Election 2024: Harris rallies in Georgia and Wisconsin; Trump fundraises in Florida

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in the state, is facing pressure to drop out, over inflammatory and lewd comments he reportedly made online. He denies these reports and vows to stay in the race. NBC’s Laura Jarrett reports for TODAY.

Democrats are preparing to ramp up efforts to tie Republicans up and down the ballot in North Carolina to Mark Robinson following a report that the GOP gubernatorial candidate made inflammatory comments on the message board of a pornography website.

National and state Democratic groups were already making Robinson the centerpiece of their strategy in down-ballot races in the state amid an expanding list of incendiary remarks he’s made over the years. But the fallout from CNN’s latest report has only added fuel to that fire.

Read the full story here.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday that roughly 98,000 Arizonans whose voter registration status was in limbo will be able to participate in the full ballot in November.

The uncertainty regarding the voters’ fate came after the Maricopa County Recorder’s office discovered a clerical error from 2004 that granted the nearly 100,000 Arizonans voting registration status despite not providing documented proof of citizenship. 

Read the full story here.

Donald Trump is facing calls both from his allies and from within his own campaign to pull his endorsement from scandal-plagued North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, according to four people familiar with the discussions. 

So far, however, there are no plans for the former president to formally drop him.

Read the full story here.

Trump told Jewish voters that they would have “a lot” to do with a loss in the 2024 election during an antisemitism event in Washington, D.C.

Amid the recent news of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ arrest, former President Donald Trump reposted a doctored image falsely showing Vice President Kamala Harris with Combs with text questioning if she was involved in his alleged “freak offs.”

The image, which Trump reposted to his Truth Social profile, is an edited version of a 2001 photo of Harris with former talk show host Montel Williams, whom she briefly dated, and his daughter Ashley. The edit replaced Montel Williams’ face with a photo of Combs. 

Read the full story here.

Harris acknowledged the endorsement of a local Teamsters council during her remarks tonight at a campaign rally in Madison.

"And to everyone at Teamsters Joint Council 39, I am so honored and grateful for your endorsement," Harris said at the opening of her remarks. "I will work so closely with you, as we always have, and we will win."

The council represents roughly 15,000 workers in Wisconsin.

The American Muslim 2024 Election Task Force today issued a statement urging voters to cast their ballots for third-party candidates and saying it could not "in good conscience" endorse Harris.

The task force, made up of a coalition of national political advocacy organizations, said voters should support "up and down the ballot" candidates who endorses a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on the Israeli government, such as Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Justice for All nominee Cornel West and Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver.

"American Muslims have the potential to significantly influence local and national elections by voting strategically," the task force said. "By doing so, they can support candidates who advocate for civil rights, racial equality, religious freedom, rule of law, freedom of speech, and a humane foreign policy."

The Secret Service said its investigation into the July 13 attempt on Trump's life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, revealed a series of operational failures and "communications deficiencies."

In a report summary released today, it said some of its failures included a "lack of due diligence" to address vulnerabilities on the site and a failure to implement certain security measures on the day of the event. The agency also said that law enforcement were using different radio frequencies at the venue that made communication difficult, and that complicated sharing information in real time.

The Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of Integrity are reviewing the findings as the Secret Service weighs next steps in accountability, the agency said in a news release.

During an event to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the show "West Wing," creator Aaron Sorkin took the stage to recognize the cast and crew that worked on the show.

"Brad Whitford, Rob Lowe and Allison Janney are all on set today and were not able to make it," Sorkin said. "The rest of us are apparently unemployed."

"Not yet, not yet," first lady Jill Biden interjected jokingly.

Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine wrote an op-ed in the New York Times today blasting Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance for his unsubstantiated claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.

DeWine wrote that as a supporter of Trump and Vance, he was "saddened" by their comments which "disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield."

"This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there," DeWine wrote.

Some early voting centers in Virginia are experiencing a higher volume of voters during their first day of early voting compared to the 2020 presidential election. At the Fairfax County Early Voting Center, at 1 p.m., 1,528 people had voted, already surpassing the total number of people, 1,213, that had voted on all of day one in 2020.

In another voting center in Manassas, Virginia, they had 540 voters at noon after 3.5 hours of voting.

Voters in Fairfax County included citizens, and candidates, on both sides of the political aisle. The renewed push for voters to show up early to cast their ballot is particularly focused on alleviating the amount of resources that campaigns will need to use to get out of the vote closer to election day.

Vance is scheduled to deliver remarks in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday, and on Thursday he will give a speech centered on the economy in Macon, Georgia.

Vance campaigned in North Carolina last week and in Georgia earlier this week.

Trump won North Carolina in 2020 with 49.9% of the vote, and a Democratic presidential nominee hasn't won the state since 2008. Biden narrowly won Georgia in the last presidential election.

Harris has completed her event in Georgia, which was focused on reproductive rights. Her remarks largely blasted Republicans for limiting abortion and focused on the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman who died because she didn't receive appropriate abortion care in time.

During her remarks in Georgia, Harris called out Trump's decision to not support a Florida ballot measure that would expand access to abortion, saying, "Now Donald Trump says that he would personally cast his vote in Florida, which is where he now lives, to support their extreme abortion ban, just like the one that is here in Georgia."

Trump's initially told NBC News last month that he believed the state's six-week limit on abortion was "too short" and declined to take a position on the ballot measure before facing conservative backlash.

During her remarks about reproductive rights in Georgia, Harris referred to the GOP as "hypocrites," saying that they justify limiting abortion by promising to take care of women during and after pregnancy.

"These hypocrites want to start talking about, 'This is in the best interest of women and children,'" Harris said, adding, "Well, where ya been? where ya been when it comes to taking care of the women and children of America?"

At a rally in Georgia focused on reproductive rights, Harris spoke at length about Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman who died after doctors at a Georgia hospital failed to provide timely abortion care.

Thurman was the subject of a ProPublica article earlier this week about the aftermath of Georgia's abortion ban. NBC News has not independently reported on the ProPublica story.

"We will speak her name: Amber Nicole Thurman," Harris told attendees in Georgia.

Harris also spoke about meeting with Thurman's mother, telling the crowd, "I promised her, as she has asked, that we will make sure Amber is not just remembered as a statistic, that she will not just be remembered as a statistic, so that people will know she was a mother and a daughter and a sister and that she was loved and that she should be alive today."

During a campaign event in Atlanta today, Harris said she's still trying to coordinate a second debate against Trump.

"I’m trying to get another debate," Harris said. "We’ll see."

Trump has said he has no plans to face off against Harris again ahead of November.

Voters waited in line today as early voting for the presidential election began in Virginia, South Dakota and Minnesota.

In a statement shared first with NBC News, the Democratic National Committee blasted Vance, saying in part, "it shouldn’t be hard to disavow [North Carolina Lt. Gov.] Mark Robinson’s horrific comments, but JD Vance has consistently shown he is willing to surround himself in an echo chamber of hate and extremism."

The statement came after Vance replied to a tweet from Harris' campaign account accusing the senator of avoiding questions about Robinson.

Dawn Roberts, an Iowa state co-chair of the Nikki Haley for President campaign, endorsed Harris today, writing in a Des Moines Register opinion piece that Harris, "showed willingness to listen to a wider range of views to solve problems."

Roberts' decision to vote for Harris came after Biden dropped out the race, she wrote, adding, "This year's Democratic National Convention was almost perfect. Harris had the ability to unite her party immediately. She said she wanted to be the president for 'all of the people.'"

Five days after the second apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the House on Friday unanimously passed bipartisan legislation that would boost Secret Service protection for the two parties’ presidential nominees, Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as their vice presidential running mates.

The vote was 405-0. It required two-thirds support of the House to pass because it came to the floor under an expedited process. In a separate action, lawmakers also passed a resolution expanding the scope of the bipartisan House task force investigating the July 13 Trump assassination attempt to include the second incident.

The bill’s passage comes as lawmakers grapple over how to address the growing threats of violence against major political figures in the U.S. ahead of the November election. Some lawmakers have called for more Secret Service funding, while others said the Secret Service could be more effective by shifting resources.

Read the full story here.

The Anti-Defamation League sharply criticized Trump over comments he made about Jewish voters last night during an event focusing on "fighting antisemitism." In a statement, the ADL accused the former president of "employing numerous antisemitic tropes and anti-Jewish stereotypes."

"I appreciate that former President Trump called out antisemitism and recognized its historic surge. He’s right on that. But the effect is undermined by then employing numerous antisemitic tropes and anti-Jewish stereotypes — including rampant accusations of dual loyalty," Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

"Pre-emptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews," Greenblatt said, referring to Trump's remarks, which included a section where the former president said, "the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss."

The Georgia state election board on Friday voted 3-2 to require counties to hand-count ballots in this November’s election, a move that could drastically lengthen the amount of time to tally election results in a critical battleground state.

The move was approved by three board members who’ve been praised by former President Donald Trump, and was opposed by Democrats in the state, as well as by the Republican secretary of state and attorney general.

“I want to make on the record that we’ll be going against the advice of our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative,” the Georgia election board’s chair, John Fervier, said before the motion passed. Fervier, who was appointed by Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democratic appointee on the panel, voted against the new rules.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had previously warned the new rule could cause “chaos.”

Read the full story here.

Democrats believe that the allegations that North Carolina GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson made an avalanche of inflammatory comments on the message board of a porn site, will help them win not just the state's gubernatorial race where Robinson is a candidate, but could help them in their quest to win the state's presidential ballot because Trump has forcefully endorsed Robinson in the past.

But while the alleged comments first reported by CNN are reverberating around the political sphere, including posts from an account linked to Robinson supporting slavery, referring to himself as a "black NAZI" and musings about "peeping" on women in gym showers; they're absent from the initial ads Democrats have launched looking to take advantage of the news cycle. Robinson has denied the report, calling it "tabloid trash."

The DNC's new digital ad campaign and billboards, about which NBC News was first to report, shows Trump standing with Robinson and quotes the former president calling Robinson "outstanding" and an "incredible gentleman." And the Harris campaign's new ad re-ups Trump's praise of Robinson, but the attack is on abortion, not on the comments.

Certainly there's been no shortage of coverage of the allegations against Robinson. But the fact that none of the ads linking Trump to Robinson are touching them, and that the key attack against them remains abortion, is notable.

The Kamala Harris campaign is pushing back on Donald Trump’s remarks that “the Jewish people” would have “a lot to do” with his defeat if he loses the 2024 election, accusing him of using antisemitic rhetoric in a statement made first to NBC News.

“Donald Trump is resorting to the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book because he’s weak and can’t stand the fact that the majority of America is going to reject him in November,” Harris campaign national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein told NBC News in a statement today. “But we know that words like these can have dangerous consequences. As Trump has proven, including over the past few weeks with his lies about Springfield, Ohio, he will cling to fearmongering and intimidation, no matter the cost. When Donald Trump loses this election, it will be because Americans from all faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds came together to turn the page on the divisiveness he demonstrates every day.”

At a Thursday event in Washington about fighting antisemitism, Trump wondered why he’s trailing his Democratic rival among Jewish voters, even though he’s the “most popular person in Israel,” he said, encouraging the crowd to help grow his support.

“I’m not going to call this a prediction, but, in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%,” Trump said, citing an unspecified poll. He added: “You can’t let this happen. Fourty percent is not acceptable, because we have an election to win.” 

In remarks today, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, blasted Trump and state GOP leaders, saying that they "have known about [Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's] character, and the kind of statement he made, his disrespect to violence" for years.

Cooper added, "this is something that has been known across the board and they have continued to support him even to this very minute."

The governor's comments come in the wake of a new CNN report out Thursday that revealed some of Robinson's lewd comments that he allegedly posted on a pornographic website years ago. The statements included Robinson talking about sexual acts, slavery and Nazis.

NBC News has reached out to the Trump campaign and North Carolina Republican Party for comment.

Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump “understands the situation that we’re in” regarding government funding. 

As he walked to House votes, Johnson was asked if Trump is OK without the SAVE Act being attached to a continuing resolution. “I’ve had a lot of conversations with President Trump,” Johnson said. “I won’t divulge all of that, but he understands the situation that we’re in. He is doggedly determined to ensure that election security remains a top priority, and I am as well, which is why I put the SAVE Act with the CR.” 

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign did not submit a written request to the state Board of Elections last night requesting to withdraw from the gubernatorial race, a spokesperson from the North Carolina State Board of Elections told NBC News today. 

This means that the deadline for Robinson to officially withdraw from the race has passed, per state law. 

The lieutenant governor is under fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle after a new report yesterday from CNN revealed that Robinson once posted lewd and inflammatory comments about Nazis, transgender people and slavery on the message board of a pornographic website.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital and a former White House communications director for Trump, said he and a group of crypto advocates are working with Harris to develop her campaign’s policies on digital assets ahead of the elections in November.

“There’s a group of cryptocurrency advocates, bitcoin advocates etc. that are working alongside her to distance the Democratic Party away from Elizabeth Warren and [Gary Gensler],” he told a panel yesterday at the annual TOKEN2049 event, one of the world’s largest crypto conferences.

Warren, a Democratic senator, and Gensler, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are widely seen as foes of the crypto industry, having backed regulations and crackdowns on the space. 

Harris has been hearing out crypto proponents and the group is pushing her to back industry-friendly policies, he said, adding that the vice president even has some of these talks lined up for this week.

Read the full story here.

In a memo out today, the Harris campaign highlighted their "all-hands-on deck, week-long mobilization push around Black voter registration efforts."

The campaign says it held in-person voter registration events on 60 HBCU campuses in battleground states, which included Harris engaging with students in Philadelphia and Walz meeting with students in Georgia.

The memo also made it clear that "the assumption is that Black voters are in our back pocket, and they are not."

"Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz are committed to earning every single vote and they are not taking a single voter for granted," the memo added.

The Supreme Court today rejected Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s last-ditch request to be included on the ballot in Nevada, a key swing state.

The court in a brief unsigned order left in place a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that blocked Stein from appearing on the ballot over a dispute concerning whether the Green Party had submitted the correct paperwork.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will not be attending Trump’s rally tomorrow in Wilmington, North Carolina, according to a person familiar with planning for the event.

A spokesperson for Robinson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news comes a day after a CNN report that alleged Robinson made a slew of inflammatory remarks on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012.

Yesterday, Robinson vowed to stay in the race and blasted CNN, but his remarks drew condemnation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Doug Emhoff responded to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ jab at Harris for not having biological children to keep her “humble.”

“It’s appalling for somebody who is in a position of leadership like governor to say something so repulsive and so out of touch,” Emhoff said during an interview with Michael Strahan that aired on "Good Morning America" this morning.

Emhoff also discussed his ex-wife’s consistent defense of Harris, particularly at attacks over Harris not having biological children. Kerstin Emhoff responded moments after Sanders first made the remarks Tuesday during a town hall with Trump.

“Kerstin has been incredible. When you attack Kamala, especially on issues about motherhood, Kerstin has just been out there each and every time, just to tell the truth about who Kamala is as a mother, as a person, as a member of our family again, who’s always there for us,” Emhoff said. 

First lady Jill Biden emphasized in an interview with NBC News that “we have to have a peaceful transfer of power,” urging Americans to “come together” amid deep political divisions.

“I think we have to come together. I think we have to vote,” she said. “As Americans, you know, that’s a right that we’ve been given, and I think we have to take advantage of that, and then we have to have a peaceful transfer of power.”

Trump has repeatedly spread false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and defended people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has also waffled about whether he would accept the results of the election this November.

Jill Biden was responding to a question about what she would say to Americans during a toxic campaign season.

If the election does not go his way, the economy will tank, Christmas will be canceled, and America as we know it will be “finished,” Trump promised in the run-up to the 2020 election.

That race did not go his way, of course, and none of Trump’s prophesied cataclysms materialized under Joe Biden’s presidency. But that has not stopped Trump from recycling some of the same dark portents about a Harris presidency.

“If he’s elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump said in October 2020 during his only debate with Biden. “If he gets in, you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

The depression never happened. Stocks rose during Biden’s presidency. But Trump recently predicted that a Harris victory would lead to “a massive [stock] market downturn” and “a 1929-style depression.”

Harris plans to speak in Georgia today about the fallout from statewide abortion bans across the country, which she has dubbed "Trump abortion bans," a senior campaign official said.

She plans to address the death of a Georgia woman, Amber Nicole Thurman, under the state’s abortion ban that was reported by ProPublica. 

The rally comes after Harris met with the Thurman's family in Michigan last evening.

A star reporter who covered Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has been placed on leave after admitting a relationship with a former reporting subject.

New York Magazine said in a statement yesterday that its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, had failed to disclose a “personal relationship” with an unnamed campaign subject while she was reporting on the 2024 election.

This was a violation of the outlet’s standards on journalists declaring personal interests that could be seen to influence their coverage, it said.

“Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” the statement said. The magazine said that it reviewed her work, however, and found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias.”

Kenneth Hauck wasn’t sure how he would vote when the race between Trump and Harris was just a hypothetical scenario. Now it’s a reality, and Hauck still isn’t sure whom he will support — but he’s leaning toward Harris.

“I need to do more research on her before anything,” said Hauck, 38, a software tester from San Diego, noting that he recently watched a YouTube video on Harris’ and Trump’s policies and that Harris’ housing plan piqued his interest. Hauck said Harris’ policies “seem good.” But, he added, “the devil is in the details.”

Hauck is among the 8% of voters surveyed in NBC News’ July national poll who said they weren’t sure how they would vote in a potential race between Trump and Harris or said they would consider a different candidate. In new interviews, 21 of them spoke about how they processed the tumultuous events of the summer, including a Democratic candidate switch, a pair of vice presidential picks and two apparent attempts to assassinate Trump.

Read the full story here.

The prospect of a President Harris facing down a Republican-controlled Senate is coming into focus as she rises in the 2024 contest, even as GOP hopes of capturing the Senate grow because of improving polling in a pivotal Montana race.

A Republican-controlled chamber could thwart Harris’ nominees to fill out her administration and the courts, along with her legislative agenda. Top Senate Republicans told NBC News she would need their sign-off to secure votes on any judicial nominees, including for the Supreme Court. And some Harris supporters worry that without a united Congress, she would struggle to get much done legislatively.

“I honestly believe she has to have both the House and the Senate in order for her to be able to get anything done. Anything at all,” said Frankie Veltri, a retired 77-year-old voter in Goodyear, Arizona. “And if she doesn’t have one or the other, putting more emphasis on the Senate ... she will never be able to do anything that she said she would do, and then it will be the same old grind. You know, ‘She made all these promises and she didn’t do them.’ I mean, that’s evident with Biden.”

Less than 24 hours after CNN published a bombshell report on comments that it said Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, made on a pornographic website, the Democratic National Committee unveiled new advertisements linking him to Trump.

The DNC plans to launch a new digital advertisement and nearly a dozen billboards highlighting how Trump has praised Robinson, who is North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, according to a source familiar with the matter and a news release by DNC regional press secretary Kenny Palmer. NBC News was the first to report the new ad push.

By linking Trump to Robinson, Democrats hope to cut into Trump’s support in the state, which a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since 2008.

North Carolina could prove decisive in a close presidential race, and Vance, Trump’s running mate, said himself that it would be “very hard” for his ticket to win in November if Democrats flip North Carolina.

Read the full story here.

MADISON, Wis. — The battle for one of the closest swing states is intensifying as Harris sweeps into this deep blue college town and state capital today for an evening rally.

This week, several new polls in Wisconsin showed an extremely tight race. Harris fared slightly better than Trump — but all of the polls were within their margins of error. AARP’s survey came in at Harris 49%, Trump 48%. Quinnipiac University and Marist College also showed 1-point Harris edges, 49% to 48% in Quinnipiac’s and 50% and 49% in Marist’s. The fight over Wisconsin — considered a must-win for Harris as part of Democrats’ so-called blue wall — could tilt the election.

Harris called for action to stop gun violence at schools during a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey last night. Harris surprised her host by also saying, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot.”

Trump will attend a Miami fundraiser this evening, a campaign official said. He has no public campaign events on his schedule today.

Trump was in Washington, D.C., yesterday, working to persuade Jewish voters to cast their ballots for him.

Harris will hold a campaign events in Marietta, Georgia, and Madison, Wisconsin, today. She has made frequent stops in the battleground states.

The Biden-Harris ticket flipped the states blue in 2020.