Election 2024: Harris talks election, potential legal challenges in NBC News interview; Trump holds rally in North Carolina

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.”

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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.

Read the full story here.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.”

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 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.

President Joe Biden, speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire today, said Trump's policies are so "bizarre" and dangerous that if he'd warned about them five years ago "you'd lock me up."

"We've got to lock him up," Biden said to applause from the small crowd before he appeared to catch himself and added, "politically lock him up."

"Lock him out," he continued. "That's what we have to do."

Pressure is mounting on state and federal prosecutors to investigate tech billionaire Elon Musk’s $1 million lottery-style giveaway to registered voters in seven battleground states.

A spokesperson said today that the Justice Department had received a letter from 11 former government officials, including several Republican ex-prosecutors, urging it to investigate whether Musk’s daily prizes violate a federal law prohibiting paying people to register to vote.

The Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment further and would not say whether the department had opened an investigation.

Read the full story here.

Trump plans to vote early and in person, according to a source familiar with his plans.

The exact timing of when he will go to the polls hasn't yet been determined, the source said. Early, in-person voting in Florida runs from Saturday to Nov. 2. Election Day is Nov. 5.

Trump has delivered mixed messaging to his supporters about mail-in and absentee voting, even as the Republican National Committee has embraced early voting this year.

At times, Trump has encouraged getting out the vote early, but he has also cast doubt on the process, as he did ahead of the 2020 election.

Harris said in an interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson today that she is not concerned that sexism could affect next month’s election and that she thinks the country is ready for a woman of color in the White House.

“Come to my events and you will see there are men and women,” Harris said at her official residence in the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. “The experience that I am having is one in which it is clear that regardless of someone’s gender, they want to know that their president has a plan to lower costs, that their president has a plan to secure America in the context of our position around the world.

“Every walk of life of our country,” she continued, “I think part of what is important in this election is really not only turning the page but closing the page and the chapter on an era that suggests that Americans are divided.”

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Statement

“One hundred-forty law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed.”

Trump will participate in the “Tucker Carlson Live” tour in Arizona on Oct. 31, less than a week before Election Day.

Other guests on different tour dates include Vance, Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk and Kid Rock.

Carlson, the former Fox News host who has often made incendiary comments about race, immigration and LGBTQ rights, among other topics, kicked off a cross-country tour last month featuring a roster of Trump allies.

Arizona GOP Senate nominee Kari Lake wrote today on X that her office received a "suspicious envelope, potentially containing anthrax."

NBC News has not confirmed the nature of the substance in the envelope, and the Phoenix police and fire departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Harris plans to spend election night in Washington, with her campaign eyeing her alma mater, Howard University, as a possible venue for her to speak from, according to seven people familiar with the planning.

While it’s possible the election results could be known within hours and not days, the Democratic campaign is preparing for a much longer stretch without an outcome — perhaps even an election “week” — these people said.

That plan could include several different speeches and venues for delivering them. Precisely what Harris says publicly and the backdrop for her remarks would depend on how Election Day and the rest of the week unfold, the people familiar with the planning said.

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Huddled with volunteers at his campaign headquarters here, Iraq War veteran and freshman Rep. Pat Ryan said it felt like a “pre-mission brief” back in his Army days.

Ryan’s mission now is holding on to his seat in a suburban district in upstate New York that Republicans would very much like to flip — and that his Democratic Party needs if it has any hope of taking back control of the House.

The race underscores a unique dynamic in this year’s battle for the House: It hinges on areas in states well outside the presidential battleground map, most notably New York and California. New York also played a starring role two years ago. While an expected “red wave” didn’t materialize nationwide, the GOP won enough seats in this historically blue state to secure a slim House majority.

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In an interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson today, Harris said she’s preparing for the possibility that Trump will declare victory before the votes are counted in next month’s election.

Sitting down at her official residence in the Naval Observatory in Washington, Harris said that her campaign is prepared for the possibility that Trump will try to subvert the election but that she’s focused on trying to beat him first.

“We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that,” she said.

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Former President Barack Obama said today that he has cast his ballot in the general election.

"I voted yesterday," Obama said as he campaigned for Harris in Madison, Wisconsin. "I got my ballot, filled it in, sealed it, signed it, and then I walked, which I don’t always get a chance to do, and Secret Service got nervous, but I said, 'Now, let’s walk to a mailbox.'"

Obama encouraged supporters to vote and help their friends and families make plans to vote. “Because together, we’ve got a chance to choose a new generational leadership in this country and start building a better, stronger, fair, more hopeful America now,” he said.

At a campaign rally today in Wisconsin, Walz made jabs at both Vance and Elon Musk, saying Musk is Trump's real running mate.

"I’m going to talk about [Trump’s] running mate — his running mate, Elon Musk," Walz said. "Elon is on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dips--- on these things."

Musk has been ramping up his campaigning for Trump while raising eyebrows from legal experts with his $1 million lottery-style daily giveaway for people who sign a conservative-leaning petition in battleground states.

Walz targeted Musk a few days after Trump called Harris a "s--- vice president." Trump told the crowd at Saturday's rally that profanity helps him underscore his arguments.

As Harris answered a question at this month’s Univision town hall about immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, Elvira Diaz began to applaud. 

Sitting with other Harris supporters at a watch party at Taqueria Jalisco in Reno, with Harris campaign signs that read “¡Cuando Luchamos Ganamos!” (“When we fight, we win!”) lining the walls, Diaz had been waiting to hear Harris talk about so-called Dreamers, as such immigrants are known.

But she’s worried other Latino voters aren’t hearing Harris’ message.

Read the full story here.

Meta has banned a series of accounts that post location updates about private jets belonging to some of the world’s richest and most powerful people, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Trump.

Those accounts have been deleted from Threads and Instagram, and corresponding Facebook accounts will be deleted soon, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, told NBC News.

The accounts, run by a Florida college student named Jack Sweeney, also track Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Some still exist on other platforms, including Bluesky.

Read the full story here.

A viral claim by a voter in Texas that a machine had changed his choice for president was easily resolved and is the only such report out of the 58,000 votes already cast, officials in Tarrant County said.

In a viral video with more than 6 million views on X, a man says he had voted in Tarrant County and that his choice for president was not whom he had intended to vote for in the printout. The video is followed by another man making a claim, without evidence, that it has happened to other voters as well.

A county spokesperson told NBC News in an emailed statement that the only voter who reported a discrepancy was allowed to invalidate the initial ballot and print a new one to accurately reflect their choice.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said people need to take seriously Trump’s recent suggestion that the U.S. military could be used against “the enemy from within,” referring to Democrats and others, on Election Day.

“When we hear the threat that the United States military would be used against American citizens, people should take it seriously, because we have the 82nd Airborne Division on the banks of Washington, D.C.,” Bowser said at a news conference this morning. “A president without guard rails can use the United States army against its citizens in America.”

D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at the news conference that about 4,000 police officers from around the country are expected to travel to D.C. to support local law enforcement during the inauguration. Officials also said a security fence will be erected around the Capitol from Jan. 5, the day before Congress certifies the election, to Jan. 21, the day after the inauguration.

A Trump supporter who federal authorities say built a giant pro-Trump billboard that the mob of Trump supporters used as a battering ram against police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was arrested on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Newcomb, 41, from Polk, Ohio, faces several charges, including felony counts of obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers while using or carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. The FBI says he later bragged about his work on X.

“Went to Jan 6th to peacefully protest in the loudest way possible: With a 13ft by 10ft signs on custom made aluminum wagon,” Newcomb wrote on a now-deleted X profile in 2023, FBI prosecutors said. “I spent $700 on this. Keeping my identity a secret because bullets are expensive.”

Read the full story here.

Trump unleashed a torrent of personal attacks against Harris today, saying at a Latino outreach campaign event in Miami that she is “the worst” and “slow,” with a “low IQ.”

“This woman is the worst. I mean, it’s just unbelievable,” the former president said at the roundtable event with Latino leaders.

Trump first attacked Harris for choosing Walz as her running mate. “I think she made a horrible mistake. We’ll see what happens. On Nov. 5, you know, let’s see what happens. But there’s something wrong with him. Honestly, there’s something wrong and there’s something wrong with her, too. She’s slow, low IQ, something, I don’t know what the hell it is, but they lied.”

“We don’t need another low-IQ person,” he continued. “We had one for four years. We don’t need another.”

Trump will sit with Joe Rogan for a taping of his podcast in Austin, Texas, on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the planning.

Trump will visit Texas the same day Harris is scheduled to host a campaign rally in Houston.

“The Joe Rogan Experience” has been one of the most popular podcasts for years, particularly among young men, who have been key targets of the Trump campaign.

Trump has done a number of interviews in recent weeks with other media figures popular among men, including Ben Shapiro, Adin Ross and Theo Vonn. He also appeared on Andrew Schulz’s “Flagrant” podcast with Akaash Singh.

This is a developing story. Check here for updates.

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Russia is continuing to work to benefit Trump's campaign, including by circulating a false story about Harris' running mate.

“Based on newly available intelligence … the IC assesses that Russian influence actors manufactured and amplified inauthentic content claiming illegal activity committed by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during his earlier career,” the assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says.

The fake video that attracted millions of views last week on social media purported to be from a former student alleging sexual misconduct by Tim Walz when he was a high school teacher. Independent researchers had attributed it to a Kremlin-linked propaganda group called Storm-1516, a disinformation mill that was the subject of an NBC News report last week.

The intel agencies are also “increasingly confident that Russian actors are considering — and in some cases implementing — a broad range of influence efforts timed with the election. Some of these are aimed at inciting violence and calling into question the validity of democracy as a political system, regardless of who wins. Others are aimed at amplifying false information and conspiracies—that may exacerbate post-election tensions in the United States.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division launched a webpage today compiling information for voters in states affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton.

The department is focusing its resources on Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, its announcement said. The webpage provides links for each state, detailing accommodations for voters who have been displaced, lost their identification documents, or have had polling sites moved.

For further assistance, the department directs voters to contact information for local officials who can provide the most up-to-date guidance on voting in their county.

Election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places with voting underway in the presidential race, from beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Listen to Wisconsin, a group of Wisconsinites advocating for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, plans to host a series of protests at three early voting sites in Milwaukee tomorrow afternoon.

The protests are part of a larger movement called Swing States Against Genocide, backed by voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin. The group says it is calling for a permanent cease-fire from the current administration and a commitment to an arms embargo on Israel.

Events will begin at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s campus in the early afternoon, where members of Students for Justice in Palestine and others will protest amid visual displays of calendar months showing a year since the war began.

Listen to Wisconsin will also host a rally at Milwaukee’s City Hall tomorrow evening, where 100 voters are expected to show up to call for a cease-fire.

A group called the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections rolled out a series of public service announcements designed to push back on threats against election workers.

The group, which describes itself as "cross-partisan experts in election administration and law enforcement who aim to support policies and practices that protect election workers and voters from violence, threats and intimidation," released the series of ads on YouTube earlier today.

They feature a collection of former military officers, current election officials and law enforcement officers urging citizens to stand up against threats to election workers and families, and warning of consequences for those who threaten violence.

“Every vote counts and will be counted. What will not be tolerated are acts of violence and intimidation,” Orange County, California, Sheriff Don Barnes, a Republican, said in one of the ads. For those who "decide to act out in ways that aren't legally protected by the Constitution, you should expect there may be some law enforcement actions taken against you."

Trump lashed out against Harris at his roundtable event with Latino leaders in Miami this morning, saying, "This woman is the worst."

The former president said Harris lied about his position on IVF and that he was "totally in favor" of it "from the beginning." "She said I'm against it," he added.

"Then she’s got that, the worst governor in the country," Trump said. "I think she made a horrible mistake. We’ll see what happens. On Nov. 5, you know, let’s see what happens. But there’s something wrong with him. Honestly, there’s something wrong — and then something wrong with her, too. She’s slow, low IQ, something, I don’t know what the hell it is, but they lied.”

NBC News reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.

Bruce Springsteen will headline two Harris-Walz campaign rallies this week and next as part of a concert series to mobilize voters in battleground states, a senior campaign official said.

Springsteen — who endorsed Harris for president this month — will perform at Harris’ first joint rally with former President Barack Obama in Atlanta on Thursday before heading to Philadelphia with Obama on Monday.

The campaign will announce additional concerts in the coming days, and the series plans to hit all seven battleground states.

At a roundtable event with Latino supporters in Miami this morning, Trump scoffed at Harris for not appearing on the campaign trail today.

“I don’t know, but it’s gonna be close," Trump said. "I mean, she’s sleeping right now. She couldn’t go on the trail. You know, you think when you have 14 days left, you wouldn’t be sleeping. She’s not doing anything today."

The former president then suggested he should take a day off. "We’ve gone 52 days in a row, and I’m going 14 more days, and we’re gonna have a big victory party, hopefully, and we’re gonna turn our country around," he said.

NBC News reached out to the Harris campaign for comment.

While Harris is not appearing at campaign events today, she is sitting down for interviews with NBC News' Hallie Jackson and Telemundo's Julio Vaqueiro. She had been criticized by Trump previously for not being willing to sit for more news interviews.

In a recent direct-to-camera ad, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., tells voters: "I'll put more money in your pocket by eliminating taxes on Social Security, tips and overtime. And I'll work every day to restore the American dream."

Bacon's position aligns with a trio of Donald Trump's campaign planks as the congressman faces a challenge from Democrat Tony Vargas in the competitive Omaha-based district.

But those proposals are expensive, and Trump hasn't proposed a way to pay for them. When asked on NewsNation about the high cost of nixing taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime, among other tax breaks Trump has mused about, Bacon added a caveat.

"I don’t think we can do all of them," he said. "But I think we should look at the Social Security tax."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Senate Democrats released a report this morning encouraging Americans to vote early and have confidence in the electoral process, while stressing that the outcome of the election may not be known on Nov. 5. 

The 11-page report reads as a “what to expect” for Election Day and lays out information on each state’s vote counting processes for mail-in ballots. 

“As in past years, some state vote totals on Election Night might not give us a complete picture of who will win after all the votes are counted,” the senators wrote in the report. “There have been efforts to stoke fear and chaos about the election with false allegations of voter fraud. The American people should beware of election misinformation.”

The Democrats’ report come as the party is campaigning on election integrity, and amid worries that Trump will sow doubt in the results or declare victory prematurely. 

Doors opened this morning at what Milwaukee election officials say is the city’s busiest early voting location, where more than 100 people were already lined up.

The League of United Latin American Citizens' PAC, LULAC Adelante PAC, announced its endorsement of Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in the Arizona Senate race today.

Gallego, who is running for retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat, would be Arizona's first Latino senator.

“Ruben has been a steadfast advocate for us, whether bolstering access to educational and employment opportunities or lowering the cost of health care and groceries for families," LULAC's national president, Domingo Garcia, said in a statement.

The endorsement is the second in LULAC's almost 100-year history and its first endorsement in a Senate race. Gallego is squaring off against Republican candidate Kari Lake in a hotly contested race that could help determine the balance of power in Washington.

State courts denied Republican efforts to block overseas and military voting laws in the battleground states of North Carolina and Michigan.

In North Carolina, a Wake County judge refused to block a bipartisan law that’s been on the books for more than a decade, which allows the adult children of North Carolina residents living abroad to vote in the state.

“Plaintiffs have presented no substantial evidence of any instance where the harm that plaintiffs seek to prevent has ever fraudulently occurred,” the court wrote, adding that the GOP plaintiffs hadn’t even proven that anyone had voted using his provision.

The battle for control of Congress is just as tight as the 2024 presidential race, highlighted by a handful of high-profile contests coast-to-coast. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for "TODAY."

A Republican county supervisor in Arizona pleaded guilty yesterday after she tried to delay certification of the 2022 midterm election results, state Attorney General Kris Mayes announced.

Peggy Judd, a Cochise County supervisor, pleaded guilty to failing to perform duties as an election officer, a misdemeanor. She acknowledged that she failed to canvass the election as required by law, the attorney general’s office said.

Judd will be sentenced to unsupervised probation for at least 90 days and pay a maximum $500 fine, the attorney general’s office said. NBC News has reached out to her for comment.

Read the full story here.

Harris will travel to Texas on Friday to discuss what's at stake in the election for women's reproductive health services.

The vice president will deliver remarks in Houston about the consequences of abortion restrictions on women and be joined by those who have been directly affected by the bans, a senior Harris campaign official said. Texas law bars abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake. The campaign calls the state "ground zero of extreme Trump abortion bans."

Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who is running against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, will also attend the event.

In response to the announcement, Cruz's campaign spokesperson, Macerena Martinez, said in a statement, "Colin Allred is Kamala Harris."

Harris will discuss her plans to expand opportunities for Latino men in an interview with Telemundo today, her campaign said in a release.

The vice president's plans include creating opportunities for Latino men in the workforce through training programs and apprenticeships, increasing startup funding for businesses and trying to drive up annual the number of Latino homebuyers to almost 600,000, the campaign said.

"A second Trump term would be a disaster for Latinos and their families — raising costs on middle class families by nearly $4,000 a year, separating Latino families, and gutting affordable health care for more than 4 million Latinos," her campaign said.

A daughter of the golfing icon Arnold Palmer said last night on CNN that Trump’s vulgar remarks about her father over the weekend are not acceptable. 

Asked if anyone in Trump’s world reached out to her after the former president’s comments, Peggy Palmer Wears said: “They probably have a long line of people to reach out to because it seems to be something he does. Again, it’s locker room talk, it’s something he seems to think is acceptable. In my father’s world, this wouldn’t be acceptable.”

At his campaign rally Saturday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump suggested that Palmer, who died in 2016, had unusually large genitalia.

A new public service campaign featuring the actor Rosario Dawson and other Hollywood stars aims to alert Americans not to be duped by AI-generated deepfakes designed to mislead them about when, where and how to vote on Election Day.

“If something seems off, it probably is,” Dawson warns in the video spot, shared exclusively with NBC News. 

Other celebrities featured in the video include Chris Rock, Laura Dern, Michael Douglas, Amy Schumer and Jonathan Scott delivering the message that Americans should rely on state secretaries of state for information about voting in the 2024 election and not to fall for unverified claims about alleged changes at polling stations.

The celebrities say Americans may receive a fake message claiming voting has been extended, or a polling location has closed or changed due to an emergency, or that new documentation is required to vote. “These are all scams designed to trick you into not voting. Don’t fall for it,” the celebrities say. At the end, the video reveals that some of the Hollywood stars are mere deepfakes, with their voices and images superimposed on other actors.

Read the full story here.

HONG KONG — One is a former president who vows to double down on the trade war he started with China but could stoke global instability to Beijing’s benefit. The other is a vice president who might be more conciliatory in the short term but could rally U.S. allies against China’s growing global influence.

Which U.S. presidential candidate would Chinese President Xi Jinping rather work with?

Whoever wins the White House next month — Trump or Harris — will determine the tone and much of the substance of the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

Read the full story here.

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, doing away with a half-century of precedent, activists worried that other high court decisions could be in jeopardy are taking their concerns to the polls. California, Colorado and Hawaii will soon allow their residents to vote on ballot measures that would remove language from their state constitutions prohibiting same-sex marriage. 

The landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, guaranteeing same-sex couples across the country the right to marry, makes these state bans unenforceable. However, these ballot measures seek to proactively protect these marriage rights should Obergefell ever be overturned. 

Paul Smith, a Georgetown law professor who argued the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the country’s remaining anti-sodomy laws, said the high court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, should serve as a cautionary tale.

Harris campaigned across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin yesterday, joined by GOP former Rep. Liz Cheney who urged Republican-leaning voters to back Harris. Meanwhile, Trump wrapped up a three-stop day in North Carolina where he courted Christian voters. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for "TODAY."

As Republican vice presidential nominee Vance campaigns across the country, his wife, Usha Vance, has been a near-constant presence by his side. In the final weeks of the campaign, she has traveled with her own regular companion: a copy of “The Iliad.”

Her edition of the Greek epic — a celebrated 800-page translation from 2023 by University of Pennsylvania classicist Emily Wilson — has accompanied Vance across the country, briefly visible as she has boarded and exited campaign planes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Colorado and California.

“That’s because our now 7-year-old decided in the spring that he was obsessed with mythology,” Vance said in a rare phone interview. “He picked up a child’s version of ‘The Odyssey’ and then ‘The Iliad’ and all these other things and became completely obsessed. So to keep up with him, I decided it was time to pick ‘The Iliad’ up myself.”

The volume is just one piece of a larger, growing library of books she has torn through in three months on the campaign trail, the dust covers visible to reporters on airport tarmacs around the country.

Read the full story here.

The “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania have paved the path to the White House for the last two Democratic presidents. 

But with just 14 days until the Nov. 5 election, there are concerns within Kamala Harris’ campaign about whether the vice president can claim all three states. 

Recent discussions have centered on the possibility of an anomaly happening this year with just part of the blue wall breaking its way. The conversations have focused on whether Michigan or Wisconsin “fall” to former President Donald Trump while the two other states go blue, according to three sources with knowledge of the campaign’s strategy. 

Losing Wisconsin or Michigan would mean that even if Harris secures Pennsylvania — where both Harris and Trump have spent the most time and resources — she would not reach the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House without winning another battleground state or possibly two. 

Read the full story here.