Election 2024 Latest: Trump and Harris present dueling visions of America in final campaign stretch
Uncertainty reigns entering the final full week of the 2024 campaign with Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump locked in a fiercely competitive presidential contest. What happens in the coming days will be pivotal in deciding the winner of next week's election.
Trump on Sunday held a rally at Madison Square Garden where several speakers made racist and crude remarks, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.” Shortly after those remarks, Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Bad Bunny endorsed Harris.
Trump is holding a rally in Atlanta on Monday evening while Harris is making several campaign stops in Michigan, including a rally with singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
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Democrats escalate attacks on Trump after comedian calls Puerto Rico 'floating island of garbage'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats stepped up their attacks on Donald Trump on Monday, a day after a comedian opening a rally for the former president called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” a comment that drew wide condemnation and highlighted the rising power of a key Latino group in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Vice President Kamala Harris described Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden as “more vivid than usual” and said he “fans the fuel of hate” before she flew to Michigan for a campaign event. President Joe Biden called the rally “simply embarrassing.” In a rare move late Sunday, the Trump campaign distanced itself from the remarks on Puerto Rico made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.
“The garbage he spoke about is polluting our elections and confirming just how little Donald Trump cares about Latinos specifically, about our Puerto Rican community,” Eddie Moran, mayor of Reading, said at a news conference with other Puerto Rican officials.
With just over a week before Election Day, the fallout underscores the importance of Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes and the last-minute efforts to court growing numbers of Hispanic voters, mostly from Puerto Rico, who have settled in cities west and north of Philadelphia.
Fernando Tormos-Aponte, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in Puerto Rican politics and electoral organizing, said the timing of the comments may spell trouble for the Trump campaign.
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US presses ahead with modest Mideast plans despite election uncertainty
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the U.S. presidential election just a week away, the Biden administration is not giving up hope for short-term deals for cease-fires between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But U.S. officials are mindful that political uncertainty in the United States has made the sides reluctant to commit to any significant agreements before it is clear who has won the White House.
In the meantime, the Middle East is uneasy about what happens next after Israel struck Iranian military targets over the weekend in retaliation for Iran's barrage of ballistic missile attacks on Oct. 1.
U.S. officials said they believe Israel’s attack — whose targets were coordinated with Washington — will not draw an escalatory reaction from Iran. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomatic discussions, caution that nothing is certain.
The Biden administration was able to persuade Israel to keep its response limited — gaining assurances it wouldn’t hit nuclear or oil sites in Iran that would have escalated the conflict — despite limited U.S. influence as Biden's term wraps up. As Israel’s closest ally and a key mediator in the Middle East, the U.S. still is pressing for any movement on a truce despite letdowns in the past and little expectation of immediate breakthroughs.
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Middle East latest: Israel passes 2 laws restricting UN agency that distributes aid in Gaza
Israeli lawmakers passed two laws Monday that could threaten the work of the main United Nations agency providing aid to people in Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil, severing ties with it and deeming it a terror organization.
The laws, which do not immediately go into effect, signal a new low for a long-troubled relationship between Israel and the U.N. Israel’s international allies said they were deeply worried about its potential impact on Palestinians as the war’s humanitarian toll is worsening.
Under the first law, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, would be banned from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, while the second would sever diplomatic ties with it. The legislation risks collapsing the already fragile process for distributing aid in Gaza at a moment when Israel is under increased pressure from the United States to ramp up aid.
Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the October 2023 Hamas attacks that sparked the war in Gaza. It also has said hundreds of UNRWA staff have militant ties and that it has found Hamas military assets near or under the agency’s facilities.
The agency fired nine employees after an investigation but denies it knowingly aids armed groups, and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants from its ranks. Some of Israel’s allegations prompted major international donors to cut funding to the agency, although some of it has been restored.
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GOP works to turn out pro-Trump Jewish voters in swing states to trim Democrats' edge
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — Rachel Weinberg calls herself a religious Jew first, then a proud American. She said she has only one choice for president: Donald Trump.
“I don't like everything he says,” the 72-year-old retired preschool teacher from Michigan said after volunteer canvassers for the Republican Jewish Coalition knocked on her door Sunday. “But I vote for Israel. It is our life. I support Israel. Trump supports Israel with his mouth and his actions.”
Weinberg's home in West Bloomfield, in vote-rich Oakland County, was among more than 20 that the Republican Jewish Coalition was visiting that morning. She has voted for Trump in previous elections as well.
The door-to-door outreach to Jewish voters with a history of backing Republicans is part of a new effort the group is undertaking this year in five presidential battleground states in hopes of boosting Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. Although surveys show that Jews vote decidedly Democratic, the Republican Jewish Coalition is hoping that the door-knocking will peel off enough votes to make a difference in an election year when the war between Israel and Hamas has stoked debate and provoked division.
About 7 in 10 Jewish voters nationally backed Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, while about 3 in 10 backed Trump that year, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the electorate. A Pew Research Center poll released last month found that about two-thirds of Jewish voters back Harris.
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Harris brings in Maggie Rogers as she tries to fire up college-age voters in battleground Michigan
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris worked to fire up college-age supporters at a rally and concert in battleground Michigan on Monday featuring singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers, who told the crowd that doing something like voting is “greater than fear” at a time when “the future feels so uncertain.”
Michigan had the highest youth voter turnout rate nationwide in 2022, with long lines stretching outside polling locations on college campuses. Democrats hope they can recreate that enthusiasm this year, with rallies such as the one Harris held in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, featuring Rogers.
“You can vote early now through Sunday, Nov. 3, and we need you to vote early, Michigan, because we have just eight days to go,” the Democratic presidential nominee said at an outdoor rally in 50-degree weather. “Eight days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”
“And we will win,” she said. “We have an opportunity to turn the page and chart a new and joyful way forward.”
Thousands packed into Burns Park for the event featuring Rogers, who sang “Love You for a Long Time” and some of her other hits. The event also reunited Harris with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The two had not appeared together since a campaign bus tour of Georgia in August.
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Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A comic calling Puerto Rico garbage before a packed Donald Trump rally in New York was the latest humiliation for an island territory that has long suffered from mistreatment, residents said Monday in expressions of fury that could affect the presidential election.
Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being U.S. citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland. Phones across the island of 3.2 million people were ringing minutes after the speaker derided the U.S. territory Sunday night, and they still buzzed Monday.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Shortly after stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe said that, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny announced he was backing Harris.
Hinchcliffe's set also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people, all key constituencies in the election.
Milagros Serrano, 81, has a son who lives in the swing state of Pennsylvania and said the entire family was outraged by the comedian’s comments.
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Owner Jeff Bezos defends Washington Post's decision not to endorse as the right, 'principled' one
NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Monday defended the newspaper's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate as “right” and “principled” and pushed back against any notion that he ordered it up to protect his business interests.
That decision, announced Friday, has reportedly led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. The Post's editorial staff was prepared to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris before publisher Will Lewis wrote instead that it would be better for readers to make up their own minds.
Bezos, in “a note from our owner” published Monday evening, said that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time many Americans don't believe the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
“Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one,” Bezos said.
Bezos wrote that he wished the decision to end presidential endorsements had been done earlier, “in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”
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Catholic bishops call for authorities to step up against violence in southern Mexico
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Four Roman Catholic bishops in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero called Monday for civilian and military authorities to take steps to protect residents of a region rocked by violence that has left more than a dozen dead in recent days.
The violence around Tecpan de Galeana, about 65 miles (104 kilometers) up the Pacific coast from Acapulco, led authorities to suspend classes at schools there and in two neighboring municipalities on Monday.
In a statement circulated by the Catholic bishops conference of Mexico, bishops Jesús González, Leopoldo González, Joel Ocampo Gorostieta and Dagoberto Sosa said the power struggles among criminal organizations are growing stronger “because they have the complicity, tolerance or indifference of many of those who must promote and ensure justice, legality and security.”
The same four bishops drew attention earlier this year when they acknowledged meeting with Mexican drug cartel bosses in a bid to negotiate a possible peace accord. The truce did not come to fruition because one of the parties allegedly did not agree.
Then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had said at the time that he approved of such talks.
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Fires set in drop boxes destroy hundreds of ballots in Washington and damage 3 in Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Incendiary devices were set off Monday at two ballot drop boxes — one in Portland and another in nearby Vancouver, Washington — destroying hundreds of ballots in what one official called a “direct attack on democracy” about a week before a heated Election Day.
The early morning fire at the drop box in Portland was extinguished quickly thanks to a suppression system inside the box as well as a nearby security guard, police said, and just three ballots were damaged there.
But within a few hours, another fire was discovered at a transit center drop box across the Columbia River in Vancouver. Vancouver is the biggest city in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what is expected to be one of the closest U.S. House races in the country, between first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent.
The ballot box in Vancouver also had a fire suppression system inside, but that failed to prevent hundreds of ballots from burning, said Greg Kimsey, the longtime elected auditor in Clark County, Washington, which includes Vancouver. He urged voters who dropped their ballots in the transit center box after 11 a.m. Saturday to contact his office for a replacement ballot.
“Heartbreaking,” Kimsey said. “It’s a direct attack on democracy.”
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