Rapper Cardi B has spoken at Kamala Harris’s rally in Milwaukee. Meanwhile, Donald Trump faces an investigation into his comments about Liz Cheney last night, which the state’s district attorney says could constitute a death threat.
Saturday 2 November 2024 04:58, UK
Thanks for following along tonight, that’s it for our live coverage for now.
Before we go, let’s summarise what happened this evening.
Candidates campaign down to the wire
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris continued campaigning – with the candidates looking to do so right up to election day.
The Republican nominee spent his day in Michigan and Wisconsin – calling on voters to make America great again by voting him in.
Kamala Harris was also in Wisconsin, with her rally in Milwaukee also hosting rapper Cardi B in the latest celebrity endorsement of the Democrat.
National Guard activated in US state ‘in case of election violence’
The governor of Washington state has said he is “activating” members of the National Guard to be on standby in case of violence surrounding the upcoming election.
Governor Jay Inslee said he made the decision after he received information and concerns regarding potential violence.
Early voting data reveals potentially decisive trends in two key swing states
New early voting data analysis from our US partner network NBC revealed some interesting – and potentially crucial – trends in two key swing states.
According to the figures, there are signs of an influx of new female Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and new male Republican voters in Arizona.
Arizona looking at Trump comments as potential death threat
Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes has said that her office is looking into comments made by Donald Trump.
She said Mr Trump might have violated state laws that prohibit death threats.
Mr Trump said last night that Ms Cheney would not be a “radical war hawk” if she was in a war herself and had guns “trained on her face”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Mr Trump said during an event with Tucker Carlson.
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
When they made America truly great its backbone was forged in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The steel for 80% of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, many of the US Navy’s battleships, and even the entire San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, all came from its blast furnaces in the hills north of Philadelphia.
Its mammoth steel plants stretched for almost five miles.
They lie empty and unused, now a huge open-air museum for guided tours led by former plant workers like Don Young.
The 87-year-old has been married to Barbara for 20 years, but their marriage has been tested in recent months, as have many others in the most divisive presidential election in living memory.
Both Republicans, she is for Donald Trump, he is emphatically not.
Read more here.
Liz Cheney has called on former President George W Bush to break his silence and back Kamala Harris for president.
Ms Cheney, who has attracted attacks from Trump since she endorsed the Democratic nominee, said it was not difficult for her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, to announce his support for Ms Harris and called on Mr Bush to follow suit.
“He has been absolutely, I would say, as concerned for maybe even longer than I have been about the danger that Donald Trump poses, and I can’t explain why George W Bush hasn’t spoken out, but I think it’s time, and I wish that he would,” Ms Cheney said during a live interview today on The New Yorker’s Radio Hour podcast.
The former president’s office said in September that Mr Bush did not have plans to endorse a candidate during this election, saying he had “retired from presidential politics years ago”.
By Jess Sharp, live news reporter in Washington DC
A band is playing, huge Halloween inflatables dance alongside them, but the topic of conversation around my table was about the election.
One man told me a second Donald Trump term would be disheartening, while another said it would end in chaos.
Sipping beers and asking about the UK, they explained to me that this election had been divisive, with family and friends at odds over their political views.
One of them explained that he had grown up in a Republican family, and while he didn’t say he had voted for Kamala Harris, he did say he was no longer a Republican supporter.
Behind me, there are another two men, Paris and Tomas – both of them have moved to the US from other countries.
Tomas, a statistician, originally from Slovakia, said the possibility of another Trump regime was the most important issue going into the election, along with ending the war in Gaza.
He says there is no way of predicting what way the election will go now, but he thinks the result will be “delayed a little bit”.
If Ms Harris wins, he says he doesn’t think things will be “immediately different” and that the country will remain “polarised”.
“It’s always going to stay polarised, it’s just the nature of the way right now,” he said.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both campaigning to crowds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin tonight.
Wisconsin is a crucial swing state in Tuesday’s election.
Mr Trump is speaking at the Fiserv Forum, where earlier this year he accepted the Republican nomination – just days after being shot in an assassination attempt.
Meanwhile, across the city at Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center, Ms Harris has taken to the stage, shortly after rapper Cardi B warmed the crowd up.
Both candidates have stuck to their respective scripts so far, but we’ll update you with any new lines we haven’t heard before.
Cardi B has just taken to the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at a rally for Kamala Harris.
The rapper stumbles over her words a bit as she steps up, saying she is nervous and has “been waiting for this moment my whole life”.
“I wasn’t gonna vote this year,” she says, before adding that Ms Harris taking over as the Democratic nominee changed her mind.
“She’s passionate, compassionate… and most of all she is not delusional,” she says.
She refers to Donald Trump as a “bully”.
“He said he’s gonna protect women whether they like it or not,” she says.
“If his definition of protection is not the freedom of choice… then I don’t want it,” she says.
“I’m not giving Donald Trump a second chance.”
By Jess Sharp, live news reporter
“Porn is the canary in the coal mine” – that’s what adult film director Holly Randall told me when we spoke.
Discussing the election from her home in LA, she said access to porn was always the first thing governments targeted if they were planning to attack civil liberties – and it was what Donald Trump was coming after.
She has been in the industry for 26 years, and is the daughter of Suze Randall – one of the first female erotic directors.
“I have seen attacks on our industry not just for the 26 years that I have been in it, but I have seen my parents go through similar things in the 1980s,” she said.
“But this is the most explicit one I have ever seen.”
Holly is one of many porn industry workers that feel this way, and is part of a campaign warning about the impact of Donald Trump being elected.
The Hands Off My Porn campaign is planning to spend $250,000 on adverts on adult websites in key swing states, warning viewers that prominent allies of Trump want to ban pornography and imprison those who make it.
The ads will show at the front of porn videos, with Holly explaining they’ll warn viewers that those sorts of clips would be banned under Mr Trump.
Holly says it was all set out in Project 2025 – a document considered to be a play book for the next Republican president.
Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are ex-senior Trump administration officials, but the former president has denied having any knowledge of the document.
However, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, wrote the foreword for the latest book by Kevin Roberts, leader of Project 2025.
In it, Mr Vance endorses his ideas as a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics”.
“It actually wants to outlaw porn completely, it wants to criminalise it, it wants to send the people who produce it to jail, it wants to imprison people who distribute it, even librarians,” Holly explains.
Page five of Project 2025 states: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”
“Porn is the canary in the coal mine,” Holly says. “It is the first thing to go down when the government wants to chip away at your civil liberties, it is the easiest thing to attack.
“We live with this on a day-to-day basis, our industry is always under threat, we are always being attacked.
“This is not unusual, but this is the first time that it has been linked to a president who is running for office who has said so explicitly that he wants to outlaw the entire industry and send us all to jail.”
Talking about how the election had been going so far, she said it had been the “most explosive” she had seen.
“It’s quite disheartening. He [Trump] has divided our country,” she added.
“We are not in a time when we can rest on our laurels any more.”
When I asked her what she thought of the idea of another Trump presidency, she replied: “If Trump wins I’m holding on tight to my British passport. I might just come over.”
The governor of Washington state has said he is “activating” members of the National Guard to be on standby in case of violence surrounding the upcoming election.
Governor Jay Inslee said he made the decision after he received information and concerns regarding potential violence.
The order is set to go into effect Monday and last until midnight on Thursday.
Kamala Harris is easily expected to defeat Donald Trump in the state.
Ballot boxes were set on fire there earlier in the week, with hundreds of votes thought to be damaged.
“Based upon general and specific information and concerns regarding the potential for violence or other unlawful activity related to the 2024 general election, I want to ensure we are fully prepared to respond,” the governor wrote in a letter published on his website.
His office said: “This is a purely precautionary measure taken in response to the US Department of Homeland Security’s nationwide warnings regarding threats to election infrastructure and other recent activities that have occurred in southwestern Washington.”
Rapper Cardi B will speak at Kamala Harris’s rally in Milwaukee shortly.
She’ll be the latest A-lister to publicly back Ms Harris for the presidency.
Previous celebrity speakers and performers have included Beyoncé, Eminem, Jennifer Lopez and Bruce Springsteen.
Donald Trump Jr has defended his father’s comments on Liz Cheney last night.
Mr Trump said last night that Ms Cheney would not be a “radical war hawk” if she was in a war herself and had guns “trained on her face”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Mr Trump said during an event with Tucker Carlson.
Arizona’s DA is currently investigating the comments as a potential death threat.
“My father says it’s strange – if Liz Cheney wants to be in all of these wars, she should pick up arms,” mr Trump Jr said.
“But it seems like the people that get us in the wars never seem to be the people fighting them. The media says Donald Trump thinks that Liz Cheney should be shot. But that’s what we’re dealing with, right? They have nothing else.”
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