NEWS
Breaking News: Election 2024 live updates: Trump and Harris stump out West…. See More
Both candidates have events scheduled today in Nevada and Arizona.
What’s happening on the campaign trail today
Former President Donald Trump rallied today in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and will head next to Henderson, Nevada. He’s also set to participate in a hurricane relief benefit with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, tonight.
Vice President Kamala Harris is holding events out West today, participating in rally concerts in Phoenix and Las Vegas and speaking in Reno, Nevada.
Their running mates are also on the campaign trail today. Sen. JD Vance stopped in North Carolina and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is holding events in Pennsylvania.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg today endorsed Harris while blasting Trump’s “personal integrity.”
“I do not agree with Vice President Kamala Harris on every issue, but earlier this week, I voted for her without hesitation,” Bloomberg wrote in a column published on Bloomberg News, outlining a number of policy positions he agrees with Harris on, including abortion, public health and public safety.
Bloomberg, a former Republican and independent who briefly ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, said some of her economic policies are “politically driven,” but “would do far less damage to consumers and businesses — and to the national debt — than Trump’s.”
As for the former president, he wrote, “Trump is not fit for high office.” He said he made the U.S. look like “a banana republic” with his efforts to stay in power after losing the last election.
He said for Trump, “nothing — not America, not our Constitution, not democracy, not the rule of law, not the lives of police officers or any other citizen — matters more than his own vanity and glory.”
Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey is anticipating 290,000 Detroit residents will vote in the 2024 election — a 53% turnout expectation that would surpass 2020’s 51% citywide turnout.
The 2024 general election is the first in which Michigan voters can vote early in-person, with 22,000 casting ballots so far and 81,000 returning absentee ballots.
In addition to higher turnout, the city has heightened its security, with 10 officers strategically located inside the absentee tabulation center where chaotic protests broke out in 2020 “in the event that we have a disturbance or someone violates or deviates from Michigan election law.”
Added security precautions, like installing bullet-resistant glass at the city’s department of elections, are necessary due to the unrest in 2020, said elections director Daniel Baxter.
The world was upside down. We had a turbulent America going on at the time, but we didn’t anticipate the type of shenanigans that occurred during that time,” he told reporters. “We expect and hope for the best, and we’ve planned for the worst.”
Winfrey, the city clerk, said she once thought her personal police escort was “overkill.”
“But when they came to my home, they came to my home in 2020 and threatened my life because they thought that I had something to do with the fact that Trump lost, then it became different for me,” she said.
Asked during a press conference about the focus on voter fraud in democratic cities like Detroit, Baxter said race is a factor.
It’s because we are a Black city,” said Baxter. “I think that when you look at some of the attacks that have been made on communities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, those type of communities, that’s where Black people live, that’s where Black folk are administrators over the process, and that is why we get attacked so often.”
Due to a measure passed during the 2022 midterms, local clerks in Michigan can opt to pre-process absentee ballots ahead of election day, which officials hope will lead to faster results and fewer conspiracy theories on election night.
Both parties are zeroing in on different issues as they make their closing arguments in the battles for the House and Senate, with Democrats leaning into abortion and Republicans focusing on immigration.
Abortion is the most-mentioned topic in Democratic closing ads, followed by immigration, health care, bipartisanship, and taxation, according to an analysis of more than 300 TV ads from candidates and joint ads they ran with party committees. The analysis looked at ads, tracked by AdImpact, that aired Wednesday in competitive House and Senate races.
Immigration is the top topic in Republican ads, followed by Vice President Kamala Harris, taxation, President Joe Biden, and candidate character.
Democrats have gone all in on abortion: Every Democratic campaign in a competitive Senate race mentioned the issue in an ad on Wednesday, less than one week from Election Day.