October 2, 2024, presidential campaign news

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

A banner with the images of the Heritage Center of Clark County and "Welcome To Our City," hangs along North Fountain Ave. in Springfield, Ohio, on September 17, 2024.

Donald Trump on Wednesday said that, if elected, he would revoke Temporary Protected Status for the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, on the receiving end of misinformation spread by the former president and his allies.

“You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country. They are, in my opinion, it’s not legal,” Trump said in an interview with NewsNation.

As CNN has previously reported, many Haitians in the US have “temporary protected status,” which shields them from deportation and allows them to live and work in the country for a limited period of time. Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

In Wednesday’s interview, Trump was asked, “So you would revoke the temporary protected status?”

“Absolutely. I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump said.

Pressed on what would happen if the country won’t receive them, Trump said: “They will,” without providing additional details.

“Well, they’re going to receive them, they’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive them,” Trump said.

Trump has spread debunked conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, including at a presidential debate last month, as part of his efforts to stoke fears about immigrants and push his hardline immigration policy proposals, including mass deportations.

Election officials in Georgia, North Carolina and Florida are working quickly to ensure voters can still securely cast early ballots, despite the devastating storm impacts of Hurricane Helene that have in some cases left them without power, water and cell service.

Potential solutions in the affected counties of the three states, which could determine the White House, could include extra polling places, extending early voting and making it easier to drop off mail ballots.

“This damage extends far beyond flood damage,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “There may be polling places inaccessible because of damaged roads. There may be polling places with trees that have fallen on them.”

Mail service has been paused in a wide swath of zip codes in the three states, according to the US Postal Service, presenting fresh challenges to delivering and receiving mail-in ballots.

“We’re working diligently with our partners at the USPS,” Travis Hart, president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, told CNN. “Some of their facilities were damaged too, some of them completely washed away.”

Elections officials are confident there won’t be a problem getting the help they need.

Read more about this here.

Tim Walz speaks at a campaign event in Mesa, Arizona, on September 10.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz expressed some relief coming out of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, telling supporters during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania he’s “excited last night’s done.”

“I’m excited to be here, I’m excited last night’s done,” Walz said at the beginning of his brief remarks at a restaurant in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Walz’s relief comes after CNN reported he was feeling nervous heading into the face-off with his Republican counterpart, Ohio Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday.

Walz also appeared to play up the significance of the candidates at the top of the ticket in his remarks, reminding those in attendance of Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance during the presidential debate against former president Donald Trump earlier this month.

Walz’s remarks came during a stop at Mofongo Restaurant, a family-owned Puerto Rican restaurant in central Pennsylvania, as part of the Harris campaign’s effort to connect with Latino voters in key states.

Walz noted that Harris was meant to attend the swing with him before pulling out of the trip to survey damage from Hurricane Helene in Georgia, and connected the damage done by the hurricane to the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico in 2017.

“She’s down in Georgia making sure our fellow Americans are safe. We’re getting recovery from the hurricane,” Walz said. “We know how these things can hit, whether it’s Maria in Puerto Rico, we need to get this right.”

Walz touted Harris’ economic proposals and attacked Trump’s hardline immigration proposals, arguing that Republicans shouldn’t “blame every problem on immigrants.”

He also defended the residents of Springfield, Ohio, after Republicans elevated conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants in the town eating household pets, saying he spoke to United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain about the residents.

Former first lady Melania Trump says she supports abortion rights “free from any intervention or pressure from the government” in her upcoming memoir, according to excerpts of the book obtained by The Guardian.

The former first lady, The Guardian reports, says that “restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body” and notes that she has believed this “throughout my entire adult life.”

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” she writes, according to The Guardian.

She also writes in the book that she has disagreed with her husband on some immigration policies, The Guardian reported.

Read more about Melania Trump’s comments in her upcoming memoir.

A campaign sign in support of former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance is seen along a rural highway near Kingsley, Michigan, on September 26.

The Trump campaign said Wednesday its political operation raised more than $160 million in September and that it ended the month with $283 million cash on hand.

The campaign said 96% of the donations in September were under $200 and the average donation was $60. The September haul is $30 million more than the reelection effort raised in August.

“President Trump continues to inspire millions of everyday Americans to join his America First movement and help fuel the campaign with their hard-earned money. In September, nearly 2.5 million donations under $200 were made. These supporters have allowed us to bank the funds we need as we move into the campaign’s final weeks,” Trump campaign spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.

“Our momentum continues to grow from supporters and donors across the country as we enter the homestretch toward victory,” he continued.

America’s position on the world stage is top of mind for young voters in this presidential election.

The Israel-Hamas war has proved to be a key sticking point for progressive and young voters, as well as Arab American and Muslim communities. The past several months have seen protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza at college campuses across the country.

Jean Kojali, who is 23 and lives in Cobb County, Georgia, said she wants the US to stop sending aid to Israel and expressed that it’s a key issue for her.

“The United States, we pride ourselves on this, like, protector of democracy and human rights, but we are currently aiding and abetting and funding this genocide, which is just … it’s really upsetting,” Kojali told CNN.

“If Vice President Harris doesn’t start to lay up a bit on this hardened US-Israel relationship, I don’t know if there’s a path to the presidency for her,” she added.

Harris has had to navigate the complex dynamics of the Israel-Hamas war on both the diplomatic level and a political one as the head of the Democratic ticket. Her positions have not been at odds with Biden’s, but she has advocated a more empathetic approach to the Palestinians and in public has sometimes struck a more forceful tone than the president when discussing the situation in Gaza.

Katelyn Kalkowski, a 24-year-old from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said Harris needs to further contrast herself with Biden over the war in Gaza.

“I think that is really important to younger voters that she speaks on Palestinian suffering and kind of works towards the ceasefire and, you know, just hears us,” she said.

JD Vance speaks at a campaign event in Auburn Hills, Michigan, on October 2.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance defended former president Donald Trump’s style on the campaign, saying he can be warm greeting voters on the ground and also “pissed off” about Vice President Harris’ leadership, which he deemed “an absolute disgrace.”

“I love that Donald Trump can do both of those things at the same time. He can go out there and talk to the American people and be warm and engaged. He can talk to a normal American citizen about their struggles and paying for groceries and housing under Kamala Harris’s policies. And then he can go on a debate stage and tell Kamala Harris that she ought to stop screwing up, and she ought to stop talking about solving the country’s problems. She ought to go and actually do it,” Vance said.

“That’s the kind of President we need. That’s the kind of leader that we need. And I think his message gets through,” Vance added, as the crowd loudly cheered.

Vance claimed Democrats are sowing division in the country by silencing Americans instead of engaging in debate.

Advocating for “open dialogue,” Vance said that is what would heal the divisions in our country. He said that he and Trump will “bring this country back together by encouraging the free exchange of ideas.”

In Marne, Michigan, Vance on Wednesday suggested that local election officials wanted the federal government to take action to secure US elections, though those same officials have repeatedly said elections are safe and secure.

This post has been updated with more comments from Vance.

Following a campaign event in Aurora Hills, Michigan, where Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance spoke, CNN asked some voters about the civility of last night’s debate and why it seems surprising.

While Midge is a Vance fan, she said she liked Walz’s overall demeanor at times during the debate, and that last night reminded her of contests from years ago.

“I thought he was not aggressive like we’re used to, and it’s kind of like the way the old debates used to be years ago between the Dems and Republicans. There was respect,” Midge said.

Midge’s husband Burt said he was impressed with Vance’s debate performance.

A bipartisan group of election officials briefed reporters Wednesday about the voting already underway in their states, and what they’re doing to make sure the election goes smoothly over the next few weeks.

Here are some key takeaways:

Fallout from new Georgia election rules: Zach Manifold, the elections supervisor for Gwinnett County, which is in the Atlanta area, condemned the Georgia State Election Board for imposing new hand-count requirements. Trump loyalists on the board approved the rules last month over bipartisan objections.

“It’s not an ideal situation – not something we really want to see,” Manifold said, pointing out that nonpartisan election officials were “very vocal” in their opposition before the board approved the rule.

Nonetheless, he said “we are moving forward” to train staff and brace for potential delays to the public reporting of results, because the new rules force counties to verify by hand that the number of ballots counted by the machine matches the number of ballots that were cast at every precinct. He said this would likely have a disproportionate impact on smaller and medium sized counties, slowing their results.

The cost of keeping RFK Jr. on the ballot. An election official from Durham County, North Carolina, said his county spent more than $50,000 to reprint ballots after a court fight involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

After RFK Jr. endorsed Trump, he tried to take his name off some state ballots, though he missed the deadline in some places. The North Carolina State Board of Elections ruled that it was too late to redo the ballots in the state, but the North Carolina Supreme Court later ruled that he must be removed.

Officials in Durham County had already spent about $60,000 to print many of their ballots before the ruling, according to Derek Bowens, director of elections for Durham County. They were then forced to pay another $50,000 to go back to their vendor and re-do all the ballots that had already been printed with RFK Jr’s name, he said.

“It came with a 25% markup, due to the rush nature of reprinting the ballots,” Bowens said. “The ballot reprint added a thread to the equation that certainly has complicated our processes this election.”

Securing mail-in ballots. Officials from across the country stressed that mail-in voting is reliable and secure, despite false claims from former President Donald Trump that is riddled with massive fraud.

Santa Fe County Clerk Katherine Clark described the extraordinary lengths her office takes to make sure the process is safeguarded. For instance, there is round-the-clock video surveillance of ballot drop boxes and drive-through locations, and they put GPS trackers on all the “ballot bags” that contain mail ballots.

“I have a dashboard and it shows me exactly where my ballot bags are,” Clark said.

More about the briefing: The Wednesday briefing was organized by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, a nonprofit group that works with nearly 100 of the biggest election offices across the country.

The US Supreme Court is seen in Washington, DC, on July 29.

The legal wrangling over special counsel Jack Smith’s ability to prosecute Donald Trump for the alleged conduct outlined in Wednesday’s filing could very well land the case back before the Supreme Court.

What may happen next: Trump is expected to push back in his own filing against prosecutors’ arguments and will argue that the whole case should be dismissed under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. It’s possible that federal Judge Tanya Chutkan will want to hold oral arguments before deciding what to keep and what to toss out in the case.

Chutkan has already noted that however she rules on the immunity issues, it will undoubtedly be appealed to higher courts and likely before a trial. It’s unclear whether such an appeal would delay the proceedings in Chutkan’s court, as they did during the first round of immunity-related appeals. No trial date has been set.

It’s likely, too, that more evidence could come out in coming days. A hefty appendix accompanying Wednesday’s filing remains under seal, and Chutkan has asked both sides to weigh in on how much of it should be made public.

Among the documents in the appendix are grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the years-long investigation.

One key part of Wednesday’s filing is the allegation from prosecutors that Donald Trump knowingly pushed false information out to support his claims of a fraudulent election.

An example of these falsehoods, the filing says, is how Trump and his co-conspirators continued to claim that voting machines across several key states were not secure and their tallies inaccurate.

They did this despite the National Association of Secretaries of State and other federal and state officials saying repeatedly that the 2020 election was the most secure in US history and there was no evidence of changed or lost votes in the system.

Despite mounds of evidence offered to Trump that highlighted the security of the election, including hand re-tally counts to verify the machine counts, Trump still made false claims about voting machines during his infamous January 6 speech.

Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to give remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023.

The Trump campaign slammed special counsel Jack Smith’s new filing in a statement, saying it is “another obvious attempt” by the Biden administration “to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”

The Trump campaign added in the statement that Smith is “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department.”

Trump argued the newly released filing was a “hit job” and claimed, without evidence, it was released in response to the vice presidential debate Tuesday night.

“Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris. The DOJ pushed out this latest “hit job” today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump also baselessly claimed the Harris campaign was directing the Department of Justice and argued the filing should not have been released before the election.

The filing is the most comprehensive narrative to date of the 2020 election conspiracy case against Trump.

This post has been updated with Trump’s reaction.

FBI experts have mapped out what Donald Trump was doing on his phone while the US Capitol riot unfolded, special counsel Jack Smith said in his filing Wednesday.

Those logs show that Trump “was using his phone, and in particular, was using the Twitter application, consistently throughout the day after he returned from the Ellipse speech.”

Smith said three unidentified witnesses are also prepared to testify that on the afternoon of January 6, the television in the White House dining room where Trump spent much of the day was “on and tuned into news programs that were covering in real time the ongoing events in the Capitol.”

That testimony would allow prosecutors to show a future jury what Trump saw unfolding on TV while he made comments and posted online that afternoon.

A woman attends a watch party at Arizona GOP headquarters for the vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 1.

It was a calmer, more civil debate — and a less popular one overall.

The vice presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance scored more than 43 million viewers on television Tuesday night, according to Nielsen estimates.

The 43 million figure is the combined audience across 15 television networks that simulcast the CBS-produced debate. An unknown number of additional viewers watched the debate on YouTube and other online platforms.

Vice presidential debates are typically lower rated than presidential face-offs, and this year was no exception. Last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump drew more than 67 million viewers across 17 networks, according to Nielsen.

Four years ago, 57 million tuned in to the only vice presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle between Harris and then-Vice President Mike Pence. In 2008, a record 69.9 million watched Joe Biden and Sarah Palin face off on television in the most-watched VP debate, according to Nielsen.

Still, Tuesday’s viewership total was enough to make the Walz-Vance debate one of the most-watched single telecasts of the year in the United States.

Special counsel Jack Smith is trying to capitalize on Donald Trump’s post-presidency comments defending his actions on January 6 and the violence from his supporters at the US Capitol that day.

Prosecutors in a new filing zeroed in on this as part of their push to frame their case as all about Trump’s personal conduct that has nothing to do with his official duties — which they are doing after the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that presidents are immune from prosecution for official actions taken while in office.

They said Trump’s continued efforts, after leaving the White House, to blame his Vice President Mike Pene for the violence at the Capitol speaks to Trump’s criminal intent while president on January 6.

Since leaving office in 2021, Trump has repeatedly praised the rioters and even pledged to pardon some of them if he returns to the White House, all while still falsely claiming he actually won the 2020 election.

The Secret Service was warned about Donald Trump threatening to criticize then-Vice President Mike Pence if he failed to overthrow the 2020 election results, according to a new filing.

The filing details how on January 5, Trump once again met with Pence to allegedly tried to pressure him not to certify the electoral college votes. In that meeting, Smith wrote citing Pence’s book, Trump threatened to criticize his vice president publicly.

Smith said that Pence told someone identified only as “P8” about that comment. P8 was so concerned by the prospect that he alerted Pence’s Secret Service detail.

Trump tried again to pressure Pence on the morning of January 6, shortly before driving to deliver his speech at the Ellipse, prosecutors said. Pence, however, again refused and Trump “was incensed,” the filing said.

It was then that Trump “set into motion the last plan in furtherance of his conspiracies: if Pence would not do as he asked, (Trump) needed to find another way to prevent the certification of Biden as president,” the filing said, adding that Trump “sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters.”

Prosecutors also said Trump personally posted on Twitter that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election results as the riot was unfolding. The revelation comes as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s argument as to why the Tweet should be considered a private act and therefore not protected under presidential immunity.

The post targeting Pence was “a matter of intense personal concern to the defendant as a candidate for office,” Smith wrote, adding that Trump knew at that time that his request for Pence to block the certification was illegal.

According to the filing, when Trump was told Pence had been taken to a secure location during the Capitol riot, Trump replied, “So what?”

Vice President Kamala Harris walks with Augusta Mayor Garnett Johnson as they survey the damage from Hurricane Helene, in Augusta, Georgia, on October 2.

Vice President Kamala Harris thanked first responders in Georgia and provided an update on the federal response as she acknowledged the pain and loss of life experienced by many Americans across the southeast of the US following the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

During her remarks, Harris provided updates on FEMA’s response, including money for people who need it for immediate needs like food or baby formula or to help with recovery activities like home repair.

And she announced that President Joe Biden has approved Georgia’s request for 100% federal reimbursement of local costs incurred by the disaster. This will help cover the costs of debris removal, first responders, search and rescue and other emergency response activities.

Ahead of her remarks, Harris surveyed the storm damage in the neighborhood and met with a family and business owner who was impacted by the storm.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr decided in 2020 to publicly rebut Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged after watching Trump spread these lies on Fox News, prosecutors say.

“On November 29, (Barr) saw the defendant appear on the Maria Bartiromo Show and claim, among other false things, that the Justice Department was ‘missing in action’ and had ignored evidence of fraud,” prosecutors wrote.

That was when “(Barr) decided it was time to speak publicly in contravention of the defendant’s false claims, set up a lunch with a reporter for the Associated Press, and made his statement,” according to the filing. Barr’s name is redacted in the filing and he is referred to as “P52,” which is described as the “attorney general.”

This was the December 1, 2020, statement where Barr infamously said the Justice Department had looked into potential election irregularities but didn’t find any widespread fraud that could’ve tipped the results. This was a major move by Barr, a lifelong Republican who at the time was a staunch Trump ally.

Another mention of false election fraud claim: Prosecutors also said that during a November 9 call with Trump, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey — who is not named by prosecutors but identified as the state’s governor — walked him through the vote margins and noted that Trump’s odds of winning the key state were low. Ducey described the situation to Trump, according to the brief, as “ninth inning, two outs” and Trump “several runs down.”

In their section about Trump’s Arizona-focused conduct, Smith’s team also highlighted that his allies were constantly changing the supposed number of noncitizen voters. Prosecutors note Trump was told on November 13 by his campaign manager that a claim circulating around the internet about a substantial number of noncitizen voters was false.

Even as they face a high bar for introducing evidence from Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, the special counsel’s team sought to do so by framing a series of interactions between the two as conversations between “running mates,” where Pence tried to convince Donald Trump he needed to accept his electoral defeat.

In a few filing Wednesday, prosecutors include details of a number of conversations:

As part of these private conversations, prosecutors say, Pence “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” after news networks called the election for Joe Biden. In other interactions, Pence encouraged Trump to consider running for reelection in 2024. Those interactions, prosecutors argued, were not at all related to Trump’s official duties as president.

“The content of the conversations at issue — the defendant and Pence’s joint electoral fate and how to accept the election results — have no bearing on any function of the Executive Branch,” they wrote in the filing.