With just 21 days to go before the final votes are cast in the 2024 presidential season, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are scrambling to win over and turn out Black voters, women and other key constituencies in what looks to be a razor-tight election.
A Republican coalition backed the Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania as the Republican nominee fielded questions from Hispanic voters in Florida. Both campaigns are appealing for the votes of union workers in pivotal blue-wall states.
And The Carter Center says former President Jimmy Carter, now 100 years old, voted by mail on Wednesday. Carter joined more than 600,000 citizens who cast absentee ballots or voted in person since early voting began Tuesday in Georgia.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
Harris interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier gets combative
Vice President Kamala Harris had a combative interview on Fox News where she tried to defend her record on immigration and make the case that former President Donald Trump is a danger to democracy.
Interviewer Bret Baier talked over Harris frequently as the two sparred over the Biden administration’s record at the border, Biden’s own mental acuity and even Harris’ critique of Trump’s recent suggestion to use the military against critics whom he called “the enemy within.”
Of families who had loved ones killed by migrants who entered the country under the Biden administration, Harris said, “Those are tragic cases, there’s no question about that.” She rued an immigration system she said had been broken since before Trump’s presidency and said “I’d follow the law” when asked about prior support for things like driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
Harris tried to argue Trump is a unique threat to democracy and tout her backing from former members of his administration, but had a hard time finishing her argument as she and Baier sparred during the 30-minute interview.
These Republicans back Harris, saying it’s time to put ‘country over party’
A group of Republicans is supporting the Kamala Harris campaign in historic Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, where Gen. George Washington launched his forces across the Delaware River in a turning point of the Revolutionary War.
Among those taking the stage was former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who said it’s time to put “country over party.” Kinzinger said Trump has abandoned Republican values and is a “whiny, weak, tiny man who is scared to death.”
Pennsylvania farmers Bob and Kristina Lange also spoke, describing themselves as lifetime Republicans who’ve had enough. Kristina Lange said, “it’s time to turn the page on Trump and on his chaos and the way he divides us.”
The Democratic nominee then took the podium. Harris said the Constitution is meant to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power, and “is not a relic from our past.” She said the Constitution “determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely, and even criticize the president, without fear of being thrown in jail.”
Biden and Pelosi speak for the first time since president abandoned reelection bid
A Washington memorial service brought President Joe Biden and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi together on Wednesday.
They spoke for the first time since the president dropped out of his reelection race for the White House, a choice he made in July after the former House speaker had publicly and privately encouraged him to consider his decision.
They both were in the front row, along with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, at the church service for Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
Asked what he likes about Harris, Trump calls her a survivor
Donald Trump is calling Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris a survivor, offering faint praise while noting her early failure in the 2020 presidential nominating campaign.
Asked during a Univision town hall-style event to name three things about his opponent he likes, Trump said, “She seems to have an ability to survive.”
“Because she was out of the race, and all of a sudden she’s running for president,” Trump added.
The vice president ended her Democratic primary campaign in 2020 and emerged as the nominee four years later after President Joe Biden dropped out.
“That’s a great ability that some people have, and some people don’t have,” Trump said, adding, “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships.”
“And she seems to have a nice way about her,” Trump said, offering an uncharacteristic personal compliment for someone he has described as “stupid” and “incompetent.”
Trump fields tough questions during Univision town hall
Donald Trump is facing pointed questions during a town hall-style event for Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language network, including why “your own vice president doesn’t want to support you now.”
The question came from a man asking about the January 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol, when thousands of Trump supporters attacked Capitol police and breached the building trying to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, in a typical refrain about the violent confrontation, said, “That was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions.”
Trump also fielded questions about immigration, guns and abortion, including whether he agrees with his wife, Melania, whose says in a new memoir that she supports abortion rights.
“Do you agree with her?”
Trump said he encourages Melania to support what she wants to support, and in true fashion, plugged the book.
As for the justices he picked for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights, he said it “is what everybody wanted for 52 years.”
“This issue has torn our country apart,” Trump said, claiming that the country will now “heal.”
Harris calls Trump’s ‘father of IVF’ comment to women ‘quite bizarre’
Vice President Kamala Harris says Republican Donald Trump’s comment that he is the “father of IVF” is “quite bizarre, actually.”
Trump made the comment during a Fox News town hall with an all-female audience that aired Wednesday.
Asked about the Trump comment as she departed Detroit for a campaign visit to Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Harris said that “if what he meant is taking responsibility, well then yeah, he should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state.”
She added that “what Trump should take responsibility for is that couples who are praying and hoping and working toward growing a family have been so disappointed and harmed by the fact that IVF treatments have now been put at risk.”
“Let’s not be distracted by his choice of words,” Harris said. “The reality is his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America.”
Trump had been promoting the idea that the Republican Party is a “leader” on IVF. That characterization is rejected by Democrats, who have seized on access to the common but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.
Former President Jimmy Carter votes by mail
Jimmy Carter has cast his ballot in the 2024 Election. The former president voted by mail on Wednesday, according to The Carter Center in Atlanta.
Before Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he’s been living in hospice care, his son Chip Carter said his father had this election very much in mind.
“He’s plugged in,” Chip Carter told The Associated Press. “I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”
Georgia’s registered voters have been turning out in record numbers since early voting began Tuesday. Nearly 460,000 had voted in-person or cast absentee ballots by Wednesday afternoon, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
Carter’s vote should count even if he’s no longer alive by Election Day on Nov. 5. Robert Sinners, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, noted that Georgia election rules state that when an absentee ballot is received by local election officials “it shall be deemed to have been voted then and there.”
Unions face a moment of truth in pivotal blue wall states
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are competing for workers in blue wall states with deep union roots.
Harris is rallying in union halls, standing alongside Michigan’s most powerful labor leader, while Trump fires back from rural steel factories, urging middle-class workers to trust him as their true champion. They’re making their case in starkly different terms. Campaigning for Harris, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain says the American dream now depends on electing Democrats.
But Harris failed to secure two key union endorsements that went to President Joe Biden, who calls himself the most labor-friendly president in U.S. history. The International Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters both declined to endorse anyone. Any break in labor movement unity can have an amplifier effect in a place like Michigan, where most people have a family member or close friend in a union.
Many Midwestern communities once core to the labor movement have shifted to the right as jobs moved overseas. And non-college-educated white voters have been voting more conservatively, concerned about cultural issues involving race and gender.
Trump has seized on these trends while accusing Harris of mandating electric vehicles in the home of America’s Big Three automakers. Trump also labeled Fain a “stupid idiot” and praised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for firing workers who went on strike.
Michelle Obama to lead turnout-minded ‘Party at the Polls’ with celebs in Atlanta
Former first lady Michelle Obama will headline a turnout-minded, celebrity-studded “Party at the Polls” rally in Atlanta aimed at engaging younger and first-time voters as well as voters of color.
The Oct. 29 event will be hosted by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group that Obama founded in 2018 to “change the culture around voting” and reach out to people who are less likely to engage in politics and elections.
The group’s co-chairs include professional basketball players Stephen Curry and Chris Paul; musical artists Becky G, H.E.R., Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez and Janelle Monáe; beauty influencer Bretman Rock; and actors Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Kerry Washington.
The group has hosted more than 500 “Party at the Polls” events, ranging from pop-up block parties in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Philadelphia to voter registration partnerships with professional sports leagues and music festivals. Executive Director Beth Lynk said the group chose Atlanta for Obama’s appearance because of the state’s diversity and the impact that only a handful of voters can make in Georgia.
“A lot of people don’t believe that their votes have power. But they do, plain and simple,” Lynk said. “We know that democracy has to work for all of us and that’s what we will be stressing at this rally.”
Some Republicans support Harris in Pennsylvania as Trump pursues Latino votes
A coalition of Republicans backing Kamala Harris will campaign with the Democratic presidential nominee in pivotal Pennsylvania before she sits down with Fox News for an interview airing at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
GOP nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, will appear on TV Wednesday in two town halls — one with a woman-only audience that Fox News Channel recorded Tuesday, and the other with with Hispanics, hosted by Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language television network.
As the race entered its final three weeks, Harris is expected to talk about upholding the Constitution and defending patriotism in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a vote-rich stretch of suburban Philadelphia where Democrats have held a narrow advantage in recent presidential elections. Flanking her will be former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and other GOP officials who argue that Trump is a threat to American democracy.
Trump’s Univision event Wednesday afternoon in Miami will air at 10 p.m. Trump is counting on increased Latino support even as he centers his campaign on a darker view of immigration, suggesting migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation.
Trump emphasizes hypermasculinity as Obama says men who sit out don’t show strength
Attention, American men: Donald Trump and his allies want you to believe your vote says big things about your masculinity. The Republican nominee is amping up his hypermasculine tone and support of traditional gender roles, a reflection of the surgical campaign-within-a-campaign for the votes of men in a showdown with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
But where Harris is deploying “dudes” who use bro-ey language and occasional scolding to boost her support particularly among Black and Hispanic males, Trump’s camp is meeting men in alpha-male terms, often with crude and demeaning language.
“If you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his podcast.
As the razor’s edge contest elevates the importance of small caches of voters who are apathetic or on the fence in battleground states, both camps are reaching beyond their ideological bases.
“You’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is?” former President Barack Obama scolded Black men last week in Pennsylvania, the largest battleground state. “That’s not acceptable.”
Republicans challenge more than 63,000 voters in Georgia, but few removed, AP finds
An Associated Press survey finds that more than 63,000 Georgia voters have had their qualifications challenged since July 1. That’s a big surge from 2023 and the first half of 2024, when the AP found that about 18,000 voters were challenged. But only about 1% of those challenged in recent months have been removed from the voting rolls or placed into challenged status, mostly in one county.
The challenges are part of a wide-ranging national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to enlist Republican activists to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls.
The Georgia push is part of a national effort coordinated by Donald Trump’s allies to remove people they view as suspect from the voting rolls. The effort to remove voters has drawn scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department, which in September issued a seven-page guidance memo that aims to limit challenges and block parts of the new Georgia law by citing 1993’s National Voter Registration Act.
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