Closing summary
We’re closing this blog. Thanks for tagging along! See all our coverage of the 2024 US elections.
Here’s a look back at the day’s political news:
Kamala Harris delivered her speech at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin, where she highlighted the case of Amber Thurman, who died in Georgia due to a strict abortion ban.
In Madison, Kamala Harris restated her plan to give a tax cut to 100 million Americans and expand the child tax credit. This measure aims “to help young and new parents buy a car seat, a crib, baby clothes in that most significant phase of their development”.
Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, will not attend Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday after CNN reported on his troubling online posts.
Harris took the stage in Atlanta earlier today, where she also decried the state’s abortion ban. She condemned Donald Trump in her speech, recounting how he appointed three of the justices who would go on to vote for Roe v Wade’s downfall.
Georgia’s election board voted to require that ballots be counted by hand, a move that could complicate and slow down determining whether the swing state has voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the November election.
The Secret Service report looking into the 13 July assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump revealed that agents did not have the necessary discussions in advance regarding how the warehouse should be guarded, and about the positioning of a local team on the roof of the warehouse building.
The House unanimously approved allowing a bipartisan taskforce investigating the July assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump in Pennsylvania to also scrutinize the apparent second attempt on his life on Sunday in Florida.
North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, was still in the race for governor on Friday morning after the deadline passed overnight for him to withdraw or be removed from the ballot. He is facing increasing pressure to step down after CNN reported he attacked Martin Luther King Jr, backed the reinstatement of slavery and referred to himself as a “black Nazi” in comments on a pornographic website.
Donald Trump is due to visit North Carolina tomorrow. When asked about the CNN report by the Associated Press, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not mention Robinson by name or answer questions as to whether he would appear with Trump at tomorrow’s campaign rally in Wilmington, or had been invited to do so.
Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters just hours after allegations emerged that a Republican ally had referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on a pornography website.
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Harris wrapped up her speech in Madison by reminding crowd members that “the stakes are even higher” in this election.
“Wisconsin, it all comes down to this,” she said. “We are here together because we love our country. We love our country and we understand the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth.”
Harris: 'Women have died because of Trump's abortion bans'
Kamala Harris then said Donald Trump poses a threat to women’s freedoms, specifically on abortion rights.
She reminded folks in Madison about the former president’s selection of three members of the supreme court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v Wade, which they did.
“Women are being denied care during miscarriages,” Harris said. “They didn’t want this. And we know that women have died because of Trump’s abortion bans.”
Harris told the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old Georgia woman, who died after doctors hesitated to treat her following a complication from a medication abortion.
Earlier today, Harris also recounted Thurman’s story during a speech in Georgia.
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Harris called her opponent Donald Trump “an unserious man”.
“The consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said. “Just Google Project 2025,” she added, referring to the Heritage Foundation-led policy blueprint for the next Republican administration.
“It’s a detailed and dangerous blueprint for what he will do if he were elected president,” she said.
Project 2025 was written by a number of supporters as well as officials who previously served under the former president. The plan calls to defund childcare and overhaul the justice department to give the president and loyalists more power in decisions about who to investigate and prosecute.
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Talking about the economy, Harris said she also intends to lower the cost of living.
“While our economy is doing well by many measures, prices for everyday necessities like groceries are still too high,” said the vice-president.
Harris restated her plan to give a tax cut to 100 million Americans and expand the child tax credit. This measure aims “to help young and new parents buy a car seat, a crib, baby clothes in that most significant phase of their development”.
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Harris addressed a pressing concern for Americans: affordable housing, particularly problematic in her home state of California.
“We have a shortage of housing in America,” she said. “With my plan, we are going to cut red tape and work with the private sector to build 3 million new homes by the end of my first term.”
She pointed to her plan to provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 in down payment assistance so “they can just get their foot in the door.”
Harris pointed to her professional background as a prosecutor in Oakland, California.
“I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them,” Harris said. “I took on the big banks and delivered $20bn for middle-class families who faced foreclosure because of predatory lending practices.
“I stood up for veterans and students who were being scammed by the big for-profit colleges, and for workers who are being cheated out of the wages they were due, and for seniors facing elder abuse.”
The vice-president then addressed concerns for small business owners.
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She addressed last week’s debate against Donald Trump, an event filled with falsehood-ridden tangents about crowd sizes, abortion access and immigration policy.
It was the same old tired show, the same old tired playbook we’ve heard for years with no plan on how he would address the needs of the American people
“Folks, it’s time to turn the page, and America is ready to start a new way forward,” Harris said during her speech in Madison, Wisconsin.
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'We're the underdog in this race', says Kamala Harris at Wisconsin rally
“Let’s not pay too much attention to the polls, because let’s be clear, we are the underdog in this race,” Harris said.
She pointed to her parents’ teaching stint at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
“So every time I land, the governor says: “Welcome home,” she said.
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Kamala Harris has started her speech at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin.
The last time the vice-president held a rally in Wisconsin was last month at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, with her running mate Tim Walz tagging along.
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Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, took the stage at the White House to celebrate the TV show’s 25th anniversary and called Joe Biden’s decision to give up the nomination “a selfless act of statesmanship”.
“Over the years, I’ve noticed that during times of political tension, pundits will warn us not to expect a West Wing moment,” Sorkin said. “They mean not to expect a selfless act of statesmanship, not to expect anyone to put country first. Don’t expect anyone to swing for the fences or reach for the stars.
“But the fact is, West Wing moments do happen, and Dr Biden, we saw proof of that on the morning of July 21. That was the kind of thing we write stories about.”
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Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, will not attend Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday after CNN reported on his troubling online posts.
His absence shows the risks he poses for Trump and other GOP candidates. According to the Associated Press, Robinson is not expected to be at the Wilmington event.
He has often joined Trump at campaign stops, and Trump has praised him, even calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids”.
The Trump campaign issued a statement that didn’t mention Robinson, but spoke generally about how North Carolina was key to the campaign’s efforts.
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Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, told Bloomberg TV that the recent allegations against North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson aren’t surprising.
Cooper said that the allegations may help Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris win the state”
He has a history of these kinds of inflammatory comments. We’ve known for a while that he was someone who was unfit for office.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper says the recent allegations against North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson aren't surprising, and that they may help Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris win the state.
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) September 20, 2024
Full interview https://t.co/7eLyBXfodU pic.twitter.com/IkJcfWvygY
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In a similar vein, Bill Carroll, Milwaukee-based Teamsters Joint Council 39 president, will introduce Kamala Harris at Wisconsin’s rally tonight, according to CNN.
This comes two days after the local union endorsed Harris for president, breaking with the national union’s decision not to back a candidate in the 2024 race.
Carroll called Harris the vice president “of the most pro-union administration ever” and criticized Trump’s labor record.
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The Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters has endorsed the vice-president Kamala Harris after the national Teamsters union chose not to back any candidate in the presidential race.
The national union’s decision was seen as a setback for Harris, while Donald Trump saw it as a win for himself.
But the endorsement from Pennsylvania’s 95,000 Teamsters, which also includes members from parts of New Jersey and Delaware, could be a strong show of labor support in a key swing state.
The PA Conference of Teamsters is committed to vetting candidates and choosing those that are best suited to protect our members’ wages, their rights and their collective bargaining agreements,” said William Hamilton, president of the PA Conference of Teamsters.
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Kamala Harris, the vice-president, outspent the former President Donald Trump on digital ads, especially on Facebook and Instagram, during their debate week, spending $12.2m compared with Trump’s $611,228, according to The New York Times.
This gap has been constant throughout the campaign, raising concerns among Republicans. Harris’s heavy spending in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan highlights her campaign’s aggressive digital strategy.
While Trump focuses more on YouTube ads and other digital media, his lighter investment in paid digital advertising could limit his reach.
This digital spending difference has prompted Democratic optimism, especially as social media plays a crucial role in engaging undecided and younger voters.
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Nebraska Republicans are considering changing how the state distributes its electoral votes to block the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, from getting any votes in the next presidential election.
Unlike most states, Nebraska and Maine don’t give all their electoral votes to the statewide winner. Nebraska gives two votes to the statewide winner and one vote for each of its three congressional districts.
The second congressional district, which includes Omaha and nearby areas, has leaned more Democratic since Donald Trump’s 2016 election. In 2020, Joe Biden won the district by 6.5%, and polls show Harris with a similar lead.
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Dawn Roberts, the co-chair of former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s campaign in Iowa, said she’s endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
In an opinion piece in the Des Moines Register, Roberts said Harris impressed her and earned her support through her strong debate performance during the Democratic national convention.
The lifelong Republican said she was “at a loss” when both of the presidential candidates were in or near their 80s, referring to President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.
“At this month’s debate, she continued to impress, looking at the audience and emphasizing bringing the country together rather than dividing, lifting people up rather than tearing people down,” Roberts said.
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Rally-goers are trickling into a Madison, Wisconsin, venue to hear Kamala Harris speak later this evening. There are plenty of young faces here – a positive sign for the campaign, which hopes that college-age voters will help deliver Harris a win in November.
According to a source familiar with the Harris campaign, the Democratic-led effort, which advocates for candidates up and down the ballot, has hired seven full-time campus organizers across the state and a youth-organizing director to aid in the effort – part of the campaign’s 250 staffers across the state.
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Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, expressed his disappointment at negative rhetoric around immigration and Haitian migrants, especially from former president Donald Trump and the Republican vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
He wrote about his personal connection to Springfield, Ohio, and the city’s recent economic resurgence thanks to Haitian migrants.
There have been language barriers and cultural differences, but these Haitians come to work every day, are fitting in with co-workers and have become valuable employees.
He stressed the need to address a slew of challenges, such as housing and healthcare.
“Their work will continue long after this fall’s election is over and the national spotlight turns away from Springfield,” DeWine said, referring to immigrants in the city. “But in the meantime, our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed.”
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Interim summary
If you’re just joining us now, here’s what’s happened in US politics today so far:
Georgia’s election board has voted to require that ballots be counted by hand, a move that could complicate and slow down determining whether the swing state has voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the November election.
The Secret Service report looking into the 13 July assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump revealed that agents did not have the necessary discussions in advance regarding how the warehouse should be guarded, and about the positioning of a local team on the roof of the warehouse building.
Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe Jr said that recent events such as the attempted assassination in July and apparent attempted assassination of the former president on Sunday in Florida highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in the how the Secret Service protects public officials and said that the “threat level is evolving”.
The House unanimously approved allowing a bipartisan taskforce investigating the July assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump in Pennsylvania to also scrutinize the apparent second attempt on his life on Sunday in Florida.
Kamala Harris took the stage in Atlanta, where she decried the state’s abortion ban, which was recently tied to the death of a woman in 2022.
Harris condemned Donald Trump in her speech, recounting how he appointed three of the justices who would go on to vote for Roe v Wade’s downfall.
North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, was still in the race for governor on Friday morning after the deadline passed overnight for him to withdraw or be removed from the ballot. He is facing increasing pressure to step down after CNN reported he attacked Martin Luther King Jr, backed the reinstatement of slavery and referred to himself as a “black Nazi” in comments on a pornographic website.
Donald Trump is due to visit North Carolina tomorrow. When asked about the CNN report by the Associated Press, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not mention Robinson by name or answer questions as to whether he would appear with Trump at tomorrow’s campaign rally in Wilmington, or had been invited to do so.
Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters just hours after allegations emerged that a Republican ally had referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on a pornography website.
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Before Harris wrapped up her speech, she said she believed Donald Trump would sign a national abortion ban, if elected.
Trump has equivocated on whether or not he would do so, saying at the debate last week that he did not think any such legislation would get through Congress.
Harris said:
The stakes are so high, because if he is elected again, I am certain he will sign a national abortion ban, which would outlaw abortion in every single state, and he would create a national anti-abortion coordinator. Look at Project 2025 – enforce states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. It’s right there.
Harris calls Trump 'the architect of this crisis' for overturning Roe v Wade
Kamala Harris then recounted her meeting with Amber Nicole Thurman’s mother, who asked her not to forget who her daughter was:
Through the pain and the grief, her mother courageously told her story. I promised her, as she has asked, that we will make sure Amber is not just remembered as a statistic, that she will not just be remembered as a statistic, so that people will know she was a mother and a daughter and a sister, and that she was loved and that she should be alive today.
She drew applause by saying that, as president, she would stand with women elsewhere who were suffering the consequences of abortion bans:
It’s happening every day in our country, an untold number of people suffering, women, who are also being made to feel as though they did something wrong. The judgment factor here is outrageous, being made as though to feel as though they are criminals, as though they are alone. So to those women, to those families, I say on behalf of what I believe we all say: we see you, and you are not alone, and we are all here standing with you.
Harris added that by appointing the justices who overturned Roe v Wade, Trump created a public health crisis:
This is a healthcare crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis.
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Harris then began discussing the case of Amber Nicole Thurman, who ProPublica reported earlier this week died after being denied care due to the state’s abortion ban.
“We will speak her name, Amber Nicole Thurman,” Harris said, as the crowd repeated her name back.
The vice-president then made the case that Trump was responsible for her death:
When she discovered that she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to have an abortion. But because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the healthcare that she needed, but when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care, so she went to a hospital. But you see, under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed. Understand what a law like this means: doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.
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Harris condemns 'hypocrites' who ban abortion while ignoring maternal health
Kamala Harris said lawmakers who have moved to ban abortion in their states while ignoring the needs of mothers are “hypocrites”:
One in three women in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban. This includes Georgia and every state in the south except Virginia. Think about that, when you also combine that with what we know has been longstanding neglect around an issue like maternal mortality. Think about that, when you compound that with what has been longstanding neglect of women in communities with a lack of the adequate resources they need for healthcare, prenatal, during their pregnancy, postpartum. Think about that, and these hypocrites want to start talking about this is in the best interest of women and children?
As the crowd cheered, Harris said: “Well, where you been? Where you been when it comes to taking care of the women and children of America, where you been? How dare they?”
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Harris immediately hit out at Donald Trump, recounting how he appointed three of the justices who would go on to vote for Roe v Wade’s downfall, which paved the way for states like Georgia to enact bans on abortion.
“We all know how we got here. When Donald Trump was president, he hand-selected three members of the United States supreme court, the court of Thurgood and RBG, with the intention that they would overturn the protections of Roe v Wade,” Harris said.
She continued:
And as he intended, they did, and now more than 20 states have Trump abortion bans, extremists that have passed laws that criminalize healthcare providers, doctors and nurses, and punish women. In two of those states, they provide for prison for life – prison for life – for healthcare providers for simply providing reproductive care, the care they so earnestly and rightly believe must be delivered – all Trump abortion bans. And think about this: many of these bans make no exception, even for rape and incest.
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Harris speaks in Georgia amid furor over abortion-related death
Kamala Harris just took the stage in Atlanta, where she is expected to decry the state’s abortion ban, which was recently tied to the death of a woman in 2022, and Donald Trump’s support for the overturning of Roe v Wade.
We may also hear from the vice-president about the election board’s rule change today that could slow down the vote-counting process in the battleground state.
Here’s more about the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, which Harris blamed on Trump:
Presidential election voting begins in three states
Residents of Virginia, South Dakota and Minnesota have hit the polls for early voting today, as the 2024 election gets underway.
While the bulk of voters will cast ballots on 5 November, the three states are the first to open their polls, and more will follow throughout October, the Associated Press reports.
In the weeks to come, millions more Americans will cast absentee ballots by mail. Here’s more on that:
Kevin Moncla, a prominent election denier, is holding court on the marble steps just outside the Georgia state board of elections hearing room at the state capitol.
Moncla described how state election officials had given him the cold shoulder after the 2020 election. Moncla and fellow activist Joe Rossi filed a complaint alleging that Fulton county had covered up mass election fraud with multiple duplicate ballots, missing ballot images and missing documents.
Applause from their supporters occasionally bleeds into the hearing room. Their backers from Georgians for Truth are wearing white T-shirts printed with the words “Paper Please.”
Here’s more on Moncla:
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House votes to investigate second Trump assassination attempt
The House just unanimously approved allowing a bipartisan taskforce investigating the July assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump in Pennsylvania to also scrutinize the apparent second attempt on his life on Sunday in Florida.
“There’s no leader in American history who has been attacked as aggressively as Donald Trump, and yet remained so strong and resilient,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said in a statement after the vote.
“Today, the House is rising to meet this historic moment by voting to formally expand the purview of the taskforce to include the second assassination attempt on his life. The American people deserve answers and accountability for the many security failures that have led to these events – and this Congress will deliver.”
Earlier, the House unanimously approved the bipartisan Enhanced Presidential Security Act, which would establish universal standards for Secret Service protectees such as the president, former presidents and candidates for the White House, and require a comprehensive review of the agency’s current protection strategy.
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Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe Jr said on Friday that recents events such as the attempted assassination in July and apparent attempted assassination of the former president on Sunday in Florida, highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in the how the Secret Service protects public officials and said that the “threat level is evolving.”
The Secret Service report states that the site of the rally, the Butler farm show, was seen by the Secret Service and local law enforcement partners “as a challenge”.
The summary of the report reads:
Advance personnel and multiple supervisors with oversight of the security plan at the Butler farm show venue recognized line of site concerns.
However, the security measures to alleviate these concerns were not carried out on July 13, 2024, as intended.
There was a lack of detailed knowledge by Secret Service personnel regarding the state or local law enforcement presence that would be present in and around the AGR complex.
There was also a lack of knowledge regarding the specific footprint of resources that would buttress the secure area of the venue and separate it from the AGR complex, which was outside of the site’s secure perimeter.
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The Secret Service report looking into the 13 July assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump also revealed that agents did not have the necessary discussions in advance regarding how the warehouse should be guarded, and about the positioning of a local team on the roof of the warehouse building, according to the report’s executive summary.
Another issue that arose on 13 July, according to the report, was that the Secret Service’s aerial system was experiencing “technical difficulties”.
It is possible that if the system had “functioned properly” the “shooter may have been detected as he flew his drone near the Butler farm show venue earlier in the day”, the summary reads.
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In a news conference on Friday, the acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe Jr, said that the findings of the report have prompted the agency to “move into the accountability phase of this process”.
“As a result of these failures, what has become clear to me is we need a shift in paradigm in how we conduct our protective operations,” he added.
A "shift in paradigm" is needed in how the U.S. Secret Service conducts protective operations, Acting Director Ronald L. Rowe, Jr. said, after the agency released a report on the Pennsylvania rally where an assassin took a shot at former Pres. Trump. https://t.co/XZWWdAwU5i pic.twitter.com/b15P2iOF8O
— ABC News (@ABC) September 20, 2024
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The Secret Service report released on Friday highlights several shortcomings in the security and preparation of the 13 July rally in Pennsylvania.
It states some local police officers at the rally were unaware of the existence of two communications centers on the grounds, the Associated Press reported, meaning that officers did not know that the Secret Service were not receiving their radio transmissions.
The report adds that law enforcement officers were communicating important information outside the Secret Service’s radio frequencies, per the AP, which resulted in details being transmitted “via mobile/cellular devices in staggered or fragmented fashion” instead of through the Secret Service’s own network.
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Secret Service details communications failures ahead of the July attempted assassination of Trump – report
A Secret Service report looking into the events leading up to the July assassination attempt on the former president was released on Friday, and, according to the Associated Press, found fault with both local and federal law enforcement in the run-up to the Pennsylvania rally where a gunman fired at Donald Trump, injuring him and others, and killing a rally attendee.
The report details a series of “communications deficiencies” before the shooting occurred, and states that the Secret Service knew even before the shooting that the site of the rally posed a security challenge.
“It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13 and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another mission failure like this again,” the Secret Service’s acting director, Ronald Rowe Jr, said in a statement.
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The day so far
Georgia’s election board has voted to require that ballots be counted by hand, a move that could complicate and slow down determining whether the swing state has voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the November election. The decision, made after Trump-aligned members gained a majority on the board, comes despite a warning from the state attorney general that such a rule would be illegal. The meeting is ongoing, with the election board voting down a proposal to require the hand counting of early voting ballots. We will let you know what else they decide.
Here’s what else is happening today:
In an interview with Oprah, Harris, a gun owner, said: “If somebody breaks into my house they’re getting shot.”
Democratic state lawmakers denounced the Georgia election board’s rule change with a press conference held in sight of Trump supporters.
CNN reported that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina has a history of lewd and offensive statements online. Will he appear with Trump during his rally tomorrow? The former president’s campaign won’t say.
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Opponents of the Georgia election board’s rule change rallied in the state capitol in Atlanta as the body met.
But supporters of Donald Trump were not far away:
I’m at the Georgia state Capitol where the state election board are considering new rules, pushed by Trump loyalists, just weeks before the presidential election.
— Oliver Laughland (@oliverlaughland) September 20, 2024
At a @fairfightaction press conference Trump loyalists are standing at the back and laughing. pic.twitter.com/WBixtWm5N2
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Georgia election board rejects hand-counting ballots from early voting
The Georgia state election board just voted 4-1 to table a proposal that would have required hand-counting ballots during early voting.
The decision to delay came after member Janelle King raised concerns that people hand-counting the ballots could potentially leak information about who was ahead in certain precincts. Anticipating that this election was going to be contentious, King said she did not want to get the rule wrong.
The only member to vote in favor of the rule was Janice Johnston.
The state attorney general had advised the board that this rule was likely illegal.
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The Georgia state election board was advised by the attorney general’s office that the decision to hand-count ballots was likely illegal.
“The statutes upon which these rules rely do not reflect any provision enacted by the general assembly for the hand-counting of ballots prior to tabulation,” it said.
“There are thus no provisions in the statutes cited in support of these proposed rules that permit counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level prior to delivery to the election superintendent for tabulation. Accordingly, these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute – and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do,” the attorney general’s office wrote in a memo.
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Georgia election board approves rule change that could delay determining presidential winner
The Georgia state election board approved a rule requiring election workers to hand-count ballots on election night. The vote was three in favor, and two opposed.
The three Republicans who voted in favor of the proposal were all praised by name by Donald Trump during an August rally as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory”.
The board’s lone Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal, and John Fervier, a Republican who serves as the board’s chair, voted against the proposal.
The concern among voting advocates and local election officials is that the rule will delay the reporting of election results and open the door for chaos after the presidential vote. It could also make it harder to determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the state’s electoral votes in the November election.
Hand counts, long favored by those who question the results of the 2020 election, have been shown to be slower and less reliable than machine counts.
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Georgia attorney general warns election board that proposed rule changes are illegal
The Guardian has obtained a memo from the Georgia attorney general’s office advising the state election board that several of the rules it is voting on today are illegal.
“A review of the proposed rules reveals several issues including that several of the proposed rules, if passed, very likely exceed the board’s statutory authority and in some instances appear to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections. Where such is the case, and as outlined below, the board risks passing rules that may easily be challenged and determined to be invalid,” the letter says.
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Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat on the state election board, just had a back-and-forth with Sharlene Alexander, a Republican on the Fayette county election board, over whether her proposal to count ballots by hand was feasible.
Ghazal noted that no local election officials had told her they supported the rule. Alexander and other Republicans have framed the rule as something that will be a minimal burden to implement.
The board is about to vote on a proposal to require hand-counting of ballots on election night.
Janice Johnston, a Republican on the board, just went through a lengthy recitation of election rules that were adopted close to an election. She’s trying to rebut criticism from election officials that it’s too close to the election to adopt new rules.
“The hue and cry about how early or how late it is to adopt these rules, I don’t buy. Rulemaking is good any month of the year.”
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We’re now beginning the part of the meeting during which the board is going to consider rules.
First up is perhaps the most controversial change it is considering today: a rule that would require election workers to hand-count ballots on election night.
Sharlene Alexander, a member of the board of elections in Fayette county, is presenting the rule and says she doesn’t understand why it’s so controversial – it’s just checking the machine counts.
Earlier this morning, election officials and poll workers warned against this rule, saying it’s not needed and would only delay tabulation of election results.
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One of the speakers who really stuck out to me this morning was Milton Kidd, the election director in Douglas county, Georgia.
He was one of half a dozen local election officials to urge the state election board not to enact rules so close to the election. But Kidd also pointed out that the volunteer board – whose members are not election experts – was ignoring the advice of seasoned election experts.
“The idea that you’re not going to listen to the individuals that are charged with conducting elections is absurd to me,” he said. “Most of us have worked decades in these career paths, and to say that we don’t know what we’re talking about, you wouldn’t say that to any other professional.”
“I’ve stayed at a lot of Waffle Houses in my life, but that does not qualify me to operate a Waffle House,” he added.
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We’re now wrapping up the morning public comment session of this meeting.
The overwhelming majority of speakers have urged the board not to adopt the proposed rules, including around half a dozen local election officials who have spoken.
We’re expecting to move on to discussion of the actual new rules shortly.
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Travis Doss, executive director of the Richmond county board of elections in Augusta and the president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, urged the board to stop its rulemaking.
“Now is simply not the time to implement sweeping changes that could create unnecessary confusion and disruption,” he said.
He noted that in previous elections – the 2018 gubernatorial race and the 2020 presidential race – Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump, respectively, said last-minute changes contributed to their loss.
He didn’t mention her by name, but Doss at one point seemed to be appealing directly to Janice Johnston, a retired OB/GYN who is leading the Republican bloc on the board. He said what the board was doing was akin to making changes during the third trimester of pregnancy.
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Brook Schreiner, the election director in Butts county, Georgia, is the first election official to testify at today’s meeting.
Local election officials throughout the state have strongly objected to the way the board has pushed through election rules.
“While we do not oppose many of the rules being processed, the timing could certainly be improved,” she said.
She also laid out how a proposal to hand-count ballots in local precincts “would unnecessarily delay election day tabulation”. She noted that poll managers already have a litany of tasks on election night, including sealing ballots and transporting memory cards.
Updated
We’re now beginning the public comment section of the meeting, which is expected last at least an hour.
John Fervier, the board’s chairman, called it his favorite portion of the meeting, which may have been said somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
The Georgia state election board meeting has only been under way for a few minutes and you can already see the two factions on the board at work.
Janice Johnston, the state GOP’s representative on the board, went back and forth with John Fervier, the board chair, over two last-minute additions to the agenda. One was to add a petition for rulemaking to the agenda, which Fervier objected to because he said the board hadn’t had proper time to consider it.
Johnston and two other members of the conservative bloc overruled Fervier’s attempt to block the petition from the agenda.
Johnston has seen a meteoric rise from being a citizen activist to essentially being in control of the three-member majority on the board.
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Georgia election board considers last-minute changes that could spark voting chaos in swing state
As the Georgia state board of elections convened, Janice Johnston asked the board to amend the agenda to allow a petition for a rule change proposed by Salleigh Grubbs, chairman of the Cobb county GOP, regarding the storage of ballots after the November election.
“We are talking about debating a rule that no member of the public has seen,” said member Sara Tindall Ghazal. The proposed rule was submitted to the board a few weeks ago, board member Janice Johnston said
“Adding the petition at the last minute is not the responsible thing to do,” said chairman John Fervier, noting that the board members could have asked for alterations ahead of the meeting.
Three board members overruled the chairman’s objection. The three – Johnston, Janelle King and Rick Jeffares – were praised by name by Donald Trump at a rally a few months ago.
Here’s more on what the board is considering today, and why it could matter to the outcome of the presidential vote in the state:
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Members of Georgia’s state election board held a short press conference ahead of their 9am meeting this morning.
Board member Janelle King asserted that “county board members have always had the right to certify or not to certify”, a statement at odds with legal holdings that the act of certification is “ministerial” and obligatory. “It is not ministerial. It is an option. It is an option because of the legal document each must sign,” King said.
The question of delayed certification is at the heart of objections raised by Democratic lawmakers, the American Civil Liberties Union and others, which are suing the state board of elections to prevent rules they believe will delay certification and potentially create a controversy that denies Georgia voters their delegates in the electoral vote after the November election.
Board member Janice Johnston encouraged Georgians to vote early and in person, instead of mailing absentee ballots this election, citing delays in mail delivery reported in the Atlanta area. She noted that – with the exception of military ballots – absentee ballots must be at the local election office by 7pm on election day.
Those who “desire to use absentee voting, please return the voting ballot directly to the election office”, she said. “If you must rely on the surface mail, please send your voting ballot as early as possible.”
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Harris tells Oprah: 'If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot'
Kamala Harris, who recently reminded the public that she owns a gun, told Oprah during their interview yesterday that “if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot”.
Here’s the moment:
Kamala Harris: “If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot. Probably should not have said that.” pic.twitter.com/hlpGKUZAik
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 20, 2024
Harris acknowledged owning a weapon as early as 2019, and mentioned it again during her debate with Donald Trump last week. Her comment to Oprah appeared to be a somewhat rare instance of the relentlessly on-message vice-president slipping: “Probably should not have said that,” Harris said afterwards.
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The Democrats have moved to capitalize on CNN’s story yesterday finding that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has a history of posting lewd and offensive statements online, including referring to himself as a “black Nazi”.
The Democratic National Committee bought billboards in Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro that show Donald Trump with Robinson, and include quotes from the former president about him, including “we have to cherish Mark”. North Carolina is a swing state Democrats are hoping to pick up this year, and Trump will campaign in the city of Wilmington on Saturday.
“Make no mistake: Trump has embraced and tied himself to Robinson at every turn. Donald Trump and Mark Robinson are too extreme for North Carolina,” Democratic national committee chair Jaime Harrison said.
Joe Biden, in the final months of his term, will meet with his cabinet to “discuss a range of administration priorities” today, the White House said.
Democrats controlled Congress for the first two years of Biden’s presidency, working with him to pass several significant pieces of legislation addressing climate change, prescription drug prices and the nation’s infrastructure needs, although he did not get everything he wanted passed.
That all ended when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives in 2023, and it remains to be seen what more Biden can accomplish before he departs the White House in January of 2025. Perhaps we’ll find out after the meeting at 11.30am ET, where first lady Jill Biden will also provide an update on her initiative to improve women’s health research.
Biden will then fly to Wilmington, Delaware, where he will meet with Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese in what the White House says is a “personal meeting”.
Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.
The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.
“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.
Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness. A control group saw the tweets without “disputed” tags; the experimental group viewed them with the label. Before and after seeing the tweets, the subjects were also asked to rank their views on election fraud overall.
The study found that Trump voters who were initially skeptical about claims of widespread fraud were more likely to rate lies as true when a “disputed” label appeared next to Trump’s tweets. The findings meanwhile showed Biden voters’ beliefs were largely unaffected by the “disputed” tags.
You can read the full story here:
Zelenskyy: 'I hope Biden supports Ukraine peace plan'
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he hopes Joe Biden will support his plan to end the war with Russia, ahead of a trip to Washington.
Zelenskyy has promised to present his so-called “victory plan” to end the fighting, which has killed thousands, to Biden in the coming days, Agence France-Presse reports.
“I really hope that he will support this plan,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv.
“The plan is designed for decisions that will have to happen from October to December … We would like that very much. Then we believe that the plan will work,” he added.
Zelenskyy will present the plan to the US after a summer of intense fighting, with Moscow advancing in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv holding on to parts of Russia’s Kursk region.
The Ukrainian leader is due to meet Biden and Kamala Harris – while Kyiv also says he plans to meet Donald Trump.
Trump has not confirmed their meeting but says it will “probably” take place. Reuters reports that while Trump and Zelenskyy talked over the phone in July, they have not talked in person since Trump was president.
The Republican nominee has consistently described US aid to its eastern European ally as a waste of money and has declined to say he wants Ukraine to win.
Trump’s threats to ‘go after’ opponents will subvert rule of law, experts warn
Donald Trump’s sweeping threats if he wins the presidency again to name a special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and take legal action against other foes would subvert the rule of law in America and take the country towards authoritarianism, former justice department officials and scholars have warned.
Trump’s escalating legal threats have targeted “corrupt election officials”, lawyers, donors and others he falsely deems out to steal November’s presidential election, and have popped up variously on his Truth Social platform, at campaign events and at an elite police group he addressed this month in North Carolina.
Trump’s menacing pledges to essentially weaponize the justice department against opponents would mark a sharp break with the Department of Justice’s mission statement, which cites as core values “independence and impartiality”.
Ex-justice officials warn that Trump’s barrage of intimidating verbal assaults are unprecedented, and suggest he would undermine longstanding traditions of justice department independence if he wins the presidency, thus badly undermining the rule of law.
You can read the full story here
During the event with Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey last night, the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman who died as a result of the state’s abortion ban, blamed Donald Trump and his supreme court picks for her death.
“They just let her die because of some stupid abortion ban. They treated her like she was just another number,” Thurman’s older sister said of the medical professionals she had turned to for help.
Associated Press have more on the abortion issue ahead of Kamala Harris’ speech in Georgia.
About half of voters say abortion is one of the most important issues as they consider their vote – but it’s more important to women who are registered voters than to male voters, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About six in 10 women voters say abortion policy is one of the most important issues to their vote in the upcoming election, compared to about four in 10 male voters.
The gender gap doesn’t stop there.
About six in 10 women voters trust Harris more than Trump to handle abortion, while about two in 10 women have more trust in Trump. Half of male voters, by contrast, trust Harris more than Trump on abortion, while about one-third trust Trump more than Harris.
Losing daughter due to Georgia abortion ban 'worst pain ever', mother tells Harris
Kamala Harris will be in Georgia today and is expected to speak about Donald Trump’s role in the abortion bans that now blanket much of the United States, days after news broke that two Georgia mothers died after being unable to access legal abortions and adequate medical care.
The deaths of the Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, were first reported earlier this week by ProPublica and occurred as a result of Georgia enacting a six-week abortion ban. Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee looked at both women’s cases and deemed their deaths “preventable”, according to ProPublica.
Although Georgia permits abortions in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that abortion exceptions are worded so vaguely as to be unworkable. Instead, doctors have said, they are forced to watch until patients get sick enough to legally intervene.
Last night, Shanette Williams, Thurman’s mother, joined a virtual event hosted by Oprah Winfrey where she interviewed Harris.
Williams told the audience:
You’re looking at a mother that is broken, the worst pain ever that a mother, that a parent can ever feel.
Harris responded: “I’m just so sad. And the courage that you all have shown is extraordinary.” Many in the studio audience of about 400 were in tears.
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Republican campaign refuses to say if Robinson will appear with Trump in North Carolina tomorrow
Donald Trump is due to visit North Carolina tomorrow. It comes as his presidential campaign is rocked by the allegations against the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Mark Robinson, that he attacked Martin Luther King Jr, backed the reinstatement of slavery and referred to himself as a “black Nazi” in comments on a pornographic website.
When asked about the CNN report by Associated Press, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not mention Robinson by name or answer questions as to whether he would appear with Trump at tomorrow’s campaign rally in Wilmington, or had been invited to do so.
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The Georgia state election board is set to meet later today to consider another round of last-minute election changes that could cause delays and confusion after election day in the critical battleground state.
The Republican majority on the board is expected to approve a rule that would require three people in every precinct to check machine-vote tallies by hand-counting the election results. Voting experts have long warned that hand-counts are time consuming, costly, and less reliable than machines. It’s a process that nonetheless has been favored by conservative activists who doubt the results of the 2020 election.
The board will also consider proposed rules that would mandate daily hand-counts of early votes, require public reports of voters who have cast a ballot during early voting, allow for greater poll-watcher access during tabulation, distinguish emergency and mail-in ballots, and require that ballots be tracked through the mail.
Read the full story here
Also appearing tonight with Donald Trump and Monica Crowley in Arizona will be Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of homeland security when Trump was president.
A report by the office of the Department for Homeland Security inspector general released in 2022 found that Wolf interfered with a report on Russian interference in the 2020 election by demanding changes, delaying its dissemination and creating a risk the report might be seen as politicised.
Following the release of the report, Wolf told NBC News the watchdog “did not find any credible evidence that I directed anyone to change the substance of the report because it ‘made President Trump look bad’”.
Turning away from the Robinson allegations momentarily we can look ahead to Donald Trump’s town hall event in the swing state of Arizona this evening.
The Republican nominee will appear alongside Monica Crowley, who was accused of plagiarism over her book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened?
Crowley has denied the claims and the then Trump administration at the time referred to them as a politically motivated attack.
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As we have said, Donald Trump did not comment on the Mark Robinson allegations during last night’s speech to a group of Jewish donors and to the Israeli-American Council in Washington.
His campaign issued a statement about the CNN story that did not even mention Robinson, saying instead that Trump “is focused on winning the White House and saving this country” and that North Carolina was a “vital part of that plan.”
'Could Robinson cost Trump the White House?' pollster asks
The story also could threaten Donald Trump’s chances of winning North Carolina, a key battleground state, Associated Press reports. It says that Mark Robinson was already already running well behind his Democratic opponent in public polls before CNN claimed he referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on a pornographic website.
“This story is not about the governor’s race in North Carolina. It’s about the presidential race,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican pollster. He warned that Trump could risk losing a state he won in 2016 and 2020.
The question is going to be, does Mark Robinson cost Donald Trump the White House?” Shumaker added.
Recent polls of North Carolina voters show Trump and Kamala Harris locked in a close race. The same polls show Democrat Josh Stein with a roughly 10-point lead over Robinson in the race to be governor.
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CNN report 'very concerning,' says North Carolina Republican
At least one North Carolina Republican, US Representative Richard Hudson, called CNN’s reporting “very concerning”, Reuters reports. He said he thought Robinson needed to do more to reassure voters the allegations were untrue.
Josh Stein, his opponent, has featured some of Robinson‘s previous controversial comments in television attack ads and his campaign issued a statement condemning him yesterday. Stein’s campaign said:
North Carolinians already know Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be governor. Josh remains focused on winning this campaign so that together we can build a safer, stronger North Carolina for everyone.”
As our story on the CNN claims states, Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, is facing the Democrat Josh Stein, the state attorney general, in November.
Republicans have reportedly been pressuring Robinson to withdraw from the race as rumors swirled about CNN’s story. North Carolina’s deadline for a candidate to drop out was yesterday and the deadline to remove his name from the ballot has passed.
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Trump bemoans lack of support from Jewish voters amid claims of ally’s antisemitism
Good morning and welcome to our blog covering US politics in the run-up to the presidential election following another tumultuous evening where Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of support from Jewish voters just hours after allegations emerged that a Republican ally had referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on a pornography website.
Trump failed to mention the claims in a CNN report against Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, during a speech on Thursday at the Israeli-American Council national summit in Washington.
In his speech, the former president lamented that he was trailing Kamala Harris among American Jews. Israel would likely cease to exist within two years should Harris win the election, and Jews would be partly to blame for that outcome because they tend to vote for Democrats, Trump argued.
If I don’t win this election - and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy - Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years.
Trump was citing a poll that he said showed Harris polling at 60% among American Jews. You can read our report on his speech here.
Meanwhile, according to CNN’s reporting, Robinson referred to himself as a “perv” in archived messages because he “enjoyed watching transgender pornography”. The messages were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa”, a pornographic website that includes a message board.
He also allegedly expressed support for reinstating slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few,” he wrote in October 2010. In March 2012, during the Obama administration, it was claimed he wrote: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”
CNN reported that Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, also attacked civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr in searing terms and once referred to himself as a “black Nazi”.
Robinson has denied the report: “Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story – those are not the words of Mark Robinson” he said on a video posted to X. And said he is staying in the race.
The North Carolina Republican party is standing by him. “Mark Robinson has categorically denied the allegations made by CNN but that won’t stop the Left from trying to demonize him via personal attacks,” the party said in a statement.
After allegations against Robinson became public, the Harris campaign posted video clips of Trump praising the candidate.
Best friends ❤️ pic.twitter.com/baS5sRfzIo
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 19, 2024
More on this story later. In other news:
Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday for a “virtual rally” that included a wide-ranging sit-down interview, during which Harris attacked Trump’s stance on reproductive rights and pledged to sign a border security bill thwarted by Senate Republicans.
On Friday, the vice-president will be attending campaign events in the swing states of Georgia and Wisconsin.
In the evening, Trump will be in another swing state – Arizona –at a town hall event. He will appear alongside Monica Crowley, a commentator and former assistant secretary for public affairs, and Chad Wolf, who was an acting secretary for public affairs in his administration.
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