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الوسم: final

  • Harris appears in Pennsylvania with Oprah Winfrey in final push for votes | US Election 2024 News

    Harris appears in Pennsylvania with Oprah Winfrey in final push for votes | US Election 2024 News

    Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has made her last appeal to voters, holding a series of rallies in battleground Pennsylvania, with a final, glitzy event in the city of Philadelphia, where producer-actress Oprah Winfrey introduced her.

    In her fifth and final event late on Monday night, Harris told a large crowd she was ready to represent the next generation of leadership in the United States.

    “But this race is not over, and we must finish strong,” she said.

    “And this could be one of the closest races in history. Every single vote matters.”

    Winfrey appeared on stage at the event at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with 10 young people who were all first-time voters.

    “[If] you’re feeling burned out and bruised and maybe inconsequential, nothing could be further from the truth. Every single vote, everyone is going to matter,” said Winfrey. “That’s why I’ve come to Philadelphia tonight.”

    As she closed her address, Harris said voters had a chance in this election to finally “turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division”.

    “We are done with that. We’re done [and] we’re exhausted with it,” she said.

    “America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow Americans not as an enemy.”

    ‘You’re going to make the difference’

    Throughout the day, Harris’s message had been consistent – every vote was crucial in the state that holds 19 Electoral College votes, the most of all the seven swing states that will likely determine the outcome.

    “We need everyone in Pennsylvania to vote,” she said to an exuberant afternoon crowd in Allentown. “You are going to make the difference in this election.”

    The polls have Harris essentially tied in Pennsylvania with her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, who held one of his final rallies in Reading, Pennsylvania, only a few kilometres away from Harris.

    Over the last few days, Harris has sought to further differentiate her campaign from Trump’s by not mentioning his name, and emphasising optimism and community.

    “Momentum is on our side, momentum is on our side, can you feel it? We have momentum, right?” she said to cheers.

    “Because our campaign has tapped into the ambitions and aspirations and the dreams of the American people, we are optimistic and excited about what we will do together.”

    Harris, 60, could make US history as the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. Four years ago, she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second-in-command.

    Harris’s last day was all about encouraging supporters to vote and think about the future.

    “It’s time for a new generation of leadership in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America,” she said.

    ‘No joke’

    Harris’s Allentown rally was introduced by Grammy Award-winning musician Fat Joe, who was raised by parents of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent. He wasted no time in taking aim at the racist remarks that featured at the recent Republican rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

    “That was no joke ladies and gentlemen. That was no joke, filled with so much hate,” he said.

    Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who was part of Trump’s warm-up act at the New York rally, created a firestorm of protests when he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

    Southeast Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizeable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit at Trump for those comments.

    Fat Joe reminded the Allentown rally that people can make their feelings clear when they vote.

    “My Latinos, where is your pride,” he asked.

    “If I am speaking to undecided Puerto Ricans, especially in Pennsylvania, what more do they gotta do to show you who they are? If I tell you that Kamala Harris is with us, she’s with us.”

    On Monday, Harris told supporters: “I stand here proud of my longstanding commitment to Puerto Rico and her people and I will be a president for all Americans.”

    Harris also swung by Scranton – the birthplace of Biden.

    “Are you ready to do this?” she yelled to supporters there, with a large handmade “Vote For Freedom” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.

    ‘We are not going back’

    Throughout the whirlwind last day, Harris repeated one of the slogans of her campaign – “We Are Not Going Back”. It is designed, in part, to contrast her with Republicans who supported the US Supreme Court decision that overturned a national right to an abortion.

    She repeated her promise to protect women’s reproductive rights.

    “We are not going back because ours is the fight for the future, for freedom, like the fundamental freedom for a woman to make decisions over her own body and not have the government tell her what to do,” Harris said.

  • Trump calls Harris a ‘disaster’ as he concludes final day of campaigning | US Election 2024 News

    Trump calls Harris a ‘disaster’ as he concludes final day of campaigning | US Election 2024 News

    Former United States President Donald Trump has delivered a final pitch to the American people, making four stops in three different states to denounce his opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, as a “disaster”.

    “You know she’s been exposed,” Trump said at his final campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a rally that lasted so long it slipped into the early hours of Election Day.

    “She’s a radical lunatic who destroyed San Francisco,” he said of the city where Harris spent the formative years of her career. “But we don’t have to settle for weakness and incompetence and decline.”

    Ever since he announced in November 2022 that he would make a second re-election bid, his campaign has focused on immigration, the economy and a desire for retribution against his perceived political adversaries.

    Trump has long maintained that his 2020 election defeat was the result of a “stolen” election, a false claim.

    And in his final rally of the election, he applied similar language to his former Democratic adversary, President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race in July due to concerns over his age.

    “They stole the election from a president,” Trump said of the circumstances of Biden’s withdrawal. “They use the word ‘coup’. I think it’s worse than a coup in a sense because in a coup there’s a little back and forth.”

    Trump stumps heavily on economy

    Polls show Democrats like Biden, 81, and Harris, 60, as being vulnerable on issues such as the economy and immigration.

    For example, a survey in late October from The New York Times and Siena College found that more voters trusted Trump than Harris to address the economy, at a rate of 52 percent to 45.

    Trump has often invoked the economy in his appeal to voters. It was no different on Monday night, when he opened his rally in Grand Rapids with a familiar question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

    He proceeded to muse at length about “groceries” being an old term — before promising to bring food prices down.

    “They say my groceries are so much more [expensive],” Trump said of voters. “The term is just like an old term. And it’s a beautiful [term], but they say about my groceries were so expensive. They’ll be cheaper. Your paycheques will be higher. Your streets will be safer and clear.”

    Campaign fatigue

    During the rally, the 78-year-old Trump also acknowledged the toll the nonstop campaign schedule has taken on him.

    “This is the last one we will have to do,” he said of the Grand Rapids rally. “Doing four of these in one day is a little difficult, but not really. Because the love at every one of them has been incredible.”

    The Grand Rapids appearance came at the end of a busy day of campaigning. Earlier on Monday, Trump gave speeches in Raleigh, North Carolina; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Pittsburgh, also in Pennsylvania.

    But making his final appeal in Grand Rapids has become a Trump team tradition. Grand Rapids was the site of his final event in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles.

    The question of Trump’s fatigue and fitness on the campaign trail has been an issue the Harris campaign has sought to weaponise.

    Harris has positioned herself as a “new generation” of leader, compared with the older Trump, and her campaign recently released footage of Trump on social media appearing to nod off at a campaign event.

    “Being president of the United States is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world,” Harris told reporters earlier this month. “And we really do need to ask: If he’s exhausted on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”

    Both candidates have sought to paint the other as incapable of weathering the stresses of the White House.

    In the waning days of his campaign, Trump has also had to navigate controversy over his rhetoric and that of his allies.

    For instance, he faced outcry after suggesting that longtime critic, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, ought to know what it was like to have guns trained on her since her family is known for its hawkish approach to foreign policy.

    On Sunday, he also said he would not “mind so much” if someone shot the media to get at him. And at a rally at Madison Square Garden a week earlier, his campaign ignited a firestorm when one of the speakers described the US island territory of Puerto Rico as “garbage”.

    Trump has since sought to redirect any criticism to President Biden, who appeared to call the Republican’s supporters “garbage” in response to the Puerto Rico comment.

    “I came in a sanitation uniform last week, and that worked out pretty good,” Trump told the crowd in Grand Rapids. “Because Joe Biden in one of his crazy moments said that we were all garbage.”

    The crowd booed Biden in response.

    Trump also returned to a talking point that earned him backlash during the June presidential debate: that migrants were stealing “Black jobs”, a phrase many critics viewed as racist.

    The former president nevertheless doubled down on the assertion in his Grand Rapids rally, reverting to hyped-up rhetoric about the threat of migration.

    “One hundred percent of the jobs that were created went to migrants, not to people. And I’ll tell you what. Your Black population is being devastated by these people. They’re taking all the Black population jobs away,” he said.

    “You’re going to see some bad things happen. They’re taking their jobs. The Hispanic population is going to be next.”

    ‘We’ve been waiting four years for this’

    Polls show Trump continues to be neck and neck with Harris in the final hours before Americans cast their ballots.

    But in his final campaign appearances of the 2024 election cycle, Trump sought to create a false narrative that his popularity far exceeded Harris’s — and that there was no way he could lose.

    “When we win the election, look, the ball’s in our hands. All we have to do is get out the vote tomorrow. You get out the vote. They can’t do anything about it. We win,” he said.

    He also described his presidential bid — and his near-death experience in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July — as providential experiences.

    “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful field in Pennsylvania, an assassin tried to stop our great movement. The greatest movement in history,” Trump told the Grand Rapids audience. “That was not a pleasant day. But many people say that God saved me in order to save America.”

    Earlier, in Pittsburgh, Trump appeared before a large crowd and offered a closing message to voters whose support might still be undecided in the key swing state.

    “We’ve been waiting four years for this,” said Trump. “We’re going to win the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it’s going to be over.”

    While on stage, he announced he had received the endorsement of Joe Rogan, the hugely influential podcaster who interviewed Trump and his running mate JD Vance.

  • The final day of voting in the US is here

    The final day of voting in the US is here

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

    The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.

    As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.

    Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early in-person and mail voting proceeded without any major problems.

    That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.

    By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.

    Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.”

    Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.

    The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.

    He has mischaracterized an investigation underway in Pennsylvania into roughly 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying one of the counties was “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is into registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved.

    In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.

    Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive.

    The 2024 election is here. This is what to know:

    News outlets around the world count on the AP for accurate U.S. election results. Since 1848, the AP has been calling races up and down the ballot. Support us. Donate to the AP.

    One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot.

    This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

    Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

    Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

    On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted.

    Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same.

    Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.

    While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.

    On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.

    Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.

    “This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

  • 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.

  • Kamala Harris, Donald Trump rallying in Wisconsin in final US election push | US Election 2024 News

    Kamala Harris, Donald Trump rallying in Wisconsin in final US election push | US Election 2024 News

    Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are targeting key swing states in a final push to win over undecided voters as they continue to crisscross the United States before Tuesday’s election.

    The two contenders, who are locked in a tight race for the White House, will host duelling rallies on Friday night about 10km (6 miles) from one another in Milwaukee, the largest city in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

    Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in the state, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020.

    Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than 1 percentage point, or fewer than 23,000 votes, and the race is just as tight this time around.

    After appearing with music star Jennifer Lopez at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday, Harris will tap musicians such as GloRilla, the Isley Brothers and Flo Milli in Milwaukee. Grammy award-winning rapper Cardi B, who has more than 200 million followers on social media platforms, was also due to speak at the campaign event.

    Trump, meanwhile, will return to the Fiserv Forum, the venue where in July he formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.

    Earlier, he made a campaign stop in Michigan, in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, home to a large Arab American community.

    Asked why Dearborn was important to him, the former president said: “We have a great feeling for Lebanon, and I know so many people from Lebanon, Lebanese people and the Muslim population [like] Trump, and I’ve a good relationship with them.”

    He said: “We want their votes. We’re looking for their votes, and I think we’ll get their votes.”

    Trump also disparaged Harris and claimed if elected to the White House again, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East”.

    In comments that echoed claims he has made about ending the conflict in Ukraine, he said bringing peace to the Middle East was possible “but not with the clowns you have running the US right now”.

    Opinion polls, both nationally and in the seven closely divided battleground states, suggest the two candidates are virtually tied with four days to go before election day. More than 66 million people have already cast early ballots.

    Trump has focused his campaign on stirring fears about violence he blames on immigrants and pessimism over the economy. The former president continues to falsely claim his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud in multiple states, and he and his supporters have spread baseless claims about this election in the key state of Pennsylvania.

    On Thursday, Trump stepped up his unfounded allegations that probes into suspect voter registration forms are proof of voter fraud. Some of his supporters also alleged voter suppression when long lines formed this week to receive mail-in ballots.

    “This is sowing the seeds for attempts to overturn an election,” said Kyle Miller, a strategist with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “We saw it in 2020, and I think the lesson Trump and his allies have learned since is that they have to sow these ideas early.”

    State officials and democracy advocates said the incidents show a system working as intended. A judge extended the mail-in ballot deadline by three days in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, after the Trump campaign sued over claims that some voters were turned away before a Tuesday deadline.

    Election officials discovered potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster and neighbouring York counties, prompting investigations by local law enforcement. There is no evidence the applications have resulted in illegal votes.

    “This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working,” Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official, told reporters this week.

    Harris, meanwhile, is running on warnings about an authoritarian takeover, pledging to help the middle class and pushing back against Republican abortion bans and restrictions.

    An issue top of mind for voters is the economy, with many complaining about inflation and wages that do not keep up with rising prices.

    Economists said the US economy is actually in robust shape, shrugging off the remaining impact of the coronavirus pandemic with low unemployment and strong growth. New figures on Friday, however, showed drastically lower job growth last month with only 12,000 new jobs created.

    Analysts largely attributed this to knock-on effects from hurricanes and a strike at the aerospace giant Boeing.

  • Harris, Trump make final push before Election Day

    Harris, Trump make final push before Election Day

    ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same parts of Pennsylvania at roughly the same time, focusing on the state that could make or break their chances during the last full day of the presidential campaign.

    In Pittsburgh, Trump delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his previous attempt — a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York — was derailed by crude and racist jokes. He has also veered off message with falsehoods about voter fraud and invocations of violence.

    “Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” said the Republican nominee, sounding raspy yet energetic after speaking for hours each day.

    “We do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline and decay,” he went on. “With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, and indeed the while world, to new heights of glory.”

    AP correspondent Norman Hall reports on Donald Trump’s first campaign stop of the day, in North Carolina, in his final campaign push through key states.

    The crowd exploded in cheers when the Republican nominee said the country should tell Harris, “You’re fired,” his catchphrase from “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that made him a nationally recognized star.

    Trump started Monday in North Carolina and he’s scheduled to hold his last rally of the election in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

    Harris, the Democratic nominee, is spending all of Monday in Pennsylvania, and she was en route to Pittsburgh while Trump was speaking there. She’s holding her final rally in Philadelphia later in the evening.

    “This is it,” Harris said in Pittsburgh in front of the Carrie Furnaces, a historic steel facility that nodded to the city’s industrial legacy. “Tomorrow is Election Day and the momentum is on our side.”

    “We must finish strong,” she added. “Make no mistake, we will win.”

    With 19 Electoral College votes, the state is the biggest prize of any battleground. A Trump victory there would puncture the Democrats’ “blue wall” and make it harder for Harris to win the necessary 270 votes.

    “If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said during an event in Reading, in the state’s southeast corner.

    Both candidates visited the area, which is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump for a comedian’s dig at Puerto Rico during the former president’s marquee Madison Square Garden event. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

    “It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

    But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he will vote for Trump.

    With one day until the election, both presidential candidates are making their final pitches to voters. AP correspondent Julie Walker reports.

    “Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Harris told the crowd, “I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and her people.”

    “And I will be a president for all Americans,” she said, adding that “momentum is on our side. Can you feel it?”

    Trump, meanwhile, stuck to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

    About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.

    Trump winning would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win nonconsecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

    Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.

    Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.” She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.

    Image

    Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

    Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”

    Harris also offered some insights into her personal formation as a politician that she doesn’t often divulge. In Scranton, she talked about once being a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “used to campaign with my ironing board.”

    “I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out.”

    Image

    Attendees holding the flag of Puerto Rico cheer as Allentown, Pa. Mayor Matt Tuerk speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in Memorial Hall at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

    In Allentown, Harris rallied with rapper Fat Joe. She then made her own visit to Reading after Trump’s rally had concluded, visiting Old San Juan Cafe, a Puerto Rican restaurant, with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez are of Puerto Rican heritage.

    Supporters chanted “Sí se puede” and “Kamala” as the vice president’s motorcade pulled up. Once inside, Harris chatted with some diners, even mixing in “Gracias” and a few Spanish words. The vice president later ordered cassava, yellow rice and pork, saying, “I’m very hungry” as she noted that she’s been too busy campaigning to find time for many meals.

    Harris did some of her own canvassing afterward, stopping at two homes in Reading while flanked by campaign volunteers.

    “It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your vote,” she said at one house.

    The woman replied, “You already got my vote” and said her husband would be casting his ballot the next day.

    Standing in line for Harris’ Allentown rally, 54-year-old Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for just the second time in his life. Kessler said that, for a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate.”

    But “now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country.”

    ___

    Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

    نوفمبر 5, 2024

  • Trump and Harris in final election push as polls signal extremely close contest | US elections 2024

    Donald Trump and Kamala Harris held competing rallies across Pennsylvania on Monday, making their final pitches in the key swing state as polls indicate an extremely close contest.

    The two candidates laid out starkly contrasting visions for America’s future on the eve of election day. Trump rambled through dark and dystopian speeches painting migrants as dangerous criminals while also launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. Harris delivered a more positive closing argument, shifting focus away from the threat posed by the ex-president, who is not mentioned in her final ad, and insisting “we all have so much more in common than what separates us”.

    Trump, at times appearing hoarse and low-energy, scheduled four rallies on Monday: one in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and a late-evening event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has continued to boast about his crowd sizes, but reports suggest some of his final events have been plagued by empty seats and early departures from audience members during his lengthy, meandering speeches.

    Harris stayed in Pennsylvania with several rallies and events in the critical state that could decide the election. Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin and other celebrities were slated to appear at her final event at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the famous steps from the Rocky movie were lit up blue and a large “President for All” banner was displayed.

    As the Harris campaign and its surrogates have continued to appeal to female voters, Trump revived familiar insults against notable women, sometimes with violent language.

    In North Carolina, he attacked former first lady Michelle Obama, saying: “She hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.” He also suggested the Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi should have been jailed for ripping up a copy of his 2020 State of the Union address: “She’s a bad, sick woman, she’s crazy as a bedbug.”

    And Trump repeated his line that Harris is a “low IQ individual”, followed by an incoherent tangent seemingly imagining her struggling to sleep: “I don’t want to have her say, You know, I had an idea last night while I was sleeping, turning, tossing, sweating,” he said, without finishing the sentence.

    Trump leaned into his taunts as he continues to face scrutiny over his recent comment suggesting that Liz Cheney, the former GOP congresswoman and a Harris supporter, should face rifles “shooting at her”. Appearing on ABC’s The View on Monday, Cheney said, “Women are going to save the day” on Tuesday.

    In North Carolina, Trump also threatened the newly elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, suggesting he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods “if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs” – part of his trade proposals that economists have warned could significantly raise costs for US consumers.

    Later in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump fantasized about wrestlers who could “take the migrants in a fight”. He repeated racist tropes about immigrants and affirmed his threat of unprecedented mass deportations, saying Tuesday would be “liberation day”. He falsely suggested Democrats support “open borders” so undocumented people can fraudulently vote.

    He later spoke of the boxer Mike Tyson and seemingly in response to a comment from an audience member, suggested Tyson take on the vice-president: “That guy could fight … Put Mike in the ring with Kamala.”

    Trump in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters

    At around the same time, Harris was rallying in Allentown, roughly 40 miles away, critiquing Trumpism without directly naming her opponent: “America is ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbor. We are ready for a president who understands that the true measure of the strength of the leader is not based on who you beat down. It is based on who you lift up.”

    Later, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, earned loud applause at a rally in Georgia, when he attacked Harris by bringing up Joe Biden’s recent gaffe, in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage”.

    “In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash is named is Kamala Harris,” said the Ohio senator, in a remark that was condemned by Democrats and pundits.

    The back-and-forth trash talking originated with a comedian’s racist joke at Trump’s recent New York rally, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, a comment that many Harris surrogates cited on Monday while appealing to Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania.

    The vice-president also stopped at a Puerto Rican restaurant with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and directly joined canvassing in a residential area in Reading, telling voters at one home: “I wanted to go door-knocking!”

    By his evening rally in Pittsburgh, Trump returned to his crowd size obsession, making false claims about low turnout at Harris’s nearby rally that hadn’t yet begun. He then mocked Beyoncé, who rallied for Harris in Texas: “Everyone’s expecting a couple songs and there were no songs. There was no happiness.” He added, “We don’t need a star. I never had a star.”

    The final scramble to turn out voters comes as Trump continues to make false claims about voter fraud, raising fears about how he might challenge the results if Harris wins. In a call with reporters on Monday, the Harris campaign said it was prepared to combat any efforts by Trump to discredit the outcome.

    “We have hundreds of lawyers across the country ready to protect election results against any challenge that Trump might bring,” said Dana Remus, a senior campaign adviser and outside counsel. “This will not be the fastest process, but the law and the facts are on our side.”

    Legal challenges were designed to undermine faith in the electoral process, she added: “Keep in mind that the volume of cases does not equate to a volume of legitimate concerns. In fact, it just shows how desperate they’re becoming.”

    There are also growing fears that political violence will escalate on election day and beyond, as misinformation and conspiracy theories are expected to spread while counting is under way. Election officials in one Nevada county said on Monday that threats have become so severe that polling places have installed “panic buttons” to automatically call 911 in emergencies.

    At Trump’s Pittsburgh rally, Michael Barringer, a 55-year-old coalminer, expressed his disdain for undocumented immigrants in explaining his support for Trump: “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.”

    Elizabeth Slaby, 81, was the first in line at Harris’s Allentown rally, arriving at about 6am. She said she was a registered Republican for more than 50 years, but changed her registration after the January 6 attack: “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so, so excited.”

    Lauren Gambino, Sam Levine and David Smith contributed reporting

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

  • Harris says will end Gaza war in final election appeal to Arab Americans | US Election 2024 News

    Harris says will end Gaza war in final election appeal to Arab Americans | US Election 2024 News

    With the clock ticking, Harris risks losing support of Michigan’s 200,000-strong Arab Americans, who denounce the US handling of Israel’s war.

    In her closing pitch for the presidency of the United States, Democrat aspirant Kamala Harris has promised to end the war in Gaza.

    Campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, home to many Arab Americans, Harris, 60, on Sunday tried to reach voters disgruntled by the ongoing genocide, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million residents of Gaza.

    “This year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating. And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,” Harris said to applause during a rally in East Lansing city of Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab Americans.

    She did not elaborate on how she planned to end the Gaza war, which critics say is backed by the US, the largest military supplier to Israel.

    Both Harris, the current US vice president, and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, 78, are making their final appeals with less than 36 hours left until polls open for Tuesday’s election.

    Israel’s ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon have been a contentious issue in the campaign, with many voters condemning the US’s continued support for Israel amid mounting deaths, displacement and destruction in both places.

    Since Israel began bombing Gaza following a rare Hamas attack inside Israel in October last year, Harris, like her boss, President Joe Biden, has repeatedly stated that Israel had a right to defend itself against its enemies. That, despite expressing concerns over disproportionate Palestinian civilian deaths due to Israel’s military campaign.

    Harris, who has also promised to continue arming Israel if elected, badly needs to secure a majority in the seven pivotal battleground states in this year’s election amid a virtual dead heat with Trump nationally. A compilation of opinion polls by the RealClearPolitics website has Trump ahead by just 0.1 percent nationally, with five polls indicating they are locked in a tie.

    Michigan, with a vibrant Arab and Muslim community and 15 Electoral College votes at stake, is crucial to Harris’s prospects. It, as well as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are considered this year’s swing states.

    Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – once considered reliably Democratic – are crucial this year. Known as the “blue wall”, these states fell to Trump in 2016, only to be secured by Biden in 2020.

    Trump on Friday visited Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of the Arab American community, and promised to end the conflict in the Middle East, also without saying how.

    Ahead of Election Day, more than 78 million Americans have already cast early ballots, including about 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans, according to data published by the University of Florida Election Lab.

  • Harris, Trump in final plea to voters on final day before US election

    Harris, Trump in final plea to voters on final day before US election

  • Trump makes final pitch to North Carolina supporters to get out and vote: ‘It’s ours to lose’

    Trump makes final pitch to North Carolina supporters to get out and vote: ‘It’s ours to lose’

    In a furious final push before Election Day, Donald Trump kicked off four rallies in three states Monday, starting in the battleground of North Carolina. Trump predicted victory, urging his supporters to get out and vote, declaring,”It’s ours to lose.”

    In a furious final push before Election Day, Donald Trump kicked off four rallies in three states Monday, starting in the battleground of North Carolina. Trump predicted victory, urging his supporters to get out and vote, declaring,”It’s ours to lose.”