2024 election updates: Harris, Trump scramble for votes in frenzied final push
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Election eve has arrived with the race for the White House still very tight — with the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday showing Kamala Harris slightly ahead nationally but Donald Trump ahead in some key swing states — and the two candidates deadlocked in Pennsylvania.
Harris is spending her last full day campaigning in battleground Pennsylvania while Trump is hitting the trail in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before ending the day in Michigan.
Early vote tops 78 million
As of 5:30 a.m. ET on Monday, more than 78 million Americans have voted early (a combination of absentee and early, in-person totals), according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
The total breaks down into 42,654,364 in-person early votes and 35,348,858 mail ballots returned.
The number of in-person early votes has surpassed 2020’s total number of in-person early votes. However, the overall number of early votes so far (including mail-in and absentee ballots) is still lower than 2020’s overall number.
-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Jeffries says Republicans ‘will take a blow torch’ to social security
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Good Morning America on Monday that Democrats are “on the right side” of the presidential election’s most pressing issues.
“The extreme MAGA Republicans have clearly and unequivocally articulated what they will do to America moving forward,” Jeffries said.
“They will take a blow torch to social security, they will take a blow torch to Medicare, they will take a blow torch to the Affordable Care Act,” Jeffries said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Jeffries said, is “closing with a positive vision” while former President Donald Trump and his Republican party are “trying to tear us apart.”
Jeffries will become House speaker if Democrats win back control of the chamber this week.
“The majority of current House Republicans voted not to certify the election in 2020,” Jeffries said. “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t seem to be capable of unequivocally saying that they will certify the election and the verdict that is rendered by the American people.”
“As House Democrats, that’s what we will do,” Jeffries added.
“We believe in democracy even when we disagree with the outcome. That’s been part of what’s made America the greatest democracy in the history of the world.”
Candidates vie for every vote in key swing states
Highlighting how important Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes are to her campaign, Kamala Harris is spending her last full day on the trail with multiple events in the state.
Her search for voters includes a rally in Allentown and then she ends with an event in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump is trying to shore up support in battleground North Carolina – where Harris has made inroads – for a rally in Raleigh, before he, too, heads to Pennsylvania for events in Reading and Pittsburgh before ending his final day campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(WASHINGTON) — With just 36 days until Election Day, the campaign trail is taking a sharp turn toward how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and its aftermath.
It’s also one day before the vice presidential debate on Tuesday.
Here’s how the news is developing.
Harris campaign launches ad on Jan. 6 debate clash between Walz, Vance
Just hours after last night’s debate, the Harris campaign launched a new ad slamming Vance over his answer to a question about Jan. 6 in a moment they consider to be a highlight of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate.
In the 30-second clip titled “JD Vance’s Damning Non-Answer,” Vance refuses to clarify if he thinks Trump lost the 2020 election. It is part of the campaign’s $370 million fall media push and will air digitally across battleground states.
Michael Tyler, a Harris spokesperson, was asked by CNN Wednesday morning if the Jan. 6 exchange was something Walz wanted to talk about or if it was something that just happened in the moment.
“I think the governor was prepared to make sure that the voters understood that Donald Trump remains a risky bet for the American people,”
-ABC News’ Gabrielle Abdul-Hakim, Fritz Farrow and Will McDuffie
Harris discusses Helene and Iran with Georgia ABC station: ‘We’ve got boots on the ground’
“So, I was actually in the Situation Room today with the president for several hours with our national security team,” said Harris on Tuesday. “It is important that we as the United States stand with Israel and its right to defend itself, especially against Iran, which poses a threat to American interest American personnel in the region.”
Harris also told the reporter that the government is sending supplies to Georgia following Hurricane Helene.
“I have been in touch with the governor. Actually I spoke with him. I’ve been getting regular briefings at FEMA,” before refuting Trump’s claims that President Joe Biden’s administration has not been moving supplies in fast enough.
“We’ve got boots on the ground in Georgia. There has been a big effort that we have made to make sure that we get food, water and generators to folks who need that after the hurricane.”
-ABC News’ Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Fritz Farrow and Will McDuffie
Harris calls Iran attack ‘reckless and brazen’
Vice President Kamala Harris condemned Iran’s attack against Israel calling it “reckless and brazen,” and labeling Iran “a destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East.”
The vice president said that while American officials are “still assessing the impact,” and that “initial indications are that Israel, with our assistance, was able to defeat this attack.”
“This operation and successful cooperation saved many innocent lives,” she said.
“My commitment to the security of Israel is unwavering,” Harris said.
-ABC News’ Will McDuffie, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Fritz Farrow
Trump criticizes Biden-Harris administration over Iranian attack
Former President Donald Trump addressed the Iranian attack against Israel five minutes into his remarks in Waunakee, Wisconsin, Tuesday, claiming “the world right now is spiraling out of control.”
He also suggested the Biden-Harris administration is close to achieving a “global catastrophe.”
The president and vice president gathered in the Situation Room earlier Tuesday afternoon to monitor the situation and gather updates from their national security team.
Trump doubled down on his previous statement that the White House has “no leadership.”
-ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Kelsey Walsh and Soo Rin Kim
Harris to tour Helene damage in Georgia Wednesday
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Georgia Wednesday, to tour areas that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene last week, her office said.
“The Vice President will also provide updates on Federal actions that are being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts in Georgia and several other states throughout the southeast,” her office said in a statement.
The tour will be at the same time that President Joe Biden visits areas in the Carolinas that were struck hardest by the storm.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Trump claims Musk will help Helene victims
Standing in front of a destroyed furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, former President Donald Trump claimed he’s requested help from Elon Musk and will be traveling to North Carolina when conditions clear.
“They don’t have communication. … I just spoke to Elon,” he said. “We want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through.”
“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election. But in a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters,” Trump said before later suggesting the Biden-Harris administration wasn’t doing enough and falsely claiming that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get ahold of the president.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
Fact check: Biden and Georgia’s governor have spoken
Trump incorrectly claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and President Joe Biden haven’t been in touch since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Southeast, making clear that his already controversial visit to the hard-hit state is a political one.
“I spoke with, for a couple hours, leaders yesterday affected by the hurricane,” Biden said Monday morning. “Governor Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, county officials in the Big Bend region of Florida and other leaders in South Carolina and Tennessee.”
Kemp on Monday acknowledged the call with Biden and said he and Harris had been trying to speak.
–ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Molly Nagle
Trump claims Biden and Harris not responding to Georgia disaster
Trump claimed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is having a hard time getting President Joe Biden on the phone and that the federal government is being unresponsive after Hurricane Helene wrecked the parts of the state.
“The Vice President, she’s out some place campaigning and looking for money,” Trump said after landing in Valdosta, Georgia. “They have to be focused over here.”
Biden approved Kemp’s request for an emergency declaration on Thursday and Harris canceled campaign events Monday to return to Washington for a briefing on the storm and the federal response.
NC leaders ask politicians to stay away
Ahead of his visit to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump posted to Truth Social that he will pay his respects to the community, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene, and bring aid.
Trump added that he was going to stop by damaged communities in North Carolina too, but determined it would be too burdensome on local officials.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents Asheville, North Carolina, told ABC Contributing Political Correspondent Rachael Bade on Sunday night that photo-ops were not welcome. Cooper even asked President Joe Biden and Harris to please not visit the state right now.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
New York Times endorses Harris
The New York Times endorsed Harris for president in an editorial published Monday morning, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” and later “the only choice.”
“As a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution, Ms. Harris stands alone in this race,” the Times’ editorial board wrote. “She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.”
–ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Trump heads to Georgia devastation, Harris cancels campaign events and heads to DC for FEMA briefing
Trump is scheduled to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday amid storm wreckage in the area.
Trump, who has been criticizing Harris for not visiting communities damaged by Hurricane Helene, will receive a briefing on the damage from the hurricane, help distribute relief supplies and deliver campaign remarks at a local furniture store in Valdosta, the campaign announced on Sunday.
Harris, meanwhile, is canceling her campaign events and heading back from Las Vegas to get a briefing at FEMA headquarters in Washington on what her campaign says are the “ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene and the federal actions being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts across several states.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House on Wednesday voted down Speaker Mike Johnson’s government funding plan with 14 Republicans voting against it and two others voting present.
The measure failed by a 202-222-2 margin. Three Democrats voted for the bill.
Johnson said after the vote that he was “disappointed that it didn’t pass,” but suggested there would be a “solution” to avoid a shutdown.
“We ran the play. It was the best play; it was the right one. So now we go back to the playbook. We’ll draw up another play, and we’ll come up with a solution,” John said. “I’m already talking to colleagues about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation, and we’ll get right to it.”
“Stay posted,” he concluded his remarks without taking questions.
Johnson’s measure would have funded the government for six months but also included the SAVE Act, a bill backed by GOP leadership and former President Donald Trump that would require individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. Democrats said the legislation is a non-starter, noting it is already illegal for non-citizens to cast a ballot in federal elections.
Johnson was set to try to pass the funding plan last week but pulled it from the floor because he didn’t have the votes.
Some Republicans in his caucus opposed the measure because they say it would contribute to the deficit while defense hawks say they won’t vote for it because the six-month extension would effect the Department of Defense’s readiness.
Still, he was dug in on the measure and wasn’t talking about what the next steps would be. Congress needs to pass a funding measure before Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown.
Trump openly called for Republicans to let the government close if they don’t pass the SAVE Act. He wrote on his social media platform that if they “don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.”
Asked about Trump’s comments that Republicans should let funding lapse in such a scenario, Johnson responded “No, look, President Trump and I have talked a lot about this. We talked a lot about it with our colleagues who are building consensus on the plan. We all believe that election security is of preeminent importance right now.”
Trump again, just before the vote on Wednesday, called for a government shutdown if “every ounce” of the SAVE Act isn’t attached to a funding measure.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, said it would be “politically beyond stupid” to allow a shutdown to take place with just seven weeks until Election Day.
“I think we first have to wait and see what the House sends us. My only observation about this whole discussion is the one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said. “It’d be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election, because certainly we’d get the blame.”
Democrats urged Johnson to drop his funding plan and bring a clean short-term measure to the floor to keep the government open.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters last week that the only path forward is a bipartisan agreement that does not include “extreme” measures, such as the SAVE Act.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday also urged the House to pass a clean bill.
“In order to avoid a shutdown, the worst thing our colleagues in the House can do right now is waste time on proposals that don’t have broad bipartisan support,” Schumer said.
(WASHINGTON, D.C) — Some gun violence prevention groups said Wednesday that they plan to double down in their fight for stronger firearm-control laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump recapturing the White House and promising to roll back President Joe Biden’s efforts to curb the national plague.
During his victorious campaign, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, voiced opposition to most of Biden’s executive orders to combat the scourge that the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found to be the leading cause of death in the United States for adolescents under the age of 19 for three straight years.
“The election of Donald Trump is deeply troubling for our safety and freedom from gun violence,” Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement Wednesday. “And that’s why we are doubling down on our work and fighting harder than ever.”
Gun violence was a big issue during the campaign. In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released in August, gun violence was ranked eighth in importance among voters after the economy, inflation, health care, protecting democracy, crime and safety, immigration and the Supreme Court.
In preliminary national exit polls analyzed by ABC News, voters said they trusted Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, 50% to 48%, in handling the issue of crime and safety.
In his campaign, Trump often railed against what he described as a “surge” in migrant crime, including several high-profile homicides allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants. A 2020 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found U.S.-born citizens are over 2 times more likely than migrants to be arrested for violent crimes.
Brown said it won’t be the first pro-gun rights administration that has occupied the White House, adding that Trump’s previous four years in the Oval Office were marked by a “deadly period for Americans.” Among the mass shootings that occurred during Trump’s first term was the 2017 massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Festival music concert in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and more than 850 people wounded; the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and staff; and the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that claimed 23 lives and injured nearly two dozen other people.
“So even though we won’t have a friend in the White House, Brady isn’t giving up an inch,” Brown said of her organization named after White House press secretary James “Jim” Brady, who was shot and permanently disabled in the 1981 assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan and later died in 2014 as a result of his wounds.
Brown added, “The movement to prevent gun violence has always been larger than one office, and we’ll continue to work with activists, survivors, community leaders and elected officials in states across the country to fight for progress that makes the whole country safer from gun violence.”
Trump and Vance, who have said they oppose a national ban on assault weapons, were endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
In February, Trump told NRA members at a forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, “No one will lay a finger on your firearms” during his second term in office.
“During my four years, nothing happened and there was a lot of pressure on me having to do with guns,” Trump said at the time. “We did nothing, we didn’t yield. And once you yield a little bit that’s just the beginning, that’s [when] the avalanche begins.”
In May, Trump spoke at the NRA convention in Dallas and outlined some of the actions he’ll take in his second term.
“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment — the attacks are fast and furious — starting the minute that Crooked Joe shuffles his way out of the White House,” Trump said in the speech.
Trump also vowed during the speech to fire Steven Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). House Republicans have also said they want to abolish or drastically cut funding for the ATF.
“At noon on Inauguration Day, we will sack the anti-gun fanatic Steve Dettelbach,” Trump told NRA conventioneers. “Have you ever heard of him? He’s a disaster.”
Gun control advocates said they expect Trump to try to water down the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the first major gun safety law enacted in 30 years that Biden signed in June 2022, about a month after a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The BSCA enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing guns, and allocates $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws” to remove firearms from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves and others.
Advocates also expect Trump to abolish the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention established under the Biden administration and overseen by Harris.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action released a statement on social media Wednesday, saying her gun violence prevention group also plans to continue to fight for laws that protect Americans from gun violence.
“If this work has taught me anything, it’s that no matter what, we always can and will secure victories to protect our communities from gun violence. This obstacle is no different. Today, we are crushed by this result,” Ferrell-Zabala said of Trump’s victory. “Tomorrow, we’re going to continue to organize like our lives depend on it — because they do.”
