Trump-Harris polls show ties in battleground states

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump hosted rallies within 7 miles of each other Friday night in the Milwaukee area as part of a fevered 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.

Air Force Two, the vice presidential aircraft, touched down at Milwaukee’s airport about 40 minutes ahead of Trump’s private plane, which he has dubbed Trump Force One. The planes parked near each other, but the candidates did not cross paths; Harris’ motorcade was gone before Trump landed.

Both venues drew roughly the same number of people, based on crowd estimates provided by each campaign. Trump took the stage seven minutes before Harris.

The two rallies — Trump was in downtown Milwaukee and Harris in a suburb — may be the candidates’ last appearances in 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.

There are similarities between former President Donald Trump and President Biden on long-term armed forces strategy, but in the run-up to the 2024 election, stark differences in Harris and Trump’s view of the military’s role have emerged.

Trump, having been commander-in-chief, has a policy record and views on the military. But former advisers with whom he clashed during his presidency have warned that a second Trump administration could look much different than the first. 

Harris doesn’t have as much in her background that illuminates her views of the role of the active-duty military. But it’s likely a Harris administration would follow the norms of previous presidents and the national defense strategy under President Biden. 

Read more about the candidates’ policy positions on the issue. 

Legalizing marijuana at the national level is generally popular with Americans, and Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have talked about the issue during the 2024 campaign.

Trump hasn’t said he’d support legalizing recreational weed nationally, but said in September that he would vote for a Florida ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana use. He has also said he wants to continue research into medical uses of marijuana.

Harris hasn’t made legalizing marijuana a central theme of her campaign, but she has said the drug should no longer be criminalized. While district attorney of San Francisco in 2002 when the drug was still illegal in California, Harris prosecuted marijuana offenses. As California attorney general, an office she was elected to in 2010, Harris opposed allowing marijuana to be sold for recreational use. As senator in 2019, she introduced legislation to legalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent weed offenses. 

Read more about the candidates’ policy positions on the issue. 

Vice President Kamala Harris promised to eliminate unnecessary college degree requirements for federal jobs through an executive order on her first day in office if she wins the presidency. While Harris has frequently called for getting rid of such requirements, it’s the first time she has said she would do so through an executive order. 

Harris made the pledge while campaigning in Janesville, Wisconsin, on Friday with union workers. 

“A college degree is not the only measure of the skills and the experience of the qualified worker,” she said. “One of the things I’m doing on Day 1, because I can do it by executive order, is I will eliminate unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and I will challenge the private sector to do the same.” 

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to freeze a decision from Pennsylvania’s highest court that required election officials to count provisional ballots cast by people whose mail ballots are invalid because they lacked mandatory secrecy envelopes.

The order from the justices means that election officials in the key battleground state must tally provisional ballots submitted on Election Day by voters who returned defective mail ballots, either because they didn’t include secrecy envelopes or failed to sign or date the outer envelope.

A 55-year-old man accused of attempting to run over election canvassers in October has been charged with assault and ethnic intimidation. 

The man allegedly was looking for campaign materials for former President Donald Trump, but encountered Harris-Walz campaign volunteer. He allegedly yelled derogatory insults at the group, including anti-LGBTQ slurs, and police said he told them when Trump wins, he would “exterminate” people like them. He then returned to his vehicle and accelerated toward the canvassers, who jumped out of the way, authorities said. 

The man was arraigned Thursday on charges that include three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon – a four-year felony – and three counts of ethnic intimidation – a two-year felony.

Read full coverage from CBS Detroit.

More than 68 million people have already voted by mail or in-person, according to the latest data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Nearly 32 million mail ballots have been returned, while more than 36 million people have voted in-person. 

Of the 25 states that report party registration, more than 13 million people who have voted are Democrats, more than 12 million are Republican and nearly 8.6 million associate with a minor political party or no party. 

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office said it is looking into whether former President Donald Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney violated state law. 

“The office has no additional comments to make at this time,” a spokesperson added. 

Trump made the remarks during a campaign stop in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday.

Trump’s final rally of his 2024 campaign will be in Grand Rapids, Michigan — the same city where his final rallies were in 2016 and 2020.

He’s expected to speak at the Van Andel Arena at 10:30 p.m. EST on Monday.

In a sign of the diminishing real estate of the campaign, both former President Donald Trump and Gov. Tim Walz had to share the same tarmac today at Detroit’s Wayne County Airport.

Walz’s motorcade drove by Trump’s plane on the way to their own plane on the tarmac. The motorcade slowed down as they passed the Trump plane.

Trump staffers were deplaning as the motorcade passed by. Afterward, they could be seen taking photos of the Harris-Walz plane. Then Trump deplaned and departed with the Harris-Walz plane still on the tarmac.

Michigan has 16 electoral votes.

by Olivia Rinaldi and Shawna Mizelle

Vice President Kamala Harris responded for the first time to former President Donald Trump’s comments about former Rep. Liz Cheney, saying his rhetoric targeting his political opponents has grown increasingly violent.

“This must be disqualifying,” she told reporters after arriving in Wisconsin for a series of campaign events. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.”

Harris said she has not spoken to Cheney since Trump attacked her during a live interview with Tucker Carlson on Thursday but called her a “true patriot” who has put the nation above her party.

“I know Liz Cheney well enough to know that she is tough, she is incredibly courageous and has shown herself to be a true patriot at a very difficult time in our country,” Harris said.

The vice president accused Trump of pitting Americans against one another and said he spends a “considerable amount of time plotting his revenge” against political opponents.

“His enemies list has grown longer. His rhetoric has grown more extreme and he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people,” Harris said.

She reiterated her plan to “be a president for all Americans.”

“America deserves better than what Donald Trump is offering,” Harris said. “America deserves a president who understands our role and responsibility to our people and to the rest of the world to be a model.”

In addition to criticizing Trump for his remarks about Cheney, Harris condemned her Republican opponent for saying during a Nevada rally that if he is elected, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., would serve in the second Trump administration to “work on heath and women’s health.”

Harris said Kennedy has “routinely promoted junk science and crazy conspiracy theories” and “is the exact last person in America who should be setting health care policy for America’s families and children.”

Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday afternoon, as he faces backlash over comments he made about former Rep. Liz Cheney.

Speaking with Tucker Carlson about foreign policy, Trump called Cheney a “war hawk” and said, “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face.” But even in trying to clean up his comments, Trump, who has long expressed disdain toward Cheney since she’s been so heavily critical of him, couldn’t refrain from calling her “dumb.” 

“All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself,” Trump wrote. “It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!’ Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so. He’s caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That’s not what we want running our Country!”

Trump is set to hold two campaign rallies on Sunday as the candidates enter the final stretch to Election Day. His campaign announced the former president will deliver remarks first in Kinston, North Carolina, and then in Macon, Georgia.

North Carolina and Georgia are two battleground states that could decide the outcome of the election.

The battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives is remarkably close. Republicans currently have an eight-seat majority over Democrats.

But both parties are looking to states like New York, where several tightly contested congressional races could change the balance of power in Congress.

Scott MacFarlane traveled to the Hudson Valley to find out why. Watch his report below.

Voters in Missouri, Nebraska and Alaska will soon decide whether workers there should be entitled to paid sick leave.

If approved, the ballot measures would allow many workers to accrue paid time off, a benefit supporters say means workers — especially those with low-paying jobs — would no longer have to fear losing wages or possibly the jobs themselves for getting sick. Proponents say such policies benefit the broader public, too, allowing workers to stay home when sick or to care for ill family members to stem the spread of infectious diseases.

But opponents say the measures force new burdens on employers, who should be the ones deciding which benefits are best.

Read full coverage from KFF Health News.

by Samantha Liss

In a call with reporters Friday, senior Harris campaign officials said they have hundreds of lawyers at the ready throughout the country in case of election challenges and other legal issues.

“We have been building our team really ever since 2020, so we now have hundreds of lawyers throughout the country, lawyers throughout the battleground states, already working around the clock to protect our voters and ready to go into court,” said one senior campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We have literally thousands of pages of pleadings customized to particular states ready to address literally anything and everything that the Trump campaign throws at us. So we’re ready for an active post-elect, but whatever they do, we’re ready to hold them accountable,” the campaign official added. 

Harris campaign officials also said they fully expect Trump to declare victory Tuesday night, regardless of where the results stand. 

“We fully expect that he will, but this should be no surprise because he lies all the time and he wants to sow doubt about a loss that he anticipates is coming,” another senior campaign official said.

U.S. officials have determined Russia was behind a video that circulated online in recent days purporting to show Haitian immigrants claiming that they illegally voted for Kamala Harris.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement, “Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia.”

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans,” the agencies said.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Thursday that the video was “obviously fake” disinformation.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Russia and other U.S. adversaries have ramped up efforts to use social media to sow distrust in the election.

by Robert Legare, Nicole Sganga and Graham Kates

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, earns a six figure salary as governor of Minnesota, but his net worth is on par with that of the typical American family, according to a federal disclosure form filed in August.

Walz is much less well-off than Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance. And Walz is miles behind Nelson Rockefeller, who in the 1970s was veep under President Gerald Ford and who is regarded as perhaps the richest vice president in U.S. history by virtue of his family fortune.

Read more here.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it will send federal personnel to monitor polls in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states to ensure federal voting rights laws are being followed for Tuesday’s general election.

The effort is coordinated by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and workers from the agency, U.S. attorneys’ offices and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management will be among the monitors.

They are being dispatched to areas in all seven battleground states, as well as 20 others. The Justice Department said it regularly deploys staff to watch for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections.

Vice presidential candidate JD Vance, 40, has amassed a multimillion fortune in the two decades since he left behind the hardscrabble childhood he described in his bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Vance parlayed his tough upbringing into a life of rare privilege after attending Yale Law School, where he met his wife, Usha, and made connections with wealthy patrons, including the right-leaning billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. After graduating from Yale, Vance was hired by Thiel’s firm Mithril Capital, marking the start of a career in venture capital that helped build his fortune.

Read more here.

Former President Donald Trump is set to visit Dearborn, Michigan — the nation’s largest Arab-majority city — on Friday, according to a local business owner who first insisted the former president call for peace in Lebanon before hosting him.

Metro Detroit is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which President Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

While Vice President Kamala Harris has been working through surrogates to ease community tensions, Trump’s visit will mark the first by either candidate, according to a local leader, Osama Siblani. Earlier this year, Harris met with the city’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, though their discussion took place outside Dearborn.

Read more here.

In dueling comments, spokespeople for the Trump and Harris campaigns responded to the former president’s remarks about former Rep. Liz Cheney, and the backlash the comments have sparked.

In an interview with MSNBC on Friday, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris’ campaign, said the former president treats those who oppose him as enemies and accused Trump of being “all-consumed by his grievances.”

“He’s spent the last month talking about the ‘enemy from within’ the United States. And now, he’s going after Liz Cheney with this dangerous, violent rhetoric,” Sams said. “I mean, think about the contrast between these two candidates. You have Donald Trump who is talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet. This is the difference in this race.”

But Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, accused the media of distorting the former president’s criticism of Cheney in an effort to aid Harris’ presidential run days before the election.

“President Trump is 100% correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” Leavitt said in a statement. “This is the continuation of the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris.”

Julia Ramsey is used to a deluge of election-related mail. Campaign mailings have clogged her Pennsylvania mailbox day after day for months, but one she received this week stood out from the rest.

It made Ramsey feel like she was being “vote shamed.”

The mailing was among millions sent this week by a pair of tax exempt organizations, letters purporting to be “Voting Report Cards.” They show whether each recipient voted in recent elections, as well as a table of what appears to be redacted neighbors’ names, addresses and voting histories.

Read more here.

For the first time ever, cryptocurrency could play a role in choosing the next president. As digital currencies have become more mainstream, crypto investors are emerging as a key new voting bloc.

Anywhere from 7% to 21% of Americans own crypto — that equates to 18 million on the low end, and roughly 50 million on the high end. According to research from crypto exchange Gemini, 73% say a political candidate’s stance toward the industry will influence their vote.

The potential for crypto voters to move the needle is particularly noteworthy in swing states. Organizations like Stand with Crypto, a pro-crypto Political Action Committee are signing up “crypto advocates” in critical battleground states. In fact, Arizona and Georgia each have three times as many of these advocates than the number of votes President Biden won by in 2020.

Read more here.

U.S. payrolls slumped sharply in October, weighed down by people not working as a result of two hurricanes and a major labor dispute.

The U.S. added just 12,000 jobs in October, well below economists’ estimate of 100,000, marking the slowest month for hiring since December 2020. Payroll gains for September were revised down to 223,000, from 254,000. 

Unemployment in October held steady at 4.1%. The lackluster report reflects a dent in hiring attributed to Hurricanes Milton and Helene, and the Boeing machinists strike, which temporarily prevented some people from working in Florida and North Carolina.

Read more here.

In the final days of the presidential campaign, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will hit the airwaves in support of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Both she and former President Donald Trump have emphasized the importance of the Keystone State to their chances of winning the election. Shapiro, who was among the finalists to be on the ticket with Harris, has been a vocal supporter of her campaign.

Now, he’s a key voice in her final push to win the state in an ad on digital platforms and on television.

“Do you want more chaos or, like me, are you ready for some common sense?” Shapiro says in the ad, echoing a Harris campaign theme targeting Trump for his behavior while in office.

by Aaron Navarro and Graham Kates

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said a video purporting to show Haitians claiming that they illegally voted for Kamala Harris is fake and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.

In the video posted to social media on Thursday, a man claims that he and others featured in the footage are from Haiti, arrived in the United States six months ago, obtained U.S. citizenship within that time, and are voting for Kamala Harris in multiple Georgia counties.

Raffensperger said his office was working with state and federal partners to identify the origin of the video and urged X owner Elon Musk and the “leadership of other social media platforms” to remove the video.

Read more here.

by Erielle Delzer and Rhona Tarrant

With Election Day four days away, just over 66 million people have already cast their ballots early, either in-person or by mail, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

More people have voted at polling places in person, with more than 35 million ballots cast, compared to 30.8 million ballots returned. Data from the 25 states that report party registration show 12.5 million registered Democrats and 11.8 million registered Republicans have voted early.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney responded to Trump’s comments about guns being “trained on her face,” saying his remark demonstrates the actions of a dictator.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” she said in a post to social media with hashtags stating “women will not be silenced” and “vote Kamala.”

Trump attacked Cheney during an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona. He also called her “a very dumb individual.”

Trump went after one of his biggest critics, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, using violent imagery in an interview with Tucker Carlson. 

“And I don’t blame [former Vice President Dick Cheney] for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb,” Trump said. “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face. You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy. But she’s a stupid person.”

Cheney and her father, the former vice president, have endorsed Harris, and Cheney has campaigned in battleground states with Harris, portraying Trump as a threat to democracy and national security in an effort to win over Republicans and moderates.

Read more here.

During a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Republican presidential nominee continued to insult Harris, his Democratic opponent, and her intellect.

“There are some people who thrive under pressure, and there are some people who crack under pressure,” Trump said. “She’s a cracker.”

The former president also claimed Harris is “exhausted” and said she is a “total stiff,” though he offered no reasons for these slights against her.

“Kamala has the economic understanding of a child,” Trump said. “Did you ever hear her speak?”

The former president’s continued insults come as he and his supporters have criticized President Biden for appearing to call Trump’s supporters “garbage” during a call with Latino activists Tuesday. Mr. Biden was responding to remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, in which he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

The White House said Mr. Biden was referring to Hinchcliffe’s offensive joke, not those who support the former president, and Mr. Biden also said in a post on X, “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say.”

Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday rejected a request from progressive activist Cornel West to direct Pennsylvania election officials to post notices informing voters at polling locations statewide on Election Day that West is a presidential candidate and his name can be written in on ballots.

West, a third-party candidate for the presidency, sought emergency relief from the nation’s highest court Wednesday, less than a week before Election Day and as more than 1.5 million voters in Pennsylvania have already cast their ballots by mail

Read more here.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will be conveying his closing message to Americans in an interview set to air on Monday night, the eve of the election, on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Walz recorded the interview Thursday morning in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, underscoring the Harris campaign’s focus on the hotly contested battleground state, with its 19 electoral votes. In 2020, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania, while Donald Trump won the state in 2016. 

The Harris campaign has tried to broaden the programs and platforms on which Harris and Walz are interviewed to reach a wider, younger audience. Harris, too, has been interviewed by Colbert, and she has also appeared on ABC’s “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show,” and the podcasts “Call Her Daddy” and “Breakfast Club.” Walz has made late-show appearances on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”