Election 2024 live updates as Trump vs. Harris polls show ties in key battleground states

Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday afternoon, as he faces backlash over comments he made about former Rep. Liz Cheney.

Speaking with Tucker Carlson about foreign policy, Trump called Cheney a "war hawk" and said, "Let's see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face." But even in trying to clean up his comments, Trump, who has long expressed disdain toward Cheney since she's been so heavily critical of him, couldn't refrain from calling her "dumb." 

"All I'm saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn't have 'the guts' to fight herself," Trump wrote. "It's easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she'll say, 'No thanks!' Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so. He's caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That's not what we want running our Country!"

Trump is set to hold two campaign rallies on Sunday as the candidates enter the final stretch to Election Day. His campaign announced the former president will deliver remarks first in Kinston, North Carolina, and then in Macon, Georgia.

North Carolina and Georgia are two battleground states that could decide the outcome of the election.

The battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives is remarkably close. Republicans currently have an eight-seat majority over Democrats.

But both parties are looking to states like New York, where several tightly contested congressional races could change the balance of power in Congress.

Scott MacFarlane traveled to the Hudson Valley to find out why. Watch his report below.

Voters in Missouri, Nebraska and Alaska will soon decide whether workers there should be entitled to paid sick leave.

If approved, the ballot measures would allow many workers to accrue paid time off, a benefit supporters say means workers — especially those with low-paying jobs — would no longer have to fear losing wages or possibly the jobs themselves for getting sick. Proponents say such policies benefit the broader public, too, allowing workers to stay home when sick or to care for ill family members to stem the spread of infectious diseases.

But opponents say the measures force new burdens on employers, who should be the ones deciding which benefits are best.

Read full coverage from KFF Health News.

by Samantha Liss

In a call with reporters Friday, senior Harris campaign officials said they have hundreds of lawyers at the ready throughout the country in case of election challenges and other legal issues.

"We have been building our team really ever since 2020, so we now have hundreds of lawyers throughout the country, lawyers throughout the battleground states, already working around the clock to protect our voters and ready to go into court," said one senior campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We have literally thousands of pages of pleadings customized to particular states ready to address literally anything and everything that the Trump campaign throws at us. So we're ready for an active post-elect, but whatever they do, we're ready to hold them accountable," the campaign official added. 

Harris campaign officials also said they fully expect Trump to declare victory Tuesday night, regardless of where the results stand. 

"We fully expect that he will, but this should be no surprise because he lies all the time and he wants to sow doubt about a loss that he anticipates is coming," another senior campaign official said.

U.S. officials have determined Russia was behind a video that circulated online in recent days purporting to show Haitian immigrants claiming that they illegally voted for Kamala Harris.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement, "Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia."

"This Russian activity is part of Moscow's broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans," the agencies said.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Thursday that the video was "obviously fake" disinformation.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Russia and other U.S. adversaries have ramped up efforts to use social media to sow distrust in the election.

by Robert Legare, Nicole Sganga and Graham Kates

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris' vice presidential running mate, earns a six figure salary as governor of Minnesota, but his net worth is on par with that of the typical American family, according to a federal disclosure form filed in August.

Walz is much less well-off than Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance. And Walz is miles behind Nelson Rockefeller, who in the 1970s was veep under President Gerald Ford and who is regarded as perhaps the richest vice president in U.S. history by virtue of his family fortune.

Read more here.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it will send federal personnel to monitor polls in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states to ensure federal voting rights laws are being followed for Tuesday's general election.

The effort is coordinated by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and workers from the agency, U.S. attorneys' offices and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management will be among the monitors.

They are being dispatched to areas in all seven battleground states, as well as 20 others. The Justice Department said it regularly deploys staff to watch for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections.

Vice presidential candidate JD Vance, 40, has amassed a multimillion fortune in the two decades since he left behind the hardscrabble childhood he described in his bestselling 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy."

Vance parlayed his tough upbringing into a life of rare privilege after attending Yale Law School, where he met his wife, Usha, and made connections with wealthy patrons, including the right-leaning billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. After graduating from Yale, Vance was hired by Thiel's firm Mithril Capital, marking the start of a career in venture capital that helped build his fortune.

Read more here.

Former President Donald Trump is set to visit Dearborn, Michigan — the nation's largest Arab-majority city — on Friday, according to a local business owner who first insisted the former president call for peace in Lebanon before hosting him.

Metro Detroit is home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which President Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

While Vice President Kamala Harris has been working through surrogates to ease community tensions, Trump's visit will mark the first by either candidate, according to a local leader, Osama Siblani. Earlier this year, Harris met with the city's Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, though their discussion took place outside Dearborn.

Read more here.

In dueling comments, spokespeople for the Trump and Harris campaigns responded to the former president's remarks about former Rep. Liz Cheney, and the backlash the comments have sparked.

In an interview with MSNBC on Friday, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Harris' campaign, said the former president treats those who oppose him as enemies and accused Trump of being "all-consumed by his grievances."

"He's spent the last month talking about the 'enemy from within' the United States. And now, he's going after Liz Cheney with this dangerous, violent rhetoric," Sams said. "I mean, think about the contrast between these two candidates. You have Donald Trump who is talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet. This is the difference in this race."

But Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, accused the media of distorting the former president's criticism of Cheney in an effort to aid Harris' presidential run days before the election.

"President Trump is 100% correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves," Leavitt said in a statement. "This is the continuation of the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris."

Julia Ramsey is used to a deluge of election-related mail. Campaign mailings have clogged her Pennsylvania mailbox day after day for months, but one she received this week stood out from the rest.

It made Ramsey feel like she was being "vote shamed."

The mailing was among millions sent this week by a pair of tax exempt organizations, letters purporting to be "Voting Report Cards." They show whether each recipient voted in recent elections, as well as a table of what appears to be redacted neighbors' names, addresses and voting histories.

Read more here.

For the first time ever, cryptocurrency could play a role in choosing the next president. As digital currencies have become more mainstream, crypto investors are emerging as a key new voting bloc.

Anywhere from 7% to 21% of Americans own crypto — that equates to 18 million on the low end, and roughly 50 million on the high end. According to research from crypto exchange Gemini, 73% say a political candidate's stance toward the industry will influence their vote.

The potential for crypto voters to move the needle is particularly noteworthy in swing states. Organizations like Stand with Crypto, a pro-crypto Political Action Committee are signing up "crypto advocates" in critical battleground states. In fact, Arizona and Georgia each have three times as many of these advocates than the number of votes President Biden won by in 2020.

Read more here.

"Kamala's going to do a hell of a job, in my view," the president said in a video posted to social media encouraging people to vote. "We're beginning to move things. We're not a nation of hate, we love each other. We're a nation that wants to pull together."

U.S. payrolls slumped sharply in October, weighed down by people not working as a result of two hurricanes and a major labor dispute.

The U.S. added just 12,000 jobs in October, well below economists' estimate of 100,000, marking the slowest month for hiring since December 2020. Payroll gains for September were revised down to 223,000, from 254,000. 

Unemployment in October held steady at 4.1%. The lackluster report reflects a dent in hiring attributed to Hurricanes Milton and Helene, and the Boeing machinists strike, which temporarily prevented some people from working in Florida and North Carolina.

Read more here.

In the final days of the presidential campaign, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will hit the airwaves in support of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Both she and former President Donald Trump have emphasized the importance of the Keystone State to their chances of winning the election. Shapiro, who was among the finalists to be on the ticket with Harris, has been a vocal supporter of her campaign.

Now, he's a key voice in her final push to win the state in an ad on digital platforms and on television.

"Do you want more chaos or, like me, are you ready for some common sense?" Shapiro says in the ad, echoing a Harris campaign theme targeting Trump for his behavior while in office.

by Aaron Navarro and Graham Kates

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said a video purporting to show Haitians claiming that they illegally voted for Kamala Harris is fake and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.

In the video posted to social media on Thursday, a man claims that he and others featured in the footage are from Haiti, arrived in the United States six months ago, obtained U.S. citizenship within that time, and are voting for Kamala Harris in multiple Georgia counties.

Raffensperger said his office was working with state and federal partners to identify the origin of the video and urged X owner Elon Musk and the "leadership of other social media platforms" to remove the video.

Read more here.

by Erielle Delzer and Rhona Tarrant

With Election Day four days away, just over 66 million people have already cast their ballots early, either in-person or by mail, according to data from the University of Florida's Election Lab.

More people have voted at polling places in person, with more than 35 million ballots cast, compared to 30.8 million ballots returned. Data from the 25 states that report party registration show 12.5 million registered Democrats and 11.8 million registered Republicans have voted early.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney responded to Trump's comments about guns being "trained on her face," saying his remark demonstrates the actions of a dictator.

"This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant," she said in a post to social media with hashtags stating "women will not be silenced" and "vote Kamala."

Trump attacked Cheney during an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona. He also called her "a very dumb individual."

Trump went after one of his biggest critics, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, using violent imagery in an interview with Tucker Carlson. 

"And I don't blame [former Vice President Dick Cheney] for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb," Trump said. "She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay? Let's see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face. You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, well let's send — let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy. But she's a stupid person."

Cheney and her father, the former vice president, have endorsed Harris, and Cheney has campaigned in battleground states with Harris, portraying Trump as a threat to democracy and national security in an effort to win over Republicans and moderates.

Read more here.

During a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Republican presidential nominee continued to insult Harris, his Democratic opponent, and her intellect.

"There are some people who thrive under pressure, and there are some people who crack under pressure," Trump said. "She's a cracker."

The former president also claimed Harris is "exhausted" and said she is a "total stiff," though he offered no reasons for these slights against her.

"Kamala has the economic understanding of a child," Trump said. "Did you ever hear her speak?"

The former president's continued insults come as he and his supporters have criticized President Biden for appearing to call Trump's supporters "garbage" during a call with Latino activists Tuesday. Mr. Biden was responding to remarks made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, in which he called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."

The White House said Mr. Biden was referring to Hinchcliffe's offensive joke, not those who support the former president, and Mr. Biden also said in a post on X, "Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say."

Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday rejected a request from progressive activist Cornel West to direct Pennsylvania election officials to post notices informing voters at polling locations statewide on Election Day that West is a presidential candidate and his name can be written in on ballots.

West, a third-party candidate for the presidency, sought emergency relief from the nation's highest court Wednesday, less than a week before Election Day and as more than 1.5 million voters in Pennsylvania have already cast their ballots by mail

Read more here.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will be conveying his closing message to Americans in an interview set to air on Monday night, the eve of the election, on CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

Walz recorded the interview Thursday morning in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, underscoring the Harris campaign's focus on the hotly contested battleground state, with its 19 electoral votes. In 2020, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania, while Donald Trump won the state in 2016. 

The Harris campaign has tried to broaden the programs and platforms on which Harris and Walz are interviewed to reach a wider, younger audience. Harris, too, has been interviewed by Colbert, and she has also appeared on ABC's "The View," "The Howard Stern Show," and the podcasts "Call Her Daddy" and "Breakfast Club." Walz has made late-show appearances on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."