Harris to hold CNN town hall on Wednesday while Trump headlines rally in Georgia
US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.
Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.
Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.
Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.
Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.
Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:
Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.
Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.
Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.
Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.
At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.
Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.
Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.
Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.
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Chris McGreal
In addition to worrying that the election will be rigged, now people in Saginaw county are nervous that violence will accompany it.
Vanessa Guerra is resigned to questions from Donald Trump’s supporters about the many ways in which American voters imagine next month’s presidential election might be rigged against him.
But more recently the Saginaw county clerk, who is overseeing the ballot in a highly contested patch of central Michigan, has faced a new line of questioning at meetings called to reassure distrustful voters.
“I did a presentation last week and, as usual, we had a lot of questions about the validity of election results. But now they’re also asking: Is it going to be safe to go to the polls on election day? Is something going to happen? That’s something new,” said Guerra.
The most consequential US presidential election of recent times is also likely to be the most disputed, particularly if the results are as close as opinion polls suggest.
Republican officials are gearing up to stall and overturn the count if it goes against Trump. Meanwhile, the former US president has warned of a bloodbath if he loses again next month, which voters have reason to take seriously in the wake of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol after he lost the last election.
Trump’s continued insistence that the 2020 vote was rigged against him – including at a rally in Saginaw earlier this month – and that Democrats are plotting to steal next month’s election, has left its mark.
In Michigan, a key swing state that Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016 and then lost to Joe Biden four years later, one in five people say they do not have confidence that votes will be counted accurately.
Across the US, just 8% of Trump supporters say they have a great deal of confidence there will be a fair election and only 16% are very confident that their own vote will be counted accurately, according to YouGov. Kamala Harris’s supporters are much more trusting, with 72% having a great deal of confidence in the conduct of the election, although that still leaves large numbers of Democrats also questioning the process.
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Labour party rejects claim its activists campaigning for Democrats have broken US electoral law
Andrew Sparrow
The Labour party has put out a statement rejecting allegations that it broke US election law because activists and staff members have been volunteering to help the Democrats.
A Labour spokesperson said:
It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections.
Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.”
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Alice Herman
On the first day of early voting in Wisconsin, Tim Walz called Elon Musk a “dipshit” while Barack Obama said of Donald Trump: “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this.”
Both were speaking at a rally in Madison, a growing Democratic party stronghold, to encourage early voting and warn of the perils of a second Trump presidency. Obama went on to campaign for Kamala Harris in Detroit on Tuesday evening, alongside rapper Eminem, in an effort to drum up support in Michigan where polls suggest Harris and Trump are in a virtual deadlock.
‘Love me some Eminem’: Obama raps on stage at Harris campaign rally – video
The Democratic vice-presidential candidate ripped into Trump ally and Silicon Valley billionaire Musk, warning that he could be charged with regulating his own businesses if Trump were elected. Musk has also promised the chance to win $1m to voters in swing states who sign a petition linked to efforts to return Trump to power.
Walz also slammed Trump, who this week served meals at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, accusing him of “cosplaying” as a working-class person and noting that the restaurant had closed to accommodate the presidential candidate. “It was a stunt,” said Walz. “Fake orders for fake customers.”
Tim Walz calls out Trump over McDonald’s appearance at Wisconsin rally – video
“He is not the 2016 Donald Trump,” said Walz, describing Trump’s promise to prosecute his political enemies. “He’s talking about sending the military against people who don’t support him. He’s naming names.”
Obama, who won in Wisconsin in 2008 and 2012, urged his Madison audience to get to the polls and spent much of his speech attacking Trump.
“I wouldn’t be offended if you just walk out right now and go vote,” he said.
“When he’s not complaining, he’s trying to sell you stuff,” he added, referring to Trump, who has raised funds by selling gold-colored sneakers, bibles and $100,000 watches. “Who does that? You’re running for president, and you’re hawking merchandise.”
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Updated at 07.10 EDT
Facebook page with racist posts still visible for Republican Mark Robinson
George Chidi
Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate, suggested that people who can’t take care of their children should be sterilized, according to one of a series of incendiary and racist social media posts from 2014 through 2019.
The commentary made in reference to Black families, which used terms a white supremacist would find appropriate, predates his time as the state’s lieutenant governor, but much of it came after his rise as a public figure on the right. Most of the social media posts have not previously been reported.
“I have more respect for loyal DOGS than I do for PEOPLE who don’t take care of their children,” Robinson wrote on his Facebook page in 2014. The post contained the hashtag “#haveyourdeadbeatsspayedandneutered”.
Mark Robinson in Asheville, North Carolina, on 14 August 2024. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Robinson has been in a state of damage control for the last few weeks. Last month, CNN revealed old posts made under his profile on pornographic websites, in which the conservative candidate for governor purportedly described himself as a “Black NAZI” and pined for a return to the days of slavery.
Robinson has denied making the comments, castigated his detractors, attacked his opponent, the attorney general, Josh Stein, and launched a defamation lawsuit against CNN.
But the other comments remain public on his social media page.
“If you need a court order to tell you to take care of your children, then you probably need an operation to make sure you don’t have any more,” Robinson posted on Facebook in 2016.
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Updated at 06.59 EDT
Richard Luscombe
It was billed as a roundtable discussion with Latino leaders, but the reality of Donald Trump’s appearance at his Doral golf club in Miami on Tuesday was a succession of adulatory monologues from his most loyal Latino supporters, interspersed with familiar, lengthy rants from the former president laden with grievances and insults.
Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the 5 November election, also courted Latino voters on Tuesday in an interview with Telemundo, touching on creating economic opportunity for Latino men.
Little of Trump’s conversation, such as it was, related to issues directly affecting Latino voters, with whom Trump falsely claimed he was leading in the polls despite significant evidence to the contrary.
His remarks about immigration, for example, were largely limited to baseless and often-aired claims that foreign countries, especially Venezuela, were opening their prisons to send “violent gang members” and drug dealers into the US with military weapons.
Donald Trump with Latino community leaders in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday. Photograph: Marco Bello/Reuters
And, his comments addressed to the many business owners and leaders present were distinctly light on policy, apart from a promise to maintain the generous tax cuts from his first term in office.
“We gave you the biggest cut in taxes in the history of the country,” he said. “We have a great foundation to build on so we have a lot of companies coming in very fast.”
Trump trails Harris in all battleground states among Latinos, a poll for Voto Latino published Monday and cited by the Hill, found, while the most recent AS/COA poll tracker shows a 56-31 preference for Harris nationally among the 36 million eligible Latino voters.
Harris, in Tuesday’s Telemundo interview, emphasised the economy, saying she would work to bring more funds to community banks to help Latino men secure small business loans. “We need to construct a strong economy that supports the working class,” she said.
“I know that Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said in an interview in English that was translated into Spanish. “For that reason, I’m focused on seeing what we can do to bring more capital to community banks that better understand the community so we can give them that kind of loans.”
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Updated at 06.36 EDT
Ahead of the upcoming presidential election, one large US bank is supplementing its global overnight team with a full trading desk in New York to handle the expected greater demand from clients, a source at the bank who is familiar with the situation has told Reuters.
This bank also plans to adjust staffing needs as necessary if a presidential decision is delayed.
Separately, a large retail brokerage is making sure staff are on hand to respond to investor questions around-the-clock and is keeping tabs on social media sites such as Reddit for signs of anything unexpected, a person familiar with the firms’ plans told Reuters.
It has undertaken reviews of its systems to ensure they can cope with any sudden increase in either volatility or trading volume, the person, who requested anonymity to speak about his company’s plans, told the news agency.
Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer at exchange operator Cboe Global Markets, said past volatility events such as the pandemic, the 2020 US election and, recently, the fallout from the yen carry trade, have tested the company’s systems.
“We build our markets to be able to handle at least two times the biggest peaks we’ve ever seen. So, we feel quite good about our resiliency and business continuity leading into the election,” he said. Still, along with 24/7 staff, “we’ll have bolstered staff watching during the key hours here,” he said.
A large US broker dealer is adjusting new hire training schedules and limiting any activities and meetings that take staff away from their phones, a source at the firm told Reuters.
For Joe Hoffman, chief executive officer at Mesirow Currency Management in Chicago, it will be crucial to have access to relationship banking as it can be “really important during times of stress” when liquidity might dry up on the screens.
Brian Hyndman, CEO of Blue Ocean Technologies LLC, whose automated trading system powers overnight trading for Robinhood and dozens of other brokerage clients, said he was prepared for increased trading and volatility, but couldn’t predict in which assets, according to Reuters.
“We’ll probably have more hands on deck than in a typical overnight session to address and resolve technical issues, and more management and support staff,” said Hyndman.
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Wall Street ramps up staffing as election nears
Banks, brokerages, investment managers and exchanges are adding staff to handle high trading volumes on and around election day with markets expected to become volatile as results come in, reports Reuters.
Political events can trigger wild gyrations that can force market participants to quickly unwind bets, raising market, liquidity and other risks that could pressure trading systems and market infrastructure.
With Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump neck-and-neck in many polls ahead of the 5 November vote, the prospect of no immediate winner being clear is heightening concerns among investors and traders, reports Reuters.
There is also the risk of a contested election following Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in 2020. Trump has indicated he might not accept the results of this election if he loses.
This election is seen as pivotal as Harris and Trump have markedly different views on policy that could have major implications for the economy, foreign relations, markets and global trade.
“We are preparing here from a market standpoint, for at least a week of uncertainty, of not knowing who that president is,” said Grant Johnsey, regional head of client solutions for Capital Markets, at Northern Trust.
“This just means ensuring we have sufficient coverage to handle more volume and volatility, managing vacation schedules accordingly, and that we are prepared for intraday ups and downs as election news unfolds,” he said.
Market participants are trying to make sure they are not caught off guard by surges in volatility. Recent surprises have included when the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, as well as when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton later that same year.
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Former Trump chief of staff says ex-boss is ‘definition of fascist’
Luca Ittimani
Two weeks out from election day, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has claimed his one-time boss “falls into the general definition of fascist”.
John Kelly, a former Marine general and presidential aide from 2017 to 2019, made the extraordinary intervention on Tuesday in a series of coordinated interviews. Speaking to the New York Times, he said the former Republican president “prefers the dictator approach to government” and is the “only president that has all but rejected what America is all about”. Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, told the Times that Kelly’s accounts were “debunked stories” and that Kelly had “beclowned” himself.
Donald Trump speaks to then-chief of staff John Kelly. With two weeks until polls open in the 5 November presidential election, Kelly has claimed his onetime boss ‘falls into the general definition of fascist.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Speaking to the Atlantic, Kelly recounted Trump saying he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Nazi generals showed Adolf Hitler. Trump’s campaign denied the exchange, with an adviser telling CNN:
This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.”
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz said the reported comments about Hitler’s generals “makes me sick as hell”. “Folks, the guardrails are gone,” Walz told a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday. “Trump is descending into this madness.”
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Updated at 07.01 EDT
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Barack Obama rapped Eminem’s signature hit Lose Yourself to a crowd in Detroit during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.
He was preceded by Eminem himself, who told the crowd in his home city:
It’s important to use your voice, I’m encouraging everyone to get out and vote, please … I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think vice-president Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”
Obama opened his ensuing speech by saying: “I gotta say, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” before segueing into Lose Yourself’s opening lines: “I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting …”
He joked that he thought Eminem would be performing and he would be a guest star, adding: “Love me some Eminem.”
The former president is an avowed music fan, sharing his favourite songs twice a year in official posts on his social media. Summer 2024’s selections included songs by contemporary pop names such as Beyoncé, Tyla and Rema alongside older tracks by Nick Drake, the Supremes and cosmic jazz musician Pharoah Sanders.
Obama went on to excoriate Donald Trump in his speech, recalling how Trump expressed doubt about the election results in 2020:
Because Donald Trump was willing to spread lies about voter fraud in Michigan, protesters came down, banged on the windows, shouting, ‘Let us in. Stop the count.’ Poll workers inside being intimidated … all because Donald Trump couldn’t accept losing … there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”
He questioned Trump’s mental fitness for the role of president, saying:
You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this. But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
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Starmer insists he can have a ‘good relationship’ with Trump despite election ‘interference’ claim
Eleni Courea
Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election.
The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.
The letter, which was sent to the US Federal Election Commission, said that these volunteering efforts and reports of contact between Labour and the Harris campaign amounted to “illegal foreign national contributions”.
A statement on DonaldJTrump.com on Tuesday night claimed that the “far-left” Labour party has “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric”.
In response Starmer insisted he had a “good relationship” with Trump which would not be jeopardised by the complaint.
The prime minister said that party officials volunteering for Harris ahead of the US presidential election on 5 November were “doing it in their spare time” rather than in their capacity working for Labour.
Speaking to reporters travelling with him to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Starmer said:
The Labour party … volunteers, have gone over pretty much every election. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.
That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
Asked if the complaint risked jeopardising his relationship with Trump if he becomes president again, the UK prime minister said:
No. I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and we’re grateful for him for making the time.”
We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections which are very close now.”
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Updated at 05.45 EDT
Harris to hold CNN town hall on Wednesday while Trump headlines rally in Georgia
US vice-president Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with undecided voters on CNN on Wednesday, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump rejected an offer to debate the Democratic nominee for a second time, reports Reuters.
Trump will headline a rally Wednesday in Duluth, Georgia with guests Tucker Carlson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, as the race for the White House counts down to less than two weeks.
Pennsylvania and Georgia are among seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency. Both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns in those states, trying to persuade the small sliver of voters who are still undecided to back them in the 5 November election.
Harris tried and failed to push Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was considered to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.
Reuters reports that Hariss’s televised town hall will take place before a live audience of undecided voters from Pennsylvania in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia.
Harris held a marginal 46% to 43% lead over the former president, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:
Surrogates campaigning for Trump and Harris are fanning out across the US this week. Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, will travel to North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance will head to Reno, Nevada on Wednesday.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has insisted he can maintain a “good relationship” with Donald Trump after the Republican candidate’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election. The Trump campaign filed a legal complaint overnight against Labour officials travelling to US battleground states to volunteer for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.
Harris herself said she has no doubt that the US was ready for a female president, in an interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. “I’m clearly a woman. I don’t need to point that out to anyone,” Harris said with a laugh. “The point that most people really care about is: can you do the job and, do you have a plan to actually focus on them?”.
Harris courted Hispanic voters promoting small business loans for Latino men, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Harris pledged to drive more funds to community banks to help Latino men access small business loans. “Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said.
Trump also pitched to Hispanic voters, holding a morning round table with Latino leaders at his golf resort in Doral, Florida. Trump hit familiar talking points but took his time in getting to issues of importance to the voting bloc. The event concluded with a group of prominent evangelists praying as they stood around Trump with their hands on his shoulders, while he sat with his eyes closed.
At the same event, the former president hurled a series of personal attacks at his opponent, calling Harris “lazy as hell” and “low IQ”. He was referring to Harris holding no public campaign events on Tuesday, instead recording the two interviews after a busy day of campaigning with Liz Cheney on Monday. At a later rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump continued the invective: “Does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally with former president Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, where he slammed Trump’s staged campaign event at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a “stunt” and mocked Elon Musk for “jumping around, skipping like a dipshit” before holding another rally in Wisconsin that evening.
Obama, meanwhile, ridiculed Trump’s boasts on the economy and cast his rambling speeches as a sign of mental deterioration. “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this,” said Obama. “But this is coming from someone who wants unchecked power.”
JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dodged a question about whether he would strip immigrants with legal authorisation of their status while campaigning in Peoria, outside Phoenix, Arizona. Vance urged supporters to “work our rear ends off for the next two weeks” to turn the swing state red.
Despite some setbacks, Republicans vowed to press ahead in bids to block some overseas ballots. Court rulings rejected Republic National Committee efforts to block some Americans living abroad from voting in North Carolina and Michigan but the party will keep up its aggressive legal campaign.
Arab Americans slightly favour Trump over Harris, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit along with YouGov, shows a deadlock in Michigan, a key battleground state with a large Arab American population.
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