Harris, Obama and Hillary Clinton set to hold Los Angeles fundraisers for the vice president this month

(RALEIGH, N.C.) — As North Carolinians continue to recover from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, early voting begins Thursday in the critical swing state.

State election officials expect a majority of North Carolina voters to cast their ballot in-person over the next two weeks, with early voting concluding on Nov. 2.

More than 400 early voting sites are in operation across the state’s 100 counties.

“To have almost all early voting sites open after such a devastating storm is an effort all North Carolinians should be proud of,” North Carolina State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell said Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remain neck-and-neck in the critical swing state, with Trump holding a 0.4% lead over Harris in 538’s polling average for the state.

Both candidates have visited North Carolina since the remnants of Hurricane Helene brought deadly floods to the state, where 95 people died and 92 remain missing. Trump has repeatedly made false claims about the federal response to the disaster, claiming that the state would be deprived of emergency aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because of undocumented immigrants.

“They got hit with a very bad hurricane, especially North Carolina and parts of Georgia. But North Carolina really got hit. I’ll tell you what, those people should never vote for a Democrat, because they held back aid,” Trump said during an interview last week.

While visiting a church in Greenville, North Carolina, on Sunday, Harris stopped short of naming Trump while criticizing the spread of disinformation about the relief efforts in the state.

“Right now, fellow Americans are experiencing some of the most difficult moments in their lives,” Harris said. “Yet instead of offering hope, there are those who are channeling people’s tragedies and sorrows into grievance and hatred, and one may ask why, and I think, sadly, frankly, the motives are quite transparent: to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heartbreak.”

With recovery efforts ongoing, election officials have expressed optimism about the state’s early voting plans. In the 25 western counties included in the federal disaster declaration, 76 early voting sites have been confirmed — four fewer than originally planned.

“We lost just a few despite the extensive damage, loss of power, water, internet and phone service, and the washing out of roads throughout the region,” said Brinson Bell.

In past presidential elections, the majority of the state’s voters have cast their ballot during early in-person voting, with 65% using that method in 2020 and 62% in 2016. Election officials expect a similar portion of voters to vote early in person, and have enacted a series of measures to improve voting access in the counties hardest hit by Helene.

Voters in the impacted counties can drop off their absentee ballot at any early voting site throughout the state, and the state plans to deploy “multipartisan assistance teams” that can assist with absentee voting at disaster shelters.

This will also be the first presidential election where voters will need to provide photo identification to vote, after lawsuits delayed implementation of the state’s controversial voter ID law following its passage in 2018. Voters can provide a drivers’ license, student ID, or passport to vote, though exceptions are permitted in the case of natural disasters.

The only county to offer fewer early voting sites is hard-hit Buncombe County, whose officials opted to reduce their number of sites from 14 to 10 because of the ongoing emergency response.

“Our office has been preparing for the 2024 election for years, but we certainly didn’t expect this,” said Buncombe County director of election services Corinne Duncan.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Secret Service failed to make clear decisions and did not communicate properly with local law enforcement or provide necessary resources that caused “foreseeable, preventable” security failings on July 13, when a would-be assassin opened fire on former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to a new Senate committee report.

The highly anticipated interim report was released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by both Republicans and Democrats and reflects the work of the committee since it opened its probe following the Butler attack.

This report focuses on the Butler shooting and does not extend to investigatory efforts launched after a separate second assassination attempt on the former president at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this month.

Since the Butler attack, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe has acknowledged that the event was a “failure” by the agency, but the committee, which interviewed multiple Secret Service personnel, found that individuals “declined to acknowledge individual areas of responsibility for planning or security as having contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting that day, even when as an agency, the USSS has acknowledged ultimate responsibility for the failure to prevent the former president of the United States from being shot.”

On a call with reporters, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Gary Peters pointed to several failures by the Secret Service.

“Every single one of those failures was preventable and the consequences of those failures were dire,” Peters said. “This was the first assassination attempt of a former president and the presidential candidate in more than four decades.”

Peters was joined on the call by committee ranking member Rand Paul, R-Ky., Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., ranking member on the investigations subcommittee.

“Whoever was in charge of security on the day of Butler, whoever’s in charge of security during the recent assassination attempt, those people can’t be in charge. They there’s so many human errors,” Paul said. “No amount of money that you give to Secret Service is going to alleviate the human errors if you leave the same humans in charge who made these terrible, dramatic mistakes with regard to security.”

On Friday, the Secret Service released a four-page Mission Assurance Report, which affirms many of the findings in the committee’s report, but the committee report offers additional details from interviews with USSS and local officials.

As part of the investigation, the committee interviewed Secret Service agents, as well as the Secret Service counter snipers that were at the rally.

A closer look at the roof of the building where shots were fired from

The Senate report pays special attention to the American Glass Research building from where Thomas Matthew Crooks fired, and unveils new details about the timeline of events on that day.

In the lead-up to the event, local law enforcement raised concerns about the building. The report finds that the line of sight from the AGR building plagued rally planning and that it was identified as a concern, but that no steps were taken to mitigate the threat. Trees obstructed the view of the sniper team that was positioned atop one of the nearby roofs.

The Secret Service initially began planning for the rally in early July with state and local law enforcement. The planning meetings lacked answers or a general plan, according to the report.

A Butler County Emergency Services Unit commander told the committee the July 11 site walkthrough was “incredibly disorganized” with “no coordination,” and said he felt like “there was really no plan.”

When the USSS counter sniper team leader did a walkthrough of the area, he told the committee he “wasn’t independently looking at the threat areas,” but rather making sure the roofs were safe for law enforcement to stand on.

The leader assumed that if there were an issue with one of the lines of sight with a sniper position, that counter sniper would have told the head of the unit.

Agents from the Secret Service were notified of a suspicious person with a rangefinder 27 minutes before shots were fired, but that information was not relayed to senior Secret Service leaders on the ground.

Three minutes before shots were fired, local law enforcement communicated over the radio that someone was on the roof of the AGR building. The information was passed to the Secret Service two minutes before Crooks fired. A local officer said there was someone armed on the roof 22 seconds before shots were fired, but that information wasn’t passed on to the Secret Service.

Secret Service counter snipers did see local law enforcement running towards the AGR building with their guns drawn, but did not alert the former president’s protective detail.

“At that time, we didn’t know what we were working with,” a USSS counter sniper told the committee.

Though counter sniper efforts ultimately failed to prevent Crooks from firing, the Senate report finds that Trump’s Butler rally was the first time that a USSS counter sniper team was assigned to a protectee who was not the president, vice president, or formally nominated party nominee. Snipers were only at the rally in response to “credible intelligence” of a threat. Though the committee did not identify what that threat was, sources have told ABC News that Iran has targeted the former president since the killing of General Soliemani.

When the Secret Service sniper took his shot at Crooks, he did so “mere seconds” after identifying him, his partner told the committee.

Officers told the committee they didn’t get resources they needed

Rowe has repeatedly asserted publicly that no assets were denied for the Butler rally. But some of the committee’s findings suggest otherwise.

The operator of the USSS counter drone measures, known as C-UAS, told the committee he requested additional C-UAS equipment and personnel in the 11 days before the rally. However, these requests were denied, at times without explanation, according to the report.

The USSS lead advance agent told the committee Trump’s Secret Service detail requested counter assault team liaisons to help coordinate tactical assets in advance of the July 13 rally, but USSS denied this request, the report found.

When the CUAS system went down, the agent who was responsible for it called the manufacturer hotline to start troubleshooting the problem, delaying the deployment of the system for hours.

Previous testimony from the acting director stated that Crooks flew a drone over the rally site during the few hours the CUAS system was down.

Secret Service communications and those of local law enforcement were “siloed” in real time, according to the committee’s report.

Those issues included inoperable radios — in one instance, the head of the Pittsburgh Field Office gave his radio to the lead advance agent on the ground because his radio wasn’t working. These types of problems were commonplace, according to the report.

At one point, some of the agent’s communications were getting crossed with those of the detail of first lady Jill Biden, who was nearby.

Blumenthal called the Secret Service’s lack of accountability an “Abbott and Costello” routine, making reference to the infamous “Who’s on First” skit.

“It was really truth being stranger than fiction,” Blumenthal said of the finger-pointing as to who was responsible and who was in charge of the Butler event.

Committee leaders stress that the report is an interim set of findings meant to be expanded upon by further lines of questioning.

Blumenthal also called for new leadership at the Secret Service.

Peters told reporters last week that there have been instances in which agencies were not as responsive to committee requests as he would’ve liked.

Though the committee staff examined “over 2,800 pages” of documents provided by USSS and transcribed 12 interviews with USSS personnel, the report does reflect instances in which agencies did not meet committee requests.

“The majority of documents provided by the USSS and DHS are heavily redacted. This has unnecessarily hindered the Committee’s ability to carry out its constitutional authority to investigate and acquire information necessary to identify needed reforms,” the report says.

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(WASHINGTON) — Democrats again helped Republicans get a short-term government funding bill over the finish line on Wednesday to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.

The measure is largely an extension of current funding levels but includes $231 million in additional aid to the Secret Service to help protect presidential candidates during the election.

The bill passed by a 341-82 margin, with 209 Democrats voting for it. While 82 Republicans voted against the bill, 132 voted with Speaker Mike Johnson, who saw his funding plan voted down last week as Democrats rejected the inclusion of the controversial SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act, pushed by Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, would have required proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. Democrats said that measure was unnecessary because it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote. Although Johnson said there was “no daylight” between him and Trump on the funding bill, Trump called several hardline House Republicans in recent days, trying to get a last-minute change to the plan.

Before the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pointed out that it has been House Democrats that have helped Republicans avoid shutdowns during the current Congress.

“Can anyone name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have been able to do on their own to make life better for the American people? A single thing? Just one,” he asked. “Can the American people name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans have done to make their lives better? Zip, zero. So that is the track record that will be presented to the American people,” he said.

Former President Donald Trump had called on congressional Republicans to allow the government to shut down over the SAVE Act.

Johnson told ABC News, “I am not defying President Trump” when asked if the former president approved of the new solution to avoid a shutdown.

“I’ve spoken with him at great length, and he is very frustrated about the situation,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “His great concern is election security, and it is mine as well. It is all of ours.”

Johnson asserted Trump “understands the current dilemma” with House Republicans and said, “there’s no daylight between us.”

The White House and congressional Democrats all slammed Johnson’s attempt to tie the voter eligibility legislation to government funding, noting that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

But the “clean” short-term measure to avert a shutdown was praised by Democratic leaders and the Biden administration.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate would “immediately move” to pass the measure as soon as the House sends it over, and “if all goes well in the House, the Senate should be sending President Biden a bill before the end of today.

“Americans can breathe easy that because both sides have chosen bipartisanship, Congress is getting the job done,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We will keep the government open. We will prevent vital government services from needlessly coming to a halt. We will give appropriators more time to fully fund the government before the end of the year. And I’m especially pleased we’re getting the job done with some time to spare.”

In addition to funding the government through Dec. 20, the bill includes funds to replenish FEMA and $231 million for the U.S. Secret Service in the wake a second apparent assassination attempt against Trump.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday released a statement calling for “swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown.”

ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.

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