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      Harris marks birthday with church visit after Trump’s crude rhetoric at rally

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      Democratic governors from three states in the so-called blue wall that is key to their party’s aspirations for an electoral college victory delivered closing pitches for Kamala Harris on Sunday as their presidential nominee celebrated her 60th birthday with a visit to church.Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer barnstormed the Sunday morning political shows to talk up the vice-president’s policy agenda – and highlight differences with Republican candidate Donald Trump, 16 days before an election that polls suggest is still on a knife edge.Acolytes of Trump, meanwhile, attempted to defend the former president’s extraordinary and vulgar rhetoric during a Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania, when he called Harris a “shit vice-president” and exalted the size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis.“I don’t want to go back to Donald Trump when he was in charge of the country,” Shapiro told NBC’s Meet the Press.“Remember the record? I know there’s still some people that have maybe a little brain fog, they don’t remember what it was like under Donald Trump. You had more chaos, you had less jobs, and you had a whole lot less freedom.“I don’t think we want to go back to a time of chaos. I want a stable, strong leader, and that’s Kamala Harris.”It also emerged Sunday that Harris has no plans to campaign with Joe Biden before election day on 5 November, a development appearing to confirm recent reports of friction between the two after the 81-year-old president was pressured out of running for re-election over age-related questions.“The most important role he can play is doing his job as president,” an anonymous White House official told NBC News, which said the decision was mutual following discussions between the campaign and Biden administration officials.Shapiro joined Evers and Whitmer, his fellow passengers on a weekend blue wall bus tour, for a joint interview on ABC’s This Week, in which the three spoke of polls showing the presidential race virtually deadlocked in all three states.“Both candidates believe that Pennsylvania is critical – I just think we’ve got a better candidate, a better message, and what we’re experiencing is a whole lot more energy,” Shapiro said.In Michigan, according to Whitmer, voters were comparing both candidates’ records ahead of the 5 November election.“While this is going to be close, I’d much rather be playing our hand in theirs,” she said. “We got a better candidate. We’ve got receipts on the issues that matter to the American people, on the economy, individual rights, affordable housing, and we got a better ground game.”Evers, a two-term governor, pushed back on Trump’s claims that a Harris administration would tank the US economy, using Democratic policies in Wisconsin as an example.“We have the best economy we’ve ever had, the largest budget we’ve ever had, and we’re in good shape, and people are making more money than they ever made. So we’re in a good place, and it had nothing to do with Donald Trump,” he said.The swing state governors were speaking as Harris rallied Black voters in another swing state, Georgia, on Sunday with “souls to the polls” visits to two community churches.“What kind of country do we want to live in – a country of chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?” she told the congregation of the New Birth Missionary Baptist church in Atlanta.“The great thing about living in a democracy is that we, the people, have the power to answer that question. So let us answer not just through our words, but through our actions and with our votes.”Harris has been attempting to shore up support from the Black community, particularly Black men. Polls have warned of a lack of enthusiasm for her campaign, though newer polling from the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion found Harris had built a lead among Black voters in swing states.Singer Stevie Wonder was scheduled to join her later at a rally at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. That gathering was set to occur ahead of Harris’s interview with civil rights leader Al Sharpton to be broadcast later Sunday on MSNBC.“We just have to keep doing the work,” Georgia US senator Raphael Warnock – a Black Democrat – said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “And the good news is – that’s exactly what Kamala Harris [is] … doing.”Trump remained in Pennsylvania for an afternoon rally in Lancaster and a photo-op at a McDonald’s restaurant, the day after his bizarre appearance in Latrobe, Palmer’s home town, in which he riffed at length – in an unrefined address – about how well endowed the golfer was with respect to his genitalia.Republicans appearing on the Sunday talk shows attempted to detract from Trump’s comments and other recent behavior, including suggesting in an interview this week he would use the US military against political enemies.View image in fullscreenThe South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham lost his composure when questioned about it on NBC’s Meet the Press – and tried to pivot to two recent assassination attempts on Trump, both conducted by pro-Republican persons.“When you talk about rhetoric, you gotta remember they tried to blow his head off,” Graham said. “He’s been shot at and hit in the ear, and we’re lucky they didn’t blow his head off. And another guy tried to kill him … so I’m not overly impressed about the rhetoric game here.”Graham also condemned Republican colleagues, including former members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as well as numerous ex-Trump administration officials who have denounced him and expressed support for Harris.The retired general Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, called Trump “fascist to the core”, according to veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book War.“To every Republican voting for her, what the hell are you doing?” Graham said. “You’re supporting the most radical nominee in the history of American politics. When you support her, you’re supporting four more years of garbage policy.”US House speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was more restrained – but equally as determined to avoid questions about Trump’s commentary in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, suggesting that it was host Jake Tapper who was obsessed with talking about Palmer’s penis.“The media can pick it apart, but people are going to vote what’s best for their family and they see that in Trump,” he said.Early in-person voting is under way in numerous states, with voters in Georgia setting a first-day turnout record Tuesday, even as polls have the candidates in a virtual dead heat.Shapiro said winning over the remaining undecided voters would determine the winner.“There are people that, frankly, don’t follow this on a daily basis, people that don’t follow the polls. They go to work, they got kids at home, they do their job with their kids and get up the next day,” he said.“The polls look at a small number. I know it’s a science, but at the end of the day I run into people all the time who just haven’t given it a thought, so we’re going to help them.” More

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      Kamala Harris questions Trump’s stamina: ‘Is he fit to do the job?’

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      Kamala Harris used a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Friday to seize on reports that Donald Trump had been canceling media interviews to question whether he has the stamina for a second presidency if voters choose him over her in November’s election.“If he can’t handle the rigors of the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?” the Democratic vice-president, 59, told rallygoers about the 78-year-old Trump.She said: “Trump is unfit for office.”Harris and her Republican opponent were in Michigan as the weekend began while trying to shore up support in a battleground state that could decide their 5 November race. Polling suggests Michigan as well as its fellow “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remained in play for both candidates as the campaign’s waning days arrived.“This is the place that is going to decide the election, right here,” Democratic congresswoman Hillary Scholten told Friday’s audience as she opened the event.Among the crowd, some Harris supporters struck a hopeful tone. “It’s about time for a woman to lead,” said Jenifer Lake, who took her daughter Adeline Butts to the rally for a chance to “see history in the making”.Butts, who will be old enough to vote for the first time this election, described herself mostly concerned about the cost of living, tuition and housing affordability. And her fellow attender Bill Bray, who came to the rally from Adrian, Michigan, said he believed Harris would better promote economic opportunity for those situated like him than Trump would.Bray grew up “in a poor neighborhood” but said he is doing well thanks to benefits from his prior military service as well as his long career at Ford Motor Company. He said he wants other people to have a chance at that same trajectory.“Trump doesn’t understand equality,” said Bray, a veteran of the Vietnam war who also accused the former president of dodging the military draft that would have sent him to the same conflict.Bray also said he supports stronger federal gun control after seeing “what guns to do to people” and has no faith in Trump – who is widely supported by the firearms industry – taking that issue seriously.Other attenders said abortion access was at the top of their mind. Harris has campaigned on preserving abortion access while three of Trump’s appointees to the US supreme court helped eliminate federal abortion rights in 2022.“It’d be nice to have control of my body back, and then I’ll think about listening to the other side,” Kim Osborn said.Lauren Rockel said she would like to see Harris fight to reinstate the Roe v Wade protections that Trump’s supreme court appointees helped strip away.“There are people dying” as a result of abortion restrictions that have since gone into effect in many states, Rockel said. “It’s awful.”To them, Harris said it was “time to turn the page” on Trump.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, spoke before Harris took the stage. Four other Democratic state governors joined her.Her presence and that of the other governors “shows how important you are, Michigan,” Whitmer said. She told the crowd that they would be the ones to “take our country forward” if they helped send Harris to the White House.Michigan’s Democratic US senator Debbie Stabenow also spoke before Harris, alluding to how it got “scarier and scarier” the more she thought about the proposed policies of Trump’s supporters. The former president has sought to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation, whose Project 2025 plan calls for the mass firings of civil servants and exalts the idea outlawing abortion altogether during a second Trump presidency.But he has struggled to effectively do that, with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, having written the foreword for a book by the Heritage Foundation’s president. And, echoing Stabenow, many attenders said they were fearful and terrified of what a return to the Oval Office for Trump may produce.The Democratic nominee’s message resonated with Richard Bandstra, who described himself as a “former Republican”. Bandstra said he came to the rally to hear a message of hope – and, as he saw it, to fight for what he called the most important issue of the race: preserving American democracy. More

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      in US Politics

      Elon Musk is Trump’s biggest cheerleader. How could he affect election results?

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      Less than a month before the presidential election, Elon Musk has made himself a near-constant presence in the race. At a rally for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Musk jumps with glee wearing a custom black Maga hat. On social media, he posts AI-generated images attacking Kamala Harris. Behind the scenes, he bankrolls one of the largest pro-Trump political action committees.The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has emerged as a unique influence on the campaign in ways that set him apart from even the most politically active billionaires and tech elite. He is all at once a vocal Trump surrogate, campaign mega-donor, informal policy adviser, media influencer and prolific source of online disinformation. At the same time, he is the world’s richest man and the owner of one of the United States’ most influential social networks, while also operating as a government defense contractor and wielding power over critical satellite communications infrastructure.On Tuesday, Federal Election Commission filings showed that Musk donated $75m in the last three months to his pro-Trump America Pac. The group has become a major ground game operative in battleground states, and Musk is its only donor.Although the ultra-wealthy have always tried to influence politics, few people in US history have possessed the mix of immense resources and intent to use them to sway an election that Musk does. He has become symbolic of the outsize power over democracy held by the ultra-wealthy and is relishing the spotlight that his unique position has awarded him, said Larry Noble, former FEC general counsel.“He clearly likes attention,” Noble said. “Unlike a lot of very wealthy people who get involved in politics who want to be in the background and want to work through dark money groups so their name isn’t attached to certain things, he’s out there. He wants his name out there. I think he wants to be adored.”Musk’s X becomes a megaphone for TrumpTrump and Musk have a contentious past: Musk called Trump “too old” to seek re-election in a series of tweets in 2022 and Trump referred to Musk as a “bullshit artist”. But the two men have become extremely intertwined during the 2024 presidential race. Musk announced his full support for Trump in July following months of telegraphing his opposition to Joe Biden and the Democratic party. In the months since, Musk has fervently committed his money and influence to the Trump campaign. The tech mogul is fond of saying this will be “the last election” if Trump doesn’t win.Musk’s most visible Trump support takes place on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that he bought for $44bn in 2022. Musk’s account has more than 200 million followers, and he has directed the company’s engineers to improve visibility of his tweets – the algorithm now boosts Musk’s own tweets beyond that of other users so that more people have to see them. It was Musk who made the decision to restore Trump to the social network in late 2022.As election day nears, Musk’s feed has become a constant stream of praise for Trump and vitriol against Harris. A large percentage of his tweets amplify false or misleading information, and the people who Musk interacts with on the platform are often far-right accounts with a history of spreading misinformation. Musk’s AI image generator, Grok, has also become one of the most prominent sources of political deepfakes that have permeated the election.Musk has used X to help the Trump campaign, not only by echoing its talking points or amplifying the president, but by preventing the spread of material that could be harmful. Reporter Ken Klippenstein published a dossier of background information on vice-presidential candidate JD Vance in early October that was obtained through a hack of the Trump campaign allegedly by Iran. The New York Times reported last week that the campaign asked X to prevent links to the published dossier from spreading there, which X followed through on, blocking links to it and suspending Klippenstein’s account.The move stands in contrast to Musk’s frequent proclamations about being a “free speech absolutist”, and to the incessant attacks by Republicans on content moderation decisions made by social media platforms that they claim are akin to censorship. Suffocating the Vance dossier also ran contrary to his own stated reasons for buying Twitter. Musk had tweeted that he would ensure something like Twitter’s suppression of links to the initial New York Post story of Hunter Biden’s laptop would never happen again.“People like Musk, they’re the ones using their money and lawfare to try and suppress real work that’s just trying to contribute to the public discussion,” said Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Musk sued CCDH after it published research that showed hate speech and extremism had risen under Musk’s ownership. He lost the case but has appealed.Musk the mega-donorWhile Musk has rallied online for Trump, he has committed large amounts of money to financing on-the-ground operations and media campaigns for the former president. His spending is an escalation of a yearslong, quiet funding of Republican groups that has turned him into one of the country’s largest rightwing donors.Musk’s America Pac, which was founded earlier this year, is currently doing get-out-the-vote work on the ground in battleground states. Musk has in effect moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania to support the effort, according to the New York Times, and he is planning a series of events in the state following his appearance at a Trump rally there earlier this month.“That is what will decide this election, especially in Pennsylvania,” Musk said at the rally in Butler. “And honestly, you want to just be a pest. Just be a pest to everyone you know, people on the street, everywhere. Vote, vote, vote. Fight, fight, fight. Vote, vote, vote.”The money is not only flowing to get-out-the-vote initiatives, though. Musk has donated to the conservative group Building America’s Future, which has set up cash awards for people who bring the group evidence of election fraud. Building America’s Future has also funneled money to a Super Pac that HuffPost reported has run targeted ads calling Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, “America’s pro-Israel power couple” in areas of Michigan with large numbers of Arab and Muslim voters. The Pac is simultaneously running ads aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania that accuse Harris of being too pro-Palestinian.

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      Musk is different from other wealthy donors in recent decades who have divided their political engagement into two styles, according to Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute who is an expert in the history of philanthropy. One is to craft a non-partisan identity and work with people in both parties, for either strategic or personal reasons. The best example of that: Bill Gates. The other is to engage directly with partisan politics, but with a level of discretion, like the Koch brothers or George Soros.Musk falls into his own category, working in a highly partisan fashion but with virtually no discretion. He’s displaying “a kind of gleeful embrace of partisanship”, Soskis said, embodying a style of politics that feels similar to Trump.“That feels unusual for the wealthiest individuals – the complete eschewal of discretion as a mode of political engagement,” Soskis said. “That seems new.”A plan to gut regulatorsIf Trump and Musk occasionally seem like an odd pair on paper – Trump has threatened to remove an electric vehicle tax credit, while Musk is CEO of perhaps the world’s most famous EV company – one point of alignment is a vehement dislike for regulators. Musk’s longstanding battles with government offices like the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Aviation Administration could shift in his favor under a Trump administration that is likely to drastically cut their resources and weaken their authority.“I suspect on some level that this is just a pocketbook issue for him, that he also wants lower taxes,” Noble, the former FEC counsel, said. “He wants to have his companies freed from safety regulations.”Over the past several years Musk has faced investigations, fines and delays over public safety concerns on a range of his projects. The FAA alleged last month that Musk’s SpaceX broke launch safety protocols, and over the years has grounded the company multiple times for violating regulations. California officials last week cited Musk’s politics and falsehoods as they voted against a SpaceX plan to conduct launches in the state. Musk sued in response. The EPA has also launched investigations into SpaceX for complaints that it is dumping unsafe amounts of wastewater into the ecosystem, while the FDA has cited Musk’s Neuralink brain implant company for animal welfare issues.Tesla’s attempts at developing fully autonomous cars have also come under scrutiny, presenting complications for a company that has staked its future on the ability to produce a self-driving robotaxi. Tesla is facing additional investigations from federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission over its self-driving car claims, and earlier this year came under investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration related to a recall of its autopilot function.These constant fights with the full alphabet of regulatory agencies has coincided with Musk making numerous public statements in favor of deregulation, as well as calling for a full-scale audit of the federal government. That idea has found purchase with Trump, who announced in September that he would launch a Musk-led government efficiency commission that would audit federal agencies for places to cut. Musk wants to call it the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, invoking one of his favorite memes, an expressive shiba inu.Although the plan is vague on details and fails to address the obvious conflict of interest in Musk auditing the regulators that oversee his companies, both Trump and Musk have repeatedly brought up the idea of Musk holding some role in a potential Trump administration. During an appearance on Fox News earlier this week, Trump said he would create a new position called “secretary of cost-cutting” and appoint Musk.“He’s dying to do this,” Trump said.Musk’s Maga support goes beyond businessMusk’s public rightward shift is an extension of years of allying himself with rightwing leaders around the world. In recent years, Musk has cozied up to nationalist and nativist politicians including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and India’s Narendra Modi.Some of these relationships have appeared to be in service of Musk’s business interests. He has forged a friendship with Argentina’s anti-regulation, far-right president, Javier Milei, who he brought on a personal tour of Tesla’s Texas headquarters and repeatedly endorsed on X. Argentina, meanwhile, has some of the world’s largest reserves of lithium, a key mineral used in electric vehicle batteries and one that Musk has previously demanded be processed in increasing quantities.Musk’s business empire is at risk when his relationships with governments sour, as evidenced during his recent conflict with Brazilian authorities that resulted in a judge banning access to X in the country. Musk ultimately capitulated to comply with local laws.But Musk’s promotion of far-right beliefs and support for Trump have also taken on a personal dimension that goes beyond business calculations. Musk’s rhetoric on X has fixated on conservative grievances and he has amplified racist and antisemitic narratives through his tweets. Anti-immigration and anti-trans views have become a frequent talking point.One of his 12 children is a trans woman, and Musk claims he was “tricked into” signing off on her medical treatment and that he “lost” his child in the process. He has since vowed to defeat what he calls the “woke mind virus”.This increasingly overt radicalization of Musk’s social and political views appears unlikely to abate following the campaign, leaving questions of how he may influence the country’s politics when the election ends regardless of its outcome.After the January 6 insurrection, Twitter, under its previous ownership, permanently suspended Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”. Under Musk, the tweets that got Trump banned seem quaint – and Trump is now back on the platform, as are a host of frequent superspreaders of election lies.A big test awaits Musk if Trump loses, something he joked would land him in either legal or bodily trouble with Democrats. Will he accept a loss? Or would he use X to keep spreading conspiracies he’s already promoted – that mail ballots are “too risky” or that non-citizens are swaying US elections, two of Trump’s pet election issues.X, under Musk, “is building now, as we speak, another fresh stolen election narrative, and we all know what the consequences could be”, Hood said. More

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      US presidential election updates: Trump’s insults draw laughs at Catholic charity dinner as Harris appears remotely

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      Donald Trump laid into Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. The Republican nominee repeatedly criticised his Democratic campaign rival over her decision to skip the event – a break with presidential electoral tradition, as she prioritised campaigning in the swing state of Wisconsin, rather than New York, a safe Democratic state. Harris recorded a video that was played instead.Trump questioned the mental fitness of Harris and the president, Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made jokes about transgender people. The dinner was emceed by the comedian Jim Gaffigan, who portrays the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, on Saturday Night Live.Harris, in her pre-recorded remarks – which featured the comedian and actor Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic school pupil – mocked Trump for lying, a sin, about the results of the 2020 election, and comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticising Detroit in Detroit”.Here’s what else happened on Thursday:Kamala Harris election news

      A poll has revealed that Harris continues to lead Trump among Black likely voters in battleground states. The poll, conducted by Howard University’s Initiative on Public Opinion from 2 October to 8 October, surveyed 981 Black likely voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for the vice-president, while only 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.

      With three weeks left, Harris is spending most of her days trying to shore up support in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as she tries to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s collapse there eight years ago. Her schedule reflects the Democratic nominee’s focus on her most likely path to victory over Trump. Harris visited Milwaukee on Thursday seeking support from college-age voters. She dropped by a business class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and held a student rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, closing out the day with a rally in Green Bay.

      The Democratic governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week embarked on a swiftly organised bus tour, rolling through the autumn landscape to press the urgency of the case for Harris in must-win states where some Democrats worry she is struggling. Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Tony Evers descended on Flint on Thursday afternoon, joined by the chairman of the national Democratic party, Jaime Harrison.

      Harris and Walz will attend church on Sunday in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. Harris will also sit down for an interview with the Rev Al Sharpton that will air on Sunday night on his MSNBC programme, according to a Harris campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details not yet officially announced.
      Donald Trump election news

      Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be banned from a future administration, with special emphasis placed on those with links to the radical Project 2025 plan to overhaul the US government. The former president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, is spearheading the drive to compile the list of barred staffers, according to Politico, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.

      Trump was joined at the Al Smith event by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail. The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along – or at least pretend to – for one night in the election’s final stretch.

      Gaffigan referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters in its buildings. “If vice-president Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn’t be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”

      Elsewhere on the campaign trail, a Nevada man who was arrested with guns at a security checkpoint outside a Trump rally in the southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterising his arrest as a thwarted assassination attempt, for the sheriff’s own personal gain.

      The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, falsely told a reporter on Wednesday that there were “serious problems” in the 2020 election and suggested that the then president, Donald Trump, did not actually lose the race. “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree with me or disagree with me on this issue.”
      Other election news:

      The Nevada Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown painted each other as extremists on Thursday night in the presidential battleground state where the election could determine control of both the White House and the Senate. The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator seen as a political consensus-builder, against Brown, a retired army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is endorsed by Trump.

      Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centres. Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people.
      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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      Do Democrats have a ‘men’ problem? – podcast

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      The Harris campaign, which has been praised for how it has managed to reach out to women, is now having to balance their attention and pitch some policies that would appeal to men.
      But is it too little too late? Jonathan Freedland speaks to Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Gloria Oladipo, a breaking news reporter for Guardian US, about why men could decide this year’s election and why both campaigns might be taking them for granted

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      US presidential election updates: Harris appeals to Republicans on Fox as Trump doubles down on pet eating claims

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      Democratic presidential nominee and US vice-president Kamala Harris focused her campaign on Republican voters, with an appearance at a Pennsylvania rally with more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officialsLater, in a further appeal to right-leaning voters, Harris faced a tough interview on Fox news, with host Brett Baier pressing the vice-president on immigration, the economy and the Biden administration. “Let me be very clear,” she said, “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”Donald Trump meanwhile spoke at a town hall hosted by Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language network, where he doubled down on baseless claims he has made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.Kamala Harris news and updates:

      Surrounded by more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials, Harris urged GOP voters on Wednesday to put “country first” and abandon Donald Trump. Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term, she said. “America must heed this warning”.

      In her interview on Fox News, Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill. Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

      In the Fox interview, Harris singled out Iran when asked which foreign country she considers to be America’s greatest adversary. Baier questioned whether the Biden-Harris administration was “acting like Iran is the number one threat”.

      Of Trump, Harris said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full-time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.” She added, “He’s not stable.”
      Donald Trump news and updates:

      Trump’s running mate, JD Vance answered “no” when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, at a Pennsylvania rally. “What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’” the reporter asked, eliciting boos from the crowd. Vance said, “No. I think there were serious problems in 2020”.

      Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about “the enemy from within” made over the weekend. Before an all-female audience in Cumming, Georgia, Trump mocked Kamala Harris and her allies as “sick”, “evil” and “a party of soundbites”. He said, “They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” Trump told the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. “They’re the threat to democracy.”

      The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.

      In Trump’s Univision town hall he was asked to name three virtues possessed by Harris, which he did, before again attacking her. He said that “she seems to have an ability to survive”, that “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships” and that “she seems to have a nice way about her”. “I mean, I like the way some of her statements, some of her – the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country,” he said.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”. Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order on Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated included three that had garnered a lot of attention – one that required that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

      Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

      Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.

      The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and tried to discourage young people from voting in the November election. The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”
      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 stands by false claims about immigrants – as it happened

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      Bret Baier has asked Kamala Harris repeatedly about immigration.You supported allowing immigrants in the country illegally to apply for drivers licences and to apply for free healthcare, he says. Do you still support those things?The vice-president says it was five years ago that she said those things, and that what she supports is the law. Baier presses her and again, she says she and Tim Walz believe in supporting and enforcing the law.We’re wrapping up our live US politics coverage for the day, thanks for following along.Here is our news story on the Kamala Harris interview on Fox news:Kamala Harris said her presidency “would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” in a testy interview with the rightwing Fox News channel on Wednesday night as she criticized Donald Trump over his continuing threats against “the enemy within”.The 25-minute interview, conducted after Harris held a rally with more than 100 Republican officials in Pennsylvania, was the first time Harris had sat for a conversation with Fox News, which has been a consistent supporter of Trump.Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, is seen as a straight news counterbalance to the vitriol of Fox News’s evening shows, but still came with a laundry list of rightwing topics, including immigration, the rights of transgender people and Joe Biden’s performance, as Harris attempted to sell herself to the channel’s older, largely Republican, audience.The event featured pointed questions for Trump, about his wife Melania’s support for abortion rights, noted in her new memoir, and about the 6 January, 2021, Siege of the US Capitol by his supporters who breached the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.“Your own vice-president doesn’t want to support you now,” said Ramiro Gonzalez, of Tampa, Florida, a Republican who said he was no longer registered with the party but wanted to give Trump the chance to win him back. Gonzalez was referring to former vice-president Mike Pence, who has disavowed Trump in light of 6 January.Trump’s response: “Hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me. They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election. That’s why they came.”“That was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions,” Trump told Gonzalez.More now from Trump’s Univision town hall. During the event, hosted by Univision, America’s nation’s largest Spanish-language network, Trump defended his call for mass deportation of immigrants who are in the US illegally, even as he nodded to a need for immigrant labour, the Associated Press reports. “We want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally, and they have to love our country,” the Republican presidential candidate said during the event, scheduled to air Wednesday evening. Trump was answering the question of Jorge Velásquez, a farm worker who said most people doing such jobs are undocumented and suggested, if they’re deported, food prices will increase.Trump then returned to his criticism of Harris for being a critical player in the Biden administration’s that presided over an influx of migrants with criminal backgrounds.Here is some analysis from the associated press of Trump and Harris’s recent media appearances:Both candidates have largely avoided traditional interviews during the campaign, preferring to sit before friendly hosts, often in nontraditional media settings. The two-day interview marathon was a noteworthy partial break from that strategy.Harris, whom the Trump campaign hammered for not doing interviews after replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, has ramped up the pace this month. The vice-president appeared on ABC’s “The View,” spoke with radio host Howard Stern and taped a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert, among other appearances. She also sat down with the newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” as is traditional for presidential candidates, while Trump canceled his appearance with the show.Harris’ appearance on Fox with anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday seemed designed to show her willingness to face any questioner, especially after Trump bailed on “60 Minutes.” The risks of that became apparent quickly as Baier challenged her immediately on immigration and often interrupted her afterward.In contrast, Trump, in his Chicago interview Tuesday, frequently spoke over Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and even insulted him as the audience cheered Trump on. Micklethwait challenged Trump’s support for tariffs and his plans to pay for his campaign promises.The former president also faced a friendly all-women audience in a Fox News town hall before participating in a town hall on the Spanish-language network Univision, where he faced pointed questions from Latino voters. Like Harris, Trump is trying to broaden his coalition to get the key votes he needs to win the neck-and-neck race. So, for him as well, every interview counts.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday stood by debunked claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating pets, telling Latino voters during a town hall he was “just saying what was reported.”Trump in recent weeks has amplified a false claim that has gone viral that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing residents’ pets or taking wildlife from parks for food. There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and officials in Ohio – including Republicans – have repeatedly said the story is untrue.At a town hall hosted by Univision, an undecided Latino Republican voter from Arizona, a battleground state, asked Trump whether he truly believed that immigrants were eating pets.“I was just saying what was reported. All I do is report,” Trump replied during the event held in Miami. “I was there, I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look.”Trump added that “newspapers” had also reported on the claim, without naming any or providing any details.Here is more of that exchange on Iran earlier.Baier asked Harris,“Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary?”She said, “Iran”.Baier said, “A number of experts thought you would say China…But you said Iran. If that’s the case, what do you say to critics who look at the actions of your administration and say you’re not acting like Iran is the number one threat?”Harris said, “Well, I will tell you most recently, whether it was in April or in October, and then several hours on each occasion that Iran posed a threat to Israel, I was there. Most recently in the Situation Room, in the most recent attack, working with the heads of our military in doing what America must always do to defend and to support Israel in its requirement to defend itself and to give American support to be able to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself against attack, including from Iran and Iran’s terrorist proxies in the region.”Here is Harris calling out Fox News’s Bret Baier for playing a clip of Trump that was “not what [Trump] has been saying about the enemy from within”:US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat down for an interview on Wednesday evening with Fox News host Bret Baier.The interview was combative, with Harris, towards the end, speaking over Baier as asked him to interview her “grounded in full assessment of the facts”, and called him out for playing clips that she said were not relevant to what they were discussing.

      Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle a surge in illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill.

      Harris was asked to defend the administration’s early decision to reverse some of Republican rival Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, and to respond to a mother who testified in Congress about the loss of her child at the hands of an illegal immigrant. “I’m so sorry for her loss, but let’s talk about what is happening right now,” Harris said.

      Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject a bipartisan immigration bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” The interview was part of a direct appeal by Harris on Wednesday to Republican voters in this year’s US presidential election, as she highlighted Republican support for her campaign in a battleground county in Pennsylvania before appearing on conservative-leaning Fox News.

      Harris was asked in the Fox News interview about her recent comment that there was “not a thing” she would change about the actions of the Biden administration, responding: “let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” but she did not elaborate. Earlier, in Bucks County, outside of Philadelphia, Harris emphasised Trump’s attempt to overturn his election loss four years ago, when he lost the White House to current President Joe Biden.

      Harris said Trump’s actions violated the US Constitution and, if given the chance, he will violate it again. “He refused to accept the will of the people and the results of a free and fair election. He sent a mob, an armed mob, to the United States Capitol, where they violently assaulted police officers, law enforcement officials and threatened the life of his own vice president,” Harris said.

      “No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign,” Harris said.

      Harris was asked “Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary?” She said Iran. She has worked with the heads of the military to do what America must always do, which is to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself from attack, “including from Iran and Iran’s territist proxies in the region. And my commitment to that is unwaivering”. The screen showed a graphic listing “Iran oil revenue”.

      Harris talked over Baier, continuing her answer about the Middle East as he tried to press her. He stopped speaking. She said, “I would like that we have a conversation that is grounded in the facts”. “Yes ma’am,” he said.

      “Madam vice-president they’re wrapping me very hard here, I hope you got to say what you wanted about President Trump,” Baier said. Harris said she has a lot more to say about Trump. She invited people to visit her website. Baier interrupted her again, she talked over him, listing the policies that would be found on her website.
      Former Democrat congressman Harold Ford Junior, on Fox news, says that Harris should be proud of her performance tonight, and that it shows that there are benefits to coming on Fox.“Tonight was a sign and a signal to the country about why we need more debates between candidates,” he says.He says Harris “Has to be pleased with how she performed this evening”.Brit Hume, Fox political analyst, says Harris was strong in some ways, but avoided answering other questions, including how she will differ from Biden.He says partisans will be pleased with her performance, they’ll say “Yay, Kamala,” he says.“But if people have doubts about her I don’t think she cleared them up”.Fox news presenters have said, variously, that Harris was strong on some answers, thin on others, and that other answers “won’t pass the smell test” – that last comment from Fox news host Dana Perino.She was praised for coming on Fox and allowing herself to “think on her toes” in a tough interview, rather than the interviews until now, which a Fox host said had been soft.The screen shows a graphic listing “Iran oil revenue”.Harris is talking over Baier. He stops. She says, “I would like that we have a conversation that is grounded in the facts”.“Yes ma’am,” he says.“Madam vice-president they’re rapping me very hard here, I hope you got to say what you wanted about President Trump,” he says.Harris says she has a lot more to say about Trump. She invites people to visit her website. Baier interrupts her, she talks over him, listing the policies that would be found on her website.Harris is asked about the Middle East and the threat posed by Iran.She says she has worked with the heads of the military to do what America must always do, which is to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself from attack, “including from Iran and Iran’s territist proxies in the region. And my commitment to that is unwaivering”. More