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  • Nostalgic Trump wheels out the hits at what could be an end-of-season finale | US elections 2024

    “And now, the end is near/ And so I face the final curtain.”

    Before a roaring crowd on Monday, Donald Trump summoned sons Don Jr and Eric, daughter Tiffany, daughter-in-law Lara Trump and son-in-law Michael Boulos to the stage. Their faces threw the orangeness of the family patriarch into stark relief. Trump insisted that his son Barron and daughter Ivanka were watching from afar. “She loves the whole thing,” he said, not very convincingly.

    It was election eve and the former US president gazed out at thousands of supporters gathered at an ice hockey arena in Pittsburgh and apparently ready to follow him through the gates of hell. Like a child awakening to mortality, he suddenly seemed to realise that The Trump Show was coming to an end.

    ‘Whoever wins, it’s going to be chaotic’: voters on the eve of the US elections – video

    “It’s sad because we’ve been doing this for nine years,” he said, as the family looked on. “We’ve had hundreds of rallies, hundreds. Actually numbers that are not even conceivable. I’ve heard 800, 900 – I don’t know – but we don’t even count ’em. And they’re all like this, all these magnificent, magnificent rallies.”

    This would be his last one in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania with one to follow in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Remember, the rallies are the most exciting thing. There’ll never be rallies like this. You’re going to have some leading candidate come in in four years and, honestly, if they’re successful they’ll have 300 or 400 people in a ballroom some place. This is never going to happen again.”

    Yes, Donald Trump is already comparing his crowd sizes with whoever runs for president in 2028.

    Still, was this a rare moment of wistful self-reflection from the man whom New Yorker writer Mark Singer once memorably described as leading “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul”?

    Well, up to a point. In a characteristic brain swerve, Trump, 78, went from sweet nostalgia to a rant about “Barack Hussein Obama” as a “very divisive guy” whose wife, Michelle, was “hitting me” in a recent speech. Then he decried the Russia “hoax” and how Don Jr had been unfairly caught up in it, which led to letting rip at Democratic congressman Adam Schiff as “watermelon head”, “evil” and “human scum”.

    Trump’s children laughed at the insults – hardly an uplifting closing argument just hours before polling day. The former president then gave his stream of consciousness full rein, talking fast as he freely associated from his economy to Covid, from the military to Isis, from the border wall to transphobia. It was vintage Trump, like a final episode recap of a long-running series.

    But after his family departed – Lara giving a heart sign to the supporters wearing miners’ helmets – Trump pondered the passage of time again. “We have people that have come to hundreds of the rallies and we all love it. They all love the country. They don’t come to our rallies if they don’t love the country.”

    Donald Trump greets his family members Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

    There might be something achingly poignant and elegiac about it – a lion in winter departing the stage – but for the fact that Trump is a twice-impeached malignant narcissist with a knife at the throat of democracy.

    Like Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd, the rallies were always more natural territory for this carnival barker than sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office. “Is there anything more fun than a Trump rally?” he has often asked rhetorically, even though some people flee before the end (and did again in Pittsburgh).

    These are gaudy, raucous spectacles that combine cult-like worship of a demagogue with a church-like sense of community, the vibe of a rock concert with the fired up “us versus them” quality of a sports event.

    The rallies are gathering places for the “Make America great again” (Maga) faithful who wear the team colours – red and white – on hats, T-shirts and other merchandise, sold by vendors who tour the country. Monday’s sampling included “I’m voting for the outlaw and the hillbilly” and “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president”, plus a photo of Trump with the legend “Pet Lives Matter” – a reference to his false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

    Greatest hits, and a few misses

    One day a university academic somewhere will write a paper about the musical playlist at Trump’s rallies and what it said about the class, age and race of his crowds. On Monday it included Mr Blue Sky by the Electric Light Orchestra, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, Nessun dorma by Luciano Pavarotti and It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World by James Brown. Other regulars are An American Trilogy by Elvis Presley, Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinéad O’Connor and numbers from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Cats and Phantom of the Opera.

    The rallies have produced some of Trump greatest verbal hits. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he told one in Sioux Center while campaigning in Iowa in 2016. None is complete without a swipe or two at the “fake news” media; the crowd turns and jeers as if playing a part.

    It was at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer that Trump survived an assassination attempt then, with face bloodied, raised his fist and urging his supporters to “Fight, fight, fight!” (A chant repeated by supporters in Pittsburgh.)

    Having lived by the rally, he nearly died by the rally that day. And the rally might yet be his political undoing: what was once Trump’s greatest strength could prove his achilles heel. In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he mused on the size of the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis, giving fodder to critics of his mental stability.

    When he fulfilled his lifelong wish to stage a mass rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, critics drew a parallel with a Nazi event there in 1939. A comedian described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”, upstaging Trump and potentially costing him vital Latino votes.

    As Democrat Kamala Harris stuck resolutely to the script at her rallies in the closing weeks, Trump’s self-destruction continued at his. He declared himself the protector of women “whether the women like it or not” and said vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr would work on “women’s health”.

    He said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2020 and joked that he wouldn’t mind if a would-be assassin had to “shoot through the fake news” to reach him. He revived a bizarre reference to fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

    When Trump questioned Harris’s college job at McDonald’s, an attendee shouted: “She worked on the corner!” The former president responded: “Just remember, other people said it … not me.”

    In Pittsburgh on Monday, Trump could not resist lying about Harris’s crowd size at a duelling rally across the city. “It’s quite embarrassing, it’s all over the internet, she’s screaming and the people – there’s about a hundred people – they’re not moving, they just want to go home, just be done with it.”

    Stretching his arms wide, he added: “It’s not quite this!”

    These antics have combined with a hypermasculine campaign that seemed intent on alienating women, failing to disown extremists like Laura Loomer and entrusting his fate to campaign neophytes such as Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk and daughter-in-law Lara Trump.

    Spare a thought for those Trump campaign managers who tried to run a more professional operation this time and stay focused on inflation and immigration. They are like riders on a bucking horse, clinging on for dear life but bound to be thrown off and trampled in the end.

    All of it has led to Tuesday and an all-or-nothing crossroads in Trump’s life. Go one way and he returns to the White House in one of the greatest political comebacks of all time. Go the other and there is the ignominy of two consecutive election defeats – and the prospect of prison. Comedian John Oliver told viewers on Sunday: “Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where he’s no longer an active threat? Just an annoyance?”

    And yet, and yet. A gaffe or insult that many see as disqualifying is merely a laugh line to a Trump supporter. He still drew a big, rambunctious crowd in Pittsburgh, as passionate and committed as ever, many waving “Trump will fix it” signs and one holding a placard that said: “Trump chosen by God.” The former president seemed to feed off the energy.

    He broke the news mid-rally that he had been endorsed by podcaster Joe Rogan. He was backed by an array of speakers including former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and rightwing media personality Megyn Kelly, who declared: “He got mocked by the left by saying he would be a protector of women. He will be a protector of women and it’s why I’m voting for him. He will close the border and he will keep the boys out of women’s sports where they don’t belong.”

    Trump called Kelly “nasty” back in 2016.

    Megyn Kelly speaks during a campaign rally by Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters

    Among the crowd, Michael Barringer, 55, a fifth-generation coal miner, was wearing a miner’s helmet. “I love this country,” he said. “You’ve got millions and millions of illegal aliens crossing the border. They don’t speak English. They don’t say a pledge allegiance to the flag. They freeload off of us. I’m all for legal immigration but not coming across the border illegally, taking American jobs, undercutting us.

    “I believe that Trump, his first term in office, he renegotiated Nafta, he’s for the American people and that’s why I vote him. I think he’s one of the greatest presidents ever to run for office and hold office.”

    Lydia Williams, 40, who works in the oil and gas industry, rejected the gender gap that sees Harris dominating among women. “Her stance on LGBTQ is anti-women,” she said. “I’m a middle school track coach and the fact that my female athletes would have to compete against a male is absolutely asinine.”

    The big day is upon us. The nation is on edge. The pollsters’ crystal balls are cloudy. But win or lose, Trump says this is his last campaign and there will never be rallies like this again. Some people, previously disconnected from politics, will miss these cauldrons of love and hate. Others, wary of where rallies have led herds throughout history, will hope that a line can be drawn under a decade of demagoguery.

    Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

  • US presidential election updates: Campaigning ends with celebrity endorsements, and Nate Silver’s forecast | US elections 2024

    Donald Trump and Kamala Harris delivered their closing arguments, holding duelling rallies across the battleground states well into the night, on the last day of campaigning before the US election.

    Harris was in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state and crucial to the Democratic campaign. She held the final rally of her campaign at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous in the movie Rocky. Introduced by Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga, Harris emphasised her message of hope. “We finish, as we started, with optimism, with energy, with joy,” she said. “We need to get to work.”

    Trump struck a darker tone in the same state, with threats to put tariffs on all imports from Mexico unless it stopped migrants from entering the US – though he interrupted himself at one point to celebrate his endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan. The Republican candidate also held hours-long events in North Carolina and Michigan.

    Leading forecaster Nate Silver has released his final forecast, and said that Harris won in 40,012 out of 80,000, or 50.15% of, simulations run using his model. Polls released on Monday found Harris had a marginal lead in Michigan but was tied with Trump in Pennsylvania and other key swing states. Trump has held on to a lead in betting markets but one that is eroding.

    Here’s what else happened on the last day of the 2024 election campaign:

    Donald Trump election news and updates

    • Trump held his final rally of the campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan – the same place where he closed his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America – indeed, the world – to new heights of glory,” he told the crowd.

    • The former president started the last day of campaigning in North Carolina, launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women, then travelled to Reading, Pennsylvania, where he painted migrants as dangerous criminals. “November 5, 2024 will be Liberation Day in America,” he said. “And on day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in American history.”

    • In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Trump praised the Green party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, as “one of my favourite politicians” and relished the prospect of a return to the White House: “Only one day – does that sound nice – one day from now. We’ve been waiting four years for this.”

    • JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, was once again condemned for misogyny after repeatedly calling Kamala Harris “trash” at campaign rallies. The Republican vice-presidential nominee compared Harris to trash at a New Hampshire rally on Sunday, then did it again on Monday in Flint, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia.

    Kamala Harris election news and updates

    • The vice-president started the day in Scranton, Joe Biden’s childhood home town, where she told supporters to “get this done”. Biden did not appear with Harris in Scranton, continuing her campaign’s effort to put a gap between the candidate and her former running mate.

    • Harris reached out to the Puerto Rican and Latino population of Pennsylvania, visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with congresswoman
      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and governor Josh Shapiro and appearing at an Allentown rally with rapper Fat Joe, who ripped Trump for his treatment of Puerto Ricans and Latino voters: “[If] you’re not decided, where’s your pride as a Latino?”

    • Harris went doorknocking in Reading and held a rally in Pittsburgh, supported by pop star Katy Perry. The vice-president sought to strike a positive tone, saying it was time to move past the “fear and division” of the past decade and, drawing a contrast with Donald Trump without mentioning his name. “It is time for a new generation of leadership,” she said.

    • Harris headed home to Number One Observatory Circle in Washington in the wee hours of Tuesday morning after her final Philadelphia rally. She will spend Tuesday calling into local radio stations in the seven battleground states to reach the remaining voters, her communications director told reporters.

    • Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, campaigned across his home state before visiting Wisconsin, where he struck a hopeful tone: “Look at the movement, and look at the energy that Kamala Harris has built in 107 days – imagine what she can do for the next eight years.” Walz ended Monday in Michigan, appearing with Jon Bon Jovi, and told supporters women will send a message to Trump tomorrow “whether he likes it or not”.

    Elsewhere on the campaign trail

    • A Pennsylvania judge rejected legal challenges to Elon Musk’s $1m giveaway, allowing the billionaire’s voter sweepstakes to continue through Tuesday’s presidential election.

    • Republicans also had a win in their legal battle over vote eligibility, after Georgia’s highest court ruled absentee ballots must be returned by election day. As legal challenges play out across the country, the Harris campaign told reporters it was prepared to combat any efforts by Trump to discredit the outcome.

    • The Harris campaign expects “near complete results” on election night from Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, along with partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona, according to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.

    • Officials have begun preparing for a feared escalation of political violence on election day and beyond. More than two dozen states are willing to send national guard troops to Washington, national guard officials said, while election officials in one Nevada county said polling places have installed “panic buttons” in the wake of surging threats. A group of Democratic secretaries of state have asked social media companies how they will moderate inflammatory content as violent threats and disinformation spread.

    Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

  • How the US elections will unfold overnight for British viewers | US elections 2024

    By late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday, we may know who is going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s been projected as the winner but be bracing ourselves for weeks of legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night.

    A reminder of the basics: whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college, rather than a straight count of the national vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a simple majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide.

    That means that the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided.

    In the UK, the election will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. The Guardian live blog is also running, obviously.

    Here is a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (at least six, at three-minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before then anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result.

    10pm UK (5pm Eastern Time): exit polls give context

    Voting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store: rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they give a view of what respondents have said the issues that mattered the most to them were.

    They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result.

    Midnight UK/7pm ET: Georgia and North Carolina – the first clues

    Polls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch, however his night is going.

    But polls also close in the first battleground states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere.

    We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and even the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press will start to call some states that haven’t even finished counting if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up but the closer the race the longer it may take.

    (When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.)

    1am UK/8pm ET: Oh God, it’s Pennsylvania

    Polls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference.

    Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020.

    Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead: we might be in for a long night.

    2am UK/9pm ET: Three more battleground states

    In this hour, polls will close in 15 states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day in 2016 or 2020. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time.

    It was around now in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later In 2020, the result wasn’t called for four more days (the following Saturday).

    Another interesting state to watch now: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump, who won it at the last two elections. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.

    By now, Trump is likely to have a solid-looking lead in the running electoral college count you’ll probably see on screen – but that is expected to start whittling down as polls close in big, solid blue states, including New York and California, from this point. But if and when those six swing states where polls have closed by now are called, it’s very likely that the result will be apparent.

    3am UK/10pm ET: Nevada

    Polls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its eight electoral college votes will be decisive but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020.

    Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide against him. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.)

    The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period.

    4am/11pm ET: California, Alaska and everything after

    The last polls close over the next two hours and, while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. What seems significantly more likely is: whatever the candidates have said, if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference.

    Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time – but that everything will still appear to be in flux.

  • Americans head to polls with historic election on a knife edge | US elections 2024

    Election day has arrived in America, with tens of millions of voters set to head to the polls on Tuesday in one of the closest and most consequential contests in modern US history.

    The Democrat Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, appear locked in a knife-edge contest with hardly any daylight between the pair in national opinion polls that have barely budged in weeks.

    In the seven crucial swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – the picture was the same. Recent polling has been unable to discern a clear pattern or advantage for either Harris or Trump in this electoral battleground, though most experts agree that whoever wins the Rust belt state of Pennsylvania is likely to have a clear advantage.

    “If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump, 78, said at a rally in Reading, in the state’s southeast corner, during a frenetic final day of campaigning in the state. Later, in Pittsburgh, he framed the election as a choice between “a golden age of America” if he returns to the White House or “four more years of misery, failure and disaster” under Harris.

    Harris, 60, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania and finished in Philadelphia, where she was joined by singer Lady Gaga and TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who warned of the threat that Trump poses to democracy. “We don’t get to sit this one out,” Winfrey said. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

    It is the swing states that will decide the election, because under the complex American political system, the result is decided not by the national popular vote but an electoral college in which each state’s number of electors is weighed roughly by the size of its population. Each candidate needs 270 votes in the electoral college to clinch victory, and the battleground is formed of those states where polls indicate a state could go either way.

    More than 78m early ballots have been cast but the result may not be quickly known. With polling so tight, full results in the crucial swing states are unlikely to be available on Tuesday night and may not even emerge on Wednesday, leaving the US and the wider world on tenterhooks as to who may emerge as America’s next president.

    The election brings to an end a remarkable and in many ways unprecedented election campaign that has deeply divided American society and upped the stress levels of many of its citizens amid warnings of civil unrest, especially in a scenario where Harris wins and Trump contests the result.

    Harris has consistently centered her campaign on the autocratic threat that Trump represents. In her final big signature event, Harris staged a rally of 75,000 supporters on the Ellipse in Washington – the spot where Trump helped encourage his supporters to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

    “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people,” Harris told the crowd.

    Harris’ campaign has tried to represent a page turning on the Trump era and threat of his return to the White House. She has acknowledged that calling Trump a fascist is a fair reflection of his political beliefs and the intentions of his movement, while insisting that she represents a choice that will serve all sides of America’s deeply fractured political landscape.

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    Trump, meanwhile, has run a campaign fueled by a sense of deep grievance, both personal, at his legal travails, and the perception among many of his supporters of an ailing America that is under threat from the Democrats. That sense of victimhood has been fueled by lies and conspiracy theories that have baselessly painted Biden and Harris as far-left figures who have wrecked the American economy with high inflation and an obsession with identity politics.

    Trump has also put immigration and border security at the heart of his campaign pitch, painting a picture of America as overrun with crime caused by illegal immigration that has often veered into outright racism and fear-mongering. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” with “bad genes” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

    The huge divisions between the two campaigns and the language used by candidates – especially Trump and his allies – have led to widespread fears of violence or unrest as voting day plays out and especially as the count goes on. In the run-up to election day, ballot drop boxes used for early voting were destroyed in several US states.

    At the same time, however, it was Trump himself who was the subject of two assassination attempts during the campaign. At a rally in Pennsylvania, an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear and at a golf course in Florida, a gunman lay in wait for an ambush, only to be foiled by an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent before he could open fire. Neither shooter seemed coherently politically motivated or definitively aligned with one side or another.

  • US security agencies warn of Russian election disinformation blitz in swing states | US elections 2024

    Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the US presidential election, authorities said a few hours ahead of the opening of polling booths in the 5 November vote.

    “Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Monday.

    “These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through election day and in the following weeks.

    The statement also noted that Iran remained a “significant foreign influence threat to US elections.”

    It was the latest in a series of warnings from the ODNI about foreign actors – notably Russia and Iran – allegedly spreading disinformation or hacking the campaigns during this election.

    The latest ODNI statement cited the example of a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with a person claiming election fraud in Arizona involving fake overseas ballots and changing of voter rolls to favour Kamala Harris.

    The Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, called the video and its claims “completely false, fake and fraudulent”.

    A spokesperson for the Russian embassy did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

    US officials warned in late October that Russia-linked operations were behind a viral video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Trump being destroyed in Bucks county in the swing state of Pennsylvania. The county’s board of elections said the video was “fake” and the envelope and other materials depicted in the footage were “clearly not authentic materials”.

    In September, Microsoft’s threat analysis centre said Russian operatives were ramping up disinformation operations to malign Harris’s campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos.

    Authorities also said they expected Iranian-linked operations to try to stoke violence by spreading false content. Tehran and Moscow have both denied such allegations in the past.

    Success in swing states is key to winning the White House for rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and those states have previously been the focus of unsupported accusations of election fraud.

    With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press

    Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

  • US election 2024 live updates: Trump launches insults at final rally as Harris ends campaign promising to ‘get to work’ | US elections 2024

    Trump insults opponents at final Michigan rally

    In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.

    “Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.

    The crowd cheers as Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
    The crowd cheers as Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/AP

    He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”

    He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”

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    Key events

    After touting Joe Rogan’s endorsement of him, Trump has invited his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the co-chair of the National Republican Committee, to take the mic.

    She says “we send a loud and clear message” to “the mainstream media” and “the swamp” among other people “that it is we who get to choose the president”.

    She says it has been “a very special night for our family”, adding “it has been my honour to be a part of this family, to be out speaking on behalf of a man whom I love … who is going to save this country and is going to save the world.”

    It’s approaching 2am in Michigan.

    Trump has now called his family up to the stage, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, Tiffany Trump and her husband Michael Boulos and Eric’s wife Lara, who is the co-chair of the National Republican Committee.

    His daughter Ivanka Trump, who was a White House advisor to him during his first term, and his wife Melania, are notable by their absence.

    Trump has given shoutouts to a list of people supporting him, including Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the ambassador to Germany during his time in office, Rick Grenell.

    He goes into a story about former chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that when Grenell “was taken out it was the happiest day of her life”.

    At one point he adds as an aside, “We can’t let them forget that we stopped that big Chinese plant in Mexico!” and “Let’s put it this way if they build it theyre going to lose their ass”. It wasn’t clear who or what plant he was referring to – see our earlier post.

    The crowds are reportedly beginning to thin out at Trump’s rally in Michigan. He’s been talking for over an hour now.

    As the clock ticked past 1am in Grand Rapids, the crowd at this final Trump rally began to thin. Trump has brought much more energy here than he did in Pittsburgh but it’s getting laaaate.

    — Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) November 5, 2024

    It’s 1.30am in Michigan and Trump has now moved back to talking about cutting energy prices and the cost of groceries again.

    He tells a familiar story about an old woman going into a shop to buy three apples but only being able to afford two and having to put one back in the fridge (“refrigeration”). It’s not clear where or when this happened.

    “That shouldn’t be happening in our country,” he says.

    After some more insults hurled at Kamala Harris and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump begins making further inflammatory remarks about immigration, accusing Harris of wanting open borders and of allowing an “invasion” of immigrants including those from “mental institutions”.

    “The day I take office the migrant invasion ends,” he says, later adding that we “live in an occupied country”.

    He also repeats his call for the death penalty for any illegal immigrant who kills and American citizen and his plan to ban sanctuary cities.

    Trump has promised to restore and expand his most controversial immigration policies, including the travel ban aimed at mostly Muslim countries. He has consistently promised to stage the “largest deportation operation in American history”.

    Trump talks briefly about groceries (“People say ‘groceries,’ right? I haven’t used tha … it’s such a sort of an old term.”)

    Then he talks for a while about the attempt to assassinate him in Pennsylvania in July. He calls his survival a “miracle” and at one point mentions that “illegal immigration saved me” although I didn’t catch how.

    He then moves into an anecdote about visiting Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom with Melania Trump. He says that the assassinated president suffered from “melancholia” and adds that: “He was very tall, he was six foot six, that’s the equivalent of a Barron Trump today … the bed was very long.”

    After a few asides about Melania’s book, he returns to the theme of the attempt on his life.

    Trump has returned to the theme of plants and Mexico, telling a convoluted story about a businessman friend and China’s intention to build a plant in Mexico which was going “to destroy Michigan”.

    He says that his threats to “put a 100% tariff on every single car coming out of that plant” had led to a decision not to build the purported plant.

    “I saved Detroit and Michigan a lot and I did that without even being president,” he claims.

    It’s not clear what plant he’s referring to. Newsweek has previously reported after similar remarks he made at the end of last month that his campaign could not confirm what plant it was but that it appeared to be one planned by auto manufacturer BYD and that there was no evidence the claim was true.

    Trump and Harris get three votes each as election kicks off in New Hampshire

    Jonathan Yerushalmy

    Jonathan Yerushalmy

    Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have tied with three votes each in the tiny New Hampshire town which traditionally kicks off voting on election day.

    Since the 1960’s, voters in Dixville Notch, located close to the border with Canada, have gathered just after midnight to cast their ballots. Votes are then counted and results announced – hours before other states even open their polls.

    According to CNN, four Republicans and two undeclared voters participated took part in the vote just after midnight on Tuesday.

    Town Moderator Tom Tillotson, left, accepts the first ballot from Les Otten during the midnight vote on Election Day in Dixville Notch, N.H. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

    Trump then launches into some familiar insults of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton of whom he says, “She called me and conceded [presumably eight years ago] and then spent seven years saying how she was a good sport.”

    He calls Harris a “low IQ person” and then begins on a long story about Elon Musk and his rockets.

    Trump insults opponents at final Michigan rally

    In Michigan, Trump then goes on to talk insultingly about President Joe Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and representative Adam Schiff, the lead investigator in Trump’s first impeachment.

    “Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage,” Trump remarked adding “They stole the election from a president,” in apparent reference to Biden’s dropping out of the campaign to be replaced by Harris.

    The crowd cheers as Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/AP

    He then says of Pelosi “she’s a crooked person … evil, sick, crazy b… oh no! It starts with a ‘b’ but I won’t say it! I wanna say it.”

    He said of “Adam Shifty Schiff”: “He’s got the biggest head, he’s an unattractive guy both inside and out.”

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    In Michigan, Trump claims to have done 930 rallies during his campaign, which I can’t confirm. Then he continues:

    If you make one slip up and you know I wrote a beautiful speech I haven’t even gotten to it yet … rarely do they ever catch me making a mistake!

    Those ellipses are covering for a series of meandering comments which included remarks on his use of teleprompters and the state of the country.

    Trump starts his rally in Michigan apparently talking about his first election run, saying “we were given a three per cent chance” in Michigan and then begins a series of rambling remarks about Detroit, (“I’ve heard a lot about Detroit”) and adds “We killed the plant in Mexico”. It’s not clear what he was referring to.

    He then moved on to immigration, saying the US was suffering the “invasion of some of the biggest criminals in the world… we’re going to end that immediately.”

    “We don’t have to live this way,” he adds.

    Then he moves on to Kamala Harris, mocking her and claiming, “Nobody knew who the hell she was.” He then made some more inflammatory comments about transgender people .

    Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Reuters
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    Trump has finally arrived at his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, almost two and a half hours behind schedule.

    Rachel Leingang

    Rachel Leingang

    A few dozen conservative voters gathered at a Phoenix park to launch a canvass with Turning Point Action the night before the election, pulling up an app to get names and locations of voters they could talk to and convince to head to the polls.

    Turning Point, the conservative youth organization, has run its “chase the vote” program in Arizona and Wisconsin to reach low propensity voters. Monday’s “super chase” canvass involved a data-driven approach to a part of town that the group says has right-leaning voters who haven’t yet turned in ballots.

    “We actually modeled this program around a lot of what the Democrats have built in years prior,” said Andrew Kolvet, the group’s spokesman.

    People from 47 states have come to Arizona and Wisconsin to volunteer with the group to turn out voters, Kolvet said. At the Phoenix park, teams of at least two – often wearing red Maga hats and toting clipboards – set off to knock some doors.

    “The job is not to convince a swing voter necessarily, or to convince a Democrat to vote Republican,” Kolvet said. “These are people that we know are probably our people that just haven’t got their vote in.”

    Registered Republicans have so far turned in more ballots than their Democratic counterparts in Arizona, a reversal of the last two cycles when Republicans trailed in early voting (though Republicans before 2020 often had a lead in early votes).

    “We’re feeling as good as we could feel,” Kolvet said. “I’m not predicting victory. I’m just saying we have done the hard work and set the state up to have a really good day tomorrow. Anything could happen.”

    Harris ends campaign ‘with energy, with joy’ at final rally in Philadelphia

    Lauren Gambino

    Lauren Gambino

    Dispatch from Philadelphia: Kamala Harris has run a remarkable 107-day presidential campaign, the shortest in modern political history.

    It began on a Sunday morning with a call from the president saying he was stepping down. On election eve, hours before polls opened, she finished the final speech of a campaign she cast as a fight for American democracy.

    But Harris has also sought to inject hope and optimism into her campaign.

    “Tonight, then, we finish, as we started with optimism with energy, with joy,” she said.

    “Generations before us led the fight for freedom, and now the baton is in our hands,” she said.

    “We need to get to work and get out the vote,” she concluded.

    US vice-president Kamala Harris (R) and US second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Photograph: Matthew Hatcher/AFP/Getty Images
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    Georgia poll worker arrested over bomb threat, prosecutors say

    A Georgia poll worker was arrested on Monday on US charges that he sent a letter threatening to bomb election workers that he wrote to appear as if it came from a voter in the presidential election battleground state. Reuters reports:

    Federal prosecutors said Nicholas Wimbish, 25, had been serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office in Gray, Georgia, on Oct. 16 when he got into a verbal altercation with a voter.

    The next day, Wimbish mailed a letter to the county’s elections superintendent that was drafted to appear as if it came from that same voter, prosecutors said. The letter complained that Wimbish was a “closeted liberal election fraudster” who had been distracting voters in line to cast ballots, according to charging papers.

    Authorities said the letter, signed by a “Jones county voter,” said Wimbish and others “should look over their shoulder” and warned that people would “learn a violent lesson about stealing our elections!”

    Prosecutors said the letter ended with a handwritten note: “PS boom toy in early vote place, cigar burning, be safe.”

    Wimbish was charged with mailing a bomb threat, conveying false information about a bomb threat, mailing a threatening letter, and making false statements to the FBI, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Wimbish could not be immediately identified.

    Georgia is one of seven closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election match up between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Concerns about potential political violence have prompted officials to take a variety of measures to bolster security during and after Election Day.

  • Cardi B says Harris inspired her to vote as candidates hold dueling Wisconsin rallies – as it happened | US elections 2024

    Supreme court rejects Republican argument on Pennsylvania ballot counting: AP

    The supreme court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reports.

    The justices left in place a state supreme court ruling that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

    As of Thursday, about 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million returned have arrived at elections offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date, according to state records.

    Pennsylvania is the biggest presidential election battleground this year, with 19 electoral votes. Donald Trump won the state in 2016, then lost it in 2020.

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    Key events

    Summary

    Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigned in midwest swing states today, ending with dueling rallies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, seen as a crucial state to win. Here are some of today’s key updates from myself and my colleagues:

    • Cardi B spoke at Harris’ Milwaukee rally, saying that she had not been planning to vote in this presidential election, but that Harris convinced her to do so. She called Harris an “underdog” whose accomplishments as a woman have been repeatedly demeaned and underestimated.

    • Despite facing criticism over saying yesterday that his prominent Republican critic Liz Cheney should have rifles shooting at her, Trump revisited his remarks about Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, calling her a war hawk and a coward. Harris had called Trump’s rhetoric about Cheney “disqualifying”.

    • The supreme court rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania, and left in place a state supreme court ruling that election officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

    • Trump visited Dearborn, Michigan, to tout his support among Arab Americans and Muslim Americans who are angry with the Biden Harris administration over their support for Israel and the human death toll in Gaza and Lebanon. While key Arab American leaders chose not to meet with Trump, some called his in-person visit important, and criticized Harris and the Democratic party.

    • Dearborn’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, posted on X, “The architect of the Muslim Ban is making a campaign stop in Dearborn…To the Dems – your unwillingness to stop funding & enabling a genocide created the space for Trump to infiltrate our communities. Remember that.”

    • The prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr campaigned for Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin, earning big cheers from Trump supporters as the former third-party candidate reportedly is aiming for a major healthcare role in Trump’s White House.

    • A federal judge on Friday denied an attempt by America Pac – the political action committee founded by Elon Musk to support Donald Trump’s campaign for a second presidency – to move to federal court a civil suit brought by the Philadelphia district attorney over a daily $1m prize draw for registered voters. A hearing was scheduled in Pennsylvania state court on Monday, the day before the election.

    • Arizona’s attorney general has launched an investigation into whether Donald Trump violated state law through his violent rhetoric against Liz Cheney. In a statement to 12News on Friday, attorney general Kris Mayes said: “I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws.”

    • The justice department announced on Friday it is deploying election monitors in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states for the general election on 5 November. “The Justice Department enforces federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all eligible citizens to access the ballot,” an official statement said. “The department regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities all across the country.”

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    Trump has wrapped up his Milwaukee rally, not long before 11 pm local time.

    Despite the late hour, the crowd in Milwaukee rose to its feet to give him a standing ovation as Donald Trump listed off the actions he would take against migrants who commit crimes, the Associated Press reports.

    Trump has centered his campaign on hardline tactics to stop illegal immigration, including the death penalty for migrants who are in the country illegally and kill an American citizen.

    We are counting down to just three days and a few hours before the 2024 election, and Donald Trump is still riffing to a crowd of supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as Kamala Harris has already arrived at her hotel for the night, according to the White House pool reporter.

    Harris’ Milwaukee speech tonight was short, peppy, and relentlessly on message. Trump, as is his style, is rambling, hitting his attack lines on the economy and immigration, but also making extraneous attacks, such as criticizing the hair of ABC anchor David Muir, saying 60 Minutes should be shut down, and complaining that he is not allowed to call the Democratic governor of Illinois fat. (Again, he is in Wisconsin.)

    “Is there a chance she would resign before the election? Three days?” Trump asks of his Democratic competitor, Kamala Harris. It’s not clear why Trump is airing this idea, other than as part of his claim that Harris looks “rattled”.

    “I actually think they should have left Joe, he would have done just as well, maybe better,” Trump says.

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    Now Trump, speaking in Wisconsin, is attacking the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker.

    “I am not allowed to use the fat word. That’s the other word you cannot use,” Trump says, to some laughter from the crowd. “You are not allowed to use the fat word so I will not do it, but that guy is disgusting.”

    “I took a lot of heat about two months ago because I said, ‘I think women like me, I do, I think the suburban housewives like me,” Trump said. There are high-pitched cheers from the audience.

    “I think they like me because they know I’m going to protect them,” Trump says.

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    Talking about his plans for mass deportation of migrants, and expediting deportation of gang members, Trump says that he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, and said that it’s “incredible” that “we had to go back so far” to find the law he needed.

    “That’s when we ran a tough country,” he says, of the year 1798.

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    It is past 10pm in Milwaukee and Donald Trump is still talking. He is riffing freely, criticizing journalist David Muir’s hair, and revisiting what he saw as the unfairness of his debate against Kamala Harris, which Muir moderated.

    Then he spoke about his lawsuit against CBS News and 60 Minutes, saying it “should be forced to close”.

    Trump sounds a bit tired, and he is delivering his attack lines in a gentler tone that he did earlier in the day in Michigan.

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    “You were a very difficult state,” Trump says of Wisconsin, talking about how hard the state was for him to win in 2016, and then falsely claiming that he actually won the state again in 2020. (He did not.)

    The AP has a fact check of Trump’s comments just now on the economy, and what his comments leave out: two major hurricanes as well as big strikes.

    Donald Trump is saying that the US jobs report today, which showed that employers added 12,000 jobs in October, showed that the Biden-Harris administration is failing on the economy. Last month’s hiring gain was down significantly from the 223,000 jobs that were added in September.

    “This is like a depression,” Trump said of the numbers as he heaped insults on Harris.

    Economists estimate that Hurricanes Helene and Milton, combined with strikes at Boeing and elsewhere, pushed down net job growth by tens of thousands of jobs in October.

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    Kamala Harris appears to be wrapping up her speech, urging her supporters to remind everyone they know to vote, and to reach out to people through text and conversation.

    “Let’s please be intentional about building community,” she adds. “There’s something intentional about this whole Trump era. It’s been powered by this idea that Americans should be pointing fingers at each other, and to make people feel alone and to make people feel small, when we all know we have so much more in common than what separates us.”

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    “I love Gen Z. I really do,” Kamala Harris laughs, talking about “all the younger leaders I see who are voting for the very first time.”

    “Here’s what I love about you guys. You are rightly impatient for change. I love that about you. You are determined to live free from gun violence. You are going to take on the climate crisis. You are going to shape the world you inherit. I know that. I know that.”

    “And here’s the thing about our young leaders. None of this is theoretical for them. None of this is political for them. It’s their lived experience. It’s your lived experience, and I see your power, I see your power, and I am so proud of you.”

    “I see her today … she’s exhausted. She looks like … she’s exhausted,” Trump says of Kamala Harris, at his Milwaukee rally.

    Harris is simultaneously speaking very energetically to her cheering crowd a few miles away.

    Both Trump and Harris are performing with a surprising deal of energy tonight after a long day of travel and multiple swing state events.

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    The crowd at Trump’s rally has been frustrated with the sound levels in the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, even chanting earlier, “Fix the mic!” the Associated Press reports.

    Trump eventually got the message and ripped the microphone from the podium to hold it closer to his mouth. “I think this mic stinks,” Trump said.

    Trump has been jumping from topic to topic, mentioning that this is his third campaign rally today, then referencing his rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden nearly a week ago, and then hurling insults at his Democratic rival.

    In two different venues across Milwaukee and its suburbs, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’ Wisconsin crowds have been waiting hours to hear the candidates speak, and both crowds sound fired up and enthusiastic.

  • America Pac was warned about Trump ground game fraud months ago | US elections 2024

    America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk that has led the ground game operation for Donald Trump’s campaign, was warned in September about increasing numbers of door knocks being flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to three people familiar with the matter.

    The confrontation marked the first time that America Pac’s leadership became aware of the problem – canvassers falsely claiming to have knocked on doors – that has raised the possibility that thousands of Trump voters might not be reached by the field operation.

    The question of whether Trump voters are being reached by the America Pac ground game effort has taken on significance in recent months given the race between the former president and Kamala Harris has remained extremely close, suggesting the result may hinge on voter turnout.

    As America Pac rapidly sought to scale up its field operation on behalf of the Trump campaign in late fall, executives at some of the canvassing vendors contracted to knock on doors in battleground states observed that internal audit systems were increasingly flagging doors as suspicious.

    map of number of electoral college votes by US state

    The executives were seeing the uptick both through the “unusual activity logs” on the Campaign Sidekick software used by America Pac and their managers in the field spotting fraud by canvassers on door knocks teams across several states, including Pennsylvania.

    By 24 September, the situation had so alarmed Drew Ryun, the chief executive of Sidekick, that he raised the issue via email with Musk’s newly hired political adviser Chris Young, a former national field director for the Republican National Committee, the people said.

    Whether any changes were implemented as a result is unclear. A review of the unusual activity logs in Arizona and Nevada for instance showed that the percentage of potentially fraudulent doors remained constant in the period before and after Ryun’s missive, hovering around 20-25% with occasional spikes.

    America Pac has previously disputed that their doors were falling victim to its canvassers cheating their way through walkbooks, a problem that has dogged the paid canvassing industry for years, saying their audit program essentially prevented door knocks being faked.

    But the Guardian has reported that tens of thousands of door knocks in Arizona and Nevada, for instance, remain dubious based on the unusual activity logs. In one instance, GPS data showed a canvasser sitting at a restaurant half a mile away from doors he was supposedly hitting in Arizona.

    As a result of that reporting, America Pac moved to restrict access to the unusual activity logs and toggled off the feature for dozens of users, who promptly complained and ultimately had their user privileges restored, two of the people said.

    A Trump spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

    The problem of suspicious door knocks in the America Pac field operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with traditional volunteers or campaign staff​.

    With the Trump campaign targeting their low-propensity voters – Trump supporters who have not voted in several previous elections – the walkbooks have had what canvassers refer to as “bad turf”, where target doors are separated by particularly large distances that are tedious to complete.

    Musk donated $75m to America Pac, according to federal disclosures. Roughly $37m has been spent on the ground game operation to drive the Trump vote, with the rest put towards digital and mail advertising for him, as well as for down-ballot Republican candidates.

    map of presidential results in 2024 battleground states in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020

    The billionaire owner of SpaceX has also been trying to return Trump to the White House in other ways, notably through a petition that asks registered voters in battleground states to submit their address, phone number and emails in exchange for $47 and to enter a daily-$1m prize draw.

    Some campaign finance lawyers and the US justice department have warned Musk that the America Pac petition offer is illegal as it amounts to paying people to register to vote in violation of federal law. America Pac has also been used by Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner.

    Musk’s defenders say it is simply a contest open to registered voters; in theory, Democrats registered to vote in battleground states can complete the petition and have a chance to win the $1m lottery.

  • Joe Rogan endorses Donald Trump for president | US elections 2024

    The influential podcast host Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.

    Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”

    Rogan shared his endorsement along with a link to a nearly three-hour-long interview with Musk, posted on Monday.

    Rogan, 57, described recently by Bloomberg as “widely accepted as the most popular podcaster on Earth”, has an overwhelmingly male audience. He recently interviewed Donald Trump on the show, and, as recently as last week, was negotiating for a sit-down with the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

    Trump’s interview on Rogan’s show ten days ago currently has 45m views on YouTube, while JD Vance’s interview has 14m views.

    The great and powerful @elonmusk.
    If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.
    For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.
    Enjoy the podcast pic.twitter.com/LdBxZFVsLN

    — Joe Rogan (@joerogan) November 5, 2024

    Rogan is a former mixed martial arts commentator, comedian, and gameshow host whose show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is Spotify’s No 1 podcast offering.

    In an era of distrust in traditional media outlets, Rogan’s outsider persona, and long conversations with famous and infamous guests, from Kanye West to Edward Snowden to Alex Jones, has won him a massive audience.

    But Rogan’s views and interviews have also sparked condemnation, and even a boycott of Spotify, which reportedly signed a $100m deal in 2020 to host his podcast, and finalized a new multiyear deal, reportedly for $250m, earlier this year.

    Over time, Spotify has reportedly removed past controversial episodes of Rogan’s show, including those featuring conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and far-right extremists Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys.

    In January 2022, a group of 270 US doctors, scientists, professors, and other healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to Spotify, raising concerns about Rogan’s podcast and what they called its “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic”.

    “Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19,” the letter said.

    Rogan had been previously called out by the White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci for telling his audience that young, healthy Americans did not need to be vaccinated against Covid.

    In early 2022, musician Neil Young demanded that the streaming platform remove his music, arguing that “Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines,” and citing Rogan’s show and his many claims about the coronavirus vaccine, as well as about Covid lockdowns. His actions prompted a wider boycott, with some artists weighing in on other aspects of Rogan’s show they found unacceptable, like some of his guest’s comments about race and about Black people in particular.

    Spotify responded to the controversy by promising to direct listeners to accurate information about Covid-19, and by making its internal guidelines for its creators public.

    In 2022, Rogan also publicly apologized for repeatedly using the n word on his show, an apology prompted by a compilation video of all the times the white host had used the offensive racial slur.

    Rogan’s night-before-the-election Trump endorsement is not the first time one of his shows with Musk has made news headlines. Tesla shares suffered and some Tesla executives resigned in 2018 after Musk infamously smoked a joint on the live webcast of Rogan’s show in 2018.

    Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

  • The women ‘cancelling out’ their Trump-loving partners’ votes: ‘No one will ever know’ | US elections 2024

    Mackenzie Owens and her boyfriend strut toward the camera like models on a catwalk, posing as she takes a dramatic sip from her Stanley cup. “Just a bf and a gf going to cancel each other’s votes,” reads the caption of their TikTok – the couple, who live in Pennsylvania, support separate candidates this election season.

    Owens made the TikTok to join in on a trend of women disclosing that they’re voting against their partners’ preferred candidates. In one video, a woman mischievously tucks away a strand of hair as she mails in her ballot, “proudly” cancelling out her boyfriend’s ballot – “because someone paid attention in US History & has to care about keeping the Dept of Education!!!!” In another, a woman dances to Ciara’s Level Up before driving off to “cancel out” her “Trump loving Husband’s vote in a swing state”.

    Mackenzie Owens says she and her boyfriend support different presidential candidates. Photograph: Mackenzie Owens

    The dozens of women participating are, for the most part, Democrats supporting Kamala Harris’s bid, while their male partners are voting for Donald Trump. (Owens did not disclose who she or her boyfriend voted for.) Though their posts provide levity in the final days of an ugly presidential race, they also underscore the pivotal role gender is playing in the election.

    A late October national poll from USA Today/Suffolk University found that women resoundingly back Harris over Trump, 53% to 36%, a “mirror image” of men’s support for Trump over Harris, 53% to 37%. A September poll from Quinnipiac University similarly found a 26-point gender gap. An unknown – but certainly sizable – number of women are seeing this gender gap in their own relationships.

    Owens, who is 19, isn’t particularly bothered by her boyfriend’s politics. “Nowadays, people think that you have to have the same political opinions as your partner, because [hyper-partisan politics] is a big problem in society, but I personally think it’s cool to co-exist and learn about the other side, and get different opinions I didn’t think of before,” she said. “But in a way, that’s not socially acceptable.”

    Meanwhile, liberal TikTokers are weighing in to say they could never date or marry a Trump supporter, given the former president’s sexist remarks about women and his appointment of anti-abortion justices to the supreme court, which resulted in the 2022 reversal of Roe v Wade. “What do you mean you’re on your way to cancel out your husband’s vote?” reads one viral tweet. “You should be on your way to the courthouse. Divorce babe. Divorce.”

    Harris needs women to turn out on Tuesday, especially those who might take a page from the TikTokers’ playbook and vote differently from the men in their lives. But those posts come from mostly young, liberal women who feel safe publicly disagreeing on candidates. In recent days, Democratic groups have made overtures to Republican women, or women who project conservatism to their friends and family but quietly harbor doubts about Trump.

    Republican turnout among women – especially white women, who backed Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections – can be partially explained by their husbands, who are seen as wielding influence over the family vote, said strategists and advocates who spoke with the Guardian.

    “Women often give deference to the presumed expertise of their husbands on politics, and then the men reinforce that presumption and express their intensity and so-called greater expertise,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “We try to reinforce to women that you have your own way of doing things, your own point of view, you focus on what’s good for the whole family. Then we emphasize that the vote is private.”

    That’s a sentiment echoed in a new ad, narrated by Julia Roberts, from the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good. In the ad, a woman whose husband appears to be a Trump supporter enters the voting booth to cast her ballot for Harris. “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the voiceover.

    Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, said the group first conceptualized the ad during the 2022 midterms. “We kept hearing from women that they were going to pay an emotional price with their families, friends and church if they didn’t continue to toe the line [and vote for Trump],” Pagitt said.

    On a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama told swing state voters: “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Liz Cheney, a never-Trump Republican who campaigned alongside Harris in Detroit last week, reminded Republican women that there is no official way to look up how someone voted: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5.”

    The Lincoln Project, a moderate political action committee, also released a bluntly titled ad, Secret, where two Trump-supporting men assume their wives also back their candidate. However, when the couples get to the polls, one of the women mouths “Kamala” to the other, and after an affirmative nod, both fill in their ballots for the Democrat.

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    This messaging is stoking anger among conservative personalities, who say it is sexist and retrograde to assume women only vote for Trump to appease their husbands. They also, paradoxically, say this messaging is undermining traditional family values. Charlie Kirk, who last year said the “radical left” was being “run by childless young ladies” on antidepressants, called the ads “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family” on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.

    The Fox News host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris, “that’s the same thing as having an affair … it violates the sanctity of our marriage”. This, despite the fact that Watters had an affair with his current wife while still married to his first wife.

    In the final stretch, these complex – and often secretive – relationship dynamics are affecting Democrats’ ground game, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. “You see it in public women’s bathrooms or places where women can be directly appealed to without the barrier of the man in their life. There are stickers or signs that say, ‘Remember, your vote is private,’” she said.

    Nancy Hirschmann, a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added that canvassers for Harris were trained to avoid outing wives who may be registered Democrats to their Republican husbands: “If a man answers the door who’s clearly in favor of Trump, you don’t ask for the woman by name, you ask if there are other voters in the house you can speak to.”

    Jamisen Casey jokes that her vote ‘cancels out’ her ex-boyfriend’s ballot. Photograph: Jamisen Casey

    It is too early to tell if Republican-coded women may in fact turn out to be secret Harris voters. But back on TikTok, women vocally share their 2024 picks, even if they go against their partner’s choice – or an ex-partner’s choice.

    Jamisen Casey, a 21-year-old student who goes to school in California but is registered to vote in her home state of Tennessee, took part in the trend, with a twist. “My absentee ballot on its way home to cancel out my ex boyfriend’s vote,” Casey wrote in the caption of a video showing her dancing with the envelope while We Both Reached for the Gun from the musical Chicago plays.

    “It’s really hard to know that there are men out there who want to vote against reproductive rights, even though they shouldn’t have a say in it at all,” Casey, who voted for Harris, said. She doesn’t think she could date someone who doesn’t share her views again. “As a political science major, I made a decision that I don’t want to put myself in that position.”