Harris rallies North Carolina crowd to ‘fight to realize the promise of America’ as Trump hits Arizona – as it happened

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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent Sunday trying to shore up political support among what they perceived to be must-have voting blocs with polls showing them locked in a tight 5 November presidential race.

With election day less than a month away, the Democratic vice-president attended a Black church in Greenville, North Carolina, as part of her campaign’s “souls to the polls” push. Her Republican opponent was in Arizona, looking for Black and Latino support as he seeks a second presidency, after a rally in California a day earlier.

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Harris and Trump, locked in tight race, seek edge among undecided voters

Presidential candidates spend Sunday trying to shore up support among must-have voting blocs

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent Sunday trying to shore up political support among what they perceived to be must-have voting blocs with polls showing them locked in a tight 5 November presidential race.

With election day less than a month away, the Democratic vice-president attended a Black church in Greenville, North Carolina, as part of her campaign’s “souls to the polls” push. Her Republican opponent was in Arizona, looking for Black and Latino support as he seeks a second presidency, after a rally in California a day earlier.

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Gretchen Whitmer apologizes for feeding chip to podcaster after Catholic backlash

Michigan governor accused of mocking communion, while she says stunt was meant to promote Biden’s Chips Act

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has apologized for feeding a Dorito chip to a social media influencer who dropped to her knees after Roman Catholic organizations accused the Democratic politician of insulting their religion by mocking the sacrament of communion.

“I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” Whitmer said in a statement that her office provided to the Michigan television news station WJBK on Friday.

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Trump addresses Latino voters at Las Vegas event as Harris releases medical report – as it happened

The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning with election day just over three weeks away. This blog is now closed.

Our latest polling shows Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck, with Trump gaining ground on Harris in crucial swing states.

Robert Tait reports: “the Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed the vice-president and Democratic nominee with a two-point nationwide lead, 48% to 46%, over her Republican opponent as of 10 October - tellingly, down from a 4% advantage she registered two weeks ago.”

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Thousands rally at Christian nationalist event in DC to ‘turn hearts back to God’

Jenny Donnelly, leader of anti-trans Don’t Mess With Our Kids, bills first pre-election event as rallying call for mothers

Tens of thousands of Christians poured onto the National Mall on Saturday to atone, pray and take a stand for America – which, in their view, has been poisoned by secularism and must be ruled instead by a Christian god.

Summoned to Washington DC by the multilevel marketing professional-turned-Christian “apostle” Jenny Donnelly and the anti-LGBTQ+ celebrity pastor Lou Engle, they streamed onto the lawn holding blue and pink banners emblazoned with the hashtag #DontMessWithOurKids – a nod to the myth that children are being indoctrinated into adopting gay and transgender identities.

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Trump makes gains as poll figures trigger anxiety for Harris campaign

The Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed vice-president with two-point nationwide lead, down from 4%

Tightening poll figures have triggered nervousness and anxiety in Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, with Donald Trump making gains in the states where it matters most as the election race enters its climactic final phase.

Amid a dramatic news cycle that has seen the US hit by two destructive hurricanes and rising fears of all-out war in the Middle East, the Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed the vice-president and Democratic nominee with a two-point nationwide lead, 48% to 46%, over her Republican opponent as of 10 October - tellingly, down from a 4% advantage she registered two weeks ago.

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Kamala Harris releases medical report saying she is in ‘excellent health’

Release of vice-president’s medical history highlights questions around Trump’s physical and mental fitness

Kamala Harris on Saturday released a report on her health and medical history, which found that “she possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency” if voters elect her in November.

A senior aide to Harris, 59, said the vice-president’s advisers viewed the publication of the health report and medical history as an opportunity to call attention to questions about Donald Trump’s physical fitness and mental acuity. The 78-year-old Republican White House nominee would be the oldest president elected if Americans gave him a second term in the Oval Office.

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Trump campaign reportedly requests military vehicles and aircraft over fear of Iran plot – US elections live

Former president’s campaign makes unprecedented request, citing fears of an assassination attempt by Iran

As he wrapped up his remarks, Walz took a swing at Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government authored by people in Donald Trump’s orbit.

“I’ve also, at times, said Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan – concept of a plan, at times. That wasn’t exactly correct. He does have a plan. It’s called Project 2025,” Walz said.

This thing is a damn nightmare. His project 2025 would repeal the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act – that would threaten hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs, including those right here in Michigan. The ones that JD Vance said, those 650 jobs were table scraps, good-paying union jobs building America, and those are table scraps. He would establish, and every single economist said so, a national sales tax on everything from groceries to prescription drugs.

And the estimates is it would cost each and every one of you $4,000 he says those tariffs that Trump will pay, or that China will pay, Trump’s tariffs – you’re going to pay them. That’s the way it always works.

Let me tell you exactly what vice-president Harris and I will do. We’re going to create an American forward strategy for manufacturing, one that builds on the historic investments, bipartisan infrastructure, law, Chips act, science act, Inflation Reduction Act, creating all kinds of new opportunities, ones that empowers American workers, revitalizes manufacturing communities, leads us into an industries of the future and keep out innovating and out competing the rest of the world.

We never fear the future. You build the future, and this gives us the opportunity to do it.

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Roger Stone calls for ‘armed guards’ at polling spots in leaked video

Trump ally and election denier declares readiness to ‘fight it out’ to ensure a Republican presidential victory

The longtime Donald Trump ally and friend Roger Stone said Republicans should send “armed guards” to the polls in November to ensure a Trump victory, according to video footage by an undercover journalist.

The video, first published by Rolling Stone, shows an embittered Stone, still angry about the 2020 election and ready to fight in 2024. Stone described the former US president’s legal strategy of constant litigation to purge voter rolls in swing states.

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Feedback loop: the tangled ties between the US election and the Middle East war

Benjamin Netanyahu has humiliated Biden’s America and seems to anticipate Trump’s return, but what would that mean for Israel?

The year since the 7 October attack has demonstrated just how densely intertwined US presidential politics is with the trajectory of events in the Middle East. Each exerts a gravitational pull on the other, often in ways that are damaging for both.

Foreign policy rarely matters much in US presidential elections, but this year could be an exception. In a contest likely to be decided by small margins in a handful of states, the fallout from the conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, with a potential war with Iran looming, could have a significant impact on Kamala Harris’s prospects.

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Obama tells men to drop ‘excuses’ and support Kamala Harris over Trump

Ex-president campaigns in Pennsylvania and says fellow Democrat ‘actually cares about making your life better’

Barack Obama made his first appearance on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania and at an event for Black voters, where he urged men in particular to support the vice-president.

In comments directed specifically to Black men in the swing state during an event at one of Harris’s campaign offices, Obama questioned their unwillingness to vote for her – a September NAACP poll showed that over one quarter of Black men under 50 say they will vote for Donald Trump.

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Trump demands CBS be stripped of licence over edited Harris interview

FCC chair denounces ex-president’s threats and denies possibility of broadcast station’s licence being revoked

America’s top broadcasting regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission, has denounced Donald Trump after the former US president demanded that CBS be stripped of its licence for airing an edited answer in a primetime interview with Kamala Harris.

He also called the network a “threat to democracy” and targeted other broadcasters for having their licences revoked also.

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Obama says Trump sees power ‘as a means to an end – as it happened

This blog is now closed. You can find all of the Guardian’s US elections coverage here.

Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman have settled their lawsuit against far-right site the Gateway Pundit, who they accused of defaming them following the 2020 election.

Here’s more on the agreement, from the Guardian’s Sam Levine:

The Gateway Pundit, the far-right news website that played a critical role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, has settled a defamation lawsuit with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing.

Notice of the settlement was filed in circuit court in Missouri, where Freeman and Moss had sued the site for defamation. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing.

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Russia shares AI images of Hurricane Milton as disinformation abounds in US

Far-right trolls spout baseless theory that storm is a ‘simulation’ as Republicans jump on conspiracy train

As Hurricane Milton ripped across Florida, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, trolls and politicians alike spawned misinformation about the storm, questioning government preparations and calling it a “simulation” designed to hurt the Republican state.

But after it made landfall and exited into the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a new propaganda target among conspiracists: Walt Disney World in Orlando.

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‘I am your retribution’: Trump’s radical plan to remake the presidency – podcast

Guardian US’s chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, explores Donald Trump’s plans for a second term as president if he wins next month’s election, and how they would give him unprecedented power

By the time Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021, he was frustrated by the limits of his office.

As Guardian US’s chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, explains to Michael Safi, Trump felt he had been held back as president not by the standard checks and balances of a democracy, but by a shadowy “deep state”.

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Hurricanes like Helene twice as likely to happen due to global heating, data finds

Analysis shows Gulf’s heat that worsened Helene 200-500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating

As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, fueled by a record-hot Gulf of Mexico, a new analysis has shown how the Gulf’s heat that worsened last month’s Hurricane Helene was 200 to 500 times more likely because of human-caused global heating.

Helene, one of the deadliest storms in US history, gathered pace over the Gulf before crashing ashore with 140mph winds.

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The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert

Democratic nominee shares a Miller High Life in late-night TV chat, and discusses Trump, Gaza and Vladimir Putin

When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.

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Hurricane Milton intensifies to category 5 again as Biden warns storm could be worst in over 100 years – as it happened

National Hurricane Center announces sustained winds of up to 165mph, as US president says his team is doing everything ‘to save lives’. This blog is now closed.

Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book “War” also reveals that Donald Trump kept in touch with Vladimir Putin after his presidency ended, CNN reports.

Citing an aide to the former president, Woodward writes that there have been “maybe as many as seven” calls between the two since Trump left the White House.

But Putin — who infamously isolated himself over fears of Covid — told Trump on a phone call to keep the delivery of the Abbott machines quiet, Woodward reports.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” Biden said earlier this year, as Israel’s invasion of Gaza ground on.

“That fucking Putin … Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.” Those were the president’s thoughts, sometime after Russia invaded Ukraine.

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US unions step up efforts to make case that Trump is no friend of workers

Unions have mobilized thousands of members to convince them that Harris is a far better ally than Trump

Even though the vast majority of US labor unions have endorsed Kamala Harris, many union members support Donald Trump, and with the race so close, unions have stepped up efforts to convince those workers that Trump is no friend of unions or workers.

In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – states that Harris badly needs to win – union households are an important voting bloc, and unions have mobilized thousands of members to engage in worksite conversations, door-knocking and phone-banking to make the case that Harris is far better for workers than Trump.

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Donald Trump claims to have been to Gaza despite no evidence of visit

Former president says territory where 41,000 people have been killed ‘could be better than Monaco’ if developed

Donald Trump’s truthfulness as well as his knowledge of Middle East geography has come under fresh scrutiny after the former president claimed to have been to Gaza – although there is no evidence of him ever visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Trump raised eyebrows after the Republican nominee in November’s presidential election told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had been in the tiny coastal strip where more than 41,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.

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