Harris warns Trump is ‘unstable’ and ‘out for unchecked power’ in major speech – live

Harris says the vote will be between chaos and division, or freedom.

Harris says: “At this very place, [Trump] sent an armed mob to overturn a free and fair election, an election that he lost. Americans died as a result of that attack,” she says.

She reminds the crowd that Trump was told that the mob wanted to kill “his own vice-president”, Mike Pence, and responded with “two words: ‘So what?’”

“So listen: one week from today you will have the chance to make a decision that directly impacts your life, the life of your family, and the future of this country that we love,” Harris says.

“And it will probably be the most important vote you ever cast.”

The US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee is walking onto stage now at Washington DC’s National Mall.

“Good evening America,” she says, over the roars of the crowd.

The crowd starts to chant: “Kamala! Kamala!”

Lauren Gambino

The sun has gone down over Kamala Harris’s rally in DC. The stage is set, as promised with a view of the White House behind her, a site her campaign hopes will remind Americans of the gravity of their choice. The crowd stretches from the Ellipse, the park outside the White House nearly to the Washington monument behind us.

The crowd just heard from a group of battleground state voters who represent parts of the broad coalition she has built. Amanda and Josh Zurawski, a young Texas couple shared their trauma after Amanda developed complications with her pregnancy and had to wait until she was at risk of losing her life before she received a life-saving abortion. They have been traveling the country on Harris’s behalf, warning about the threat Trump poses to abortion rights.

Bob and Kristina Lange, farmers from Pennsylvania who previously supported Trump, said they would “proudy support Harris this year”.

“We deserve better,” said Bob Lange, who was met with groans when he admitted to having twice voted for Trump. “It made sense because I was a Republican.” His wife, he noted, was “way ahead of the curve” and only voted for him once.

“Enough is enough,” she said.

Jenny Poon, a small business owner and mom of two young kids in Phoenix, said she and her husband mailed in their ballots before coming to DC to speak at the rally.

“Today women run our homes. They run our businesses. They run our cities.” Poon said, surrounded by her family. “And soon they’ll run this country.”

Sam Levine

As supporters were lined up to get into the arena for Donald Trump’s rally here, a small protest descended on the street just outside the arena.

Some waved Puerto Rican flags and held signs that said Latinos for Harris-Walz.

One of the people marching was Luis Gonzalez, a retired 65-year-old truck driver from Allentown. He wore a sweater with the Puerto Rican flag stitched on it.

“The guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” he said. “I was born in Puerto Rico. That island as well as all the other islands around it are beautiful.”

“For anybody to say that it’s a garbage island – they’ve never been to the Caribbean.”

Sam Levine

I’ve been chatting to a few voters here at Trump’s rally about their reaction to the racist joke about Puerto Rico a comic made on Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden.

Some hadn’t heard of the joke and one woman laughed when I told her. And those who had heard it didn’t think it would matter much in the election.

“It was made in poor taste, I have to admit. But Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” said Mark Melendez, 55, who is Puerto Rican and traveled to the rally from New Jersey. “I don’t think it will affect him, it might.”

Several speakers at the rally emphasized their Puerto Rican background and gave the crowd a reason to vote for Trump. Allentown and the surrounding Lehigh valley has a huge Latino population and their remarks signaled how serious an effort the campaign is to court the Latino vote.

At least one audience member is holding a sign that says “Boricuas for Trump,” using the term to that describes people of Puerto Rican dissent.

Jackie Beller, 60, who lives near Allentown thought the joke was funny.

“If you take a comedian out of context and you look at it as a serious thing, yes you would be offended,” she said.

Kamala Harris to address nation in major, ‘closing argument’ speech

Lauren Gambino

With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.

Harris, a former prosecutor, will deliver what her campaign has called her “closing argument” intended to persuade the vanishing slice of undecided voters, in a location she hopes will remind them precisely why Americans denied Trump a second term four years ago. The Democrat is expected to cast her opponent as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.

“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign’s chair, told reporters on a call previewing the remarks on Tuesday morning. She said many Americans were “exhausted” by the tribalism and polarization Trump has exacerbated since his political rise in 2016.

While we wait for Kamala Harris to address the nation in 20 minutes’ time – in a major speech that her campaign has described as her ‘“closing argument” – here is a summary of the key recent developments. This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US elections coverage.

• Kamala Harris will warn that Donald Trump is “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power” during her speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday night, according to excerpts of her remarks released by the campaign.

• New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin. In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%.

• The United States Postal Service issued an alert on Tuesday urging voters who choose to vote by mail to send their ballots in by today. In the message, USPS said that they “anticipate an uptick of ballots in the mail over the coming days” and recommended that voters who want to mail their ballots do so at least a week before their election office needs them to ensure it arrives in time. “If a ballot is due on Election Day, the Postal Service recommends mailing the ballot by this Tuesday” 29 October, the postal service said. USPS said that in 2020, 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days and 98.3% of ballots were delivered within three days.

• Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist, Bad Bunny, posted a video on his Instagram on Tuesday in celebration of Puerto Rican culture. The post comes in response to the insulting remarks made at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday against the island, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”. Bad Bunny’s eight-minute long video, posted to his more than 45 million followers on Tuesday, is captioned “garbage” and highlights Puerto Rican culture, history and people over inspirational music.

• Puerto Rico’s Largest Newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President as of Tuesday morning. “On Sunday, continuing a pattern of contempt and misinformation that Donald Trump has maintained for years against the eight million of us American citizens who are Puerto Ricans, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted us during a Republican Party event by referring to Puerto Rico as ‘an island of garbage in the ocean’” the statement from the newspaper reads.

• Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of George W Bush and granddaughter of George HW Bush, has revealed that she is campaigning for Kamala Harris. In an interview with People Magazine, Pierce Bush said that she is “hopeful” that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights”.

• Donald Trump held a press conference at his Florida residence and described the marathon New York rally that he held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan two days ago – which has been widely condemned for racist remarks from speakers – as a “love fest”. He said: “The love in that room, it was breathtaking.”

• JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has been rallying in Saginaw in the swing state of Michigan, 100 miles north of Detroit, and criticized opposing politicians calling Trump a fascist in the last week. That includes Harris, whom Vance, a US Senator from Ohio, called unqualified to be president.

• Jennifer Lopez will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Harris campaign has announced. Lopez will speak on the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election, and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the Harris campaign said.

• The White House announced that Joe Biden will travel to his childhood home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania for political engagements on Saturday. The US president has campaigned often in the city as a way of reminding the electorate of his working class roots and pro-union politics.

• Rapper 50 Cent said that he turned down a $3m offer to perform at Trump’s controversial rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, according to Variety magazine. Deadline also reported that 50 Cent also confirmed that he was also offered money to perform at the Republic National Convention in the summer, but turned it down because he prefers to stay away from party politics.

• New polling has found that Trump’s support among young Black men has decreased since August, while Harris’s has grown. A new NAACP survey, conducted between 11 and 17 October, found that 21% of Black men under 50 years old said they would for the former president, down from 27% in August. Harris’s support among this group jumped from 51% to 59 % over that same time frame, the researchers said.

• Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump Maga ally, is back on air hosting his podcast after being released from prison this morning. He served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena related to the investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump who were intent on overturning his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

• Most Americans are prepared to accept the election results as legitimate, according to a new ABC/Ipsos poll released today. And more than 48.6 million Americans have reportedly voted early in this year’s presidential election.

Kamala Harris will call on voters to ‘turn the page’ in Washington DC speech

Lauren Gambino

With the presidential race deadlocked a week before election day, Kamala Harris will call on voters to “turn the page” on the Trump era, in remarks delivered from a park near the White House where the former president spoke before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a last effort to overturn his 2020 loss.

Harris, a former prosecutor, will deliver what her campaign has called her “closing argument” intended to persuade the vanishing slice of undecided voters, in a location she hopes will remind them precisely why Americans denied Trump a second term four years ago. The Democrat is expected to cast her opponent as a divisive figure who will spend his term consumed by vengeance, leveraging the power of the presidency against his political enemies rather than in service of the American people.

“We know that there are still a lot of voters out there that are still trying to decide who to support or whether to vote at all,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s campaign’s chair, told reporters on a call previewing the remarks on Tuesday morning. She said many Americans were “exhausted” by the tribalism and polarization Trump has exacerbated since his political rise in 2016.

Although the vice-president frames the stakes of the 2024 election as nothing less than the preservation of US democracy, her speech is expected to strike an optimistic and hopeful tone, standing in stark contrast to the dark, racist themes that animated Trump’s grievance-fueled rally at Madison Square Garden.

“That’s why people are exhausted with him,” Harris said before boarding Air Force Two, where she worked on the speech with advisers on the plane. “People are literally ready to turn the page.”