Breaking News: Harris and Trump race to make pitch to voters in final campaign sprint…Read More

What we’re covering
• A tight race: With four weeks until Election Day, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are racing to make their pitches to voters as CNN’s latest average of national polling shows an exceedingly close presidential race as the nominees continue to focus on crucial battleground states in the final campaign sprint.

•On the campaign trail: Harris’ media blitz moves to New York as the vice president sits down for several interviews. Trump will participate in a virtual town hall on health care. Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz will be in Seattle before speaking at a fundraiser in California, while his GOP counterpart JD Vance is expected to hold a rally in Michigan.

Storms loom over race: As Florida braces for another major hurricane, the candidates have been slamming each other on how they are navigating the politics surrounding the storms. In an interview with “The View” on Tuesday, Harris said the falsehoods Trump is spreading about the federal response to Hurricane Helene are “the height of irresponsibility.”

• What to know to cast your vote: With early voting and by mail already underway in much of the country, read CNN’s voter handbook to see how to vote in your area and read up on the 2024 candidates and their proposals on key issues.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said “nobody can really predict” the effect that Hurricanes Helene and Milton will have on the November election.

In an interview on The Ben Shapiro Show, Trump baselessly accused Democrats of cheating on elections and said, “And I suspect that’ll stay that way, we have a big lead in Florida and in North Carolina we were leading solidly. I’ve won it twice, and, you know, it looked like we were going to win it reasonably easily.”

Trump said in the interview of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, “They should do a double 25th Amendment just get them both out, who’s third in line? Because it’s just terrible.”

The former president praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his former GOP presidential primary rival, for his response to the hurricanes.

“I think Ron’s doing a good job. I see him all over television. He’s all over the place. I left Florida last night, and it was starting to get nasty already,” Trump said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday proposed broadening Medicare benefits to cover home health care for the first time, as she seeks to appeal to Americans caring for both children and aging parents.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle. They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said on ABC’s “The View,” part of a media blitz this week that’s putting her in front of friendlier interviewers with more targeted audiences.

Harris, who has promised on the campaign trail to improve long-term care, said the proposal will allow aging Americans to keep their dignity and help families with the emotional, financial and physical burdens of caring for their elders.

“We’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress,” Harris said Tuesday.

Covering home health care, however, could be very costly. Neither Harris nor her campaign provided details about the proposal, but the vice president said it would be paid for by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations. A campaign official said the cost would also be covered by increasing drug discounts from manufacturers and other measures.

The proposal aims to address the long-term care needs of senior citizens and people with disabilities, helping them stay at home instead of moving to a nursing home, which can cost thousands of dollars a month. Medicare does not cover home health care except in very narrow circumstances. So most senior citizens have to pay for the services out of pocket or through Medicaid, if they are eligible.

Before his MAGA conversion, Vance indicated that Biden won the 2020 election legitimately

Sen. JD Vance’s refusal to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election at last week’s vice presidential debate culminated his years-long conversion from a Never Trump critic into a MAGA supporter.

When asked directly by Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate Gov. Tim Walz if former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Vance said, “Tim, I’m focused on the future.” Walz called the Ohio Republican’s response a “damning non-answer

Vance’s response was a departure from what he said in the weeks after the 2020 election, when, in a little-noticed interview, he indicated he believed that Trump had lost the election and accepted that Biden would be inaugurated.

“I really don’t see any reason to think that this is gonna become, you know, violent or chaotic,” Vance said, in a prediction that was disproven by the events of January 6, 2021. “I think, you know, people certainly feel that they need to fight and they need to see this through to the end, but I think they’re supportive of the president continuing the litigation.”

Most notably, Vance never parroted Trump’s stolen election rhetoric during this time, according to a CNN KFile review of his social media activity. In fact, Vance never tweeted or liked any content related to the aftermath of the 2020 election at the time. Vance was promoting the release of the “Hillbilly Elegy” movie, based on his bestselling book.

Likes on X – formerly Twitter – are now hidden, but CNN archived a copy of Vance’s before he was picked as Trump’s running mate.

A spokesperson for Vance declined to comment.

Harris slams Trump for secretly sending Covid tests to Putin during pandemic

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday criticized Donald Trump for mismanaging the pandemic in response to new revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book that details Trump’s private conversations with Putin – and a secret shipment of Covid-19 testing equipment Trump sent to the Russian president for his personal use.

“I believe that Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator. He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends, and they are manipulating him full time and manipulating him by flattery and with favor,” Harris said on “The Howard Stern Show.”

She continued, “Everybody was scrambling to get these kits, the tests, the covid test kits. Couldn’t get them, couldn’t get them anywhere. And this guy who was president of the United States is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his personal use.”

Harris slammed Trump for helping an adversary amid the pandemic while Americans needed relief, adding he “mismanaged the whole thing” domestically. She also highlighted that Trump dangerously suggested sunlight and ingesting disinfectants could help cure coronavirus.

“Think about this, this person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an adversary when the American people are dying by the hundreds every day and in need of relief, and instead, how did he handle it domestically for Americans? He mismanaged the whole thing,” Harris added.

Trump campaign seizes on Harris saying she can’t think of anything she’d do differently than Biden

Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday quickly seized on the moment when Vice President Kamala Harris said on ABC’s “The View” that “there is not a thing that comes to mind” when asked if she would’ve done anything differently than President Joe Biden.

“If you’re a voter who wants to turn the page from Joe Biden’s failed economy, open border, and global chaos then Kamala Harris is NOT the candidate for you,” the campaign said in a new statement.

The campaign added that “Kamala Harris has no regrets for supporting inflationary spending, open borders, and weakness abroad.”

On “The View,” Harris was asked, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of, and I’ve been part of most of the decisions that have had impact,” Harris responded

Trump ally, GOP Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, responded to the moment and posted on X, “A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for four more years of Biden’s policies on inflation, the border, and national security–only with even less competent leadership.”

Meanwhile, Trump claimed Tuesday that Harris “sounds like a child,” in response to her interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the former president said he watched as he continued to insult the vice president’s intelligence.

Trump backed out of a previously scheduled interview with “60 Minutes,” CBS said last week.

Trump has levied a number of personal attacks on Harris since she ascended as the Democratic nominee for president and recently claimed Harris was “mentally impaired.”

This post has been updated with Trump’s reaction to Harris’ interview

Harris says it’s time to “combine resources” as she dismisses criticism from Florida Gov. DeSantis

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday dismissed criticism from GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has sought to accuse her of politicizing the storm, and instead said now is the time to “work together to combine resources” amid hurricane relief efforts.

“That’s why I called the governor about what Florida has received in terms of impact. We have to have an agreement that at some point we all need to work together to combine resources, especially federal, state and local resources, around these kinds of disasters, and I think it’s a shame that that hasn’t happened. But look, it has at the local level,” Harris said.

CNN previously reported that the Florida governor has refused to return Harris’ phone call after she reached out about storm recovery, which Harris called “irresponsible” and “selfish.

People are in desperate need of support right now, and playing political games at this moment, in these crisis situations – these are the height of emergency situations – is just utterly irresponsible, and it is selfish, and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is putting the people first,” Harris told reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Monday.

DeSantis hit back at the vice president’s remarks during a Fox interview, calling her “delusional.”

“For Kamala Harris to try to say my sole focus (being) on the people of Florida is somehow selfish is delusional,” DeSantis said. “She has no role in this, in fact, she’s been vice president for three and a half years, I’ve dealt with a number of storms under this administration, she’s never contributed anything to any of these efforts.”