October 22, 2024, presidential campaign news

Our live coverage has ended. Follow the latest 2024 election news here or read through the posts below.

Rapper Eminem, center, greets the crowd on stage with former President Barack Obama, left, at a campaign rally supporting Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, in Detroit on October 22.

Former President Barack Obama, who was introduced by rapper Eminem during a Detroit, Michigan, rally Tuesday, briefly rapped the opening lyrics to the song “Lose Yourself.”

“I have done a lot of rallies. So, I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem. Now I notice my palms are sweaty. Knees weak, arms are heavy. Vomit on my sweater already. Mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous. But on the surface, I look calm and ready. To drop bombs, but I keep on forgetting,” Obama said to cheers from the audience.

“I thought Eminem was gonna be performing. I was gonna jump out. Love me some Eminem,” he continued.

The Detroit stop was Obama’s fifth rally for Vice President Kamala Harris – and the fifth battleground state – during his biggest blitz of campaigning since he left office. He and Harris are set to make their first joint appearance on the campaign trail Thursday in Georgia.

Read more on the rally here.

Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona on Tuesday argued that the “most conservative thing you can do” is back Vice President Kamala Harris, who wouldn’t try to overturn an election, attempting to assuage fellow conservatives’ feelings about backing Harris over their party’s standard-bearer.

He criticized former President Donald Trump for pressuring Republicans in Congress to tank the bipartisan border security bill, arguing that Trump “wanted to run on the issue rather than solve the problem.”

The Arizona Republican was joined on the townhall by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Mesa City Councilmember Julie Spilsbury, a Republican and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Flake said he served alongside Harris in the US Senate, saying, “I know of her love of country and of her fine character,” and Gov. Tim Walz in the US House, calling him a “good man” and recalling that he “often worked with him on bipartisan legislation.”

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday detailed her latest economic proposals tailored to Latino men during an interview with Telemundo, as she seeks to shore up support from the key demographic ahead of Election Day.

“A lot of my agenda is about creating opportunities for people to succeed. So, for example, part of the agenda that I’ve rolled out, I’m very aware of how it would affect Latino men,” Harris told Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro.

“That includes what we need to do around building a strong economy that supports working people, understanding that the small business owners don’t always have access to the capital they need to grow their business or maybe start a small business,” she continued.

Earlier today, Harris rolled out her “Economic Agenda,” which includes expanding and investing in small businesses and entrepreneurs, career advancement and increasing the annual number of first-time Latino homebuyers, among other things.

Harris emphasized that she is aware “Latino men often have a more difficult time having access to big loans from big banks because of relationships, because of things are not necessarily grounded in their qualifications.”

“I’m focused on what we can do to bring more capital to community banks that will understand their community and will be able to give those kinds of loans,” Harris said. “Part of my plan is to do what we can to give people the opportunity for home ownership and build intergenerational wealth. So, my plan includes a $25,000 down payment for first-time home buyers so that they can get a foot in the door to home ownership.”

The full Harris interview with Telemundo is set to air Wednesday.

People line up for early voting at a polling station at the Black Mountain Public Library in Black Mountain, North Carolina, on October 21.

More than 20 million ballots have already been cast with two weeks to go until Election Day.

That’s according to data from 47 states and the District of Columbia gathered by CNN; Edison Research; and Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups, including insights into who is voting before November.

About 2.4 million of these ballots are from California, while more than one million ballots have been cast in seven more states: Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas.

US Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance leaves after speaking during a campaign rally in Peoria, Arizona, on October 22.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Tuesday suggested that the Trump administration would be willing to deport Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, known as Dreamers.

DACA recipients are allowed to legally live and work in the US for a temporary period. The Trump administration tried terminating DACA, a program that has generally received bipartisan support. That effort was blocked by the courts, though there is still ongoing litigation on the matter.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday falsely said Vice President Kamala Harris is “taking another day off tomorrow” as she is set to participate in a live CNN town hall in Pennsylvania.

Harris had no public events scheduled Tuesday but taped interviews with NBC News and Telemundo.

“We don’t take days off. We gotta win this thing. If we don’t win it, our country’s in big trouble. Our country’s in big trouble. No I heard it today and she’s taking another day off tomorrow, they say. What the hell? Maybe she knows something that we don’t know. You think she knows some kind of result that we don’t know about maybe? Maybe she knows something. I doubt it,” Trump said.

Trump has been raising doubts about the integrity of the 2024 election as he accuses Democrats, without evidence, of trying to cheat in November’s election and falsely claims he won the 2020 election.

Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard announces that she is joining the Republican party as Donald Trump reacts to her speaking at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on October 22.

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday at a Trump rally in North Carolina that she is joining the Republican Party.

Gabbard unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat but said she was leaving the party in 2022. She has been campaigning with Trump and is serving on his transition team.

John Kelly, the retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, told The New York Times that the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

The newspaper reported on Tuesday that in a recorded interview, Kelly was asked whether the former president met the definition of a fascist and responded by reading aloud a definition he’d found online.

The comments from a top Trump White House official come two weeks before Election Day, as Trump faces Vice President Kamala Harris in his bid to return to the Oval Office four years after losing an election he falsely maintained was riddled with fraud.

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement that Kelly had “totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated because he failed to serve his President well while working as Chief of Staff and currently suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

‘It's scaring the heck out of me’: How antisemitic threats are influencing Jewish voters in a critical swing state.

When Stephanie Spielman describes how she feels as a Jewish voter this election year, she is visibly despondent.

“There’s a feeling of real emptiness, kind of hollowness,” she said.

A lifelong Pennsylvania Democrat who usually votes blue, up and down the ticket, Spielman left the Democratic Party this year.

Jewish Americans have been a core part of the Democratic coalition for generations. But Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas in Gaza and the turmoil it set off, including protests and a spike in antisemitic incidents, make Republicans believe they can make inroads with Jewish voters.

And in an election that will likely be decided on the margins, the votes of Jewish Pennsylvanians like Spielman could be key to determining who wins the commonwealth’s 19 electoral votes – and with it, the presidency.

Read more here about how Jewish voters could make a difference

The Trump campaign on Tuesday called on Vice President Kamala Harris to condemn President Joe Biden saying earlier in the day that “we gotta lock him up,” in reference to former President Donald Trump.

Biden at the event in New Hampshire said, “I know this sounds bizarre – it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up.” He then caught himself and added, “Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a new statement:

Remember: Harris has previously shut down “lock him up” chants aimed at Trump, telling her supporters at multiple rallies, “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

When Trump was running for president in 2016, he called for Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment on multiple occasions, including by using the phrase “Lock her up!”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited a Black-owned barbershop in Racine ahead of a rally in the Milwaukee suburb on Tuesday.

Walz participated in a conversation with local Black entrepreneurs and community leaders at Racine Barbar Sports Co., a barber shop and business collective, where he heard stories about their ventures and their backgrounds.

At the beginning of the roundtable, Walz touted Vice President Kamala Harris’ agenda to provide economic opportunities for Black men.

The US Capitol in Washington, DC, is seen on September 9, 2024.

Recent polling, including new surveys out Tuesday, shows that 2024 may produce something never seen before in American history: The House could flip from Republican to Democratic control, while the Senate may flip from Democratic to Republican control.

If that happened, it would be the first time in over 230 years of congressional elections that the two chambers of Congress changed partisan control in the opposite direction.

The possibility for this historic oddity arises in large part because the battleground maps for the narrowly divided House and Senate are totally different.

All 435 seats are up in the House. Democrats need a net pickup of just four seats to win a majority.

They could grab those four from New York alone. There were four House races in the Empire State that the GOP won by less than 5 points in 2022, all in districts that Joe Biden would have carried two years earlier under the current district lines. They include New York’s 4th District on Long Island, the 17th and 19th districts in the Hudson Valley, and the 22nd District in Central New York, which was decided by a point two years ago and where the lines have since been heavily redrawn to Democrats’ advantage.

The battle for the Senate is something else entirely.

Remember that only about a third of the chamber’s 100 seats are up every cycle. This year, a bunch of seats held by Democrats or those who caucus with them are on the ballot in red-leaning states.

The math for Republicans is simple: To win the Senate, they need a net pickup of either one seat (if the incoming vice president is a Republican) or two seats (if the incoming vice president is a Democrat).

Read more of the analysis of the Congressional races here

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are pushing out their messages to voters with just two weeks to go until Election Day.

Here’s a recap of what happened today:

Other key headlines to know:

Looking ahead:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, on October 22.

Former President Donald Trump took a jab at former President Barack Obama on Tuesday, calling him “a real jerk” at a rally in North Carolina.

Obama has been campaigning for Harris and attacking Trump in the process.

Obama appeared at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, earlier Tuesday with Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz. The former president has been sharply critical of Trump, saying in Wisconsin that “there is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself.”

Trump called Obama “a divider” and said “he was terrible.”

“He’s trying to campaign because (Harris’) incapable of campaigning, so they sent him into try. He’s not going to do it,” Trump said.

A lawsuit from two Republican officials in Waynesboro, Virginia, that threatened not to certify the 2024 election results attracted a counter lawsuit Monday from voters in the Shenandoah Valley city who are seeking a court order that would force the board to formalize the results.

The dispute — in which the Republican officials on the Waynesboro Board of Elections are demanding a hand-count of ballots before they certify the 2024 results — is just the latest example of how local certification procedures have become a hot spot for unsubstantiated election fraud claims since former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 loss.

The Virginia lawsuits stand out, however, for how the local officials are threatening to not formalize the results — potentially gumming up the works for certifying the entire state vote — well before the final ballot has been cast.

The new lawsuit from the Waynesboro voters alleged, citing a news report, that one of the GOP officials got the idea to file a lawsuit from the attorney who is now representing them. That lawyer, Thomas Ranieri, said in a statement Tuesday that his clients “want to ensure that all voters’ votes are safely cast and accurately counted, which is something they cannot verify at the present.”

A spokesperson for the Virginia State Board of Elections did not reply to CNN’s inquiry. The office of state Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Read more details here on the Virginia pre-election fight.

A voter picks up an "I Voted" sticker after casting an early ballot at a polling station in Arlington, Virginia, on September 20.

The election misinformation machine is already ramping up in critical battleground states as early voting gets underway, and election officials are hustling to combat falsehoods in real time.

Conservatives have been sharing uncorroborated instances of machines flipping votes, claims of widespread fraud in mail ballots and suggestions that election officials are subverting the process if it takes multiple days to count ballots. The claims are ricocheting around social media as voters hit the polls. They mirror claims that former President Donald Trump and his allies spread around the 2020 election as they tried to head off Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden.

State and local election officials, however, are also preparing for a deluge of false and misleading claims, and are actively trying to address issues before they go far.

Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Alliance for Securing Democracy who’s focused on election-related disinformation, said that some of the push is needed because social media companies have stepped back from challenging false claims.

“It’s reassuring how much better election officials have gotten around communication in advance of the election,” Schafer said. “There definitely wasn’t the same level of interaction four years ago … in trying to communicate any changes in how voting will work this time, and, to the extent possible, short-circuit some of the false election narratives we know will be coming.”

JD Vance, Republican vice presidential candidate, said the Arizona election system is “in a better place” than where it was four years ago, despite no widespread evidence of fraud in 2020.

As CNN previously reported, an independent investigation conducted by a former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice found that older printers and longer ballots printed on heavier paper were to blame for a printer issue at several precincts in Maricopa County that prevented some ballots from being properly scanned on site during Election Day 2022.

A recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College shows Trump leading Harris in Arizona by five points, but Vance acknowledged the Republican ticket could still lose by a “very tiny margin” and said there are still undecided voters up for grabs.

Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump answers questions as he works the drive-through line at a McDonald's restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, on October 20.

An influx of Yelp reviews – many of them bogus – of a Pennsylvania McDonald’s that former President Donald Trump visited Sunday led the review platform to temporarily freeze the franchise’s Yelp page.

Many of the recent latest reviews were ruthless. Some called out Trump for his criminal record.

Others used the opportunity to take a different jab at the presidential candidate.

“The fries were too salty as if someone who lost a major election had been crying over them for an hour,” one review said.

Some users on Yelp blamed the McDonald’s franchise for allowing Trump to host a campaign event there.

“If you make managerial decisions this bad I certainly am never going to eat anything you make,” another review said.

Still, some on Yelp shrugged off the Trump campaign event.

“I’ve been to this MacDonalds long before Trump came by and I’ll keep coming by long afterwards,” one five-star review said.

McDonald’s was thrust into the political spotlight Sunday when Trump served fries at a Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, location, even though the chain attempted to distance itself from the stunt. Vice President Kamala Harris says she briefly worked at the chain during the summer of 1983 when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington, a claim Trump refutes without evidence.

The company clarified in its memo that Derek Giacomantonio, the franchise’s owner and operator, was approached by local law enforcement about Trump’s desire to visit and Giacomantonio accepted.

President Joe Biden told New Hampshire Democrats that “we gotta lock him up,” referring to former President Donald Trump and co-opting a 2016 Trump campaign line that Vice President Kamala Harris has actively discouraged on the campaign trail.

Harris has shut down “lock him up” chants aimed at Trump, telling her supporters at multiple rallies, “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”

Biden also offered a sober assessment of the 2024 election, telling Democrats that if Trump wins, they will need a strong majority.

“If Trump wins, this nation changes,” Biden warned.

He continued, “There’s only two things we can do: guarantee that he doesn’t, or if he does, make sure we have a strongest Democratic majority we can get.”

The comments marked a recognition of what both sides have cast as an exceedingly close race with two weeks to go.