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What to know about the campaigns today
- Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with NBC News anchor Hallie Jackson for an interview at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., that aired this evening on "NBC Nightly News," followed by an interview with Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro.
- Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, campaigned with former President Barack Obama in Madison, Wisconsin, this afternoon before holding a rally in Racine tonight. Obama also spoke in Detroit this evening.
- Former President Donald Trump held a rally tonight in Greensboro in North Carolina, a state he has focused much of his attention on in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
- Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, spoke at a campaign event in Peoria, Arizona, this afternoon. He held a rally at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson tonight.
Obama posts video showing him voting by mail
Obama posted a video on X tonight that shows him voting my mail in Chicago.
"I’m showing you how easy it is," Obama says in the video as he walks to the mailbox and greets neighbors and law enforcement officers along the way.
After he puts his ballot in the mailbox, he says, "I trust the U.S. Postal Service to get this done."
Earlier in the day, Obama said as he campaigned for Harris in Wisconsin that he had voted by mail.
Trump plans to vote early in person, sources said today, though a date has not been confirmed.
For the second time in a day, Trump resorts to false personal attacks on Harris
Trump slammed Harris tonight as a “lunatic” and “stupid” and questioned whether she had a problem with alcohol or drugs — the second time over the course of the day that he made false personal attacks on her.
At a nearly two-hour rally Tuesday night in Greensboro, North Carolina, Trump launched into a diatribe about Harris’ Oct. 7 appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that ended with his falsely suggesting she had substance abuse issues.
“She was so bad, she gave an answer. This never happened to me,” Trump said. “She gave an answer that was so bad that they changed it. They took it out, threw it out. They didn’t, like, edit a little bit, take a word out.”
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly says Trump meets the definition of a ‘fascist’
John Kelly, who was White House chief of staff during the Trump administration, said in a series of recent interviews that Trump meets the definition of a fascist.
The remark, published Tuesday, was made in one of Kelly’s interviews with The New York Times. Audio of his comments was made available online.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” Kelly said.
Reporter hit by fragment as U.S. Senate candidate fires rifle
A reporter with an NBC affiliate in Missouri was injured by a fragment when Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lucas Kunce was firing an AR-style rifle, Kunce and the television station said today.
The reporter, Ryan Gamboa of KSHB of Kansas City, sustained a minor injury, and first aid was given at the scene by Kunce and others, according to the station and Kunce.
Kunce is challenging Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.
“Always have your first aid kit handy. Shrapnel can always fly when you hit a target like today, and you’ve got to be ready to go,” Kunce wrote on X after the incident at a campaign event in Holt.
“We had four first aid kits, so we were able to take care of the situation, and I’m glad Ryan is okay and was able to continue reporting,” Kunce added.
KSHB reported that it was unclear whether the fragment was from a bullet or something else.
Hawley, elected in 2018, is running for re-election. Kunce is a Marine veteran who beat three other candidates in the Democratic primary this year.
Hawley joked about the incident on social media. He wrote on X, "While Kunce was busy shooting at reporters, Erin and I were traveling the state …," followed by a promotional video for his own campaign.
Harris says she’s ‘a pragmatic capitalist’ in pitch to Latino voters
Harris told Telemundo today that she is a “pragmatic capitalist” who wants to support Latino entrepreneurs, countering Trump’s attempts to portray her as a Marxist.
“I am a capitalist. I am a pragmatic capitalist,” Harris said in the interview at the vice president’s official residence in the Naval Observatory in Washington. “I believe that we need a new generation of leadership in America that actively works with the private sector to build up the new industries of America, to build up small-business owners, to allow us to increase home ownership.”
Republicans have for years tried to convince Hispanic voters, many of whom fled repressive countries or are descended from people who did, that Democrats are secret socialists or communists.
Eminem praises Harris at Detroit rally with Obama
Eminem offered praise for Harris tonight as he introduced Obama at a get-out-the-vote rally in Detroit.
“I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution, what people would do if you make your opinion known,” said the rapper, who grew up in Detroit. “I think Vice President Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms … should be protected and upheld.”
Eminem then turned the microphone over to Obama, who made a joke about his palms being “sweaty” — a reference to an Eminem lyric.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, introduced Eminem and got in on the lyric game, too.
“Can the real Slim Shady please stand up?” she asked.
Trump made disparaging remarks about soldier murdered at Fort Hood, The Atlantic reports
Trump made disparaging comments about Vanessa Guillén, a Mexican American soldier who was murdered at Fort Hood, Texas, and he refused to pay for Guillén’s funeral despite having offered to do so, according to new reporting from The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
Guillén was stationed in Fort Hood when she was killed by a fellow soldier in April 2020. Trump met with her family at the White House in July 2020 and offered to pay for any funeral costs.
But at an unrelated meeting in December 2020 about a separate national security issue, Trump asked whether the family had billed him for the funeral expenses, The Atlantic reported, citing two sources in the meeting. "According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000," The Atlantic said.
According to The Atlantic, Trump then said, "It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican!” and told his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows not to pay for it. Trump later that day complained that the family was "trying to rip me off," according to The Atlantic, citing a witness.
A spokesperson for Meadows and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment tonight.
Meadows said on X tonight that the report was not true.
“Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” he wrote.
Sen. Stabenow says Trump is 'the real enemy within us'
Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., is warming up the crowd with some pointed attacks on Trump.
Specifically, Stabenow homed in on Trump’s recent comments warning of an “enemy within” as Election Day approaches.
“We know who the real enemy within is,” said Stabenow, who is not seeking re-election this year. “And it’s Donald Trump.”
Wisconsin experiences 'system lag' on first day of in-person early voting
In Wisconsin, “higher than expected turnout” on the first day of in-person early voting today caused some system lags, according to the state Elections Commission.
“The WisVote system that some clerks use experienced a period of slowness that has now been resolved,” the commission said in a statement tonight.
“Today’s system lag was purely related to demands on the WisVote system due to high turnout,” the statement said. The state says that the system is used to print labels for ballot envelopes but that the same information can be written manually by clerks using pens.
The commission says that staff members worked to increase system capacity and that “this should not prevent any voter’s ability to vote in-person absentee today.”
Long lines, with some people waiting more than an hour, were seen outside early voting locations throughout the day in Milwaukee. Dozens of voters lined up before polls even opened.
More than 326,000 Wisconsinites had cast ballots by mail or secure drop boxes as of this morning. The state will release the in-person totals tomorrow.
Georgia high court won't reinstate contested election rules
The Georgia Supreme Court today declined to take up an emergency appeal from the state Republican Party that would have restored new rules from the state’s GOP-led Election Board ahead of Election Day.
In a brief ruling, the court said it would not hear the appeal of last week's ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox on an expedited basis, meaning Cox's decision shooting down seven new rules from the Trump-allied board will stand until at least after the November election.
Cox found that the recently passed rules, which included a hand-count rule for Election Day ballots and rules tied to certifying results, were “unconstitutional” and in violation of state law.
He wrote that the five-member board “had no authority to implement these rules” and that the measures were “illegal, unconstitutional, and void.”
The measures were opposed by state Democrats, and the state's Republican secretary of state and attorney general had warned the board the moves were likely to be illegal.