September 22, 2024, presidential campaign news

Our live coverage has ended. Follow the latest 2024 election news here or read through the posts below.

The mayor of a Detroit-area city with a significant Arab American community endorsed Donald Trump on Sunday after meeting with the former president last week. 

Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib, who is a Yemeni immigrant, posted his endorsement on Facebook, writing, “President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles.”

Trump said in an interview with Breitbart on Sunday that he was “very impressed” by Ghalib, saying, the mayor was “a very big fan of the Trump administration because he saw no wars” and “a world that was at peace.” Ghalib met with Trump last week when the former president was in Flint, Michigan, for a town hall.

About 25% of Hamtramck’s population is of Arab descent, according to 2019 census data, and in 2022, the city inaugurated its first all-Muslim government, including Ghalib. 

Trump ally Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence, has been helping the former president’s campaign reach out to Arab American communities in Michigan and Arizona. 

Grennell, a Michigan native, told CNN he was not present for Trump’s meeting with Ghalib, but said that “we are absolutely trying to make sure that Arab Americans in Detroit and Muslims throughout the state understand that Donald Trump is the one who brought peace, and Donald Trump is the one who made sure that Iran, the enemy of the region, is totally bankrupt.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has also made efforts to court the key demographic in Michigan, after more than 13% of voters chose to be “uncommitted” instead of casting ballots for President Joe Biden in the state’s Democratic primary.

The national “Uncommitted” movement announced Thursday it would not endorse Harris, after her campaign spurned activists pushing for a halt to US military aid to Israel and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday that she will deliver a speech later this week aimed at laying out her “vision” for the economy.

Since entering the race, Harris has unveiled economic proposals focused on making housing, groceries, child-rearing and prescription drugs more affordable. And earlier this month, she added tax relief for small businesses to her economic policy platform. Many of the proposals build upon efforts the Biden administration has already unveiled.

Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at LaGuardia Airport in New York on September 22.

Vice President Kamala Harris raised $27 million during a Sunday fundraiser in New York, the largest amount raised from a single event since she entered the race for president, according to a campaign official.

Harris, speaking to reporters on the tarmac after landing back in Washington, DC, said she believes the high numbers show support for her campaign.

Some context: The high-dollar fundraising will be critical for the campaign as she and Donald Trump remain locked in one of the closest presidential races in the past 60 years. Sunday’s total comes as Harris entered the month with significantly more campaign cash than Trump, federal filings show.

Former President Donald Trump, in remarks at virtual rallies on Sunday, urged supporters in Virginia and Minnesota to vote early and by mail, despite his false claims that mail-in voting caused election fraud during the last presidential race.

“Early voting in your commonwealth is now underway right now. … You’re the first group, first little group,” Trump said on the call with Virginia voters.

He told Virginia supporters, “Another way you can cast the ballot early is to vote by mail. And you’ve heard a lot about voting by mail, but that’s what we have right now.” 

During a virtual rally with Minnesota voters, Trump echoed past claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election but encouraged voters to vote by mail anyway.

Some background: The Trump campaign in June announced a program aimed at promoting absentee, mail-in and early in-person voting — practices the former president has disparaged for years while promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

It marked a sharp reversal from Trump’s repeated calls to end the practice of mail-in voting altogether and his discouragement of Republicans from voting any other way but at the polls on Election Day.

Vice President Kamala Harris again challenged former President Donald Trump to face off in a second presidential debate after she accepted an invitation from CNN to participate in a matchup on October 23.

She also said that she’s “hoping” Trump will agree to another debate.

Trump has argued that it’s “too late” to have another debate because Americans have begun casting their ballots in the 2024 election.

Earlier at the New York City fundraiser, Harris said, “My opponent seems to be looking for an excuse to avoid when he should accept.”

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff swiped at the head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Sunday, suggesting Sean O’Brien was “bullied” by former President Donald Trump into not endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and saying he didn’t “have the courage” to oppose Trump.

Emhoff praised local Teamsters chapters in several states, including Pennsylvania, that have independently endorsed Harris after the union declined last week to formally endorse a candidate.

In a statement Wednesday, O’Brien, the Teamsters’ president, said the union decided to not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in three decades because “neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business.” The union also shared internal data showing a majority of members supported Trump over Harris.

Some background: Emhoff’s comments come as Harris campaign seeks to bolster its ties to union members around the country, part of an effort to sure up support among working-class voters who could be crucial to determining the outcome of the election in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania. 

North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson arrives to speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 15.

Four top operatives on Republican Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor have stepped down, the campaign announced Sunday.

General consultant and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, finance director Heather Whillier and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk all stepped down.

The announcement from Robinson’s campaign comes in the aftermath of a CNN report uncovering inflammatory comments the lieutenant governor and Republican nominee for governor made on a pornography website message board over a decade ago. The lewd comments included Robinson describing himself as a “black Nazi” and how he used to go “peeping” on women at a public gym when he was 14 years old.

Robinson has a long history of making inflammatory statements, but the newly unearthed message board posts go a step beyond.

Since the CNN report, North Carolina Republicans have moved to pressure Robinson to drop out —  though the state deadline for him to officially withdraw as a candidate has passed. Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has also looked to leverage Robinson’s association with former President Donald Trump in a new ad.

In a statement announcing the departure, Robinson reiterated his intention to stay in the race.

“My campaign will continue to focus on the substantive issues at stake in this election: building an economy that grows from Murphy to Manteo; cutting taxes and eliminating unnecessary red-tape; removing politics out of our classrooms; and cracking down on violent crime and dangerous drugs,” he said.

Kamala Harris called on former President Donald Trump to participate in a second presidential debate, a day after the vice president accepted an invitation from CNN to participate in a matchup on October 23.

After Harris announced Saturday that she agreed to a second debate, Trump argued it would be “too late” to debate in late October after early voting has begun.

“The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late, voting has already started,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday.

President Joe Biden speaks in Washington, DC, on September 19.

President Joe Biden will speak at Climate Week NYC on Tuesday, touting his administration’s climate agenda and drawing contrasts between Democratic action and Republicans who voted against his 2022 climate law, according to a White House official.

Biden will appear at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, according to the official, where he’ll speak about his work to lower planet-warming pollution in the US and create clean energy jobs while saving Americans money with energy tax subsidies.

While there, in the final weeks of a neck-and-neck race for the White House between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Biden will draw a sharp contrast between Democrats and Republicans on energy and climate. The president will point out that Republicans voted unanimously against his climate bill, and many voted against Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.

Throughout his term, Biden has worked to cement his legacy as the most pro-climate president after making the fight against climate change a central pillar of his administration. He signed billions of new clean energy tax credits and federal grant money into law in 2022 and oversaw dozens of ambitious federal regulations designed to slash pollution from US plants.

Read more about Biden’s expected speech.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

The 2024 presidential election continues to be the closest of the century. In fact, it is the closest race for the White House in the past 60 years.

Polling since the September 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shows that while the vice president seems to have opened up a slight national edge over her Republican rival, their race remains well within the margin of error and too close to call. This is especially the case when looking at the Electoral College.

On average, according to the latest CNN Poll of Polls, Harris is ahead by 3 points.

You’d have to go back to the 1960 campaign to find a race in which the major-party nominees were always within 5 points of each other in an average of the national polling. Every presidential year since then has had at least three weeks when one candidate was up by 5 points or more.

But perhaps the more important reason this election is too close to call is that this isn’t a national election. Instead, it is a race to 270 electoral votes through the Electoral College.

Indeed, neither Harris nor Trump has a big leg up when you look at the state-level data. Per CNN’s race ratings, Harris starts at 225 electoral votes to Trump’s 219. Seven states and the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District remain up for grabs.

The bottom line is that this year’s presidential race is as close as it could be. One tiny shift in either direction could make all the difference in the world.

Read more from Harry Enten’s analysis.

Former President Donald Trump told two fictional stories about Oprah Winfrey on Saturday — one of them new, another he has been telling for at least 11 years.

The end of Winfrey’s television show

In a social media post late Saturday night, Trump wrote, “A long time ago, Oprah Winfrey asked me to do her last Network Television Show. The final week of her show was a big deal, and it was my honor, with my family, to do it.” He went on to criticize Harris and say that when he watched Winfrey’s event with her, “I couldn’t help but think this isn’t the real Oprah.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not appear on the last episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2011, nor even in the star-studded final week of the show. Rather, Trump appeared on the show about three months before it ended. 

Winfrey’s McDonald’s comment

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Harris is lying about having once worked at McDonald’s. (The Harris campaign says she worked at a restaurant in California during a summer when she was in college in the 1980s.)

At a campaign rally in North Carolina earlier on Saturday, Trump said: “And didn’t Oprah ask her about her time at McDonald’s? And she just sort of didn’t want to answer that one.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that Harris dodged a question from Winfrey about working at McDonald’s is false. In reality, Winfrey never even asked Harris about working at McDonald’s. Rather, Winfrey passingly mentioned the McDonald’s job during her introduction of Harris — before the vice president walked onstage for their conversation.

Read more about Trump’s false stories.

Election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2020. 

In Pennsylvania, officials are bracing for another presidential election in which the state could once again be the decisive battleground and take days to determine the winner.

Seth Bluestein, a Republican city commissioner in vote-rich Philadelphia, put the odds of knowing the winner on election night at “almost zero.”

In battleground Wisconsin, meanwhile, a final tally isn’t likely until the morning after the election, said Ann Jacobs, a Democrat who chairs the state’s election commission.

While several other states have moved to speed up the vote count in the four years since 2020’s post-election chaos, political gridlock in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin has prevented a change that could have paved the way for earlier projections: the ability to begin opening and processing mail-in ballots before Election Day.

Election observers worry that delays in counting mail ballots could give the public a false sense of who’s winning the election. That could create a potential “red mirage” — showing GOP candidates ahead initially before more Democratic-leaning absentee ballots are processed and added to the tally — and leave an opening for false narratives about election fraud.

In Georgia, a controversial rule change approved Friday that requires workers to hand-count the number of ballots cast at precincts on Election Day could delay the results of the presidential election in another key swing state.

“It’s obviously a concern,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, said of the time lag in the Keystone State. “That period of uncertainty is something that is exploited by bad-faith actors to undermine the confidence in the outcome.”

Read more about concerns over potential vote-counting delays in battleground states.

Dozens of young voters told CNN that the economy is a key issue for them this election. Along with the economy, young voters also name abortion, immigration, foreign policy, climate and gun control as other priorities.

A recent GenForward survey conducted by the University of Chicago supports what those voters told CNN. Asked what was the most important problem facing the country, 12% of US adults ages 18-26 picked economic growth, 11% said income inequality and 10% chose poverty.

The two presidential nominees — former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — seem to be aware of how crucial young Americans will be this fall as they’ve looked to reach these voters where they are, whether that is Trump posting TikToks with Gen Z internet personalities or Harris embracing her own memes.

Here’s what the young voters CNN spoke with said about some the issues they care about this election:

Read more about what issues are motivating young voters this election cycle.

More than 700 national security officials endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in a bipartisan letter released Sunday.

The bipartisan group, National Security Leaders for America, released the letter signed by 200 general and flag officers, including 15 retired four-star generals and admirals, 12 Cabinet-level officials, eight service secretaries, and more than 120 ambassadors.

Notable names listed are former Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, William Cohen and William Perry. Former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who have previously announced their endorsement of Harris, also signed the letter.

Melania Trump attends the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 18.

Former first lady Melania Trump on Sunday posted a new video that shows her appearing to read a passage from her forthcoming book about a time during the Trump administration when “violent protests across the country had finally reached Pennsylvania Avenue.”

CNN has reached out to a representative of the former first lady for clarity about what she is referring to in her video. 

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump, Melania Trump and their son, Barron Trump, were all taken to the underground bunker at the White House when protesters gathered outside in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Some background: Melania Trump has begun inching more back into the spotlight in the final few months of the 2024 presidential campaign with a series of politically pointed social media videos. The posts come as former first lady promotes her upcoming memoir, “Melania,” set to release on October 8.

Anti-abortion activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. 

Weeks after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, a then-little-known Republican congressman from Louisiana introduced a short bill that proposed amending the Social Security Act to ensure child support payments be made for an “unborn child.”

“The Unborn Child Support Act” has gone nowhere. But the congressman has. He’s Mike Johnson, now the speaker of the House. More than two years after the decision overturning Roe and nearly a year into a job that gives him control over which legislation gets debated and voted on, Johnson hasn’t touched the bill or any of its provisions.

That’s far from unique. CNN’s review of dozens of pledges made and bills introduced to help mothers and children living in a post-Roe America found little action, either in Washington or in state capitals where abortion bans were quickly put in place.

On the state level, despite much fast and thorough action to ban or limit the procedure mostly in Republican-led states, only a handful of measures have been enacted to address the aftermath of those bans.

Across the country, that’s led to an unlikely alliance of activists, advocates and economists across the spectrum on reproductive rights who complain that anti-abortion politicians haven’t followed up with enough effort to prioritize and protect life.

Read more here

Foreign dignitaries descending on this week’s United Nations General Assembly are looking to take advantage of a choice opportunity to sound out the next leader of the free world, seeking early clues where US foreign policy is heading next.

The most sought-after meeting this week may be an audience with one or both of the candidates running for the White House.

Even as President Joe Biden is busy himself with an intensive stretch of diplomatic engagements — including meetings at his home in Delaware, on the margins of the UN talks and an upcoming foreign trip – attention on the world stage is also turning to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Each candidate is looking to cultivate their own diplomatic relationships in the final stretch of the campaign, seizing on this week’s UN meetings as an opportunity for talks that illustrate their divergent worldviews.

So far, only one leader appears set to meet both Harris and Trump next week: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, who is making an urgent appeal to both candidates, along with Biden, for sustained help in combatting Russia’s invasion.

Official and unofficial representatives for Harris and Trump have fielded requests from dozens of countries reaching out in hopes of setting up a meeting, multiple US officials said. Some countries have even offered to accommodate or change their schedules to lock in a meeting.

Read more about how foreign leaders are trying to meet with the presidential candidates.

Former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally on September 21, in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

Former President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he doesn’t believe he will run again in 2028 if he loses this election. 

The former president would be 82 on Election Day in 2028.

 GOP Sen. Marco Rubio warned voters to be aware of election disinformation coming from foreign actors, particularly Russia, Iran and China, ahead of the November election.

“Here’s the bottom line: If you see something out there, a video that just seems way too scandalous, I would pause for a second and make sure that it can be verified,” Rubio said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

He went on to address the false claims against Haitian migrants amplified by former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance.

More: Springfield, Ohio, was thrust into the national spotlight as Trump and Vance amplified debunked conspiracy theories claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating pet cats and dogs.

The false claims triggered a weeklong string of bomb threats. They have shut down schools, government offices and grocery stores. The chaos has put more law enforcement on the streets, including tower cameras and state troopers stationed at public schools — all, at a cost to the city that has faced budget shortfalls.

CNN’s Nicole Chavez contributed to this report.

Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks during a news conference at on July 31, in Washington, DC. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally to former President Donald Trump, argued that Trump will not lose North Carolina over CNN’s reporting on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s graphic and extreme comments on an adult website forum.

On Robinson, Graham added that “the charges are beyond unnerving. If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office.”

However, the South Carolina Republican encouraged Robinson to go on offense and do everything he can do defend himself. “He needs to do more. In my view, he has a right to defend himself, has an obligation to defend himself. This is hanging over his campaign,” said Graham.

“Trump won in 2016 and 2020 when the governor candidate lost both times, I don’t think this hurts Trump, but as to Robinson, he’s a political zombie if he does not offer a defense to this that’s credible.”

Graham did encourage Trump to change tactics on how he addresses Jewish voters, after Trump said that Jewish Americans will bear the “blame” if he loses this election.

“My advice to President Trump is that the Jewish American voter — I’m sure they do care about Israel, there’s been no better friend of Israel. But talk about crime, talk about the economy, talk about inflation, talk about border. That’s the way you persuade people in this country, we have an obligation to persuade people to vote for us,” he said.

Sen. John Fetterman speaks at a rally for Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on August 6.

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Sunday dismissed concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris’ past support for banning fracking, insisting that the election in his home state will “not be defined” by that issue.

He also refused to answer questions about his own past support for banning fracking, arguing his previous quotes were taken “out of context.”

“I fully support fracking, so does the Vice President Harris and if you want to have a serious conversation about policy, then I would challenge Trump and Vance to have one, other than talking about eating pets,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman also pushed back against GOP vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance and former President Donald Trump blaming the assassination attempts against Trump on Democratic rhetoric.

“That’s absolutely absurd. Every Democrat condemned the assassination attempts, and I did as well,” he said.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who will face off against North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson for governor in November, told CNN on Sunday that his opponent is not qualified for office.

An investigation by CNN’s KFile team found that Robinson made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery.

Asked by Tapper if the Robinson controversy will boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ chances of winning North Carolina in November, Stein cited “newfound energy” for her at recent events in the state.

“I’m not a political scientist, but there has been incredibly exciting newfound energy for the Harris-Walz campaign here in North Carolina,” Stein said. “She’s got momentum. I think she’s going to win, but I am absolutely focused on winning my race.”

Watch the moment:

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North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson speaks on stage at the Republican National Convention on July 15 in Milwaukee. 

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson returned to the campaign trail Saturday, making what is believed to be his first public appearance since a CNN KFile investigation found he called himself a “Black NAZI,” along with a host of other graphic, inflammatory and lewd comments, on a pornographic site’s message board more than a decade ago.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate, who has denied he made the comments, did not directly address the CNN investigation in his remarks to the crowd gathered at the Fayetteville Motor Speedway for the Carlton Lamm “Big C” Memorial Race. However, in a short video posted to his X account that included his remarks before the race, Robinson appeared to allude to the controversy surrounding his campaign. 

Robinson and Trump campaign signs were fixed side-by-side to the fence around the track, but while both men were campaigning in North Carolina Saturday, they did not appear together. The Trump campaign did not invite Robinson to the former president’s rally Saturday in Wilmington, and Trump made no mention of the lieutenant governor in his remarks. 

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris holds 50% support to former President Donald Trump’s 47% in the race for president, according to the latest CNN Poll of Polls, a difference just inside the typical margin of sampling error for a national poll. 

Although there is no clear leader in the current average, the results suggest a slight shift in Harris’ favor compared with the previous Poll of Polls from before the ABC News debate. In that average, the race stood at 49% Harris to 48% Trump.

The new average incorporates five polls conducted entirely after the ABC News debate held on September 10.

It includes three polls that found Harris ahead outside of the poll’s margin of sampling error and two that found the race within that error margin.

One poll added to the average today, from NBC News, found Harris at 49% support to Trump’s 44%, the lowest level of support for the former president in any poll that meets CNN’s standards since Harris entered the race in late July.

Sen. Jon Tester speaks during a Senate hearing in Washington, DC, in September 2023.

Sen. Jon Tester has so far refrained from throwing his support behind Kamala Harris and dodged a question this week on whether he thinks endorsing the vice president could be detrimental to his own reelection bid as the Montana Democrat looks to defend an endangered seat. 

Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju if the senator thinks endorsing Harris may pose a problem for his campaign, Tester said, “No, not at all. I want to talk about Montana.”

Asked whether he believes Harris’ policies are too liberal for the people of Montana, Tester said: “That’s for the people of Montana to decide on.” 

Tester remains the most endangered Democrat running for reelection as looks to defend his seat in a state the former president carried twice by significant margins. 

And although Tester did not attend the Democratic National Convention last month and has not endorsed Harris, Montana Republicans have continued to tie him to an administration that is deeply unpopular in the state.

Former President Barack Obama speaks in New York on September 19.

Headlining a $4 million fundraiser in Los Angeles on Friday, former President Barack Obama described the country at a “crossroads” of change, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing a “new future” of economic and social fairness that he linked back to his own 2008 bid.

Harris, he said, has “has performed flawlessly since she became the nominee,” including at this month’s “embarrassingly one sided” debate. Yet he acknowledged it would take enormous effort to send her to the White House.

The event brought the total amount he’s raised through events and fundraising content for Democrats to more than $76 million, his office said.

Coming in the final stretch of the campaign, it launched what is expected to be a concerted effort by Obama to rally Democrats ahead of Election Day, including through candidate-specific advertising, robocalls and get-out-the-vote travel coordinated with Harris’s team.

A Harris victory, Obama said, “won’t solve all the crazy that’s out there.”

“But each time we win, it’s solidifying this new future. It is ushering in these new possibilities. Eventually, that will become the new normal and the new reality,” he said.

Angela Alsobrooks speaks during the Democratic National Convention on August 20. 

Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maryland, improperly took advantage of tax breaks she did not qualify for, including one meant for low-income senior citizens, saving thousands of dollars in taxes on two properties she owned in Washington, DC, and in Maryland.

A CNN review of property records and tax bills shows that for both properties, Alsobrooks claimed for more than a decade a homestead tax exemption that is meant to apply only to someone’s primary residence, violating state and local tax relief requirements.

She also improperly claimed a senior citizens’ tax break on her Washington property, cutting the tax bill in half. Alsobrooks, 53, never qualified for that tax break, but her grandparents, who owned the property before her, likely did.

A senior adviser for Alsobrooks told CNN that she was unaware of the problem and that her attorneys are working with both Washington and Prince George’s County, Maryland, to resolve the issue.

Alsobrooks saved nearly $14,000 in taxes between 2005 and 2017 on her northeast Washington property by using tax exemptions meant for the district’s primary residents, lower income residents and senior citizens, according to property tax bills reviewed by CNN.

But she did not live in Washington, according to public records. Since 1995, she has been registered to vote in Prince George’s County, where she’s been a longtime government official. She’s currently the county executive there, where she oversees the county’s budget and its tax collection division.

Read more here.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance speaks at a rally on September 21, in Leesport, Pennsylvania. 

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance expressed “100 percent” confidence that the Trump-Vance ticket will win the 2024 election, propping up internal polling he believes accurately reflects the leanings of Donald Trump voters — versus other polls he deemed “fundamentally biased.”

“Look, the internal polls are great. I think that we have to work our rear ends off over the next 45 days,” Vance said. 

Arguing the American people are “fed up” with the story of American leadership turning people into “paupers in their own country” over the last 30 years, Vance urged Republicans to get out and vote. 

He said the difference in this election will be marginal voters who don’t always show up to the polls. 

Earlier Saturday at an event in Leesport, Pennsylvania, Vance said he puts “zero” weight in the polls.

Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies monitor for any security threats from their emergency operations center during Arizona's July 30 primary election.

When the ballot counting begins inside Arizona’s Maricopa County Tabulation Center this November, election workers will be protected behind doors and windows with bullet-proof glass and two layers of fencing. Security cameras will be monitored for suspicious activity inside and outside the building. A fleet of police drones and rooftop snipers will be at the ready.

In many ways, the county’s election headquarters has been transformed into “a fortress,” says Bill Gates, a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors who has received repeated death threats for rejecting bogus claims that officials helped steal elections in 2020 and 2022. He says the new safety measures reflect “the reality of elections in 2024.”

Such precautions were unheard of a few years ago. But during the ballot count in 2020, when armed MAGA protesters — inflamed by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election cheating — swarmed the tabulation center and forced police to lock workers and reporters inside for their own safety, county leaders decided more needed to be done. That’s why Maricopa County has spent over $864,000 in federal funds and more than $3 million in county funds to bolster its election security and processes over the past four years.

But that level of planning and preparation stands in stark contrast with that of many other locales across the country with similar worries about election-related turmoil this November.

A CNN review has found that, amid an exodus of experienced workers and leaders, election officials across the country have struggled to enhance security measures to adequately safeguard workers and ensure voting integrity in advance of Election Day. Officials readily shared their worries with CNN, citing death threats, harassment, baseless lawsuits, onerous public-records requests and various security threats spurred by false claims about voter fraud.

Amid these challenges, budgets for election security have been squeezed in several ways.

Keep reading.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin on September 20.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday accepted an invitation from CNN to debate former President Donald Trump on October 23, challenging her rival to another showdown in the final weeks of the campaign. 

Harris tweeted Saturday that she “will gladly accept a second presidential debate” and that she hopes Trump “will join” her on October 23.

Trump on Saturday argued it was “too late” to have another presidential debate because Americans have begun casting their ballots in the 2024 election.

“The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late, voting has already started,” Trump said at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Trump suggested last week that he might be open to participating in a third presidential debate following his September 10 face-off with Harris hosted by ABC in Philadelphia.

“Maybe if I got in the right mood,” he told reporters during a stop in California, after previously posting on Truth Social, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung referred CNN to that Truth Social post when asked Saturday whether the former president would accept the debate invitation.

The October debate would mirror the first 2024 presidential debate in June between Trump and President Joe Biden, taking place at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, according to the network. Trump and Harris would field moderators’ questions for 90 minutes without a live studio audience.

This post has been updated with additional information.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday announced he was selling “Trump Coins” featuring his face for $100.

Trump posted the announcement video to Truth Social and said, “this beautiful, limited-edition coin commemorates our movement, our fight for freedom, prosperity and putting America first.”

The website says the coin is a “1oz .999% silver medallion” and features the White House on the back.

Trump has sold several products while running for president, including Bibles and sneakers.