Harris holds rally with Obama while Trump calls US a ‘garbage can’ – US election live | US elections 2024

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are taking a detour from barnstorming the battleground states that will decide November’s election with Friday stops in Texas, a conservative state that was the first to implement a near-total abortion ban.

Superstar singer Beyoncé is expected to join Harris at her Houston stop and perform, two sources told Reuters. Harris has made Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” her campaign anthem.

Texas hasn’t backed a Democratic president since 1976, and Republican Trump is almost certain to win the state’s 40 electoral college votes, Reuters reported.

But Democrats are betting it will provide a powerful backdrop for vice-president Harris to talk about abortion rights in the final days before the election.

Harris will speak about the danger former president Trump and Republicans could present to abortion rights across the country if he’s elected, a campaign source said, and be joined by women who have suffered after Texas’ anti-abortion regulations were passed and their family members.

Texas implemented a first-of-its kind law in September 2021 that banned abortion after six weeks and allowed anyone to sue abortion patients in violation and those who assisted them.

A former model has said Donald Trump and the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein were “looking at each other and smiling” while the former president groped her body.

Stacey Williams accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.

Williams, who worked as a professional model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 at a Christmas party after being introduced to him by Epstein, who she believed was a good friend of the then New York real estate developer. Williams said Epstein was interested in her and the two casually dated for a period of a few months.

Speaking to CNN yesterday, she said Trump greeted them outside his office:

The second he was in front of me, he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off. And then the hands started moving, and they were on the, you know, on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt, back up, sort of then, you know – they were just on me the whole time.

And I froze. I couldn’t understand what was going on.

I think I probably was trying to smile and go through the motions of being engaged the way you would in a social situation. But it was an out of body experience.

So, I don’t know if I spoke, I don’t know if I answered questions, I don’t know. It was one of the strangest moments of my life.

More than 80 Nobel prize winners have endorsed Kamala Harris for the presidency, warning that Donald Trump would “jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living” given his earlier proposals for enormous cuts to science funding.

In an open letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, 82 Nobel prize winners from the US in the fields of physics, chemistry, economics and medicine, said “this is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States”.

The letter, which commends Harris for recognizing that “the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology”, called Trump a potential threat to progress who could “jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living and impede our responses to climate change”.

The Nobel laureates range from a physicist involved in the discovery of remnant light from the Big Bang, to an immunologist instrumental in the development of a specific type of Covid-19 vaccine.

They include signatories who won Nobels this month such as molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, chemist David Baker, physicist John Hopfield and economist Daron Acemoglu.

Rachel Leingang

Donald Trump, campaigning in the border swing state of Arizona on Thursday, called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration.

“We’re like a garbage can, you know, it’s the first time I’ve ever said that,” Trump said in Tempe, Arizona, the home of Arizona State University. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angry. First time I’ve ever said garbage can, but you know what, it’s a very accurate description.”

Candidates and their surrogates for both presidential campaigns are blitzing swing states like Arizona in the final two weeks before election day. The Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance held two campaign rallies in Arizona earlier this week. Joe Biden and the former president Barack Obama are set to visit this week, as is Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential pick.

A banner behind the stage said, “Vote early!” – a change in strategy for Republicans and Trump, who have cast doubt on early and mail-in voting by falsely claiming it is an avenue for widespread fraud. He said of Arizona voting: “They got a problem. Gotta make it too big to rig.” An image of Trump, raised fist and bloodied ear after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, showed before he came out. Early on, he displayed on screens behind him the chart of migration that he has attributed with saving his life.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are tied at 48% each for the popular vote for the US presidential election, according to the final New York Times/Siena College national poll published on Friday.

Bruce Springsteen urged voters to back Kamala Harris in the presidential election, warning that Donald Trump is a would-be “tyrant”.

“I want a president who reveres the constitution, who does not threaten but wants to protect and guide our great democracy, who believes in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power, who will fight for a woman’s right to choose, and who wants to create a middle-class economy that will serve all our citizens,” Springsteen said at the Thursday evening rally.

The rally at James R Hallford Stadium in Clarkston, Georgia, drew about 20,000 people, according to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, which would make it her largest political rally yet, besting the 17,000 Harris drew in Greensboro, North Carolina, in early September.

“There is only one candidate in this election who holds those principles dear: Kamala Harris. She’s running to be the 47th president of the United States.”

The Born in the USA singer is among the many celebrities stumping for Harris; directors Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, as well as actor Samuel L Jackson, were also in attendance.

Good morning and welcome to the US election live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest from the campaign trail over the next couple of hours.

We start with news that vice-president Kamala Harris appeared with Barack Obama for the first time, offering closing arguments targeting Black voters in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, a vibrant, symbolic part of Georgia.

“Ours is a fight for the future,” Harris said at the rally in Clarkston. She touched on familiar themes – reducing the costs of drugs, housing and groceries. “I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.

Harris said she believes “healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it”, and said Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act and roll back the $35 cap on insulin.

The Democratic nominee also reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, referring to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman whose death was recently found to be a result of the state’s abortion ban. Harris said: “Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused … women are being denied care during miscarriages.”

For more on the rally, see George Chidi’s full report here:

Meanwhile, in other news:

• The family of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Black 28-year-old mother who died just weeks after Georgia’s abortion ban went into effect, was in attendance at the Harris rally. Harris is expected to make another high profile appearance today, this time alongside Beyoncé in Houston, where the vice-president hopes to rally support for Senate candidate Colin Allred.

• Donald Trump rallied supporters in Tempe, Arizona, where he spoke alongside Senate candidate Kari Lake. Earlier in the day, Trump made news when he vowed that, if elected, he would immediately fire Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel who is prosecuting him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and hide classified documents.

• Trump called the country a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration. “We’re like a garbage can, you know, it’s the first time I’ve ever said that,” Trump said in Tempe, the home of Arizona State University. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angry. First time I’ve ever said garbage can, but you know what, it’s a very accurate description.”

• Phoenix police arrested a man suspected of setting fire to a mailbox there, damaging mail-in ballots. The news comes just days after Tempe police arrested another man in connection with three shootings at Democratic party campaign offices in Tempe. An Arizona prosecutor said the second man had more than 120 guns and more than 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home, leading law enforcement to believe he may have been planning a mass casualty event.

• Harris picked up the endorsement of two Republicans, one a former congressman from Michigan, the other a mayor in a pivotal county in Wisconsin.

• Joe Biden announced he will issue an apology for the US government’s role in forcing thousands of Indigenous American children to attend Indian boarding schools – a policy which has been widely recognized as an element of genocide. The news comes as Harris is trailing in the polls in Arizona, a state that Biden famously won in 2020, largely due to the support of Indigenous American voters.

• More than 29 million people have voted already in the 2024 election, at least partly driven by Republicans embracing early voting at Donald Trump’s direction. So far, Republicans have cast 32% of ballots, up from 27% at this point in 2020. Whereas Democrats have cast 42% of the votes, down from 47% at this point in the last presidential election.