US Election 2024 News Updates: Washington state activates National Guard in case of election violence; Trump seeks to undermine 2024 election process, again

Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory, as he did in 2020, Harris campaign and party officials told Reuters.

The Republican candidate told reporters this week that he hoped to be able to declare victory on Election Day, although election experts have cautioned that it could take several days for the final result to be known, especially if there are demands for vote recounts in some key areas. Trump is locked in a razor-thin race with Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

U.S. election winners are typically declared by major media outlets who analyze vote counts provided by election officials. While candidates sometimes declare victory before those calls are made, it is unusual to do so before the winner is at least arguably apparent.

“We are sadly ready if he does and, if we know that he is actually manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people … we are prepared to respond,” Harris said in an interview with ABC on Wednesday.

Ukrainians are nervously following the final days of the US presidential election campaign, some fearing a victory for Donald Trump could halt Washington’s vital aid.

Tuesday’s US vote will take place as the war with Russia grinds through its third year, with the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian army on the back foot against Russia’s advancing troops.

Moscow’s alliance with Pyongyang appears more solid than ever, with Washington and Seoul saying thousands of North Korean troops have been sent to Russia.

By contrast, Ukraine’s war-fatigued backers could be further disheartened by the potential return to the White House of Trump, who has given no assurance of support to Kyiv.

“A Trump victory would create grave risks. The situation would be alarming,” former Ukrainian ambassador to the US Oleg Shamshur told AFP.

It is no secret who Viktor Orban favours in the US presidential election on Tuesday, with Hungary’s nationalist leader saying publicly that he will pop open bottles of champagne if his “dear friend” Donald Trump wins.

It is a political friendship that the Hungarian prime minister — whose illiberal policies and pro-Russian stance has made him a bete noir in the European Union — has spent years cultivating and he could gain a powerful ally if Trump returns to the White House.

One of the key people tasked with making the connection between Orban’s “illiberal democracy” and US conservatives is Rod Dreher, a renowned American right-wing thinker and writer who works a few minutes’ walk from Orban’s seat of power inside Buda Castle.

“He had nothing to lose by coming out 100 percent for Trump,” Dreher told AFP, adding that Hungary could “hit the jackpot” and gain a “powerful friend in its eternal struggle against the Brussels bullies”.

Top House Republicans called on the White House to produce all documents and internal communications regarding President Joe Biden’s statement earlier this week in which he appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump.

White House press officials altered the official transcript of Biden’s statement, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

The lawmakers said they question whether the decision to create “a false transcript and manipulate or alter the accurate transcript” produced for the National Archives and Records Administration was a violation of federal law.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that Republicans “probably will” try to repeal legislation that spurred U.S. production of semiconductor chips, a statement he quickly tried to walk back by saying he would like to instead “streamline” it.

Johnson made the initial comment while campaigning for a vulnerable New York GOP congressman in a district that is anticipating a large new Micron semiconductor manufacturing plant.

A reporter asked Johnson whether he would try to repeal the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had disparaged last week. “I expect that we probably will, but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet,” Johnson replied.

Democrats quickly jumped on the Republican speaker’s comments, warning that it showed how Johnson and Trump are pursuing an aggressive conservative agenda bent on dismantling even popular government programs. The White House has credited the CHIPS Act for spurring hundreds of billions of dollars of investments as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs. Vice President Kamala Harris has pointed to the legislation on the campaign trail as proof that Democrats can be entrusted with the U.S. economy.

Donald Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the campaign’s final days, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates have not won in decades.

The former president campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday and was scheduled to visit Salem, Virginia, on Saturday.

The Trump team is projecting optimism based in part on early voting numbers and thinks he can be competitive against Democrat Kamala Harris in both states — New Mexico in particular, if he sweeps swing states Nevada and Arizona. That hope comes even though neither New Mexico nor Virginia has been carried by a GOP nominee for the White House since George W. Bush in 2004.

A judge in the U.S. state of Georgia issued an order on Friday extending the deadline for the return and counting of absentee ballots after a county failed to promptly send out some 3,000 mail-in ballots for Tuesday’s election that were requested by the deadline, the county said.

Under Georgia state law, eligible voters may request an absentee ballot up to 11 days before any election. Civil rights groups said Cobb County had violated the law and asked a judge to extend the return deadline on the ballots by three days to Nov. 8.

County Judge Robert Flournoy agreed to the request, the county said. The Cobb County Board of Elections will be allowed to count affected ballots received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 8 as long as they are postmarked by 7 p.m. on Nov. 5. The county added that the extension only applies to ballots mailed after Oct. 30.

Just days before the highly anticipated US Presidential elections, a New York author and journalist released audio tapes that appear to detail the close relationship between former US President Donald Trump and late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The tapes in question were released as a part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff.

Wolff has authored three books about Trump’s first term in office and 2020 bid for a second. He was supported by James Truman, former NME journalist and Condé Nast editorial director. The tapes deal with Epstein’s thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president’s inner circle.

The governor of Washington state on Friday said he was activating some members of the National Guard to be on stand-by after information and concerns regarding potential violence related to the 2024 election.

The state, where Democrat Kamala Harris is easily expected to defeat Republican Donald Trump according to polling, was one of two where ballot boxes were set on fire earlier in the week.

Early voting is available to those in Washington and more than 2 million have already cast their ballots, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.

“Based upon general and specific information and concerns regarding the potential for violence or other unlawful activity related to the 2024 general election, I want to ensure we are fully prepared to respond,” Governor Jay Inslee wrote in a letter published on his website on Friday.

Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago.

At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has refused to say, repeatedly, whether he will accept the results regardless of the outcome. And he’s claimed cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality.

“The only thing that can stop us is the cheating. It’s the only thing that can stop us,” he said at an event in Arizona late Thursday night.

In 2020, Trump prematurely declared victory from the White House. He launched a legal and political effort to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden that culminated in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Democrats fear he may do the same thing this year before the race is called. He wouldn’t answer a question Friday in Dearborn, Michigan, about those Democratic concerns, instead pivoting to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris.

Alannah Hurley still gets choked up recalling Democrat Mary Peltola’s election to Alaska’s only U.S. House seat in 2022. Hurley, like Peltola, is Yup’ik and called Peltola’s election — in which she became the first Alaska Native in Congress — monumental for Hurley and her daughters.

“Finally, we have somebody in Congress who looks like us, talks like us, grew up like us, and they have lived experience, understanding the beauty and the challenges of what it means to be Native in this state and the nation,” Hurley said.

Peltola, 51, is in a tough reelection fight against Republican Nick Begich in a high-stakes race that could help determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the House. The campaign follows a year of intense personal tragedy for the lawmaker, who lost her mother and her husband, Eugene Peltola, within a four-month span in 2023.

Peltola called the weeks around her husband’s death in a small plane crash some of the most difficult of her life. She returned to Washington about a month later, arriving amid a period of Republican infighting over the House speakership. She said then that it was a difficult time for the country, too, and that she was “ready to get to work.”

Donald Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the campaign’s final days, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates have not won in decades.

The former president campaigned in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday and was scheduled to visit Salem, Virginia, on Saturday.

The Trump team is projecting optimism based in part on early voting numbers and thinks he can be competitive against Democrat Kamala Harris in both states — New Mexico in particular, if he sweeps swing states Nevada and Arizona. That hope comes even though neither New Mexico nor Virginia has been carried by a GOP nominee for the White House since George W. Bush in 2004.

Votes cast for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in Ohio will not be counted despite her name appearing on the state’s ballot in Tuesday’s election after an appeals court panel denied her motion seeking to force the election chief to tally them.

The three-judge panel on the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday against her request for an injunction targeting Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Friday in a dispute over the person listed as her running mate on the ballot.

Stein filed as an independent presidential candidate in Ohio because the Green Party lost state recognition several years ago. She listed Anita Rios — the party’s 2014 nominee for governor — as a placeholder running mate until Butch Ware was nominated at the national convention Aug. 17.

Less than a week before the United States chooses its next president, American citizens living in faraway Israel know exactly who they hope it will be: Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Recent polls show that a majority of Israelis, 66 percent according to one conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 News, dream of the days when the former president inhabited the White House.

Trump prioritised Israel during his previous term, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and helping to normalise ties between Israel and several Arab states under the so-called Abraham Accords.

Now, many Israelis believe Trump will offer yet more support as the country battles Iran-backed militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as Iran itself.

Businesses were boarding up in Washington as the US capital braced for Tuesday’s knife-edge presidential election — and any potential repeat of the shocking violence that erupted in the wake of 2020’s vote.

City authorities have warned of a “fluid, unpredictable security environment” in the days and possibly weeks after the polls close, adding that they do not expect a winner between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump to be declared on Election Day.

The specter of January 6, 2021 — the day that Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, seeking to overturn the former president’s election loss to Joe Biden — hangs heavy over the preparations.

“In many respects, our preparations for 2024 started on January 7 of 2021,” Christopher Rodriguez, Washington’s assistant city administrator, told a city council briefing on election preparedness last week.

Four years ago Washington was repeatedly rocked by at-times violent demonstrations, from the Black Lives Matter protests during the pandemic-hit summer of 2020, up until the deadly Capitol riot.

Violence in the West Bank — occupied by Israel since 1967 — has surged since the Gaza war erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Hamas’s attack on Israel last year resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s response has led to the deaths of 43,259 Palestinians in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the United Nations.

For the wider world, the US election is all about who gets to move into the White House, but for many Americans, the battle for control of Congress is just as important — and looks set to go down to the wire.

While the presidential race sucks up all the oxygen, hundreds of congressional districts nationwide will determine whether the incoming leader gets a unified government dedicated to enacting his or her agenda — or bureaucratic deadlock.

“Congressional elections are just as important as the presidential race because Congress creates and passes the laws that directly impact people’s lives,” said Corryn Freeman of Future Coalition, an organization that supports youth activists nationwide.

“The public should pay close attention since control of Congress determines the direction of key issues like health care, education and climate policy — often having a more immediate effect than presidential decisions.”

The US Capitol, the neoclassical citadel of American democracy overlooking Washington’s National Mall, is divided into the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are up for grabs — and a 100-member upper chamber, the Senate, where 34 seats are available.

With just a few days left for the November 5 polls, the 2024 US Presidential election has already set records for pre-Election Day votes. While Republicans have been excitedly urging people to take part in early voting, things are looking great for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pollings are now suggesting that the Democratic presidential nominee is significantly ahead among those who have already voted either through absentee, mail-in or in-person ballots. Recent national polling from ABC News/Ipsos, The New York Times/Sienna College and CNN show that Harris is leading Trump by 62 per cent to 33 per cent; 59 per cent to 40 per cent; and 61 per cent to 36 per cent respectively.

American intelligence officials on Friday blamed Russia for a fake video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times, the latest in a series of disinformation campaigns in the final stretch of the US election.

The United States is on heightened alert for a potential flood of falsehoods from Kremlin-aligned actors in the closing days of a polarizing race between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the top election official in the swing state, said a video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have cast multiple ballots for Harris was an example of “targeted disinformation.”

The 20-second clip features a man saying in a stilted, robotic delivery: “We are from Haiti. We came to America six months ago, and we already have our American citizenship — we’re voting Kamala Harris.”

Raffensperger said the “obviously fake” video was likely a production of “Russian troll farms,” while American intelligence officials directly blamed “Russian influence actors.”

A federal judge on Friday sent a lawsuit seeking to halt billionaire Elon Musk’s $1 million giveaways to registered US voters back to a state court in Pennsylvania.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has pressed ahead with the sweepstakes while the lawsuit filed by Philadelphia’s chief prosecutor is pending, giving $1 million to a Michigan man on Friday and promising to continue the daily awards until Election Day.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, sued Musk and his pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC, this week, calling the $1 million giveaways to registered voters in election battleground states “an illegal lottery scheme.”

Musk’s lawyers filed a motion seeking to move the case to federal court but District Court Judge Gerald Pappert batted it back to state court on Friday, saying that was the proper jurisdiction.

The Justice Department warned Musk and his America PAC last week that the sweepstakes may violate federal law, which prohibits paying people to register to vote.

Republican candidate Donald Trump announced Friday that Kennedy family scion and notorious vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would play a “big role” in his administration if he wins next week’s election.

Speaking to reporters outside an upscale halal restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, Trump exuded confidence in Kennedy, who has spent two decades fueling vaccine disinformation, claiming he had the perfect credentials for a high-level job.

“He’s going to have a big role in health care,” Trump declared, adding with a trademark flourish: “He knows about it better than anybody.”

Trump noted that Kennedy has “got some views that I happen to agree with very strongly and I have for a long time,” but he dodged questions on whether he specifically endorsed Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric.

Kennedy, a former Democrat, ran as an independent earlier in this election cycle before dropping his campaign in August to support the Republican tycoon.

With just a few days ahead of the US presidential elections, Vice President Kamala Harris called for the disqualification of former President Donald Trump after the Republican nominee pushed violent rhetoric against ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney. While holding a rally in Arizona on Thursday, Trump was asked for his take on Cheney’s endorsement of Harris.

Harris reiterated that “I love Gen Z, I really do” to win over young voters, some of whom will be voting for the first time on November 5.

Young people are “rightly impatient for change” over gun violence and the climate problem, she continued.

Harris concluded by urging her followers to text their friends, knock on doors, and encourage their loved ones to cast their ballots.

She asserted that “your vote is your voice, and your voice is your power.”

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has confirmed that her office is investigating former US President Donald Trump’s comments on Liz Cheney. She noted that Trump might have violated state laws that prohibit death threats.

Last night Trump said that violated state laws that prohibit death threats. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analysing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Mayes told reporters on Friday.

However, she added it was not yet clear whether the comment amounted to protected free speech or a criminal threat. “That’s the question, whether it did cross the line. It’s deeply troubling,” she added.

While addressing the rally in Michigan, Trump said that he will “prevent World War III from happening. “We will teach our children to love our country and to honour our history and to always respect our great American flag,” Trump said.

He said he would support legislation that would impose a penalty of one year in prison for burning the American flag. It is pertinent to note that the US Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that flag-burning is constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment.

“We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” he added.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has been travelling with Donald Trump on his private jet today, as reports swirl that the former independent candidate is set for a prominent position in a potential second Trump administration.

The reports started to gain momentum after Trump said on Thursday that RFK Jr can “do anything he wants” in his government. “He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants – everything. I think it’s great,” the former president said at a rally in Arizona.

Headed to Michigan and Wisconsin with @realDonaldTrump and @RobertKennedyJr. Let’s go!🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/v9IkXqzWdJ

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) November 1, 2024

Despite facing backlash for suggesting that Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman and major Republican critic, should have guns firing at her, Trump reiterated his criticisms against her.  While addressing the Michigan rally, the former president called Cheney a “war hawk”. He went on to slam former Vice President Dick Cheney for being responsible for massive losses of life across the Middle East when he was George W Bush’s vice president.

“Kamala is campaigning with warmongers like Liz Cheney….she picks Liz Cheney, whose father virtually destroyed the Middle East,” Trump said.

In his first term, Trump says, Cheney was always telling him, “We should attack this nation, that nation, nations that people have never even heard of we should attack…but if you give Liz Cheney a gun and put her into battle facing the other side with guns facing at her, she wouldn’t have the courage or the strength…to even look the enemy in the eye. ‘Oh, we ought to go attack Iran, Iraq, everybody.’ That’s why I broke up with her. All she wanted to do was to go to war with everybody…”

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., arrives, with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, to vote at the Teton County Library during the Republican primary election Aug. 16, 2022, in Jackson Hole, Wyo. File image/ AP

As Trump is still speaking in Michigan, Kamala Harris will be speaking again soon in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Catch her address live.

Watch Live: Vice President Harris speaks in Little Chute, Wisconsin https://t.co/b2qEyN97BX

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) November 1, 2024

With just 4 days left in the upcoming US Presidential Elections, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said on Friday that mail ballots missing the correct date will not be counted this election. The move is considered as a major win for the Republicans.

The state’s highest court put a lower court ruling on pause that said a requirement that mail voters write the date they filled out the ballot on their ballot envelopes goes against the Pennsylvania Constitution. Voting rights groups argued that the ruling would disenfranchise thousands of voters in past elections.

Kamala Harris’s VP pick Tim Walz will make tops in every battleground state in the final days before Tuesday’s election. He will hold his final campaign in Pennsylvania on the morning of Election Day before attending Vice President Kamala Harris’ election night event in Washington, DC, CNN reported.

Here’s what his schedule looks like:

• Saturday: Walz will travel to Las Vegas in the morning, followed by Flagstaff and Tuscon, Arizona, later in the day.
• Sunday: Walz will travel to North Carolina and Georgia, which includes a joint rally in the Atlanta metro area with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
• Monday: Walz will travel to Wisconsin and Michigan.
• Tuesday: Walz will be in Pennsylvania on Election Day morning, then an event at Howard University in Washington, DC, with Harris in the evening.

Tim Walz at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, October 28, 2024. Reuters

While holding a rally in the state of Michigan, former US President Donald Trump had a bizarre exchange with a heckler.

A woman shouts something unintelligible before Trump stops speaking and says: “You want to marry me?” “She wants to marry me what the hell?” he responded.

“Let me ask the [former] first lady if that would be ok… it’s ok with me but let me get permission,” Trump furthered.

Donald Trump- File
Image- AP

A survey released recently by the major US pollster Rasmussen Reports indicates that the Republican candidate is leading in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina.

If the election were held today, the poll shows that 49 percent of Pennsylvania voters would support Trump, while 47 percent would choose Harris.

Similarly, in Nevada, Trump has a 2-point advantage, with both candidates receiving the same percentages as in Pennsylvania.

In North Carolina, which is one of the swing states and was won by Trump in 2020, he currently leads by 3 points, with 50 percent of voters favoring him compared to 47 percent for Harris.

“There is no doubt that one of the candidates– Trump– is way more dangerous than the other,” Greta Thunberg said in a post on social media platform X.

But she bashed sitting President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their backing of Israel and its offensive in Gaza.

“Let’s not forget that the genocide in Palestine is happening under the Biden and Harris administration, with American money and complicity,” Thunberg said.

“It is not in any way ‘feminist’, ‘progressive’ or ‘humanitarian’ to bomb innocent children and civilians — it is the opposite, even if it is a woman in charge.”

#UsaElection #USA2024 #StopArmingIsrael #FreePalestine #ClimateJusticeNow pic.twitter.com/RZU2nQfMXH

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) November 1, 2024

Harris is expected to lose some of the traditional support from Indian American voters, who have historically favored the Democrats, in the 2024 United States election, according to a new survey on the political attitudes of the community.

Meanwhile, Trump vowed to protect Hindu Americans and strengthen ties with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a message for the religious festival of Diwali.

Election officials in Cobb County, Georgia, missed a deadline to send mail ballots to at least 3,000 voters, NBC News reported citing a new lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with the ACLU of Georgia and the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a lawsuit against Cobb County election officials this morning. They are seeking relief for over 3,000 voters who did not receive their ballots in the mail on time.

President Joe Biden tried to explain this week that he doesn’t really think Donald Trump’s supporters are “garbage,” but that doesn’t mean that other people don’t believe the label occasionally fits.

“I would say that some of them are garbage,” said Samantha Leister, 32, who went to see Kamala Harris at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

As for the rest of them? Leister, whose parents and father-in-law are backing Trump, says they are “misguided.”

That same day, at Trump’s rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the idea of voting for Harris was impossible to fathom.

“I just think they are uneducated, and they believe all the lies,” said Shawn Vanderheyden, 44, who went to see Trump with his wife and two young daughters. “It’s unfortunate.”

Vanderheyden still has faith in some people who are supporting the Democratic vice president, saying “hopefully they open their eyes.”

The enduring truth of American politics — one that will undoubtedly outlast the controversy over Biden’s comments and this year’s presidential campaign — is that many Trump and Harris voters view one another with disdain and suspicion. At best, they feel confused by people supporting the other party and anxious about the country’s future after the election.

Donald Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights central to his closing argument before Election Day, using demeaning language and misrepresentations to paint an exceedingly narrow slice of the U.S. population as a threat to national identity.

The former president and Republican nominee’s campaign and aligned political action committees have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising that attacks Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris for her previous statements supporting transgender rights.

His rally speeches now feature a spoof video mocking trans people and their place in the U.S. military. The montage, interspersed with clips of the Vietnam War movie “Full Metal Jacket,” typically draws loud boos at his rallies, as do Trump’s false claims about female athletes and his mocking impression of what he says is a trans woman lifting weights.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will host dueling rallies within seven miles of one another on Friday night in the Milwaukee area as part of a final push for votes in swing-state Wisconsin’s largest county.

Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in Wisconsin, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020. One reason for his defeat was a drop in support in those Milwaukee suburbs and an increase in Democratic votes in the city.

“Both candidates recognize that the road to the White House runs directly through Milwaukee County,” said Hilario Deleon, chair of the county’s Republican Party.

The dueling rallies — Trump is in downtown Milwaukee and Harris is in a suburb — may be the candidates’ last appearances in battleground Wisconsin before Election Day. Both sides say the race is once again razor tight for the state’s 10 electoral votes. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a point, or fewer than 23,000 votes.

It was absentee votes from Milwaukee, which typically are reported early in the morning after Election Day, that tipped Wisconsin for President Joe Biden in 2020.

Democrats know they must turn out voters in Milwaukee, also home to the state’s largest Black population, to counter Trump’s support in the suburbs and rural areas. Harris is hoping to replicate, and exceed, turnout from 2020 in the city, which voted 79% for Biden that year.

Trump is trying to cut into the Democrats’ margin. Deleon called it a “lose by less” mentality.

Kamala Harris has slammed her opponent Donald Trump for his comment on women, saying that it reflects that the Republican presidential nominee “does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix: “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”

At a rally in Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that he is “going to protect women whether they like it or not” despite his campaign urging him not to use the term “protector” because it was “inappropriate.”