had given him up for adoption, said Frost, who wore a black T-shirt that read “Abortion is Health Care”. “The thing that made it sacred was the fact that she had a choice,” Frost said. “I’ve had enough of people trying to use parts of all of our identities to take away freedoms from other people.”The crowd – mostly women – roared in response.In an election where women’s access to abortion has become a top issue, activists are now rushing to convince men that they also have a stake in the fight – and that, come Tuesday, they should vote accordingly.Although men support abortion rights at similar rates as women, they seem to be far less driven by the issue. Less than half of men identify as “pro-choice”, according to Gallup, and are far more likely to see the economy or immigration as their top issue. One poll of men of color found that, although more than 80% believe abortion should be legal, less than half prioritized candidates who supported abortion rights.“It’s that common misconception that abortion is a woman’s issue,” said Zach Rivera, a 24-year-old activist with Men4Choice, a national group dedicated to energizing men who support abortion rights.View image in fullscreenOver the last several weeks, Rivera has spent countless hours knocking on doors in Florida neighborhoods in support of amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the Florida constitution and overturn the state’s ban on the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy. Nine other states are also set to vote on similar ballot measures on election day, but amendment 4 may face the steepest odds. In order to pass, the measure must secure 60% of the vote in a state that has veered sharply to the right in recent years and whose state government has repeatedly tried to kneecap the campaign behind the amendment.Recent polling has found that support for measure hovers somewhere in the 50% range: while one poll found that 58% of Florida voters support it, another closer to 54%. In the latter poll, 55% of women supported the measure, compared to 53% of men. In an election as tight as Florida’s, nudging more men to vote yes could mean the difference between victory and defeat.As Saturday morning gave way to a humid afternoon punctuated by bursts of rain, Rivera trudged from house to house in a wealthy, blue area of Orlando, dropping off Men4Choice stickers and attempting to talk to voters about amendment 4. Numerous houses had blue “Harris/Walz” signs in their front lawns – but not a single one had a purple “Yes on 4” sign. Voters were reluctant to talk about it. “I’m friends with everyone,” one woman said.Rivera has had better luck, he said, with phone banking. In one recent conversation, Rivera described urging one reluctant man to think about his future wife and children: what if, 10 years down the line, his wife died because an abortion ban blocked her from accessing medical care? How would he reveal to his kids that he didn’t vote?“The whole point of this movement is to think about future you,” Rivera recalled telling him. The man, Rivera said, decided to vote in favor of amendment 4.At an early voting site in Tampa, 24-year-old Brandon McCray cited women’s rights as one of his greatest concerns in the 2024 elections. It helped convince him to vote for Kamala Harris. “Amendment 4 would just protect a lot of women,” he said. Banning abortion, he said, “is the biggest violation to a human right”.McCray may be a relative anomaly among his peers. Appalled by the triple-punch of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, the sexual violence exposed by the #MeToo movement in late 2017 and the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, young women have become the most progressive cohort ever measured in US history – but young men have inched towards the right. While 62% of young women now support Harris, 55% of young men back Donald Trump, according to recent New York Times polling. Moreover, young men’s participation in politics is falling, with young women now on track to vote, rally and donate more frequently.For many young women, the trend is so obvious that its unremarkable. “The right-leaning has more traditional values and more traditional values tends to benefit men more than it benefits women,” said Briana Valle, 22. “For obvious reasons, people are always gonna go for what benefits them.”Leila Wotruba, 22, added: “There’s a lot more at stake for women.”As a gay man, Rivera knows that he may appear to not have much at stake in the fight over abortion rights. But Rivera sees the future of the issue, especially in Florida, as a “litmus test” for other rights.“That’s what I tell people: Even if this might not be a personal issue to you overall … you are definitely next,” he said. “They are just waiting until there’s nobody left to defend you.” More
