Category Archives: US elections 2024

Hundreds of damaged ballots saved following fire at drop box in Washington

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FBI is investigating and workers are contacting voters about new ballots after incendiary devices were put in drop box

Officials in south-west Washington were able to salvage almost 500 damaged ballots from a ballot box that was set on fire on Monday in what officials have called an attack on democracy ahead of a contentious US election.

An unknown number of ballots were destroyed when someone placed incendiary devices in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, while three ballots were damaged in a fire at a box in nearby Portland, Oregon. Those fires and one other are linked, officials have said.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Kamala Harris: ‘I will always be an American before I am a Republican’

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The former Republican governor said that he was backing the Democrat because a Trump victory would mean ‘four more years of bullshit’

The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in next week’s election.

In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements” … “hate[s] politics” and doesn’t “trust most politicians”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice president Tim Walz.

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Biden says he meant to condemn comedian, not Trump supporters, in ‘garbage’ comments

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Edited video clip of president’s remarks suggests he insulted Trump backers, but his wording is unclear

Joe Biden put out a statement that he had “meant to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But in an edited video clip already widely circulating on social media Tuesday evening, a phrase that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”.

Republican politicians and rightwing media outlets quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters garbage, comparing his remarks with Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging in “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widely seen as undermining her campaign.

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Trump claims ‘nobody loves Puerto Rican community more than I do’ at Pennsylvania rally

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Ex-president’s comments come after comedian at one of Trump’s recent rallies called Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’

Donald Trump praised Puerto Ricans on Tuesday during a Pennsylvania rally, days after a comedian made a racist joke and referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at one of his rallies.

“Nobody loves our Latino community and our Puerto Rican community more than I do,” the former president said a little over an hour into a rally in Allentown, in the Lehigh Valley, which has a sizable Latino population.

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Supreme court rejects RFK Jr plea to remove name from battleground ballots

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Kennedy, who suspended campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, will remain on ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin

The supreme court on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from presidential ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Kennedy wanted to remove himself from the ballot in the two crucial swing states after dropping his independent bid and endorsing Donald Trump. He argued that keeping him on violated his first amendment rights by wrongly implying he still wanted to be elected president.

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UAW leader Shawn Fain makes final appeal to divided membership

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Fain asks members to vote for Harris in billionaire v working class framing in which Republicans ‘embraced’ theirs

The leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) made a last plea to union members to vote for presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Tuesday night casting the election as a fight between the interests of the working-class and billionaires.

“I want you to know where your union stands. I want you to listen to how your UAW leadership thinks about this election and I want you to keep an open mind,” said Shawn Fain, president of the 391,00-strong union.

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Puerto Rico Republican chair demands Trump apology for rally’s racist remarks

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Angel M Cintrón, party’s chair on island, says he will not vote for Trump unless he says sorry for speaker’s comments

The president of the Republican party’s branch in Puerto Rico has said he will not vote for Donald Trump unless he apologises for racist remarks made at his rally referring to the US island territory as a “floating island of garbage”.

Outrage even among fellow Republicans is continuing to mount after the racist insult at the Republican nominee’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, with the podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe coming under fire for his inflammatory comments made about Puerto Rico in the opening speech.

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Kamala Harris delivers ‘closing argument’ in Washington – as it happened

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This blog is closed now, thanks for following along.

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Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The poll, conducted between 18 October to 22, 2024, states 83% of Americans surveyed and 86% of registered voters surveyed are prepared to accept the outcome of the presidential election as legitimate, regardless of which candidate they support.

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Kamala Harris calls for a ‘new generation of leadership’ in Washington speech

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Vice-president strikes hopeful tone in remarks delivered from site of Trump’s speech before deadly January 6 attack

With the White House illuminated behind her, Kamala Harris asked the vanishing slice of undecided Americans to elect a “new generation of leadership”, likening Donald Trump to a “petty tyrant” who had stood in the very same spot nearly four years ago and, in a last-gasp effort to cling to power, helped incite the mob that stormed the US Capitol.

The choice between her and Trump in the deadlocked presidential contest was “about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division”, Harris said, from the Ellipse near the White House’s South Lawn, where tens of thousands of supporters gathered one week before the final votes of the 2024 election are cast.

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If Trump wins the election, Nato can expect more turbulence ahead

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Past threats former president – and present Russian ones – have spurred Europe to invest in self-defence, but as conflicts rise the alliance still looks vital

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Politeness and convention dictate that European leaders try to sound noncommittal when asked whether a Donald Trump presidency would hurt Nato. But despite the rhetoric about “Trump-proofing”, Nato cohesion will be at risk from a hostile or isolationist Republican president, who has previously threatened to leave the alliance if European defence spending did not increase.

“The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter. “Take the new Nato command centre to coordinate assistance for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is inside a US army barracks, relying on US logistics and software.”

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US election live: outcry grows over ‘hateful’ Trump rally remarks; Harris says Puerto Ricans ‘deserve better’

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Congressional Hispanic caucus hits out at ‘shameful’ rhetoric; vice-president releases ad condemning Trump and comedian’s remarks

Here’s our story of the resignation of Washington Post columnist Michele Norris, the latest high profile writer to leave the newspaper in protest at its decision not to endorse a candidate in next week’s presidential election.

Norris says the Post’s non-call was a “terrible mistake & an insult to the paper’s own longstanding standard of regularly endorsing candidates since 1976”.

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Outcry over Trump’s hint at ‘little secret’ with House Republicans

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Critics condemn ‘sinister’ remark that suggests potential Trump-Mike Johnson plot to settle contested election

Donald Trump faced mounting suspicion of hatching a plot to steal next week’s presidential election as Democrats and commentators focused on his references to a “little secret” at Sunday night’s tumultuous Madison Square Garden rally.

The allusions initially attracted little notice amid the angry backlash provoked by racist jokes and incendiary rhetoric from a succession of warm-up speakers, including an offensive comment about Puerto Ricans that even Trump’s own campaign felt obliged to disavow.

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Anita Hill empathizes with ‘irritatingly familiar’ insults against Harris in op-ed

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Professor who was impugned for allegations against Clarence Thomas says the sexist, racist remarks ‘must sting’

Anita Hill, former clerk to US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has said “racist, misogynist and sexist insults” aimed at Kamala Harris “must sting”.

In a New York Times opinion piece published Monday, the Brandeis University professor who was famously brought before Thomas’s confirmation hearings only to have her sexual harassment allegations against him picked apart by sitting senators, wrote that she sympathizes with the US vice-president.

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Inmate Steve Bannon reportedly hangs with the white guys and teaches civics

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Former Trump White House aide set to be released after serving four months for contempt of Congress

Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, is set to be released from prison on Tuesday and details have emerged of his life behind bars, in which he gravitated to hanging out with other white prisoners.

The news website Notus posted an investigation in which it corresponded with several of Bannon’s fellow inmates at a prison in Connecticut.

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Early ballots burned in suspected attacks in Washington and Oregon

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Hundreds of ballots damaged in fires that police believe are linked and vehicle involved has reportedly been identified

Hundreds of early ballots cast for the US presidential election have been burned in two suspected attacks in Washington and Oregon, exacerbating tensions ahead of next Tuesday’s knife-edge contest.

Police said Monday that the fires in the two states were believed to be connected and that a vehicle involved had been identified, according to the Associated Press.

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Therapy-speak and 80s hairstyles: will Harris’s Brené Brown sit-down swing white female voters?

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The Democrat’s cozy chat with the vulnerability expert was largely apolitical – which could play well with a key demographic

In the quest to win over white female voters – 53% of whom showed up for Donald Trump in 2020 – Kamala Harris made her case on a podcast hosted by one of their beloved avatars, the vulnerability researcher Brené Brown. The episode, released on Monday, was a mostly fluffy discussion about leadership, trauma and the notion of voting as agency in an uncontrollable news cycle.

Brown, a University of Houston professor and bestselling author who has spent two decades studying social sciences, became an overnight celebrity after giving a 2010 Ted Talk called “the power of vulnerability”. One could argue the talk, which birthed Brown’s Oprah-approved speaking empire, also spawned our culture’s current obsession with therapy-speak.

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Trump fills Madison Square Garden with anger, vitriol and racist threats

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Marking final stretch of campaign in New York, Trump and cabal of surrogates attack Harris and mock Puerto Rico

Anger and vitriol took center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants.

Nine days out from the election, Trump used the rally in New York to repeat his claim that he is fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the largest deportation program in American history”, amid incoherent ramblings about ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land.

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Trump repeats ‘enemy from within’ rhetoric at Madison Square Garden rally as speakers give racist remarks – live

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Tucker Carlson among speakers to take jabs at Harris, Puerto Rico and trans people after vice-president rallies in Philadelphia

Following her appearance at a predominantly Black church in Philadelphia this morning, Kamala Harris has just visited Philly Cuts, a barbershop not far from the west Philadelphia church.

From a barbershop chair, Harris answered questions from several young Black men, including about student loan debt, in a conversation moderated by Pennsylvania state representative Jordan Harris.

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Racist remarks and playing to the base: key takeaways from Trump’s MSG rally

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The ex-president took the stage at Madison Square Garden, where he doubled down on his anti-immigration rhetoric and gave little on his economic agenda

Donald Trump reveled in what advisers called his happy place at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, as he enveloped himself in the adulation ahead of the final stretch of campaigning until the November election.

The capacity rally at the Garden – something Trump had talked about for years – was essentially a reboot of the Republican national convention this summer, widely seen as Trump’s most confident moment.

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Bad Bunny supports Kamala Harris and shares campaign video on Puerto Rico

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Artist shares video with over 45 million Instagram followers as Harris and Trump work to gain ground with Latino voters

The international reggaeton star Bad Bunny is throwing his support behind Kamala Harris in the US presidential race, sharing a video of the Democratic presidential nominee to his more than 45 million followers on Instagram.

Bad Bunny, whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is one of the most famous artists of the moment. His support could be a boost for the Harris campaign as it tries to bolster its support with Latino and Puerto Rican voters.

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