And as the clock approaches 2.10am in Michigan, Trump has finally ended his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. After ranging further through various topics including promises to defend religious liberty, the right to keep and bear arms, “keeping men out of women’s sports” and building up our borders, he says:
We will never ever surrender, together we will fight fight fight and we will win win win! …
November 5, today, will be the most important day in the history of our country.”
And finally, he ends:
“I love you all, God bless you, God bless you Michigan, God bless the United States of America!” and dances out to the tune of YMCA.
Trump appears to be winding up and is talking about his “favourite word: tariff!” and repeats his threat to put “large scale” tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada if they don’t prevent fentanyl made by China coming into the US.
He then makes even more imflammatory comments about immigration claiming, without any evidence, that “Crime is plummeting all over the world” because they’re sending their “criminals”, “mental patients”, “prison populations” and others to the US.
He also talks again about putting a missile shield around the US.
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Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump take the mic next, urging people to get out and vote.
“You are going to save democracy in the United states and keep peace in the world”, Eric says of his father.
Then Tiffany says a few brief words before Trump returns. “They’re my kids but I’ll tell you they’re very good people,” he says.
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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
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.
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.
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 .
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Trump has finally arrived at his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, almost two and a half hours behind schedule.
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
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.
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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.
Dispatch from Grand Rapids, Michigan: They just showed a video here of Donald Trump shaving the head of Vince McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, during a wrestling event. It happened in 2007.
Needless to say, Trump hasn’t arrived yet.
Harris emphasises her message of unity in her remarks in Philadelphia, drawing a contrast with Donald Trump without mentioning his name, saying: “Instead of stewing on an enemies list I will work on my to-do list.”
She then lists some of the things she would do in office including banning corporate price gouging on groceries, cutting taxes for workers and middle class families and lowering the cost of health care, adding: “access to health care should be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it.”
She also mentions women’s right to control their own bodies and her determination to sign into law protections for women’s reproductive freedom.
She then goes back to her message of unity saying: “I pledge to listen to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make”. She also repeats comments she has made previously about listening to experts and giving people who disagree with her a seat at the table.
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Harris take the stage in Philadelphia
Harris came onstage to Beyoncé’s Freedom. She hugged Oprah before beginning her remarks.
Harris said her campaign started “as the underdog and climb to victory,” she said gesturing to the Rocky steps behind her.
“This could be one of the closest races in history,” Harris said.
“You will decide the outcome of this election Pennsylvania,” she said. “Make no mistake: we will win!”
The crowd begins chanting “We will win.”
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More from the Harris rally in Philadelphia: In a white pants suit, Oprah Winfrey laid the stakes pretty bare for the audience. She told a story about meeting a woman on a hike who said she wasn’t planning to vote this election.
“We don’t get to sit this one out, Oprah said. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”
She said those were the “dangers” of not electing Harris on Tuesday.
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Kamala Harris is taking to the stage in Philadelphia now for her final rally before election day, after an introduction by Oprah Winfrey.
Security agencies say Russia election disinformation efforts risk inciting violence
Russia-linked disinformation operations have falsely claimed officials in battleground states plan to fraudulently sway the outcome of the extraordinarily close US presidential election, authorities have warned hours before Election Day. AFP reports:
Success in the seven swing states is key to winning the White House for rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and those states have previously been the focus of unsupported accusations of election fraud.
“Russia is the most active threat,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday.
“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” they added, noting the efforts are expected to intensify through Election Day and in the following weeks.
It was the latest in a series of warnings from the ODNI about foreign actors - notably Russia and Iran - allegedly spreading disinformation or hacking the campaigns during this election.
Tehran and Moscow have both denied such allegations in the past.
More from Philadelphia, where Doug Emhoff just praised his wife, Kamala Harris as the “right president for this moment in our nation’s history.”
He joked that she will lead with her “laugh and that look.” Emhoff has been crisscrossing the country for Harris’s campaign.
Donald Trump was supposed to start speaking at 10.30pm local time in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Well, he didn’t - he isn’t even here yet - and according to a police officer I just spoke to it’s probably going to get to midnight before Trump actually appears.
In the meantime the campaign is desperately filling time. We’ve had an appearance from a local congressman – “Who the hell is that?” a Trump supporter behind me commented – and some lackeys just wheeled out a sort of T-shirt machine gun, which entertained people for a bit.
In contrast to Trump’s other rallies today, the Van Andel Arena, in downtown Grand Rapids, is actually almost full. “And let me tell you,” one of the speakers said just now, “There’s the same number of people waiting outside who couldn’t get in!”
I was a bit bored so I got up and went and looked outside. There is not a single person out there.
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Lady Gaga has just arrived on stage. She takes a seat at the piano and belts God Bless America.
She said she cast her vote for Harris – but there is little chance Lady Gaga is a battleground state voter. Instead she encourages everyone in the audience to vote and then brings out the future “first First Gentleman,” Doug Emhoff.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage as the US is set to vote in the 2024 presidential election.
With just hours to go before polls open, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have been making their final pitch to voters, honing in on the crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Polls continue to show the contest could not be closer, with both candidates tied in a number of key swing states.
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”.
The polls are set to start opening on the US east coast in less than six hours time, with the rest of the country following in the hours after. Millions of Americans are set to vote across the day, but the outcome remains far from certain.
Here’s what else has been happening over the last 24 hours:
Kamala Harris put all her chips on the key battleground state of Pennsylvania on Monday, as polls indicate an extremely close contest. She held several rallies and events including a stop 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!”’
Harris sought to strike a positive tone, saying she wanted to be a “president for all Americans”. A sign of a “strong” leader is someone willing to listen to the experts, the stakeholders and those who disagree, she said at a rally in Pittsburgh.
Donald Trump meanwhile held rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, but his tone was much darker, focusing on painting migrants as dangerous criminals while also launching personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. “They’re killing people. They’re killing people at will,” he said at one rally, giving gruesome details of specific murders allegedly committed by undocumented migrants. In North Caroliana he called Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi a “crazyass bedbug” and 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.”
The influential podcast host Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”. Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
The $1m-a-day voter sweepstakes that Elon Musk’s political action committee is hosting in swing states can continue through Tuesday’s presidential election, a Pennsylvania judge ruled on Monday. The common pleas court judge Angelo Foglietta – ruling after Musk’s lawyers said the winners are not chosen by chance – did not immediately give a reason for the ruling.
A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s position on Gaza, a strategy by Trump allies aimed at peeling off Democratic support for the vice-president. Texts, mailers, social media ads and billboards targeting heavily Arab American areas in metro Detroit paint Harris as a staunch ally of Israel who will continue supplying arms to the country. Meanwhile, residents in metro Detroit or areas of Pennsylvania with higher Jewish populations have been receiving messaging that underscores her alleged support for the Palestinian cause.
The Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who are the third largest donors in this year’s US presidential election, have sought information about who employees at their company Uline will be voting for in Tuesday’s ballot. A screenshot seen by the Guardian shows how employees at the private Wisconsin paper and office products distributor were asked to take part in what was called an anonymous survey to track who the employees were voting for on 5 November.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:
How the electoral college works
Lessons from the key swing states
What’s at stake in this election
