(ATLANTA) Former President Jimmy Carter has voted in the 2024 election, the Carter Center confirmed Wednesday.
Carter, the oldest living president, voted by mail on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Carter Center.
Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told ABC News earlier this week that the former president planned on voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in the “next couple of days.”
“It’s going to be the next couple days; the absentee ballots have gone out,” Jason Carter said.
Carter recently celebrated his 100th birthday. As he neared the milestone, his family said he was trying to live until he could vote for Harris.
Carter entered hospice care in early 2023 amid health challenges. Last year, he made a rare public appearance when he attended a memorial service for his late wife, Rosalynn Carter.
(ERIE, Pa.) — With less than 40 days left until November’s election, former President Donald Trump continues to escalate his personal attacks against Kamala Harris, calling for the vice president to be “impeached and prosecuted.”
Throughout his campaign rally speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, Trump said Harris should be disqualified from running for president, resign from office and be investigated at the highest level.
“She should be disqualified. She should resign the vice presidency and go home to California,” Trump told the cheering crowd while discussing the “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border.
While criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies, Trump baselessly called for the Vice President to be impeached.
“She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” he said.
Trump has a long history of threatening legal action against his political rivals, including President Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Now, as he faces his own set of legal battles, the former president is again calling for investigations into his new opponent, Vice President Harris, over policies he disagrees with, attempting to blame her for the deaths of people killed by undocumented immigrants.
Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, her first trip there in more than three years.
Delivering a speech in Douglas, Arizona, a border town in the critical battleground state, Harris called for tougher security measures and criticized Trump for his role earlier this year in tanking a bipartisan bill that was the result of months of negotiations.
Harris’ trip and Trump’s continued comments on border security come as immigration continues to be a top issue for many voters ahead of the election.
A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 70% viewed immigration at the southern border as an “important” issue for them, and Trump led Harris by 10 points on who voters thought was best suited to handle it.
However, as his Republican allies push for Trump to focus on the issues rather than attacking Harris, Trump’s rhetoric in recent days has become more extreme.
Trump’s personal attacks on Harris Sunday echoed similar remarks from his rally on Saturday, where he called the vice president “mentally disabled.”
“Crooked Joe became mentally impaired. Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing,” Trump said.
Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is helping Sen. JD Vance with debate the vice presidential debate preparations, didn’t go as far as to rebuke Trump’s comments when pressed by ABC News’s Martha Raddatz; however, he did ultimately concede, “I think we should stick to the issues.”
(CHICAGO) — Former first lady Michelle Obama will take center stage at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, along with her husband former President Barack Obama, throwing their formidable political weight behind Kamala Harris.
The speeches will mark a return for the Obamas to Chicago, where Michelle Obama grew up and where Barack Obama began his political career.
Michelle Obama remains one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, despite her aversion to partisan politics. Her goodwill with the party is so high that when Biden struggled in his campaign this past year, her name was floated as a possible alternative to take his place atop the ticket.
Several days after Biden dropped out of the race, the Obamas threw their support behind Harris. Their endorsement emphasized their 20-year friendship with Harris, saying she has the character and resume to meet the moment.
Cementing their support was a video released by the Harris campaign showing a phone call between the vice president and the Obamas. The video racked up millions of views on social media.
“I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you,” Michelle Obama told Harris. “This is going to be historic.”
Her remarks on Tuesday will lay out how Harris is ready to lead and “turn the page on fear and division,” according to a source. She will also speak on the need for everyone to do their part to elect the Harris-Walz ticket, the source said.
Michelle Obama has maintained a relatively low profile this election cycle, and the DNC will mark her biggest appearance in the race so far.
“Politics is hard. And the people who get into it — it’s just like marriage, it’s just like kids — you’ve got to want it. It’s got to be in your soul, because it is so important. It is not in my soul. Service is in my soul,” Michelle Obama told Oprah last year.
Barack Obama, during a political fundraiser for Biden in California earlier this summer, was asked if either of his daughters would ever venture into politics. The former president joked, “That is a question I do not need to answer because Michelle drilled into them so early that you would be crazy to go into politics. It will never happen.”
Still, Michelle Obama has stepped in to support Democrats since leaving the White House. She also leads the nonpartisan initiative When We All Vote, which works to register new voters.
During the 2020 campaign, she gave a keynote address at the virtual DNC in which she praised Biden’s character and criticized Donald Trump’s record on COVID, race issues and more.
In a play on her famous 2016 mantra, “When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama said at the last DNC that “going high means taking the harder path” and accepting the truth.
“So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said in the 2020 speech. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
(CHICAGO) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will have his big moment at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night, where he will deliver the keynote speech and accept the party’s nomination for vice president.
Walz has been in the national spotlight for just two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate pick earlier this month. With his prime-time speech at the DNC, Walz plans to introduce himself to America, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.
In his remarks, the Midwesterner plans to share his biography — from growing up in a small town in Nebraska to working as a high school social studies teacher and football coach before he was elected to Congress in 2006. The convention plans to showcase his impact as an educator in a video earlier in the night featuring five of his former students, according to the campaign.
Another former student of his, Ben Ingman, will nominate Walz along with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, according to the campaign. Walz coached Ingman in basketball and track in the seventh grade, the campaign said.
Walz’s time as a football coach has become a major part of the image the Harris campaign is painting of him, handing out signs that read “COACH!” at rallies since he joined the ticket.
Walz will also talk about his military service, which has come under scrutiny following his selection at Harris’ running mate.
Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17 and retired 24 years later, prior to running for Congress. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has alleged Walz is guilty of “stolen valor” for the way the Democrat has referred to his service. On the campaign trail, Walz has fiercely defended his service, saying at a rally last week that he is “damn proud” of his military record.
Earlier in Wednesday’s programming, the DNC will play a short video highlighting his service in the National Guard and his commitment to improving the lives of veterans, according to the campaign. The video will include remarks from Sgt. Al Bonnifield, who served with Walz in the Minnesota National Guard, and Cpl. Mike McLaughlin, an Iraq war veteran who worked with Walz when he was in Congress on the “Forever GI” bill, which expanded veterans’ education benefits, according to the campaign.
In his DNC speech, Walz also plans to address what he will bring to the White House and what Harris will do for working families, according to the campaign.
It is unclear if Walz will bring up reproductive rights. The father of two has often talked on the campaign trail about his and his wife Gwen’s fertility struggle. He has connected their experience to the bans on in vitro fertilization (IVF) put in place this past spring in Alabama and attacking Republicans over reproductive rights restrictions. He has frequently talked about their fertility journey generally, referring to IVF and treatments “like it.”
In new comments this week, Gwen Walz revealed for the first time publicly that the fertility treatment they used was intrauterine insemination, or IUI — not IVF, as had been broadly assumed.
The detail that Gwen Walz did not use IVF, but rather a different treatment, quickly led to another attack from Vance, who said that the governor “lied” and should know the difference, having been involved in the process.
In response, the Harris campaign called Vance’s attack “just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare.”
Gwen Walz did address their fertility journey in a biographical video released by the Harris-Walz campaign earlier Wednesday.
“Of all the things he’s done, Tim loves being a dad,” she said. “We struggled to have kids and fertility treatments made it possible. There’s a reason our daughter is named Hope.”
Gwen Walz also highlighted the governor’s time in the military.
“His dad served during the Korean War and that meant a lot to Tim,” she said. “And so he enlisted right after his 17th birthday and served 24 years in the National Guard, rising to command sergeant major.”
The video also touched on his years as a public school teacher, coach and founding faculty adviser to a gay-straight alliance.
“His focus has always been helping working people like those he grew up with,” she said.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Will McDuffie and Isabella Murray contributed to this report.