Politics
Harris and Trump make a furious final push before Election Day
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump closed out this year’s presidential race with a fierce battle for Pennsylvania on Monday, making their final pitch to voters across a state that could prove decisive in the campaign for the White House. Harris ended her night in Philadelphia at the art museum steps made famous
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump closed out this year’s presidential race with a fierce battle for Pennsylvania on Monday, making their final pitch to voters across a state that could prove decisive in the campaign for the White House.
Harris ended her night in Philadelphia at the art museum steps made famous in the movie “Rocky,” where she said “the momentum is on our side.” She also rallied with supporters in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh, and she swung through Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant and do a little canvassing herself, knocking on doors alongside campaign volunteers.
“It’s the day before the election and I just wanted to come by and say I hope to earn your vote,” Harris told one woman, who said she had already cast a ballot for the Democratic nominee.
Trump started the day in North Carolina and finished it in Michigan, but he spoke in Reading and Pittsburgh in between. The former president delivered stemwinders at each stop, blending false claims about voter fraud with warnings about migrants committing crimes and promises to revitalize the United States.
AP AUDIO: Harris and Trump make a furious final push before Election Day
AP correspondent Norman Hall reports on Donald Trump’s first campaign stop of the day, in North Carolina, in his final campaign push through key states.
“With your vote tomorrow, we can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America, and indeed the whole world, to new heights of glory,” he said.
While Harris focused on optimism about the future and never mentioned Trump by name, the Republican nominee excoriated his opponent at every turn. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, followed Trump’s lead during his own rally in Atlanta, telling the crowd that “we are going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris.”
In his final rally, Trump called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who led the House when it impeached him twice, a “crazy, horrible human being” and barely restrained himself from using a sexist slur.
“She’s a crooked person, she’s a bad person, evil,” Trump said. “She’s an evil, sick, crazy – oh no. It starts with a b, but I won’t say it. I want to say it.”
The last day of campaigning was an appropriately frenetic ending to a presidential race that has defied expectations at every turn.
Trump was convicted during a felony trial involving hush money payments and survived two assassination attempts. He remains under indictment for trying to overturn the last presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
Harris became Democrats’ replacement candidate this summer when Biden was pushed off the ticket and forced to abandon his reelection bid after stumbling badly in his debate with Trump.
One of the few constants in the campaign has been how close it’s remained. The election is expected to be decided by razor-thin margins, and the results may not be known for days.
Pennsylvania has the most Electoral College votes of any battleground state, making it the top prize of the campaign. A victory there would clear a path to White House for either candidate.
“You are going to make the difference in this election,” Harris said in Allentown.
About 30 miles away in Reading, Trump told supporters that “if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax.”
In Pittsburgh, Trump delivered what his campaign aides described as his closing argument after his previous attempt — a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York — was derailed by crude and racist jokes. He has also veered into invocations of violence and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after he was voted out.
“Over the past four years, Americans have suffered one catastrophic failure, betrayal and humiliation after another,” Trump said. He added that “we do not have to settle for weakness, incompetence, decline, and decay.”
The crowd exploded in cheers when Trump said the country should tell Harris, “You’re fired,” his catchphrase from “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that made him a nationally recognized star.
Harris arrived in Pittsburgh while Trump’s rally was underway. By the time she finished her succinct remarks, he was still talking.
“We must finish strong,” Harris said. “Make no mistake, we will win.”
The day was further evidence of the ripple effects from Trump’s Madison Square Garden event, where the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” Southeastern Pennsylvania, which was visited by both candidates on Monday, is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population.
“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”
But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he will vote for Trump.
AP AUDIO: Harris and Trump are making a furious last-day push before Election Day
With one day until the election, both presidential candidates are making their final pitches to voters. AP correspondent Julie Walker reports.
“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.
While in Reading, Harris visited Old San Juan Cafe with New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who has Puerto Rican heritage.
Supporters chanted “Sí se puede” and “Kamala” as the vice president’s motorcade pulled up. Once inside, Harris chatted with some diners, even mixing in “gracias” and a few Spanish words. The vice president later ordered cassava, yellow rice and pork, saying, “I’m very hungry” as she noted that she’s been too busy campaigning to find time for many meals.
“I stand here proud of my long-standing commitment to Puerto Rico and her people,” she told her crowd in Allentown. Harris promised to be “a president for all Americans.”
Trump, meanwhile, stuck to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration while speaking in Reading. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.
About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.
Trump winning would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony. He would gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win nonconsecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.
Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming Biden’s second in command.
Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.” She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”
On her final day of campaigning, Harris took a rare trip down memory lane by talking about being a longshot candidate for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, her first elected office.
“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” the vice president said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out.”
Trump seemed nostalgic as well.
“It’s sad because we’ve been doing this for nine years,” he said in Pittsburgh after inviting members of his family to join him onstage.
He held his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he also concluded his campaigns in 2016 and 2020. He savored the moment, stopping every few steps as he made his way to the stage, soaking in an explosion of applause. A few in the crowd waited nearly 18 hours, at times in the rain, for a rally that finally began after midnight and ended after 2 a.m.
“It’s unbelievable,” Trump said when he started talking after standing wordless at his lectern for an extended ovation. “Think of it. This is it. This is the last one that we’ll have to do.”
___
Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina; Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia; Luis Andres Henao in Reading, Pennsylvania; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert, Michelle L. Price and Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
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Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
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