A polarized America goes to the polls: ‘I’m in a house divided’

In the seven swing states that could decide whether Harris or Trump wins the election, voters feel fought over

America had previously always been “somebody else’s country,” said Christopher La Rose, a health researcher, as he waited just before 7am in Pine Lake, a village that’s too small for postal delivery just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

But that changed recently for La Rose, who is of Guyanese descent, when he became an American citizen. He had the jitters on Monday night, before using his first-ever vote in a US election to back Kamala Harris.

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Trump deploys garbage truck to trash Biden gaffe at Wisconsin rally

Republican presidential candidate in high-vis vest says ‘250 million Americans are not garbage’ as he capitalises on latest twist in Puerto Rico debate

Dressing like a sanitation worker and, at one point, appearing in the cab of a garbage truck, Donald Trump sought to convince voters in battleground state Wisconsin on Wednesday that Democrats believe those who vote for him are “garbage”.

The theatrics came in response to an apparent verbal gaffe made by Joe Biden the night before, which the president said was intended to condemn a comedian over his racist remarks at a massive rally Trump staged at New York City’s Madison Square Garden over the weekend.

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Harris hails first-time and gen Z voters at Wisconsin rally: ‘I’m so proud of you’

Artists including Remi Wolf, Gracie Abrams and Mumford & Sons join VP at rally briefly interrupted by Gaza protesters

Kamala Harris warned a crowd that time was running out at a get-out-the-vote event in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, joined by a lineup of folk and pop musicians including Remi Wolf, Gracie Abrams and Mumford & Sons.

“We have six days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime,” the vice-president and Democratic nominee told the crowd, denouncing Donald Trump and issuing a dire warning about the consequences of a second Trump presidency.

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

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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Pizza accidentally laced with THC sickens dozens at Wisconsin restaurant

Famous Yeti’s Pizza picked up wrong jug of oil from commercial kitchen and called it ‘alarming’ for customers

Pizza inadvertently laced with THC – the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – has apparently sickened dozens of people in Wisconsin.

Health officials in Dane county say Famous Yeti’s Pizza in Stoughton, about 20 miles (32km) south-east of Madison, served pizza contaminated with THC, from Monday through Thursday.

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Liz Cheney urges conservatives to back Kamala Harris over abortion

Ex-Republican congresswoman, longtime abortion rights opponent, campaigns with vice-president in swing states

Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, on Monday condemned Republican-imposed bans on the procedure and urged conservatives to support Democrat Kamala Harris for US president.

Cheney was speaking during three joint events with the vice-president in three swing states aimed at prising suburban Republican voters away from party nominee Donald Trump. She has become the Democrat’s most prominent conservative surrogate and is rumoured to be in contention for a seat in a potential Harris cabinet.

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Liz Cheney campaigns with Harris and urges voters to reject Trump’s ‘cruelty’

Republican and former Wyoming representative appeals to undecided voters in Ripon, Wisconsin, on Thursday

Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to “reject the depraved cruelty” of the former president.

A former representative from Wyoming, Cheney cast the stakes in November as nothing less than the future of American democracy as she appeared alongside Kamala Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, on Thursday, the symbolic birthplace of the modern Republican party.

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Trump leans into anti-immigrant rants and Harris barbs at Wisconsin rally

Ex-president speaks in Prairie du Chien flanked by anti-immigrant posters and lobs insults at Harris and Biden

Donald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.

Trump’s speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as “stone-cold killers”, “monsters” and “vile animals”.

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Kyle Rittenhouse texts pledging to ‘murder’ shoplifters disillusion his ex-spokesperson

‘I believed things he told me that I now understand to be … lies,’ Dave Hancock says in new Rittenhouse documentary

A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

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JD Vance defends pet-eating remarks: ‘The media has a responsibility to fact-check’

Republican VP nominee claims at Wisconsin rally that constituents told him ‘they’d seen something in Springfield’

JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.

The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.

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RFK Jr’s name will remain on ballot in swing state Wisconsin, judge rules

Law states that candidates who submit nomination papers cannot be removed from ballot unless they die, says judge

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name will remain on the ballot in the swing state of Wisconsin, a judge ruled on Monday.

Dane county circuit judge Stephen Ehlke ruled that Wisconsin law clearly states presidential candidates who have submitted nomination papers can’t be removed from the ballot unless they die. Kennedy’s campaign submitted nomination papers before the state’s 6 August deadline.

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Wisconsin and Illinois health officials report three deaths from West Nile virus

While most people don’t experience symptoms after bite of infected mosquito, about one in 150 develop serious illness

Two people in eastern Wisconsin and one person in northeastern Illinois have died of West Nile virus, according to health officials.

A third person in Wisconsin has been hospitalized because of the mosquito-borne illness, the Wisconsin department of health services said Thursday in a release.

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‘Georgia’s ours to lose’: Trump and Harris camps zero in on swing states

Amid close race, Harris to go on tour in Georgia as Trump surrogate insists state’s governor will back ex-president

As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brace themselves for what promises to be an ugly and bruising sprint to the finishing line in November, both presidential candidates’ campaigns are turning their sights back on the handful of desperately close swing states where the battle is likely to be decided.

Georgia is coming into view as a critical battleground for both leaders as they struggle to gain voters’ attention in an epochal election. On Wednesday, the vice-president will travel from the White House to southern Georgia to hold her first campaign event in the state with her recently anointed running mate and former high school football coach, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.

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New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states

Crucial states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan are now leaning Democratic according to a NYT/Siena poll

A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election.

The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters across the three states, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.

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‘We’re not going back’: thousands rally for Harris and Walz in Wisconsin and Michigan

Detroit rally draws 15,000 people and high energy despite Gaza protesters and medical incidents from summer heat

Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, continued their swing-state tour with rallies in rural Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday, that the campaign said brought out more than 10,000 people each.

The rallies, which followed a raucous event in Philadelphia, served as an opportunity for Harris to continue to introduce Walz, a formerly low-profile midwest governor, to Democrats in the critical swing state.

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Hoping to avoid Clinton’s 2016 mistakes, Harris courts three ‘rust belt’ states

‘Blue wall’ states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could decide the outcome of November’s election

Of all the lessons Kamala Harris’s campaign will have learned from Hillary Clinton’s botched run for president eight years ago, among the most important is that it’s better to talk about jobs than guns in the three rust belt states that hold the key to the White House.

The peculiarities of the US’s electoral college will almost certainly see November’s presidential election decided by voters in just seven states. Four – Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia – lie in the southern sun belt.

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Wreckage of schooner that sank in 1893 found in Lake Michigan

Marine archaeologists in Wisconsin find ship after single day of searching, in 50ft-deep waters off Algoma

Shipwreck hunters with the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association have discovered the wreckage of a schooner that sank in Lake Michigan 131 years ago.

A team of marine archaeologists located the Margaret A Muir – a 130ft, three-masted schooner built in 1872 – in 50ft-deep waters off the coast of Algoma, Wisconsin, on 12 May.

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Trump expected to call for national unity in first speech since assassination attempt

Strategists view Republican convention address as time to ‘pivot’ ex-president’s image, while critics remain skeptical

With political winds at his back, Donald Trump on Thursday is expected to use his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt to plead for national unity.

Strategists view the Republican national convention address, likely to be watched by tens of millions of Americans on primetime television, as a unique opportunity to redefine the former US president as more palatable to moderate voters.

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Biden hasn’t done enough to ease age concerns, former top Obama adviser says – live

David Axelrod, former top Obama adviser, says the question of whether Biden can survive is ‘entirely in his hands’

Today’s theme at the Republican national convention will be “Make America Strong Once Again,” and many of the speeches are expected to focus on foreign policy.

“Each one of these has a theme, like last night was ‘bend the knee and grovel’ apparently,” Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said at a Democratic press conference in Milwaukee. “And today is ‘celebrate Russia day,’ I guess.”

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Republican convention speakers ramp up anti-Democratic rhetoric despite campaign promise of unity

Kari Lake attacks media as ‘fake news’ as Elise Stefanik calls Biden ‘feckless and failed’ and says he’s caused ‘chaos’

Speakers at the Republican national convention ramped up their rhetorical attacks on Democrats on Tuesday night despite Donald Trump’s presidential campaign signalling that the party would adopt a serious tone and message of unity in the face of political violence.

Kari Lake, a Trump ally and Republican candidate for senate in Arizona, used her speech time to launch an attack on the media, which she called “fake news”, and said more Americans were no longer tuning in to mainstream media.

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