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 supportersto “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.
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.”
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.
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 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
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.”
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
Trump has finally arrived at his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, almost two and a half hours behind schedule.
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
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
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.
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. in 1973.
The court’s controversial but expected ruling gives individual states the power to set their own abortion laws without concern of running afoul of Roe, which had permitted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
Almost half the states are expected to outlaw or severely restrict abortion as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, which is related to a highly restrictive new Mississippi abortion law. The laws will affect tens of millions of people around the country, who may have to cross state lines to seek reproductive health care.
Supporters of abortion rights immediately condemned the ruling, while abortion opponents praised a decision they had long hoped for and worked to ensure. Protesters descended on the Supreme Court on Friday to speak out both for and against a decision that will upend decades of precedent in the U.S.
Abortion opponents celebrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022.
Olivier Douliery | AFP | Getty Images
Justice Samuel Alito, as expected, wrote the majority opinion that tossed out Roe as well as a 1992 Supreme Court decision upholding abortion rights in a case known as Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Alito was joined in that judgment by four other conservatives on the high court. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority to uphold the Mississippi abortion restrictions but did not approve of overturning Roe altogether.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Alito wrote.
“That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” he added.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
In their scathing joint dissent, the court’s liberal justices wrote, “The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.”
“The majority would allow States to ban abortion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equality and freedom,” said the dissent by Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“Today’s Court, that is, does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life,” it said. “A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”
In a concurring opinion with the majority ruling, the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that in light of the rationale for overturning Roe, the Supreme Court should reconsider its rulings in three other past cases which established a right to use birth control, and which said there is a constitutional right for gay people to have sex and marry one another.
Friday’s bombshell decision came a day after the Supreme Court in another controversial ruling invalidated a century-old New York law that had made it very difficult for people to obtain a license to carry a gun outside of their homes.
Anti-abortion protestors march in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building as the court considers overturning Roe v. Wade on June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC.
Roberto Schmidt | AFP | Getty Images
The case that triggered Roe’s demise, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is related to a Mississippi law that banned nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Dobbs was by far the most significant and controversial dispute of the court’s term.
It also posed the most serious threat to abortion rights since Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe.
Dobbs deepened partisan divisions in a period of already intense political tribalism.
The early May leak of a draft of the majority opinion, which completely overturned Roe, sent shockwaves across the country and galvanized activists on both sides of the debate. It also cast a pall over the nation’s highest court, which immediately opened an investigation to find the source of the leak.
The publication of the court’s draft opinion, written by Alito, sparked protests from abortion-rights supporters, who were outraged and fearful about how the decision will impact both patients and providers as 22 states gear up to restrict abortions or ban them outright.
The leaked opinion marked a major victory for conservatives and anti-abortion advocates who had worked for decades to undermine Roe and Casey, which the majority of Americans support keeping in place.
But Republican lawmakers in Washington, who are hoping to win big in the November midterm elections, initially focused more on the leak itself than on what it revealed. They also decried the protests that formed outside the homes of some conservative justices, accusing activists of trying to intimidate the court.
The unprecedented leak of Alito’s draft opinion blew a hole in the cloak of secrecy normally shrouding the court’s internal affairs. It drew harsh scrutiny from the court’s critics, many of whom were already concerned about the politicization of the country’s most powerful deliberative body, where justices are appointed for life.
Roberts vowed that the work of the court “will not be affected in any way” by the leak, which he described as a “betrayal” intended to “undermine the integrity of our operations.”
The leak had clearly had an impact, however. Tall fencing was set up around the court building afterward, and Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the U.S. Marshals Service to “help ensure the Justices’ safety.”
