Election 2024: Harris holds town hall in Pennsylvania; Trump rallies in Georgia

Trump posted on social media moments after Harris' town hall wrapped, arguing that she is "losing badly" so she "is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind."

Harris did not call Trump “Hitler” but rather said the American people “deserve to have a president who encourages healthy debate, works across the aisle, [is] not afraid of good ideas, wherever they come from, but also maintains certain standards about how we think about the role and the responsibility and certainly not comparing oneself in a clearly admiring way to Hitler” in reference to Trump’s reported comments about Hitler.

Separately, Trump's campaign said in an email release that the town hall was "another unmitigated disaster."

For some undecided Michigan voters, abortion continues to be an influential factor in a decision they now have less than two weeks to make. 

Western Michigan voter Alexandria Colley says she definitely will vote but is still undecided about whether to choose Harris or Trump. Neither candidate completely aligns with her views, and “there are many pros and cons on each one evenly, so it’s really tough,” she said. 

One of her top issues of concern is abortion.

“I don’t agree with abortion, but I know there are other people that have their own reasons, and I believe that they should have their own choices,” she said. “I don’t want to be like, 'Hey, you can’t do it.'” 

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick, a Republican, took aim at a letter that Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ron Wyden of Oregon addressed to McDonald's about its rising prices, calling the letter a "deep, intrusive government intervention into how McDonald’s is being run."

"It’s hard to imagine it’s not driven by political opportunity to try to punish McDonald’s for hosting President Trump, but it’s also emblematic of this crazy idea of deep intervention in the pricing decisions of businesses," McCormick said at a campaign event yesterday in Cabot.

In their letter to CEO Chris Kempczinski on Monday, the Democratic senators argued that corporate profits "must not come at the expense of people's ability to put food on the table" and asked McDonald's for details about its pricing decisions.

Less than two weeks before an election where she could make history, Harris has yet to enlist help on the campaign trail from the only other woman who has gotten as close to the Oval Office: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

The decision underscores Harris’ lack of emphasis on the history-making potential of her candidacy in her pitch to voters, a stark contrast to Clinton’s approach in her 2016 campaign. It also reflects the Harris campaign’s strategy of training its focus on making inroads with specific voters, particularly men. 

Read the full story here.

Harris called Trump a “fascist” at a CNN town hall today in Pennsylvania — echoing his onetime chief of staff’s criticism as she makes a more vocal pitch to voters that he is unfit for office.

John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who was Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, came forward this week to warn that his former boss meets “the general definition of a fascist.” And he said that in private conversations, Trump admired dictators and said he wished he had military generals as loyal as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s.

Read the full story here.

Political yard signs across the country are being vandalized and stolen ahead of the presidential election, and a man was arrested and accused of firing bullets in a Democratic National Committee office. NBC News’ Liz Kreutz reports on the thefts and the arrest. 

At the top of her town hall in Pennsylvania, Harris was asked directly whether she thinks Trump is a fascist.

"Yes, I do," she said at the town hall hosted by CNN. "I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted."

Former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday that Trump meets the definition of a fascist. He also said Trump at times praised Adolf Hitler when he was in office.

Earlier today, Harris said Trump's reported remarks demonstrated that he was "increasingly unhinged."

John Stewart, vice president of Cameron Energy Co., and Robert Bair, president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, are on different sides in the presidential race. But they are on the same side on fracking — a key energy and environmental issue in the biggest battleground state in the election.

Comfortable majorities of Pennsylvania voters support fracking, according to multiple recent polls. But while Trump’s base draws almost entirely from that side of the question, Democrats like Harris and Pennsylvania’s governor and senators have to balance a coalition that includes supporters and opponents of a major industry in the state.

For Harris, that means getting support from the likes of Bair — who represents 130,000 union construction workers across Pennsylvania and says the U.S. would not be able to function without fracking — as well as Katie Blume, the political and legislative director of Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, who told NBC News that she believes Pennsylvania lacks strong regulations and that fracking is not critical for a modern society, praising the Biden-Harris administration’s historic climate legislation.

Read the full story here.

In a defeat for Republicans, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled today that mail-in ballots flagged as being potentially defective should be provisionally counted.

The divided court said mail-in ballots that machines detect as lacking secondary "secrecy envelopes" as required under state law can nevertheless be counted provisionally, a finding that Republicans had argued against. Such ballots automatically lead to voters' being notified that there are problems with the ballots that can be remedied by voting in person.

Although it is unclear how many ballots the ruling — which arose from a dispute over ballots submitted during the Pennsylvania primary election — would affect, it could have major legal ramifications if the election is close in the key swing state.

The Atlantic magazine has found itself in Elon Musk’s crosshairs after it fact-checked a fake image he shared that depicted an article with a headline that never actually ran in the publication.

Last night, Musk reshared a fake image on X that showed an article from the magazine reading “Trump Is Literally Hitler.” The article was never written for or published by The Atlantic, but Musk appeared to take the image as truth, commenting, “They are literally foaming at the mouth 😂.”

The day after Musk posted the message, which had amassed over 20 million views, The Atlantic said in a statement that it did not publish an article with that headline.

Read the full story here.

Does love conquer all, even politics? NBC News’ Alex Tabet asked Trump supporters in Peoria, Arizona, whether they would be willing to date a Democrat or someone who is voting for Harris.

In remarks in Nevada’s battleground Washoe County, Vance declined to devise an answer about whether a future Trump administration would pursue a ban on “junk fees”— a stark example of how Vance has reined in speculatively speaking on Trump's behalf.

On the stump, Vance has taken a leading role in translating Trump to both voters and reporters. But that role landed him in hot water when Trump said on the debate stage that he had not discussed vetoing a national abortion ban after Vance indicated he would.

Today, asked about whether a second Trump administration would seek to limit “junk” charges like resort fees in tourism-dependent Nevada, Vance said he would have to check in with Trump first.

“That’s something that we haven’t talked about between me and the president. I don’t want to speak for him until I’ve talked to him, but I’ll talk to him,” Vance said, pivoting back to highlight the ticket’s “no tax on tips” policy. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this afternoon that President Joe Biden agreed with former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly’s remark calling Trump a fascist.

"Do we agree about that determination? Yes, we do," Jean-Pierre said at today's White House briefing.

Jean-Pierre was answering a reporter's question about whether Biden was aware of Kelly's telling The New York Times that Trump "falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure," and reporting from The Atlantic that said Trump admired Hitler's generals, saying, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had."

Jean-Pierre also said: "You’ve heard from the former president himself saying that he is going to be a dictator on day one. This is him, not us. This is him. And it’s not just, it’s not just us, the White House saying this. You’ve heard it from officials; former officials that worked for the former president say this, as well."

Kelly is just one of a number of former officials who have come forward with concerns about or outright opposition to a second Trump term.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission said today that a system delay affecting the speed of printing labels for early voting certification envelopes is also affecting nonelection systems.

NBC News reported yesterday that the battleground state's Elections Commission had said "higher than expected turnout" for the first day of early in-person voting caused system delays.

In today's statement, it said that "high levels of in-person absentee voting do still appear to be compounding the issue."

"Printing a label is not required for in-person absentee voting, though it is certainly an added efficiency for our hard-working local election officials," the statement said. "Municipal clerks may choose to hand write in-person absentee information on the outside of the absentee certificate envelope if they wish to not print a label."

In a scathing Truth Social post, Trump called his former chief of staff John Kelly a “lowlife” after he called Trump a "fascist," which The New York Times reported in a story published yesterday, out of “pure Trump derangement syndrome.” 

"The story about the Soldiers was A LIE, as are numerous other stories he told," Trump wrote.

Kelly made headlines yesterday after he told the Times that Trump is “certainly an authoritarian” and said “he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist.” Kelly told the newspaper that Trump spoke favorably about Adolf Hitler in the White House, saying Trump once said, “Hitler did some good things, too.” 

Harris will deliver a “closing argument” speech in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday at the site where former President Donald Trump spoke shortly before the Jan. 6 riot, according to a senior campaign official.

Harris will argue it’s time to turn the page on Trump and choose a new way forward, the official said. The address will contrast what a Harris term in office would like compared with another Trump presidency.

The event at the Ellipse, outside the White House, is timed for exactly one week before Election Day.

Read the full story here.

After Harris’ interview with Hallie Jackson, NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and Monica Alba analyze the top moments and what will matter most in the election.

TV personality Chrissy Teigen is scheduled to join Arizona for Abortion Access, a grassroots organization created to support enshrining the right to abortion in the state’s constitution, at a rally in Phoenix on Sunday.

Teigen will encourage voters in the state to vote yes on Proposition 139, a ballot measure that would codify the right to abortion in state law and prevent the state from legally penalizing anyone, including health care professionals, who assist others with obtaining abortions. 

“I’m all in to stop these awful abortion bans, like the one in Arizona. Everyone should have the right to get the care they need, no matter where they are or when they need it. I’m so proud to team up with the incredible folks on the ground fighting for Prop 139 and protecting abortion rights in Arizona,” Teigan said.

NBC News asked more than a dozen voters why they decided to vote early as they left their polling station in Morgantown, West Virginia. 

Most said they enjoy the convenience of voting early. Others told me they were so excited and ready to vote that they wanted to do it on Day One. 

Scott Rosier, a Republican, said he always votes early. He said he thinks Trump’s early voting messaging will have an impact on how many Republicans will vote. 

“I think his base listens to pretty much everything he says," Rosier said. "They tend to follow him in kind of, in lockstep.”

Rosier said he thinks a lot of people are voting early in part because “Trump encouraged it” and because “the state of our economy and the state of our nation right now is so poor that folks are looking for a change.”

Erstwhile independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a last-minute request at the Supreme Court today seeking his removal from the ballot in the key swing state of Wisconsin.

Kennedy, who has endorsed Trump, wants his name to have stickers placed over it.

Previous efforts to have his name removed from the ballot failed, and, with voting already underway, it seems highly unlikely his request will be granted.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against Kennedy almost a month ago.

Donald Trump Jr. lashed out at his father's former chief of staff John Kelly, calling him "part of that swamp" after The New York Times reported that Kelly thought Trump met the definition of a fascist and said Trump has made comments admiring Adolf Hitler.

"He’s part of that swamp. He’s doing their bidding. That’s how you get a board seat in Washington, D.C.," Trump Jr. told NBC News.

Trump Jr. asserted that if Kelly "was that concerned about it, I think he would have said it five years ago, not two weeks before an election."

Kelly told the Times in a story published yesterday that Trump is "certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure."

President Joe Biden will return to the campaign trail Saturday in Pittsburgh as part of a renewed closing push to win over working-class voters for his vice president.

Biden will meet with both leadership and rank-and-file members of Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), which represents 70,000 workers in the construction and energy industry to thank them for their efforts to boost the Harris campaign and other Democratic candidates.

LIUNA President Brent Booker, who recently joined Biden and other labor leaders for another worker-focused event in Michigan, will be with the president for the stop. First lady Jill Biden will also campaign for Harris in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with separate events in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Postal Service officials said today that they are able to handle the onslaught of mailed ballots but that voters should be sure to postmark them in time.

“Our message to voters who choose to use the mail is simple. If you’re eligible to vote by mail and you choose to do so, you should plan ahead, give yourself enough time to complete and return your ballot by your state’s deadline,” Steve Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer, said on a media call.

In September, a coalition of election officials wrote a stark open letter accusing the Postal Service of failing to adequately prepare for all voters who choose to mail their ballots in November and encouraged voters to request and mail their ballots early to avoid potential delays.

Addressing those and other concerns about voting by mail is “a laser-like focus for us, Monteith said. “We have a number of meetings throughout the organization, daily and weekly, to make sure that we’re addressing those issues.”

After his event wrapped in Georgia, Trump went outside and spoke to supporters who were not inside the venue. He offered a moment of gratitude, saying, "There's never been anything like it."

“I realized the time is coming to an end. This is the greatest movement in the history of our country. MAGA: Make America great again," he said. "And in many ways, it's sad, because we're down to 12 days. We've been doing this together for nine years."

After having reflected on the campaign, Trump said he hopes he will continue on a new journey with his supporters as president.

"Hopefully we'll do another journey, and that will be the journey to make America better than it's ever been," he said.

Answering a question about Israel at an event in Georgia, Trump said Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him yesterday and the day before.

“We have a very good relationship," he said.

Trump said Monday that he had also talked to Netanyahu over the weekend.

EDF Action Votes, the campaign arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, says it is doubling its planned spending in the presidential race as part of a new push for Latino voters.

The $3 million in additional spending will boost a Spanish-language ad that links a pro-environmental message with an economic one, saying Harris’ agenda would help reduce costs.

“Supporting working people will be a key goal of her presidency. She’ll do it with new ideas to make middle class life more affordable,” the ad says.

The Harris campaign says it is taking steps to prepare for “anything Republicans throw at us” in court before, on and after Election Day.

“The 2024 presidential election is already the most litigated in American history, but we are also the most prepared campaign in history for what we face,” the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee said in a memo obtained by NBC News outlining the steps they’ve taken to prepare for an anticipated deluge of litigation.

“Democrats are prepared and enter this final stretch with a playbook to protect the integrity of our elections — before and after November 5,” the memo says.

It says the “veteran lawyers who fought and won in 2020 have been preparing for dozens of scenarios, drafting thousands of pages of legal briefs, and working directly with hundreds of lawyers and experts on the ground in battleground states so we are ready for whatever the other side throws our way.”

Read the full story here.

The NAACP, one of the nation's leading civil rights organizations, plans to hold a series of events at barbershops and salons in key battleground states in the final stretch of the election to "stimulate organic conversations about the importance of voting."

The advocacy group plans to host events in Milwaukee on Saturday; Pittsburgh on Tuesday; Charlotte, North Carolina, and Las Vegas on Nov. 2; and Philadelphia on Nov. 4, the day before Election Day.

The NAACP is organizing the events in partnership with an array of media and advocacy organizations, including the NBA, the BET cable network and the group NexGen America.

Both campaigns have made direct appeals to Black voters in recent months, especially Black men. Polls have found Trump has made gains among Black men, but Harris still leads among Black voters overall by wide margins.

"We are laser focused on mobilizing Black voters this election. In 2020, Black women and Black men showed up and saved democracy—and we are ready to make our voices heard once again," said Tyler Sterling, national director of campaigns for the NAACP.

Despite previous mixed messaging about early and mail-in voting, Trump reminded Floridians this afternoon on Truth Social about the deadline to request mail-in ballots.

“FLORIDA! Tomorrow is the last day to request a mail-in ballot! Don’t wait until the deadline to request yours!" he wrote.

Trump has also posted election deadlines for other states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Maine.

Planning is in the works for Harris to deliver a “closing argument” speech from the National Mall on Tuesday, three sources familiar with the preparations confirmed.

The final logistical details have not been nailed down. The Harris campaign declined to comment.

The U.S. economy remains on solid footing.

But an expected drop in payroll figures as a result of two hurricanes and a nationwide strike could temporarily mask continued labor market growth that, especially in some swing states, has by some measures rarely been stronger.

The final pre-election edition of the closely watched monthly jobs report is slated to be published next Friday, Nov. 1. Election Day is Nov. 5. All eyes are now on a handful of states expected to see razor-thin vote margins, likely to be determined by a small but crucial pool of persuadable voters.

Many of those voters have indicated that economic concerns remain top-of-mind.

Gov. Tim Walz cast his ballot early in Minnesota with his wife, Gwen, and his son, Gus, who is a first-time voter.

LONDON — Evoking the Battle of Yorktown and misspelling the word Britain, Trump issued a remarkable legal complaint against the United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party late Tuesday, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the U.S. election in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s team asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate after a senior Labour figure posted a rallying cry for current and former staffers to travel to battleground states and campaign for Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 vote.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Wednesday his party had done nothing wrong. Party members often travel to the United States ahead of elections to help out their Democratic bedfellows, he said, but added that this was voluntary rather than party-led, and therefore does not contravene American election law.

If the FEC agrees with Trump that Labour and Harris are guilty of flouting foreign interference rules, it could issue big fines.

Read the full story here.

NBC News asked five Trump supporters if they think the former president will concede the 2024 election if he loses. They expressed confidence that Trump would do so, although a couple of them also said they don’t believe there’s any way Harris can win legitimately. 

“He’s going to walk away, he’s going to accept, just like he did four years ago,” said John Crann, 66, of Peoria. Crann, a two-time Trump voter, described the former president's exit in 2020 as graceful. 

“He walked out of the office with class, even though January 6th happened, he still exited the office," he said.

"And to me, that was a sign of a person doing the right thing,” added Michael Chevalier, 61, of Scottsdale, who also expressed confidence Trump will concede if he loses this time around. 

“I think he’s an honest guy, and I think that he’ll realize that it’s not a good thing to divide the country and not concede, so I don’t think there’ll be a repeat of anything that happened last time,” said Janell Rubin, 60, also of Peoria, acknowledging that in 2020 Trump begrudgingly left office. 

Harris delivered brief remarks today in response to former Trump chief of staff John Kelly’s interview with The New York Times in which he confirmed reports that his former boss had made admiring statements about Adolf Hitler and said he meets the definition of a fascist.

“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans," Harris said. "All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is." 

Harris said Kelly’s comments furthered her belief that Trump is “unstable” and unfit for office, adding that he has now surrounded himself with people who would allow him to operate with “unchecked power.” 

“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guard rails against his propensities and his actions,” Harris said. “So, the bottom line is this: We know what Donald Trump wants, he wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?”

The nation’s largest network of left-leaning megadonors poured millions of dollars into California and New York House races this year to build a get-out-the-vote operation in states so blue that Democrats have not bothered to build much political infrastructure, revealing previously unknown details about the effort to NBC News.

Many Democrats credit failures in New York with costing them the House of Representatives in 2022. This year, analysts think the battle for the narrowly divided chamber could come down to New York and California, which between them have at least 17 contested congressional races, including more than half of the most expensive contests in the country.

After the 2022 losses, the Democracy Alliance, which funds a vast array of left-leaning causes and advocacy groups, decided to wade deeper into electoral politics than it typically does by partnering with unions to fund massive field organizing efforts in two states that will get practically zero resources from the presidential or Senate campaigns.

“2022 was a wakeup call,” Democracy Alliance president Pamela Shifman said in an interview. “The reality is that blue states like New York and California often get overlooked by national organizations and national donors because they’re not presidential battlegrounds. But the reality is that the road the House runs right through New York and California.”

Read the full story here.

In a memo obtained by NBC News, the Harris campaign has outlined plans to address election security concerns of voters and allies.

A main takeaway from the memo, according to campaign sources, is that their approach is about preparation, building a team, early legal filings and using the legal system to bring clarity to who is an eligible voter and how the process should work across the battleground states. 

“We’ve done the work, so this will be ok, and we just need to execute,” an official working on some of the plans for election security and potential litigation said.

Excerpts from the memo indicate that the campaign has plans to have observers at polling stations, hire hundreds lawyers in battleground states, and take legal action if needed.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican, has endorsed Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin for Senate in Michigan. In a statement, Cheney said her endorsement is “not about policy differences” but rather “about doing what’s right for our country."

"Cheney, a lifelong Republican and former Chair of the House Republican Conference, has fought back against extremist rhetoric in today’s politics, choosing to support serious and principled leaders who will put the good of the country first," Slotkin's team said in a news release.

This isn’t the first time Cheney has endorsed Slotkin for office over a Republican. In 2022, Cheney backed Slotkin for Congress and stumped for her in Lansing — Cheney’s first-ever cross party endorsement. 

Cheney, who endorsed Harris for president along with a handful of other down-ballot Democrats this year, campaigned for the vice president on Monday in key battleground suburbs, including outside Detroit.

 

Harris, her campaign team and some of Donald Trump’s own allies say they expect the former president to quickly declare victory on election night — even if the outcome is not yet settled in key swing states.

Between the time it takes to process mail ballots and deal with provisional ballots in some battleground states, votes will not be fully tabulated on election night. Projections of who won a close presidential race might not come for days, similar to the 2020 election.

NBC News spoke to four Trump allies, all of whom speculated that the former president may be prepared to pull a repeat of 2020 and quickly declare he is the victor on election night when that is not yet certain. The sources all noted they did not have direct knowledge that this was a formal Trump campaign plan.

Others noted that this November could be different because he is surrounded by a new slate of top aides who wouldn’t push him to make such a declaration.

Seven Harris aides — and the vice president herself — said they are making preparations if Trump does indeed prematurely say he won or if he legally challenges the results if he loses. 

Read the full story here.

Harris is set to deliver remarks this afternoon from the vice president's residence before hitting the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, is sounding the alarm over former President Donald Trump’s failure to enter into key agreements with the Biden administration for the presidential transition process, warning that it could endanger the peaceful transfer of power and threaten U.S. national security.

In a letter sent today to Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, obtained exclusively by NBC News, Raskin warned that they are “breaking the precedent set by every other presidential candidate since 2010” by not accepting resources provided by the federal government for a smooth transition.

“Your actions depart from well-established norms of the federal government and demonstrate a spectacular disregard for the successful continuation of the essential institutions of American democratic government,” Raskin wrote.

The Maryland Democrat said it appears Trump could be trying to flout fundraising reporting requirements and rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest in the incoming administration.

Read the full story here.

After voting in Minnesota, Walz commented on The Atlantic's reporting that Trump praised Adolf Hitler. Walz called the reporting "shaking" and applauded former Trump official John Kelly for expressing his concerns about a second Trump term.

"As John Kelly said, Donald Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution, nor does he respect the rule of law. If there was ever a red line, he has stepped across it," Walz said. "And so I appreciate Gen. Kelly coming out at this moment, I ask the American public, go look, go see what he’s saying."

In a number of interviews, Kelly told reporters that Trump had praised Hitler, to which Walz said, "Donald Trump made it very clear that this is election about Donald Trump taking full control of the military to use against his political enemies."

For 30 years, the Rev. Alyn E. Waller has led his flock at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, the largest Black congregation in Philadelphia. But on Saturday, the good pastor led another kind of assembly: 100 Black men, mostly clad in leather, astride a pack of snarling motorcycles. 

“Here we are in Philly, 100 fellas on bikes in the city and the police are helping us, not chasing us,” Waller said, a chorus of hogs, trikes and slingshots rising around him. “At the end of the day, we know that we have done some good, not just for us, but for everybody.” 

Just days ahead of Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline and weeks before Election Day, this Harley-Davidson-riding pastor and a collective of some of Philadelphia’s Black motorcycle clubs, along with two nonpartisan voter engagement groups, are encouraging men in some of the city’s historically Black neighborhoods, where voter turnout and political engagement has been low, to register and to show up at the polls.

“We’ve got Black Bikers Vote, Black Men Vote and then just people who care about democracy getting together on a beautiful day to ride bikes through some of the areas in Philadelphia that need to be reminded to exercise their franchise,” Waller said.

Read the full story here.

An audit by election officials in Georgia identified 20 noncitizens among more than 8 million registered voters, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced today.

A spokesperson for Raffensperger’s office told NBC News that 11 of those 20 people never voted, while the other nine had voted in election cycles prior to 2016.

The audit’s findings help to back up the notion that noncitizen voting is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Despite that, many Republicans have pushed the false notion that noncitizens are voting in widespread numbers and that Democrats have helped them enter the country to cast those ballots. Election experts have sounded the alarm that it’s one way Republicans are attempting to sow doubt about the upcoming election results.

Walz voted this morning in St. Paul at the Ramsey Government Center, along with his wife, Gwen, and their son, Gus, who voted for the first time.

"To have my son with me, Gus, to vote for the first time, exciting, an opportunity to turn the page on the chaos of Donald Trump and a new way forward," Walz said afterward.

Early voting began in St. Paul on Sept. 20.

In an increasingly polarized political climate, NBC News asked several Trump supporters here whether they’d ever consider dating a Democrat.

The informal survey found that two Trump supporters said they would not date a Democrat, while three said they'd be open to it.

John Crann, 66, who is currently single and mourning the passing of his fiance, said he couldn’t date a Democrat because they are “the people who want to use abortion as a form of birth control.” 

The Democratic National Committee launched a six-figure ad blitz today, targeting young voters on more than two dozen college campuses across battleground states and key battleground districts, according to a memo shared first with NBC News.

Their message to Gen Z: Vote early.

The campaign, featuring ads on buses, bus shelters, billboards and posters that read “Freedom is on the ballot,” is expected to reach 30 college campuses across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Florida, Iowa, New York and Ohio. The call to action on the signs will direct Gen Zers to IWillVote.com, a website with information on how to vote early.

Following Trump's recent comments calling Democrats the "enemy from within," NBC News spoke with Trump supporters here who wholeheartedly agreed with the former president.

“I think Democrats are bound to determine to destroy our country and make us like Venezuela. They want to destroy the middle class,” Sally Foree, 66, said.  

Another voter, Neil Rubin, 64, told NBC that the Democratic Party "has been taken over by leftist, communist, Marxist Democrats."

One half of hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse endorsed Harris during an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."

"I want her to win because she's a Democrat and I love my mom," Violent J told "Daily Show" correspondent Troy Iwata during a segment in which Iwata showed the rapper digitally altered photos of the major party presidential and vice presidential nominees in clown makeup.

Earlier in the segment, Violent J spoke about Trump, telling Iwata, "Now I know why I hated Trump, that wall s---," and referring to Trump's attempts to build a wall along the southern border.

Police in Tempe, Arizona, have arrested a 60-year-old man suspected of shooting at a Democratic National Committee office over the last two months and hanging suspicious bags of white powder from political signs in a nearby village.

Police announced the arrest late yesterday and identified the suspect as Jeffrey Michael Kelly. He was charged with several felonies, including the unlawful discharge of a firearm, shooting at a nonresidential structure and committing an act of terrorism, and misdemeanor criminal damage.

Tempe police also allege that the suspect posted several political signs hung with suspicious bags of white powder and lined with razor blades in the village of Ahwatukee, Arizona.

Last month, the police said officers responded to the DNC office, which organizes and campaigns for Harris, after staff members reported they noticed what appeared to be gunshots through the office’s front windows. Earlier in September, police said the same office’s front windows appeared to be hit by a pellet or BB gun.

Read the full story here.

Political parties and groups have filed nearly 100 lawsuits across seven battleground states that could shape how votes are cast and counted ahead of Election Day and the legal battle that’s expected to follow.

The majority of suits were brought by Republicans and allied groups who are focused on rooting out alleged voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence of its occurring in a widespread way, particularly around mail ballot procedures and noncitizen voting.

Many suits have sought to purge voter rolls or bolster signature and voter identification requirements — or invalidate ballots that don’t meet them — while others have looked to revamp different aspects of election administration, including reducing the use of ballot drop boxes and instituting unusual vote-counting protocols, like requiring that ballots be counted by hand.

Lawsuits from Democrats and allied groups have focused mostly on expanding voting access by trying to extend registration deadlines or appealing for broader interpretations of laws about absentee ballots and voter identification.

Read the full story here.

Harris’ campaign is launching an early voting push targeting students on battleground state college campuses. The effort consists of concerts, block parties and tailgates, in addition to a new seven-figure targeted ad buy focused primarily on reaching students through social media platforms.

The ad buy will geographically target students in battleground states across platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts. Some of the ads, according to the campaign, are designed to mirror popular social media trends.

The “Vote for Our Future” tour will put the campaign’s principals alongside high-profile surrogates working to mobilize young voters across the battlegrounds, not just engaging the students, but also encouraging them to register to vote and vote early.

Read the full story here.

John Kelly, who was the White House chief of staff during the Trump administration, is speaking out about what he sees as the dangers of a second Trump term. In a series of interviews with The New York Times, he sharply criticized Trump, saying he fits “the definition of a fascist.” NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for "TODAY."

The progressive organization MoveOn said today it's spending $250,000 on a Charli XCX-inspired ad targeting young, infrequent voters in a get-out-the-vote effort.

The 15-second digital ad, first shared with NBC News, spoofs Charli XCX’s song “Guess” off the artist’s rereleased “brat” album. It will run across Meta platforms as a video and a gif in key battleground states.

“We have been reaching beyond traditional GOTV methods to remind young people their vote is their power and can affect our daily lives 365 days of the year,” MoveOn spokesperson Britt Jacovich said in a statement.

MoveOn said the ad is part of a $1.2 million digital campaign in support of the Harris-Walz ticket and key congressional races and targets 1.63 million so-called surge voters — people who are new and vote infrequently, lean Democratic, skew younger and cast their first ballot after the 2016 election.

Vance’s willingness to regularly take questions from mainstream news outlets has added an unofficial duty to his role as Trump’s running mate: explainer-in-chief.

In interviews, at news conferences and while speaking with reporters on his campaign plane, Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio, often finds himself having to defend, decode or “well, actually” whatever provocative Trump comment made most recently.

That time Trump questioned whether Harris is really Black? “I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris,” Vance contended.

When Trump disparaged Detroit, a majority-Black city in battleground Michigan? Trump, Vance said, “was just talking honestly about the fact that Detroit has been left behind.”

And when Trump name-dropped a Democratic congressman when he warned about an “enemy within” and stoked fears of chaos justifying military intervention on Election Day? “The enemy within,” Vance offered, “are people that Kamala Harris let into this country unvetted, unchecked and undocumented.”

Read the full story here.

Former President Barack Obama made a direct plea for young men not to get frustrated at the slow pace of political progress as he made the case to support Harris for president on the inaugural episode of a new podcast hosted by NBA players.

“A lot of young people — a lot of young men — they get frustrated, and they say, ‘Well, nothing’s happened,’” Obama told NBA All-Star Tyrese Halliburton, 24, and producer Tommy Alter in a clip first shared with NBC News. “But let’s say — when I was president I didn’t cure racism, I didn’t eliminate poverty. But 50 million people got health insurance. That didn’t happen before, and that saved lives and made people’s lives better.”

Obama added that the reason to vote is that there is somebody “who can see you, knows your life, cares about you,” who will be making “a million decisions” that will hopefully “make your lives a little bit better each year.”  

The podcast, “The Young Man and the Three,” is a rebrand of a show that was called “The Old Man and the Three,” which had more than a million YouTube subscribers, with an overwhelming young and male audience.

Read the full story here.

Given the tumultuous nature of the Trump era in general and the twists and turns that of the 2024 campaign specifically, it’s hard to believe we are most likely at the end game of this historic election cycle and (knock on wood) it’s ending more normally than any campaign featuring Donald Trump has ended so far.

I accept that the phrase “so far” is doing a lot of work in the above paragraph — and to be clear, I’m talking about campaign-shaking events, not Trump’s penchant for crude or uncomfortable remarks. Clearly, something unforeseen can still happen, but I’m not sure we’ll have any new event that would dramatically affect either candidate’s vote share in this late stage of the race. But if you aren’t prepared for the unexpected in politics anymore, then you haven’t been paying attention!

But what has been different — so far! — about this campaign in these last few weeks is how semi-, sorta, kinda conventionally both campaigns are behaving.

For one thing, the campaigns appear to agree on who the final persuadable voter is: a Republican or Republican-leaning independent who doesn’t like Trump personally but is skeptical of Vice President Kamala Harris’ perceived liberal politics.

Read the full analysis here.

Local governments are uniquely able to combat growing national polarization, according to a new study out today from the nonprofit research organization CivicPulse and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The study, which involved interviews with more than 1,400 local elected policymakers and local civil service leaders, found that 87% of those surveyed said political polarization negatively affects the country “a great deal” or “a lot.” But just 31% of local officials said that political polarization negatively impacts their local communities to that extent.

“Political polarization, which is dominating the media at the national level, really is not dominating life at the local level at all,” Louise Richardson, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic fund supporting research and education, told NBC News about the report.

Dividing responses by population size, the survey found that local officials from smaller communities see fewer negative effects from polarization than those from larger communities. While 46% of officials from communities with 50,000 or more residents said their community is negatively affected “a lot” or “a great deal” by polarization, just 28% of local officials from communities with 1,000 to 10,000 residents said the same.

Read the full story here.