Trump defends New York rally widely condemned for racist remarks as a ‘love fest’ – US elections live

New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin.

In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%.

In Nevada, Trump received 48% support among likely voters, and Harris received 47%.

It is important to point out that these numbers are within the margins of error for these polls.

The United States Postal Service issued an alert on Tuesday urging voters who choose to vote by mail to send their ballots in by today.

In the message, USPS said that they “anticipate an uptick of ballots in the mail over the coming days” and recommended that voters who want to mail their ballots do so at least a week before their election office needs them to ensure it arrives in time.

“If a ballot is due on Election Day, the Postal Service recommends mailing the ballot by this Tuesday” 29 October, the postal service said.

USPS said that in 2020, 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days and 98.3% of ballots were delivered within three days.

Obama says he tells young American men voting is their birthright

Joanna Walters

Barack Obama has posted a clip on X of himself on The Pivot podcast where he recalls how he regularly talks to young men and tells them “do not let people think you do not belong.”

He said that he tells them that people with power, “fancy” titles and wealth are just the same as everyone else when you get up close to them. “They just folk,” he said.

The former US president, who is currently campaigning to get Kamala Harris elected to the White House next month, said that such young men are amazed when he tells them of some of the struggles of his youth and that “I was getting high, screwing around” and understands they are sometimes “not doing what they are supposed to do”. But then he tells them they have the power to make choices.

“There is no reason why you cannot pursue the dreams you want, and politics is part of that and voting is part of that. That’s your birthright as a citizen, do not give it away,” he said.

Joanna Walters

A federal judge today threw out a lawsuit by six Republican members of Congress seeking to make Pennsylvania election officials institute new checks confirming the identity of soldiers, sailors, and others who vote from overseas and to make sure they’re eligible.

US district judge Christopher Conner said he agreed with the defendants – Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Al Schmidt, and one of his top deputies – who argued there were no grounds to sue and that the case was launched too late and too close to Election Day, the Associated Press reports.

The Pennsylvania congressmen:

Provide no good excuse for waiting until barely a month before the election to bring this lawsuit,” Conner wrote.

More than 25,000 overseas ballots had already been sent out when the case was filed in late September, the judge noted.

The lawsuit was filed by six of the state’s eight Republican members of the US House: Representatives Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, GT Thompson, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly and Scott Perry. The other plaintiff is PA Fair Elections, a group led by Heather Honey, an election researcher whose work has fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures.

Joanna Walters

Donald Trump falsely said Democrats had staged a “coup” to force Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid, as his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, planned a rally in Washington DC, that will remind voters of the violent attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.

At an event at his Florida estate, his accusation that Democrats had unfairly forced Biden out of the race recalled Trump’s false claims that he had lost the 2020 election due to fraud, Reuters reports.

They stole the presidency of the United States. You can call it a coup, you can call it whatever. But they stole it. The way they took that away from him was not right,” Trump said.

Harris is due to hold a rally this evening at the Ellipse, a park near the White House where on 6 January 2021, Trump once again urged supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the US Capitol, where lawmakers were due to certify his loss.

Four people died in the ensuing riot, and one police officer who defended the Capitol died the following day. Trump has said if he is re-elected he would pardon the more than 1,500 participants who have been charged with crimes.

Harris will call on Americans tonight to “turn the page” on Trump while stressing her plans to lower costs and make the economy work for middle-class Americans, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters.

Hello, US election live blog readers, it’s a packed day on the campaign trail for all the candidates, with just a week left before election day next Tuesday. We’ll bring you the news as it happens.

Here’s where things stand:

• Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of George W Bush and granddaughter of George HW Bush, has revealed that she is campaigning for Kamala Harris. In an interview with People Magazine, Pierce Bush said that she is “hopeful” that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights”.

• Donald Trump held a press conference at his Florida residence and described the marathon New York rally that he held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan two days ago – which has been widely condemned for racist remarks from speakers – as a “love fest”. He said: “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

• JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has been rallying in Saginaw in the swing state of Michigan, 100 miles north of Detroit, and criticized opposing politicians calling Trump a fascist in the last week. That includes Harris, whom Vance, a US Senator from Ohio, called unqualified to be president.

• The White House announced that Joe Biden will travel to his childhood home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania for political engagements on Saturday. The US president has campaigned often in the city as a way of reminding the electorate of his working class roots and pro-union politics.

• Rapper 50 Cent said that he turned down a $3m offer to perform at Trump’s controversial rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, according to Variety magazine. Deadline also reported that 50 Cent also confirmed that he was also offered money to perform at the Republic National Convention in the summer, but turned it down because he prefers to stay away from party politics.

• New polling has found that Trump’s support among young Black men has decreased since August, while Harris’s has grown. A new NAACP survey, conducted between 11 and 17 October, found that 21% of Black men under 50 years old said they would for the former president, down from 27% in August. Harris’s support among this group jumped from 51% to 59 % over that same time frame, the researchers said.

• Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump Maga ally, is back on air hosting his podcast after being released from prison this morning. He served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena related to the investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump who were intent on overturning his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

• Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released today. And more than 48.6 million Americans have reportedly voted early in this year’s presidential election.

Chris Stein

Kamala Harris and her allies have lately stepped up their accusations that Donald Trump is a fascist.

They were aided last week by his former chief of staff John Kelly saying publicly that he believes his ex-boss met the definition of a politician who believes in the governing philosophy typically associated with the Nazis.

In Saginaw, Michigan on Tuesday, JD Vance accused Democrats of being disrespectful with that accusation, comparing it to the experience of a World War II veteran who had led the pledge of allegiance earlier in the event.

“Rather than persuade their fellow Americans, they’ve decided that they’re going to call their fellow Americans Nazis and fascists. And I think it’s disgusting … and a person who would close out her campaign by running and attacking her fellow Americans has no business leading the greatest nation on Earth,” Vance said.

“It occurs to me that when they attack us as Nazis, it’s so disgraceful because there are people in this room right now who have grandparents, who have parents, or who they themselves fought in World War II.”

During his speech on Tuesday, former president Donald Trump described his New York rally, which has been widely condemned for racist remarks, as a “love fest”.

“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden …” Trump told a crowd at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

“Politicans that have been doing this for a long time said there’s never been an event so beautiful, it was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved.”

Chris Stein

Joe Biden has been underwater in public opinion polls for most of his presidency, a problem that came to a head in his disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June, which set off a chain of events that led to Kamala Harris taking his place atop the Democratic ticket.

JD Vance’s message to voters in Saginaw today – he’s focusing most of his time talking about Harris and not her running mate Tim Walz, who he debated earlier this month – is that Harris and Biden are substantively the same – and the vice-president has nothing new to offer.

“I think the fact that so many of our fellow citizens are telling us they’re worse off, and they’re telling us that because they are, that explains why Kamala Harris is going around running as far away as she can from the policies of Joe Biden” Vance said.

He continued, “in fact, you know, between her copying Donald Trump’s policies and her pretending that she doesn’t even know who Joe Biden is, I’m half convinced that tomorrow on the campaign trail, Kamala Harris is going to show up in a long red tie and a red Maga hat, realizing that the American people just haven’t had it anymore.”

Vance mocked Harris, saying: “She’s copying all of Donald Trump’s policy, she might as well copy [his] style too. You know, just complete the bit Kamala. It’s not working so far. Just lean into it a little bit more.”