October 25, 2024, presidential campaign news

Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a get-out-the-vote rally at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on October 30, according to a campaign spokesperson.

Musical artists Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons, Remi Wolf, and The National’s Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner will perform as a part of the campaign’s GOTV concert series.

The rally is part of the Harris campaign’s efforts to reach college students as early voting is underway in battleground states. CNN reported earlier Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will hold a joint rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, featuring singer Maggie Rogers on Monday.

Early in-person voting started in Wisconsin on October 22, and begins statewide in Michigan on October 26.

Staring down the prospect of losing the Senate and amid a tight race for the House, Democrats are burning through cash in the final sprint to Election Day, new federal filings show.

The pre-general election reports, which cover the first 16 days of October, are the last opportunity before November 5 to see just how much congressional campaigns have raised and spent. Democrats are defending a razor-thin majority in the Senate, while Republicans are trying to maintain their own narrow edge in the House.

In almost all the key races, Democratic candidates brought in more than their Republican opponents between October 1-16. At this point in the race, neither side has a significant overall cash-on-hand advantage, with campaigns spending all the resources they can to win.

With no clear leader in the presidential election according to the most recent CNN Poll of Polls, the battle for Congress will be crucial to determining whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will have a supportive first branch of government to help implement the new president’s policies.

Read more about Senate Democrats’ final stand and the battle for the House

An interview with Vice President Kamala Harris by CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell will air on CBS Sunday Morning and Face the Nation, according to the network.

O’Donnell will join Harris on the campaign trail in Houston and Kalamazoo and the interview will air first on “CBS News Sunday Morning” on Sunday at 9:00 a.m. ET., with additional excerpts of the interview appearing on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” “CBS Mornings,” the “CBS Evening News,” and on the CBS News 24/7 Streaming Network, CBS said.

Former President Donald Trump gives remarks on border security inside an airplane hanger at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on October 25 in Austin, Texas.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to jail election officials and political operatives if he takes office – reiterating a threat he made last month.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump said he is closely monitoring the sanctity of the election, and “WHEN” he wins, “those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.”

The former president added: “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”

“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” Trump said in the Truth Social post.

It’s the latest threat from the former president to weaponize the justice system against his political opponents if he reclaims the White House. Trump’s post on Friday is identical to one he made in early September.

A panel of three Donald Trump-appointed judges said Friday that Mississippi was violating federal law by counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, but stopped short of blocking the policy before the election, in a ruling that could nevertheless impact voting-related lawsuits this fall.

The ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for the Republican National Committee and others who brought the case in Mississippi, a non-battleground state with very little mail-in voting, seeking a ruling by a far-right circuit court friendly to their arguments.

Democrats and voting rights advocates fear that a ruling in Republicans’ favor will be used to boost challenges to late-arriving ballots in other states, which could make the difference if the margins are right in key races.

Among the states that allow for late-arriving ballots are Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, as does Maryland, the site of a competitive Senate race.

California and New York also allow post-election ballot receipt — both states that could make a major difference in which party controls the House.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling is only binding on the three Southern states covered by the circuit, and for now, the panel is not ordering that the policy be blocked in Mississippi for the current election, instead sending the case down for more proceedings.

Judge Andrew Oldham, joined by Judges James Ho and Kyle Duncan, instructed the lower court to give “due consideration to ‘the value of preserving the status quo in a voting case on the eve of an election’” as it considered the next steps in the case. All three were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told supporters in Pennsylvania on Friday they can be the “firewall” preventing former president Donald Trump from returning to the White House while suggesting there are no more “guardrails” preventing Trump from following through on anti-democratic policy proposals.

While speaking to voters at a Latino outreach event in a restaurant in Allentown, Walz invoked criticisms of the Republican presidential nominee from former Trump administration officials who have warned against his return to the White House. Walz suggested that because “there is no more firewalls” around Trump, voters can be “the biggest and most important firewall” preventing Trump’s reelection.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to make the case for reproductive freedom nationwide during her Houston rally Friday evening, according to excerpts released by her campaign.

Harris plans to say that “no one is protected,” while mentioning states, including the battlegrounds of Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, where there are currently protections for reproductive health.

Harris is also planning to say, “We are fighting for an America where, no matter who you are, or where you live, you can make that decision based on what is right for you and your family.”

As CNN has previously reported, Texas was chosen as the location for the rally, campaign officials said, because it’s the epicenter of abortion bans. The excerpts released show that Harris is placing the blame squarely on former President Donald Trump for abortion bans in several states and plans to amplify stories of the people impacted by those restrictions.

Friday’s rally will spotlight Amanda and Josh Zurawski, the Texas couple who led a lawsuit against the state’s abortion bans after Amanda suffered life-threatening pregnancy complications but couldn’t have an abortion in the deep-red state.

Rep. Colin Allred speaks during a campaign event that saw volunteers man phones on October 3, in San Antonio, Texas.

Vice President Kamala Harris, set to rally voters with Beyoncé in Houston this evening, sees Texas as ground zero for abortion rights, a central issue to her campaign.

Democrats are also eyeing the Lone Star State in the battle for control of the US Senate, with the race between incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred one of the few pickup opportunities on a map that largely favors the GOP this cycle.

“It’s a top pickup opportunity,” a campaign official tells CNN.

With Democrats’ razor-thin majority at risk as the party defends three seats in states that Donald Trump won twice plus a handful of Senate contests in battleground states, the Harris campaign is lending some star power of its own to boost Allred’s candidacy.

Allred, a US congressman serving the Dallas area, is expected to appear onstage in Houston with Harris, Beyonce and abortion rights advocates. Abortion has become a focal point for the state’s Senate race, with Allred using a mid-October debate to try to paint Cruz as extreme on the issue.

If elected, Harris has pledged to restore reproductive freedoms through federal law, but has faced repeated questions over what she would do if a Republican-controlled Congress blocked that effort.

In her remarks in Houston, Harris plans to point to an Allred victory as part of the solution.

“What happens in this election will determine the future of reproductive freedom for generations to come… I trust women,” Harris plans to say, according to excerpts. “And with Colin Allred in the United States Senate, when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has chosen to close out the 2024 presidential election with a major address next week at the Ellipse, a park near the White House where former President Donald Trump infamously delivered a speech on January 6, 2021, that fired up his supporters – some of whom would go on to attack the US Capitol.

Campaign advisers have said the Tuesday remarks would effectively serve as Harris’ final major speech of the cycle just one week out from Election Day, and a senior campaign official tells CNN that the speech itself is still in development.

That official rejected any suggestion that the remarks will boil down to being a “democracy speech,” however – despite the deliberate effort to evoke the events of January 6.

Harris’ speech will certainly point to Trump’s actions on and around the day of the riots as perhaps the best-known example of how “Trump puts himself first, wants unchecked power and doesn’t give a damn about you or anything except himself,” the official said.

However, the remarks will make a clear pivot from January 6 to the change that the vice president is promising the country with her campaign and her candidacy – and make clear that what she is promising is to “turn the page” on that period in American history.

The issue of protecting democracy was a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign as well as his 2024 re-election efforts, which ended when the president dropped out of the race in July. Some Democrats had questioned the strategy of focusing so much on that issue, arguing that voters at the end of the day care much more about – and are more likely to vote based on – an issue like the economy.

Republican vice presidential nominee, US Sen. JD Vance speaks at a campaign rally in Waterford, Michigan, on October 24.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance told a crowd in North Carolina that since he has become the Republican vice presidential nominee, he and his wife Usha have “lost a few friends” due to politics and argued the “first step to healing” the country is electing Donald Trump in 2024.

“I think that something that is true of most of us, and maybe all of us in this room, is even if we disagreed with somebody politically, we would never cast aside a friend or a family member over politics,” Vance said at an event in Raeford, North Carolina.

“Look, I think Kamala Harris legitimately is a crazy person, I mean, to the extent that she has any ideas, any original thoughts about how to govern this country, I think it’s a disaster. We got to remember that most of our fellow citizens are not Kamala Harris and thank God for that.”

Vance also said it’s “a disgrace” people have lost friendships due to their vocal support for the former president.

At a NewsNation town hall on Thursday, Vance shared how some of his friends and his wife’s friends who disagree with them on politics will get “very personal about it” and he offered some advice.

“If you’re discarding a lifelong friendship, because somebody votes for the other team, then you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake and you should do something different,” Vance said.

Former President Donald Trump said Vice President Kamala Harris is “in Texas to rub shoulders with woke celebrities” ahead of her scheduled speech tonight on reproductive rights in Houston that is expected to feature Beyoncé.

“But she’s not going to meet with any of the victims of migrant crime while she’s here,” Trump said in Austin.

Trump focused much of his speech on illegal immigration and crime as he sought to blame Harris for border crossings. The former president invited Alexis Nungaray, whose 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn Nungaray, was killed in Houston, to the podium with him.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate who subsequently endorsed Donald Trump, asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pull his name from the ballot in battleground Michigan in his latest longshot appeal to the high court.

Kennedy’s emergency request came days after he made the same appeal to the Supreme Court over Wisconsin’s ballot. Election officials in both pivotal presidential states will file a brief at the high court responding to Kennedy on Monday.

In both cases, Kennedy is arguing that election officials are violating his First Amendment rights by declining to withdraw his name.

Kennedy’s requests underscore the potential spoiler role third-party and independent candidates can play in tight elections. Early voting is already underway in both states.

In a separate appeal earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined Kennedy’s request to keep his name on the ballot in New York.

The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus suggested that legislators in the battleground state of North Carolina could possibly allocate their state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump before votes are counted because of the possible disenfranchisement of voters in the west of the state, a plan that state election officials called illegal, and Republicans have criticized.

The activist, Ivan Raiklin, who has previously pushed baseless theories about the 2020 election, said during his presentation Thursday that because the hurricane had damaged many western counties, displaced some ballots and hindered the postal service, state legislators could decide the election.

Harris said in a statement to CNN on Friday that his “theoretical conversation has been taken out of context,” but did not go so far as to say he disagreed with the idea.

“As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted,” Harris’ statement continued.

Asked by CNN about proposals by far-right activists for legislators to award electors for Trump regardless of vote counts, the executive director of North Carolina’s election board called the plan a nonstarter. “What’s being proposed by these individuals is actually a violation of law,” said Karen Brinson Bell.

Former President Donald Trump’s late-campaign television ads are littered with deceptively edited and misleadingly described quotations.

Multiple Trump ads omit critical words from quotes by and about Vice President Kamala Harris on the subject of tax policy. One Trump ad misleadingly depicts comments about fracking from Trump’s campaign and administration as if they were comments from independent news organizations.

Another Trump ad takes an immigration-related quote from a 6-year-old news article way out of context, wrongly depicting it as a comment about the Biden-Harris administration. Another ad changes a word from the headline of an economic news story. And another ad wrongly describes a quote from the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Asked for comment on CNN’s findings, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt chose not to defend any of the specifics. Instead, she said Friday: “President Trump has the hardest-hitting, most well produced ads in the business.” She credited them for damaging Harris’ campaign.

All of the ads discussed in this article are among the 20 most-aired ads from Trump and his outside allies in the last two weeks, according to data provided by AdImpact.

Read this fact check on some of the ads by Trump and his allies.

Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a rally in Georgia, on October 24.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday she will discuss the “fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body” during her rally in Houston, Texas.

CNN has previously reported that the Houston rally will spotlight Amanda and Josh Zurawski, the Texas couple who led a lawsuit against the state’s abortion bans after Amanda suffered life-threatening pregnancy complications but couldn’t have an abortion in the deep-red state. Shanette Williams — the mother of Amber Nicole Thurman, who ProPublica reported died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from Georgia’s restrictive abortion law — will also be in attendance.

Asked about reports, including from CNN, that Beyoncé will appear alongside the vice president at her rally Friday night, Harris said there will be “more to follow.”

Two Senate Democrats urged the Department of Justice on Friday to investigate and potentially prosecute tech billionaire Elon Musk over his $1 million sweepstakes to registered voters.

The letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland was sent by Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general. They sent the letter one day after Musk’s super PAC defied a private warning from the Justice Department that its lottery might violate federal laws against paying people to register.

Musk’s super PAC declined to comment about the letter. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

Some background: The Tesla CEO endorsed former President Donald Trump and has pumped more than $118 million into a political group, America PAC, supporting Trump’s candidacy, campaign finance reports show. Legal scholars immediately raised concerns about Musk’s sweepstakes after he launched it last weekend – because only registered voters in swing states can win the cash prize.

CNN reported Wednesday that the Justice Department sent a letter to America PAC warning that the sweepstakes might be illegal. Since then, the PAC has continued its giveaway, naming two $1 million winners on Thursday from Wisconsin and Michigan.

The letter to Garland is the latest move in a partisan battle between Musk and elected Democrats. He recently triggered a war of words with Michigan’s top election official, a Democrat, after spreading false claims about the state’s voter rolls. And Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro condemned the $1 million lottery and said it should be investigated.

Musk has defended his lottery. In response to a recent X post accusing him of “paying to register Republicans,” Musk said winners “can be from any or no political party and you don’t even have to vote.” He also slammed Shapiro for criticizing the giveaway.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday baselessly claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was “behind” the ruling by a federal judge halting a Virginia program that purged the state’s voter rolls based on indications that a person might be a noncitizen.

Trump, who railed against the decision earlier on social media, claimed the judge’s decision was “election interference” and “unconstitutional.”

“The outrageous decision goes against the very bedrock of our democracy and thankfully Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is doing a terrific job,” Trump said at an event in Austin, Texas. “He’s working hard to fix this problem.”

“This is blatantly un-American and it’s election interference, and Kamala Harris is behind it very much,” Trump added, without providing evidence.

Key context: The judge on Friday ordered officials to restore the registrations of roughly 1,600 people who had been removed under the process.

US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles sided with the Biden administration and the private groups that brought the legal challenge, finding that Virginia’s program violated a federal law that forbids systematic removals from the voter rolls 90 days before a federal election.

The supposed threat of noncitizens voting in the 2024 election has been a fixation of Trump and Republicans. However, documented cases of noncitizens voting are extremely rare; a recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people on its rolls found just 20 registered noncitizens — only nine of whom had voted.

Youngkin, a Republican, has touted his state’s efforts to purge the rolls and pledged to take even more aggressive steps to remove suspected noncitizens.

Former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance in New York City on September 11.

Chinese government-linked hackers have targeted the phone communications of former President Donald Trump and vice presidential nominee JD Vance as part of a much broader cyber-espionage effort aimed at high-level US targets, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The Chinese hackers also targeted people affiliated with the Harris-Walz campaign, another source familiar with the matter told CNN. The Chinese hackers have also targeted senior Biden administration officials, one of the sources said.

US officials informed the Trump campaign this week that Trump and Vance were among a group of people whose phones were targeted by the Chinese hackers, one of the sources said. In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung attacked the Harris campaign for allegedly emboldening China.

It was not immediately clear what data, if any, the hackers were able to access. Phone communications of senior current and former US officials are coveted by foreign spies.

The New York Times first reported on the hacking targeting Trump and Vance’s phones.

The activity is part of a much broader Chinese hacking campaign that has infiltrated multiple US telecommunications firms in the last several months. Investigators believe the hackers are likely searching for sensitive national security information, including, in some cases, information on wiretap warrant requests made by the Justice Department, CNN previously reported.

In this case, there is no indication that the hackers’ search for data on Trump and Vance related to US law enforcement activity, the sources said.

Major US broadband and internet providers AT&T, Verizon and Lumen are among the hackers’ targets, CNN has reported.

The Chinese government has denied the allegations.

This post was updated with information about the Harris-Walz campaign.

Former President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith, suggesting the prosecutor leading two federal criminal cases against him should be “thrown out of the country” in an interview on Thursday.

“We should throw Jack Smith out with them, the mentally deranged people. Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged, and he should be thrown out of the country,” Trump said in an interview on “Cats & Cosby,” a conservative radio talk show, on Thursday.

The comment is the latest escalation in rhetoric against Smith, who he has frequently criticized for his role in leading the federal case into Trump’s role in the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Smith is also overseeing the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. The case was dismissed by a federal judge, but Smith is appealing.

In another interview on Thursday with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump said he would fire Smith “within two seconds” when asked if he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if he’s reelected.

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” he told Hewitt. “I would fire him within two seconds.”

Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald Trump’s “garbage can” comment “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”

At a rally Thursday night in Arizona, Trump said that the United States is “like a garbage can for the world,” as he railed against illegal immigration.

“We’re a dumping ground. We’re like, we’re like a garbage can for the world. That’s what’s happened. That’s what’s happened to our— We’re like a garbage can,” Trump said in Tempe.

The remark, coming less than two weeks from Election Day, marks the latest escalation in Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as he’s made border security central to his bid to return to the White House.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Kaanita Iyer contributed reporting.

Republicans plan on appealing to the US Supreme Court a decision from Pennsylvania’s highest state court that ordered the counting of provisional ballots cast by eligible voters whose mail ballots had been rejected for technical defects.

Lawyers for the Republican National Committee indicated their intention to seek the intervention of the US Supreme Court in a filing Friday that asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to pause the recent ruling until the US Supreme Court has the chance to step in.

More context: The case was brought by residents of Butler County, Pennsylvania, who sued the county for not counting provisional ballots they had cast in the 2024 primary after their mail ballots were tossed out. Both the Republic National Committee and the Democratic National Committee have intervened in the case, with Democrats arguing in favor of counting the provisional ballots. On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with the voters.

It’s unclear how many ballots the dispute could affect, as not every county notifies voters ahead of the Election Day that their mail ballots have been disqualified, and some counties give voters the additional option of fixing mail ballots that have mistakes such as a missing signature or incorrect date.

However, with polls showing the presidential race to be in a dead heat and Pennsylvania a key state in the path the White House, both parties are preparing to grind it out in court over every last ballot.

The RNC said if the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was unwilling to put its ruling on pause, the court should at least order the disputed ballots to be segregated – setting up the potential for a post-election fight.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, election and law enforcement officials are probing an effort to potentially register up to 2,500 fraudulent voters.

“Through this staff’s normal review process, as many as 2,500 completed voter registration forms are being researched for potential fraud stemming from two separate dropped batches by individuals,” Ray D’Agostino, the vice chairman of the Lancaster County Board of Elections, said at a news conference.

The Board of Elections is led by two Republicans and one Democrat. D’Agostino said the fraudulent applications did not appear to be from one party or the other.

The Pennsylvania Department of State told CNN it would send a statement on the allegations later this afternoon.

What officials found: Election officials notified the Lancaster County district attorney’s office when staff found inconsistencies with multiple “stacks” of applications.

At Friday’s news conference, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said the detectives found fraud on applications, including inaccurate addresses and personal identifying information, duplicate handwriting, and signatures that did not match.

Some people who were listed on the applications with correct information told investigators they did not request or complete the form, Adams added.

“Thus far, of the investigations that we have completed, we have determined that 60% have been fraudulent,” Adams said. She added that investigators still have more applications to vet, and she expects that process to be completed later today.

County officials said the applications appear to be connected to a “large-scale canvassing operation” that dates back to the mid-summer, when canvassers solicited prospective voters at grocery stores, parks and other public spaces, but did not elaborate further on the organization suspected to be responsible.

“Our systems work”: D’Agostino said catching the problem was an example of their processes working.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will hold a joint rally in Michigan on Monday featuring singer Maggie Rogers, a Harris campaign official told CNN.

The joint rally will take place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the official said.

An election clerk was assaulted in an incident at a San Antonio polling location Thursday night, just as polls were closing for the evening, election officials said.

“It’s something that we never, ever, ever, thought we would have to say,” Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen told reporters at a news conference Friday.

The election clerk received medical attention on site and went home after the incident.

The election commission administrator said early voting turnout had exceeded the election board’s expectation.

The main purpose in telling the public about the incident was “to allay any fears that are out there,” she said.

“Our poll sites are safe,” Callanen said. As a safety precaution, and as mandated under Texas Election Code, Callanen said the election board is placing a peace officer at the location where the incident occurred.

She would not disclose the polling site location where the incident occurred, citing the ongoing investigation spearheaded by the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.

“Normally you don’t have any police presence or sheriff’s presence because they look at it as intimidation in some aspects, but we are going to place one at this site,” Callanen said.

There are no plans to close early voting polling locations early, she told reporters Friday.

CNN’s Jeremy Grisham contributed to this report

Former President Donald Trump on Friday railed against a ruling by a federal judge halting a Virginia program that purged the state’s voter rolls based on indications that a person might be a noncitizen and ordered officials to restore the registrations of roughly 1,600 people who had been removed under the process.

Trump said in a social media post that it was a “totally unacceptable travesty,” adding he hoped the US Supreme Court would “fix it.”

Trump also said he would be calling in to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s rally on Saturday.

Some context: US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles sided with the Biden administration and the private groups that brought the legal challenge, finding that Virginia’s program violated a federal law that forbids systematic removals from the voter rolls 90 days before a federal election.

Time is ticking until Election Day, and Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are working to get voters to the polls.

Many Americans are taking to social media to talk politics, and there are some campaign-related moments that can rack up millions of views on platforms like TikTok.

Here are some of those viral moments from the week:

Trump serves fries at McDonald’s

The former president dished out french fries at a McDonald’ franchise location in Pennsylvania over the weekend. At the staged event, Trump put on an apron to work as a fry attendant and handed people food out of the drive thru, which had been closed for the campaign stop.

The event got people talking online. A video of the visit posted by Trump’s TikTok account has received more than 41 million views and more than 4.6 million likes.

The caption of the video said, “I’ve officially worked longer at McDonalds than Kamala.” Harris says she briefly worked at the chain during the summer of 1983 when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington, DC. “I’m having a lot of fun here everybody,” Trump told people in a car while hanging out food from the drive thru window.

The stop was also fuel for the late night shows. “The Daily Show” posted a clip on TikTok that got 3.5 million views, with host John Stewart poking fun at the former president.

Watch Trump’s McDonald’s moment below:

Coach Walz goes for a run

The Harris campaign has been using social media to highlight aspects of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s biography.

“Coach Walz here. Their game plan is titled Project 2025,” Walz says in the TikTok video posted to his account that racked up to 1 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes.

Walz, standing at a white board wearing a baseball hat, draws up plays and uses football terms to argue that voters need to get to the polls to “play defense” and stop the 920-page document and its proposals, which Democrats warn will be implemented if Trump is elected, despite the former president’s efforts to distance himself from the document.

But Walz didn’t stop there. The vice presidential candidate has mentioned on the campaign trail that he is a runner, so he took questions on the go with popular social media influencer, Kate Mackz. Walz joined Mackz, who conducts interviews with runners, on a four a mile-long run in New York City’s Central Park on Monday. Walz told the young audience viewing the TikTok video — which got 3.8 million views — that they should “get out and vote,” regardless of who they vote for.

From TikTok itself

While scrolling through their feed, some TikTok users might see an ad from the social media platform itself promoting its Election Center. The ad, with more than 23,000 likes, tells users how they can find the Election Center in the app, which it says includes things like voting dates and how to check your registration.

Lawmakers have doubled down their focus on TikTok this election year. President Joe Biden signed a bill into law in April that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States or force its sale, citing national security concerns due to the social media platform’s parent company, ByteDance, being based in Beijing.

There is already some evidence of election influence on the platform. In September, TikTok said it removed accounts associated with two Russian media groups for trying to exercise what it called “covert influence” on the upcoming election.

Former President Donald Trump appears in a new TV ad for Ohio Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno that began airing Friday, saying Moreno’s opponent, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, “pretends he’s my friend.”

The ad, which comes from a super PAC supporting Moreno, features Trump on-camera, slamming Brown’s record in Congress and working to undercut Brown’s bipartisan messaging.

“Sherrod Brown is a radical left politician who has played politics for 50 years making a career of selling you out,” Trump says in the ad. “He pretends he’s my friend, he pretends he goes with my policies — but it’s only for about a month before the election.”

Trump proceeds to criticize Brown over immigration and border security — key issues for conservative voters — and closes saying, “He’s a disaster. He’s not for me. He’s not for my policies. He’s not for Make America Great Again, he has nothing to do with it.”

The ad comes in the closing days of the most expensive 2024 Senate race, and the most expensive congressional election on record.

The incumbent Democrat’s past work with the Trump administration, and instances where he’s broken with his own party, have featured heavily in Brown’s advertising as he’s courted crossover voters in a state that twice voted for the former president.

One of the Brown campaign’s top TV ads by spending over the last 30 days features the senator talking about that record, saying, “I’ve shown I’ll stand up to presidents of my party if they’re doing damage to my state.”

For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a presidential candidate, the newspaper’s publisher announced Friday.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Will Lewis said in a statement Friday. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since the 1980s. In his statement, Lewis referred to the Editorial Board’s past decisions to not endorse, noting that it is a right “we are going back to.”

The decision comes just days after The Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Newspaper owners typically play a role in their publication’s endorsements and sign off on the editorials which are seen as a reflection of their views.

Ahead of Friday’s announcement, the Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley, told staffers that Lewis would be publishing a public note with the decision.

“The news is significant - and I know there will be strong reactions across the department,” Shipley wrote in a memo.

A person with knowledge of the matter told CNN an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been drafted and was ready to be approved by the editorial board but was never presented.

Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor who led the newspaper through its coverage of the January 6, 2021, attack, sharply criticized the decision Friday.

This post has been updated with more reporting on the decision.

Kamala Harria and Donald Trump.

The race for the White House rests on a razor’s edge in the final nationwide CNN poll before votes are counted. The poll, conducted by SSRS, finds 47% of likely voters support Vice President Kamala Harris and an equal 47% support former President Donald Trump.

CNN polling has found a tight race throughout the short campaign between Harris and Trump. In September, likely voters split 48% for Harris and 47% for Trump, nearly identical to the new poll, and a poll just after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race over the summer and threw his support behind Harris found 49% of registered voters behind Trump, with 46% backing Harris.

Trump has never trailed outside the margin of error in CNN’s polling on this year’s presidential contest against either Harris or Biden, a stark departure from his previous two runs for the presidency.

The race has been remarkably stable throughout this tumultuous political year. The poll finds that 85% of likely voters who’ve made a choice say they knew which party they would support in the presidential election all along, and just 15% say they changed their minds along the way. As of now, even more than that are fully locked in: A scant 2% of all likely voters say they haven’t yet chosen a candidate, and another 9% say that they could change their minds before casting a ballot.

Those voters who say their choices are locked in now split 50% Harris to 49% Trump, with just 1% supporting other candidates. Those who could change tilt toward Trump and are much more likely than decided voters to be backers of minor-party and independent candidates (38% support Trump, 31% Harris, 30% someone else). They are also much less motivated to vote than those who’ve made a decision. While 70% of likely voters who say their minds are made up say they are “extremely motivated” to vote, that drops to just 27% among those who could change their minds.

Harris has likely banked more votes than Trump so far, given Democrats’ higher propensity to vote early or by mail, according to the poll. The poll was fielded October 20-23, after early and absentee voting was well underway across the country, and found the 20% of likely voters who say they have already cast their ballots break 61% Harris to 36% Trump, while those who say they haven’t yet voted break in Trump’s favor, 50% to 44%.

Read more about the CNN poll here and watch CNN’s David Chalian break down the data below:

House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks with reporters in September in Washington, DC.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson called Vice President Kamala Harris’ rhetoric about the dangers of a Trump presidency “reckless” in a new statement, pointing to the previous assassination attempts against the former president.

“Vice President Harris acknowledged that ‘we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.’ These words have proven hollow,” they said.

Johnson and McConnell said that they have been briefed on “ongoing and persistent threats” against Trump and warned that Harris must “stop escalating the threat environment.”

Kamala Harris’ campaign rally in Houston tonight is aimed at accomplishing two things the vice president’s team is focused on in the final stretch of the campaign: persuasion and getting out the vote.

Campaign officials say that with 11 days to go until Election Day, they expect there are plenty of voters who are now tuning into the presidential race for the first time. With early voting underway in many states across the country — including in the seven most competitive battlegrounds — reaching voters who are in the middle of their decision-making process and convincing them that Harris’ vision for America is a better one than Donald Trump’s is a top priority for the campaign.

And that is precisely why the campaign has chosen the decidedly non-battleground state of Texas for Friday’s event. While not a state that Democrats compete for in a presidential election, Texas — which has one of the country’s most strict abortion bans — is a powerful backdrop for Harris to discuss the issue of reproductive rights and deliver a warning about another four years of a Trump presidency.

As for the second urgent task at hand for the Harris campaign — getting people to actually vote — the team is getting a helping hand tonight from one of the biggest celebrities in the world: Beyoncé.

The promise of a musical performance by the megastar tonight is just one of many ways in which the Harris campaign is leaning on celebrities in the final days to grab people’s attention.

Former President Donald Trump will host a rally at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on November 1, according to a campaign official.

Trump last spoke at the venue during the Republican National Convention.

Vice President Kamala Harris also held a rally at the arena during the Democratic National Convention.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz laid out part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ closing argument in Philadelphia on Friday, where he detailed Harris’ economic policy proposals aimed at benefiting Black voters.

Speaking at a Black-owned family restaurant in West Philadelphia, Walz contrasted Trump’s message in the closing days of the campaign, which he characterized as a message of “hate,” with Harris’ “optimistic” vision for the country.

“I know we’re in the fourth quarter and we are going to win this. And I say we’re going to win it because I believe in the American people. I believe that their vision is more optimistic. I believe it’s more unified. I believe it is more hopeful about what we can do together,” he told a small group of Black community leaders.

Walz also made the case for Harris’ “opportunity agenda,” a slate of economic policy proposals targeted to Black voters to lower costs, and make it easier to buy a home and start a business. Walz said the policies are part of an effort by the vice president to work alongside Black community leaders to improve the lives of Black Americans across the country.

A federal judge on Friday halted a Virginia program that purged the state’s voter rolls based on indications that a person might be a noncitizen and ordered officials to restore the registrations of roughly 1,600 people who had been removed under the process.

US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles sided with the Biden administration and the private groups who brought the legal challenge, finding that Virginia’s program violated a federal law that forbids systematic removals from the voter rolls in the 90 days before a federal election.

The challengers put forward evidence that citizens were being wrongly removed from the rolls under Virginia’s systems. Giles noted that issue as she handed down her ruling.

The ruling comes on the heels of a Justice Department victory in a similar case brought against Alabama for a purge program it was running within the 90-day window. When Giles announced her ruling from the bench Friday, lawyers for the state asked her to pause while they appeal, raising the concern there could be potential non-citizens who are restored to the rolls.

The judge rejected that argument: “I am not dealing with belief. I am dealing with evidence.”

More context: The supposed threat of noncitizens voting in the 2024 election has been a fixation of Republicans, all the way up to their White House nominee, former President Donald Trump. However, documented cases of noncitizens voting are extremely rare; a recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people on its rolls found just 20 registered non-citizens – only nine of whom had voted.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is recording an interview on Friday with comedian Tim Dillon for his podcast, the “Tim Dillon Show,” a person familiar with the plans told CNN.

The interview is expected to air this weekend, the source said.

Dillon has spoken favorably of former president Donald Trump and told The Free Press in July that he believed Trump should win following his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Earlier this month, Dillon’s talk-show special “This is Your Country,” was released on Netflix.

Former President Barack Obama attends a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia on October 24.

Several political lifetimes ago, Barack Obama followed Bruce Springsteen onstage at a huge rally beneath the Cleveland skyline and declared, “A rising is coming.”

That promise, riffing off one of the rock icon’s hits, came true days later, when Obama won the 2008 presidential election.

The band was back together Thursday night, in Georgia. The former president, now 63 and still the Democratic Party’s most compelling figure, and the Boss were trying to push Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over the line in the critical swing state.

Springsteen, before strumming “Land of Hope and Dreams,” declared that Harris “is running to be the 47th president of the United States. Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant. He does not understand this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American.”

Harris reminisced before the huge crowd in Clarkston, a suburb of Atlanta, about her trip to Obama’s first presidential campaign launch in Springfield, Illinois, in 2007.

But the sense of imminent change dancing in the frigid air that February morning is missing this year in the grueling slog for every last vote, amid Democratic dread that Obama’s nemesis, Trump, is about to reclaim power.

And Obama’s return to center stage is raising the question of whether, 12 years after his last election win, he has the political muscle to take the once and possibly future president down.

Read the full analysis.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is rapidly responding to an assessment from Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly that the former president meets the definition of a fascist.

In a new ad, the campaign is using audio of Kelly’s voice from an interview with the New York Times. The first few seconds of the spot describe it as “an unprecedented warning.”

“He certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist, using the military to go after American citizens. He commented more than once, ‘Hitler did some good things too,’” Kelly says.

The ad is part of broader campaign push to characterize Trump as increasingly unstable and unhinged in the closing days of the presidential contest.

And it’s part of the Harris-Walz campaign’s $370 million fall paid media campaign airing on television and digital platforms.

Elon Musk speaks at a town hall in Pittsburgh on October 20.

Elon Musk plowed nearly $44 million in October into a super PAC working to restore Donald Trump to the White House – pushing the billionaire’s total donations to the group he established to benefit the former president to nearly $119 million, new campaign finance reports show.

The last-minute burst of spending by the world’s richest man comes as Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, continues to lap the former president in fundraising, bringing in about $97 million – six times the amount collected by Trump in the first 16 days of October, according to reports the campaigns filed late Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission.

But both candidates and their aligned political operations went on a spending spree this month — burning through more than half a billion dollars combined during the first half of October as they jockey for advantage ahead of Election Day.

Read more takeaways from the filings.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally encouraging early voting on October 19 in Atlanta.

Vice President Kamala Harris will give a speech on reproductive freedom in Texas today, according to a senior Harris campaign official, as her team seeks to amplify the issue and spotlight what she’s described as Trump abortion bans.

In the closing days of the election, Harris is leaning into the issue of abortion rights as part of her broader argument against her Republican rival, placing the blame on former President Donald Trump for abortion bans in several states and amplifying stories of the people impacted by those restrictions. And Texas was chosen as the location for the rally, campaign officials said, because it’s the epicenter of abortion bans.

Today’s rally in Houston, will feature music superstar and Houston native Beyoncé, will spotlight Amanda and Josh Zurawski, the Texas couple who led a lawsuit against the state’s abortion bans after Amanda suffered life-threatening pregnancy complications but couldn’t have an abortion in the deep-red state.

Shanette Williams — the mother of Amber Nicole Thurman, who ProPublica reported died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from Georgia’s restrictive abortion law — will also be in attendance.

Texas has one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country, banning the procedure at six weeks — before many people know they are pregnant — with exceptions only in the case of life endangerment for the mother. The trigger law passed in 2021 took effect after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in June 2022.

Read the full story.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are holding dueling events in Texas as they seek to elevate competing issues central to their closing arguments with just 11 days to go until Election Day.

Texas is not part of the universe of seven battleground states poised to decide the 2024 race for the White House. And polls show voters consistently rank the economy as their top concern in the election. Yet on Friday in the Lone Star State, the two candidates are shining a spotlight on separate issues that they see as key to energizing their voters in the closing days of the campaign.

Harris: The vice president is leaning into the issue of reproductive rights as she blames her Republican rival for paving the way for a wave of new abortion restrictions across the country put in place after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a little more than two years ago. Texas, the second largest state in the US, has one of the country’s strictest abortion laws. The procedure is banned after six weeks — before many women know they are pregnant — with exceptions only in cases to save the life of the mother. To coincide with the Texas stop, the Harris campaign released a new ad that features a clip of Trump taking credit for his role in ending the constitutional right to an abortion. Friday’s rally in Houston will also feature music superstar and Houston native Beyoncé as the Harris campaign continues to lean into celebrity endorsements and their appearances on the trail.

Trump: The former president, meanwhile, is set to deliver remarks in Austin, where he plans to focus on immigration, an issue that has been a cornerstone of his political campaigns since the day he launched his first bid for the White House in 2015. Trump has vowed to expand on his hardline immigration policies during a second term, including a pledge to conduct mass deportations, while using dehumanizing rhetoric to refer to undocumented immigrants. During a campaign event Thursday in Arizona, Trump said the US has become “like a garbage can for the world” as a result of illegal border crossings.

Closing message: While economy remains the most pressing priority for voters, polls show why Harris and Trump are leaning into these competing issues for their closing arguments. The latest survey from the New York Times and Siena College shows that the former president continues to hold an advantage on who is more trusted to handle immigration — 54% to 43% — while Harris leads by the same 11-point margin when it comes to abortion.

Texas Senate race in focus: With Harris and Trump in Texas, the state’s US Senate race is also in the spotlight. Democratic candidate Colin Allred is set to appear at the vice president’s event in Houston and GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is expected to join Trump in Austin. Those appearances come as a top Democratic super PAC plans to pour $5 million into the race in the final days as the party tries to prevent Republicans from flipping control of the chamber given the GOP’s favorable map this cycle.

First lady Jill Biden is teaming up with Gwen Walz for campaign events in two battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin, on Monday, Kamala Harris’ campaign says, “marking the first time the two longtime educators campaign together.”

There will be three stops, which will focus on reproductive rights, volunteer mobilization, and education, respectively.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will meet with Black and Latino voters during his trip to Pennsylvania on Friday, a Harris campaign official told CNN, furthering efforts by the Democratic vice presidential nominee to engage with voting demographics the campaign sees as crucial to Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to victory.

Ahead of a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Walz will visit Booker’s Restaurant and Bar, a Black-owned family restaurant in West Philadelphia for a conversation with Black community leaders, the official told CNN. He’ll stop at El Tipico Restaurant, a Spanish and Dominican restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a majority Latino population, alongside Allentown’s first Latino mayor Matt Tuerk. At both stops, he’s expected to highlight Harris’ “opportunity agenda,” a slate of economic policy proposals targeted towards non-white voters.

Since joining the Democratic ticket in August, Walz has echoed Harris’ outreach to Black and Latino voters through rallies, community stops and interviews. In September, Walz held a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, targeted to engage with Latino voters across the Lehigh Valley, including nearby Allentown. He’s conducted multiple interviews with Black and Latino outlets and is expected to sit down for additional interviews with outlets that target those voters, the official said. During a trip to Wisconsin on Tuesday, Walz visited a Black-owned barber shop for a roundtable with community leaders, where he said Harris’ economic policies offering “empowerment” to the Black community.

Walz echoed that message in an interview with Univision Radio on Wednesday, where he highlighted Harris’ proposals to ease access to credit for small businesses and startups, the expansion of the child tax credit, and aid to first-time home buyers as key components of Harris’ economic policy. Walz said his and Harris’ goal for the policy is to give Black and Latino families the opportunity to create “generational wealth.”

Staring down the prospect of losing the Senate and amid a tight race for the House, Democrats are burning through cash in the final sprint to Election Day, new federal filings show.

The pre-general election reports, which cover the first sixteen days of October, are the last opportunity before November 5 to see just how much congressional campaigns have raised and spent. Democrats are defending a razor-thin majority in the Senate, while Republicans are trying to maintain their own narrow edge in the House.

In almost all the key races, Democratic candidates brought in more than their Republican opponents between October 1-16. At this point in the race, neither side has a significant overall cash-on-hand advantage, with campaigns spending all the resources they can to win.

With no clear leader in the presidential election according to the most recent CNN Poll of Polls, the battle for Congress will be crucial to determining whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will have a supportive first branch of government to help implement the new president’s policies.

Read more about the filings.

Election workers open and sort envelopes with 2024 General Election ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 23.

During a special election in Wisconsin over the summer, a group of partisan poll watchers showed up at a handful of precincts in Glendale, a suburb of Milwaukee, and created chaos by contesting every absentee ballot that was cast.

After they were reminded repeatedly about the rules against making meritless ballot challenges, the groups of poll watchers “turned disruptive,” according to Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy.

“They refused to stop challenging, then they were asked to leave. They didn’t, and the police were called,” Kennedy told CNN, adding that once police arrived, the observers left peacefully. “It certainly gave us pause about what we’ll see later.”

Turning what are supposed to be routine scenes of counting ballots into tense standoffs that require police intervention is exactly the sort of thing that election officials across the country are hoping to avoid when Americans go to the polls next month.

After conspiracy theories about voting spread rampantly in 2020 — as Trump and his allies tried to reverse his loss to Joe Biden — officials are preparing for a possible wave of misinformation this election season and hoping it won’t be fueled by volunteers acting as observers.

Some context: Poll watchers are a key component of election transparency, and both Democrats and Republicans have built out their ranks of volunteers and lawyers to observe polling places and vote counting centers. But while Democrats have publicly focused on get-out-the-vote efforts, Republicans have made “election integrity” a centerpiece of their campaign messaging, vowing to deploy tens of thousands of people to monitor the vote across battlegrounds.

Read more about how election workers are preparing for poll watchers here.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump campaigned in battleground states yesterday as the presidential race enters its final days.

More than 30 million Americans have already cast their ballots with less than two weeks left until Election Day.

Here’s a recap of what happened on Thursday:

Donald Trump:

Kamala Harris:

Other key headlines:

In effort to make the business and economic case for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Republican Accountability PAC is investing in a slate of new digital ads featuring the stories of small business owners.

In one ad, Jackie, a two time Trump voter and small business owner from Michigan, says:

The ad is running digitally in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

In another, Scott, a small business owner and former Trump supporter from Michigan says:

It comes as the economy and the cost of living remains an essential issue for voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

With just 11 days to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris will appear alongside Beyoncé at a rally in Houston, while former President Donald Trump will hold campaign events in Texas and Michigan on Friday.

Here’s the schedule of the 2024 candidates today:

The Willie Moore Jr. Radio Show will air a pre-taped interview with Harris at 4 p.m. ET, and she will tape an interview with Brené Brown later. Harris will deliver remarks at a campaign event in Houston, Texas at 9:30 p.m. ET, where she is expected to give remarks on abortion. Beyoncé and Willie Nelson are expected to appear with Harris.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will make a stop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ,at 11 a.m. ET before delivering remarks at a campaign reception on behalf of the Harris Victory Fund. He will then make a campaign stop in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at 3 p.m. ET before delivering remarks at a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at 6 p.m. ET.

Trump will deliver remarks to the press in Austin, Texas, at 1:30 p.m. ET focused on immigration. GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is expected to join Trump at the event. Afterwards, the former president is expected to record an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Later, Trump will deliver remarks at a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, focused on the auto industry at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will deliver remarks at a campaign event in Raeford, North Carolina, at 2:30 p.m. ET, focused on inflation and high prices. He will later hold a town hall in Monroe, North Carolina, at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris participate in a presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10.

The presidential election is a tossup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the latest national poll from the New York Times and Siena College.

In a head-to-head matchup, the two are tied at 48% each among likely voters, and when third-party and independent candidates are included in the mix, the race stands at 47% Trump to 46% Harris with no clear leader. An early October poll from the Times and Siena also found no clear leader in the race, with the two-way matchup in that poll standing at 49% Harris to 46% Trump.

The close finding mirrors other recent national polling on the race. In polls that meet CNN’s standards, no candidate has had a lead outside the margin of sampling error in a single poll since early October. And an updated CNN Poll of Polls incorporating the findings from the Times/Siena poll shows a tight, two-point race, with 49% supporting Harris to 47% for Trump.

The Times/Siena poll finds several key dynamics of the race unchanged compared with prior polling: Favorability ratings remain steady for both candidates, Trump continues to hold advantages as more trusted to handle both the economy (52% to 45%) and immigration (54% to 43%), while Harris has a broad advantage on abortion (54% to 43%) and handling democracy (51% to 45%).

People stand in line at Metropolitan Library to cast their votes in the US presidential election on October 15 in Atlanta.

There is currently no federal law requiring organizations to give their employees time off to vote during working hours.

But 28 states and the District of Columbia do have such laws. And a 29th state, North Dakota, has a law simply encouraging, but not requiring, employers to provide time off.

The states requiring voting leave be granted are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The rules and allowances differ by state, according to law firm Fisher Phillips, which compiled a state-by-state guide for employers.

You can also look up specific state statutes at Justia, an online legal resource.

Read more about voting during the workday.

Sister Jean Wolbert, Sister Diane Rabe and Sister Theresa Zoky speak during an interview with CNN, in Erie, Pennsylvania.
MS: 21071572

For a Republican canvasser going door-to-door to get out the vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the address on East Lake Road in Erie must have seemed like Heaven-sent evidence of the sort of widespread voter fraud many in his party have been complaining about since Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden in 2020.

There were 53 voters registered at the address, the site of a Catholic church, but not a single one actually living there, Cliff Maloney, a conservative operative and founder of The Pennsylvania Chase, claimed on X in a post that quickly went viral.

But there were voters at that address — dozens of them actually. Fifty-five hard-to-miss nuns of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.

A so-called ballot chaser, who goes door-to-door encouraging voters to return their mail-in ballots, had somehow missed the packed parking lot and the bustling reception area where nuns shuffled between their simple living quarters and the impressive stained-glass windows in the chapel.

Maloney heads a group that encourages Republicans to vote by mail and is part of a larger, often coordinated network of conservatives who cast doubts on the security of the election, suggesting widespread fraud in mail ballots, sharing uncorroborated stories of machines changing votes and urging voters to be alert and document suspected wrongdoing.

Evidence for their concerns, however, remains as thin as it was in the 2020 election and local officials are actively trying to combat the flurry of false and misleading claims like Maloney’s that spread like wildfire on social media.

The monastery has been in Erie since the 1850s and moved into their current building in 1969, in part financed by sisters who formed a real-life musical “Sister Act” group to raise funds. Most of the residents have lived there for decades and are deeply engaged with the community.

“We’ve been in Erie since 1856 doing good work. These sisters don’t deserve to be put down by some misinformation that we’re a sham, that we’re a fraud,” said the prioress, Sister Stephanie Schmidt.

Read the full story.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to CNN on October 24.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that former President Donald Trump is now “more unhinged, more unstable” and more dangerous than when she faced him in the 2016 presidential election.

“I think he’s more unhinged, more unstable,” the losing 2016 Democratic nominee told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source.” “I think you see that all the time in both his rallies and his kind of word-salad-after-word-salad speeches.”

Clinton – the first woman to capture a major-party nomination for president – also drew a contrast between her 2016 effort and Kamala Harris’ campaign, saying the vice president has centered her message on reminding voters how dangerous Trump could be for the country.

“I think that she’s running her campaign based on a lot of the lessons that we have learned over the last eight years. First and foremost, how incredibly dangerous Donald Trump is. That wasn’t maybe as clear as it should have been back in 2016. But it sure is now,” Clinton said. “And I think her warnings, the warnings of not just Democrats like President Obama, but the people who actually observed him up close for the four years he was actually in the White House are warning us with everything they possibly can say.”

Read more on the interview here.