US Election News LIVE: With 13 days to go, Trump ramps up rallies and Harris focuses on interviews

Donald Trump will be campaigning in Georgia, starting with a town hall at Christ Chapel in Zebulon, Georgia, followed by a rally in Duluth.

Kamala Harris will participate in a live CNN town hall near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, moderated by Anderson Cooper. An interview Harris did with Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo will also air at 2300 GMT.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, will be in Las Vegas,
Nevada, where he is holding a rally. Later, he will be in Reno to speak at a campaign gathering.

Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, is starting the day in his home state of Minnesota, where he has stopped to cast his vote. He will later head out to Louisville, Kentucky, where he will speak at a fundraiser.

Donald Trump has announced that he will be voting early this year, which is a change from his previous stance where he questioned the validity of early ballots.

In an interview with Fox News radio this morning, Trump mentioned that he still has mixed feelings about early voting, but added, “the main thing is you got to get out and you got to vote, and I’ll be voting early.”

The GOP hopes this surge of early votes will fix a mechanical problem that some in the party blame for costing it the 2020 presidential election and key races in 2022. Campaigns usually want their voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day so they can focus their resources on getting more marginal supporters to the polls at the last minute.

Republicans excelled at that before Trump turned against early in-person and mail voting in 2020, as he spun wild conspiracies about the process and convinced his supporters to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots.

On social media platform X (formerly Twitter), former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared a video where she explains why she thinks Kamala Harris is the right choice for the President.

Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a conspiracy theorist who dropped his bid as an independent candidate in this election and endorsed Trump, said in a post, “we need volunteers to make calls to fellow supporters in key states to tell them how, why + where to vote for Donald Trump.”

Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz attacked Trump over his alleged statement that he wants the kind of generals that German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had.

Gov. Walz: It’s just been reported that Donald Trump said ‘I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.’ As a 24-year veteran of our military, that makes me sick as hell, and it should make you sick. The guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into madness. This is the guy who… pic.twitter.com/dGsLljqlRK

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 23, 2024

Walz’s comments came after John Kelly, who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, said that the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and wanted the “kind of generals Hitler had” in a series of interviews published Tuesday (October 22).

According to CNN, the latest presidential polling and voter registration data suggests that only 3 per cent of the American electorate are undecided voters. The number is much lower than percentages noted at equivalent points in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Regardless, this small chunk of voters who aren’t sure who they want to cast their ballot for, could still flip the neck-and-neck elections.

Harris and Trump are among the most unpopular presidential contestants since 1956 with favourable ratings of 48 per cent and 50 per cent respectively, according to a Gallup poll.

Trump’s rating is similar to the 2020 election but better than in the 2016 election when he was favoured by all-time low of 36 per cent voters.

The findings are based on a Gallup survey during October 1-12 in which people were asked to rate Trump and Harris on a scale ranging from +5 to -5.

READ MORE: Trump-Harris favorability among lowest for US presidential elections in 68 years: Gallup poll

Kamala Harris faces voters’ questions at a live forum Wednesday in must-win Pennsylvania as the vice president and her rival Donald Trump battle for undecided voters in the closing stretch of an extremely close White House race.

The pace of campaigning has been intensifying in the electoral fight that is nearing its November 5 apogee after twists, turns and a fair bit of drama.

Harris will be near Philadelphia for a CNN town hall-type meeting with voters, but there is not one planned for Trump despite the news channel’s offer to hold a separate forum for him.

Pennsylvania is a coveted prize for the candidates in the election in which more than 240 million Americans are expected to vote, and Harris and Trump have made repeated appearances there and across swing states.

Microsoft co-founder and one of the richest persons in the world, Bill Gates, has privately donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organisation supporting Kamala Harris’ US presidential run.

A report by the New York Times quoted three people with knowledge of the matter as saying that Gates has said that he made his donation to Future Forward, the main outside fund-raising group supporting Harris.

As per a report by Forbes, with his donation, Gates has joined the list of over 80 billionaires supporting Harris in her fight against Donald Trump for the Presidential post.

McDonald’s received scathing one-star reviews after Donald Trump’s one day working visit.

Following the former president’s visit on Sunday, October 20, Yelp temporarily disabled the comment area for the Feasterville, Pennsylvania-based restaurant.

Trump serviced customers’ orders through the drive-thru window while posing as an employee of McDonald’s.

Former President Donald Trump has accused the UK’s Labour Party of “blatant foreign interference” in the next U.S. presidential election in a complaint he filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

According to Trump, they’re trying to help Kamala Harris win the election.

European nations are nervously eyeing the  nail-biting US election that will bring the radically different approach of either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to the White House.

Trump has threatened to upend NATO, cut a quick deal with Russia over Ukraine and impose trade tariffs if he wins November’s presidential election.

Harris has stressed the importance of NATO and decried Trump’s tariffs as a hidden sales tax.

It is no secret that most European officials would prefer the more predictable Democratic vice president rather than the volatile Republican take the reins at such a perilous moment.

Jack Sweeney’s Instagram and Threads accounts, which tracked the jets of celebrities, including Taylor Swift and Elon Musk, have been suspended by Mark Zuckerberg.

Sweeney accused Meta of behaving arbitrarily and “without transparency,” claiming that he has yet to get an answer.

Jet Tracking on Threads and Instagram got Zucked pic.twitter.com/EQtCmnBaOI

— Jack Sweeney (@Jxck_Sweeney) October 22, 2024

Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has stated that his former boss “falls into the general definition of fascist” just two weeks before election day.

In a series of coordinated interviews on Tuesday, John Kelly, a retired Marine general and presidential assistant from 2017 to 2019, took the unprecedented move. In an interview with the New York Times, he claimed that the previous Republican president is the “only president that has all but rejected what America is all about” and “prefers the dictator approach to government.” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Times that Kelly had “beclowned” himself and that his stories were “debunked.”

Obama uploaded a video on X that shows him casting his ballot in Chicago.

Obama is seen in the video saying, “I’m showing you how easy it is,” as he greets neighbours and law enforcement as he makes his way to the mailbox.

When he places his ballot in the mailbox, he says, “I trust the U.S. Postal Service to get this done.”

I voted by mail – it was easy and a great excuse to say hi to some neighbors. If you're voting by mail like me, get your ballot in the mail right away. No matter how you vote, make sure you have a plan and get it done: https://t.co/V3uLF7Ypg1 pic.twitter.com/McWv88dQuG

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 22, 2024

While young women have leaned more Democratic than Republican, this year’s election could see a historic gender gap as Harris tries to become the country’s first female president and the fight over abortion rights remains an animating issue.

“Men shouldn’t have a say in what women can and can’t do with their bodies,” said Wenthur, 18.

And in Allegheny County — which has voted for a Democratic president in the past five election cycles — turnout of young women will be crucial in the country’s largest battleground state. As of Oct. 21, the county has registered more than 88,670 18- to 24-year-olds this election cycle, and more than 183,232 25- to 34-year-olds, according to state data. Combined they represent almost 30% of the county’s voting population of more than 943,221 registered voters.

Five days before the expected election day on November 5, Republican nominee Donald Trump is slated to take part in the “Tucker Carlson Live” tour in Arizona on October 31.

Trump’s running mate JD Vance, along with Kid Rock, Charlie Kirk, and Megyn Kelly, will accompany him on the “Tucker Carlson Live” tour.

Trump said the United States is “a failing country” and that Democrats will keep it that way.

He promises to return the nation to its previous splendour.

The audience’s applause keeps interrupting Trump, who is briefly muffled before going back to Harris.

Jon Stewart, presenter of The Daily Show, is calling on the public to take notice of former US President Donald Trump’s remarks regarding the use of the military to target “the enemy from within.”

The media is currently furious with the former president for his recent actions, which include his offensive rally statements about Arnold Palmer and his McDonald’s marketing stunt.

Former President Barack Obama has been critiquing Donald Trump’s immigration statements at the event in Detroit.

He claims that the only answer from Trump and his running mate JD Vance is blaming immigrants.

Obama claims that immigration is a serious problem that requires attention.

US President Joe Biden said that global leaders, whom he met recently, are terrified of what Donald Trump’s return to the White House could do to democratic rule around the world.

“Every international meeting I attend,” Biden said, specifically referencing his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “They pull me aside — one leader after the other, quietly — and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win.’ My democracy is at stake.”

Biden made the statement in New Hampshire’s capital of Concord on Tuesday where he was supposed to give a speech on healthcare.

Four years after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, America’s body politic is swimming in vote-rigging conspiracies pushed by a man who still refuses to admit that he lost.

Now an Arizona county is trying to keep its head above the water with a $32 million election center that includes a center-piece counting room made largely of glass, nicknamed “the fish tank”.

This state-of-the-art building in the small town of Florence will allow anyone to watch the entire ballot-handling process — the sorting, verification, and counting — on November 5.

Dozens of cameras are also trained on the space, with live streams available for all to see on the internet.

Donald Trump may have become involved with a porn star, but if elected president he could try shutting down the entire industry, adult film stars are warning in a push to get young men to vote against the Republican next month.

The #HandsOffMyPorn campaign has spent $200,000 so far on ads to run on adult websites, warning viewers that prominent allies of Trump want to ban pornography and lock up the stars who bring it to vivid, graphic life.

And they want Americans to fight back at the ballot box.

“If you care about adult entertainment, if you consume or create adult entertainment, you gotta vote November 5,” porn actress Siouxsie Q told AFP. “There’s no two ways about it.”

The initiative comes in response to Project 2025, a blueprint for reshaping the federal government should Trump, the Republican nominee, win the election.

Page five of the 900-page tome’s foreword states: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

Four years after a US presidential race awash with misinformation, Americans face more of the same in the closing weeks of this year’s campaign, with claims about ballot irregularities and fraud likely to dominate.

With conspiracy theories already bubbling in the too-close-to-call contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the vote count is expected to take days, giving oxygen to online rancor about the electoral process.

Social media users in states such as Texas are already misrepresenting early voting machine errors as evidence of wrongdoing. Republican former president Trump has also repeatedly accused Democrats of importing migrants to vote illegally for Harris on Election Day, November 5.

That narrative has gained massive traction, adding to years of election denialism after 2020, when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden but insisted falsely and against all evidence that he had won — a baseless claim he continues to make today.

Former Trump chief of staff John Kelly recently said that Trump had expressed to him during his presidency that he wished he had generals like Adolf Hitler’s. Walz responded to Kelly’s remarks.

“As a 24-year veteran of our military, that makes me sick as hell,” Walz stated. “The guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness.

President Joe Biden tore into his predecessor on Tuesday, suggesting that global leaders are terrified of what Donald Trump ‘s return to the White House could do to democratic rule around the world.

“Every international meeting I attend,” Biden said, specifically referencing his whirlwind trip to Germany last week, “They pull me aside — one leader after the other, quietly — and say, ‘Joe, he can’t win.’ My democracy is at stake.”

His voice rising, Biden then asked if “America walks away, who leads the world? Who? Name me a country.”

The comments came during what was supposed to be a rather staid speech on health care in New Hampshire. They were a dose of unfiltered politics at an event otherwise focused on Biden’s policy legacy with the race to replace him just two weeks from concluding. And they made clear that the president also sees not having Trump succeed him as an important piece of how he might go down in history.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is contesting against Republican nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election on November 5, said she thinks that America is ready for a woman of colour in the White House.

With less than two weeks left for the much-awaited US Presidential election, the contest is getting all the more exciting with both Democrat candidate Harris and Trump trying their best to woo voters.

Polls show a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump both nationally and in the seven key battleground states.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday that her team is prepared to challenge Donald Trump if he tries to prematurely declare victory in the 2024 election — but she’s first focused on beating the Republican nominee.

Harris spoke to NBC News just two weeks before Election Day, as part of a media blitz meant to deliver her closing argument before as many persuadable voters as possible. She said she was not concerned about the role sexism could play in the election, as she stands to be the first woman elected to the White House, and again defended President Joe Biden’s fitness for office.

Harris said the Democrats “have the resources and the expertise” should Trump try to subvert the election.

“This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the — a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and some 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some — were killed. This is a very serious matter,” she said.

The cutthroat US presidential election is likely to be won on the thinnest of margins, and polls showing gains by Republican Donald Trump among traditionally Democratic Black voters, particularly men, have made headlines.

One recent New York Times/Siena poll that set off alarm bells said Harris has only 78 percent Black support, compared to approximately 90 percent for President Joe Biden when he defeated Trump four years ago.

So, Harris will be counting on the enthusiasm of Black voters at cultural lynchpins like Howard — one of a network of HBCUs, or historically black colleges and universities, that emerged during the decades of racial segregation and continue to exert powerful influence.

The Democrat may even use Howard’s campus as her election night headquarters, according to NBC News.

Certainly, the homecoming festivities last weekend indicated strong support for Howard’s most famous living graduate, as vendors sold campaign merchandise and visitors took photos with cutouts of the vice president.

A federal appeals court upheld on Tuesday a conviction against a former New Mexico county commissioner for illegally entering the U.S. Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

A panel of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the 2022 conviction against Couy Griffin, of Tularosa, in a 2-1 decision.

Separately, Griffin has been banished from public office for aiding in insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, under a state district court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court in March refused to hear an appeal of the ruling.

Griffin, a cowboy pastor who rode to national political fame by embracing then-President Donald Trump with a series of horseback caravans, was convicted of the misdemeanor charge at a 2022 bench trial at U.S. District Court in Washington while being acquitted of disorderly conduct.

In an interview with Hallie Jackson of NBC News on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris stated that she believes the nation is prepared for a woman of colour to hold the White House and that she is not worried that sexism will influence the election next month.

At her official residence in the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., Harris declared, “You will see that there are men and women when you come to my events.”

She also added that in her experience, it is evident that people of all genders want to know if their president has a plan to secure America in light of our global standing and if their president has a plan to cut costs.

The state Election Commission reported a system lag during Wisconsin’s in-person early voting after the first day’s turnout was higher than anticipated.

In a statement, the election commission said that the WisVote system experienced a period of slowness which had been resolved. The system lag was related to demands on the WisVote system due to high turnout.

According to the commission, the staff members moved right away to increase system capacity in order to give a resolution, and this would not stop any voter from casting their ballot today as an in-person absentee.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday called his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris “lazy,” criticizing the vice president with a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms.

“Who the hell takes off when you have 14 days left,” Trump said at a campaign event in Doral, Florida, aimed at courting Latino voters. “She’s lazy. She’s lazy as hell.”

Harris was spending Tuesday in meetings in Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to sit for recorded interviews with Telemundo and NBC to air Tuesday evening. It was the first day in more than two weeks that the Democratic nominee had no public events scheduled after a run of more than 14 consecutive days of travel to political events in pivotal states, including a three-state run on Monday, starting in Pennsylvania, continuing to Michigan and ending in Wisconsin.

Bill Gates has contributed $50 million to Kamala Harris’ campaign, which was once supposed to be a private political donation.

Although he has yet to formally support Harris, the Microsoft founder confirmed the payment to The New York Times on Tuesday, stating that “this election is different.”

In a statement, Gates said that he supports candidates who demonstrate a clear commitment to improving health care, reducing poverty and fighting climate change in the U.S. and around the world.

Georgia’s top court declined on Tuesday to hear an expedited appeal by Republicans of a decision blocking a new rule that would have required poll workers to hand-count ballots, a change that voting rights groups warned could have caused chaos.

The decision also means that county-level officials in the state, one of seven battlegrounds expected to play a decisive role in the Nov. 5 presidential election, will not have enhanced authority to challenge precinct-level results.

Republican candidate Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss was the result of widespread fraud and his backers have filed a series of lawsuits across the U.S. challenging election rules.

The state Republican Party said in a statement that it did not plan an appeal of the decision before the election.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would make interest on car loans fully tax deductible for cars built in the United States, in his latest economic incentive to woo voters just two weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

“I will make interest on car loans fully tax deductible,” Trump said in remarks at a rally in North Carolina. “I am only going to do it if they build that particular product – namely an automobile – in the United States,” the former president said.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday said she would work to bring more funds to community banks to help Latino men secure small business loans, while Republican Donald Trump’s economic roundtable aimed at Latino voters devolved into a tirade of insults against his opponent.

Harris said in an interview with Telemundo that “we need to construct a strong economy that supports the working class.”

“I know that Hispanic men often have more difficulty securing loans from banks because of their connections and the fact that things aren’t necessarily set up so that they will qualify,” she said in an interview in English that was translated into Spanish. “For that reason, I’m focused on seeing what we can do to bring more capital to community banks that better understand the community so we can give them that kind of loans.”

In response to Trump’s claims that she was a socialist, she said: “I’m a capitalist. I’m a pragmatic capitalist.”

Trump, meanwhile, described Harris as “lazy,” railed against green energy and talked about “extreme” presidential power during remarks at his golf club in Doral, a Miami suburb.

Insisting President Joe Biden did not need congressional approval to curb illegal immigration, he said: “As president, you have tremendous — it’s called extreme power. You have extreme power.”

With just 14 days until the November 5 election, early voting numbers show Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump. A tracker maintained by the University of Florida reports that nearly 17 million people have already voted, with early voting underway across more than half of US states.

So far, Democrats are leading with 45.3 per cent of early votes, while Republicans account for 33.4 per cent, according to data from 24 states by party registration.