Election 2024 live updates as Trump and Harris campaign to sway voters amid head-to-head presidential polls

Voters in Arizona’s border towns are considering the effects of drug trafficking as the battleground state prepares to vote. CBS News’ Omar Villafranca spoke to Americans who live on the U.S.-Mexico border.

A suspect has been arrested in Phoenix for allegedly setting fire to a United States postal service box, which police said contained five ballots. 

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said Thursday morning that a suspect had been arrested. 

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement that he is “deeply troubled by the arson attack.”

“This deliberate act of vandalism undermines the integrity of our democratic process. I’ve been in close communication with Mayor Kate Gallego and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to coordinate our response,” Fontes said. “Our thanks go to Phoenix Fire Chief Mike Duran and his team for their quick work, which saved many of the ballots. We have sent fire suppression equipment to the counties across Arizona to prevent such incidents and protect our electoral process.”

With Pennsylvania being a must-win battleground state for both Trump and Harris, Trump is heading there yet again on Tuesday. He’ll be in Allentown, Pennsylvania, just west of the New Jersey border, for a rally. 

Allentown is home to one of the state’s most competitive House races between Democratic Rep. Susan Wild and Republican challenger and state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. Republicans hope to not only keep control of the House, but grow their thin margin. 

Tuesday will make one week out from Election Day. 

Former President Donald Trump will stop in Arizona and Nevada to campaign with surrogates Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy. CBS News campaign reporter Libby Cathey has more on the presidential race and Trump’s reaction to John Kelly’s fascism comments.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found fewer Americans plan to vote by mail than they did in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, a record share of voters — 39% — cast their ballots by mail. That 2020 figure rose to 46% counting absentee ballots. 

This year, 28% of voters plan to vote by mail, according to Pew’s survey of more than 5,000 Americans between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6. 

Singer and songwriter James Taylor, who was bumped from the DNC due to time, will campaign with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday in North Carolina. 

Taylor will perform alongside his wife and son, Henry. Taylor posted on social media on Wednesday that the three of them had voted in the election. 

Harris said voters are facing a stark choice between her and the former president, warning that should Trump win, he will “sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list.” 

Harris said if she is elected, she will be responding to the people “with a to-do list,” adding that she understands “the need to work on lifting up the American people” by working to lower grocery prices, invest in small businesses and in American families. 

She criticized Trump for “not showing up” at a CNN town hall Wednesday night that had been offered as a debate date, while claiming that the decision not to appear suggested the former president is “exhausted.”

“The sad part about that is he’s trying to be president of the United States, probably the toughest job in the world, and he’s exhausted,” Harris added. 

Harris celebrated two new endorsements from Republicans on Thursday afternoon, telling reporters of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Mayor Shawn Reilly and former Rep. Fred Upton’s endorsement that the two are the latest leaders who “understand what’s at stake.”

The vice president said the Republicans “are weighing in courageously” in support of a president who “understands the obligation” to the constitution — and Democracy. 

Upton, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump before retiring in 2022,  told The Detroit News on Thursday that he’s backing Harris in the 2024 presidential election. And Reilly told FOX6 Milwaukee late Wednesday that he plans to vote for Harris. 

Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, penned an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accusing Harris of being anti-Catholic, alleging that the Democratic presidential nominee and her surrogates have “mocked” the faith and displayed “anti-Catholic bigotry.”

The op-ed came as Post-Gazette workers have been on strike for two years, alleging poor work conditions. Jon Schleuss, the president of the NewsGuild-CWA, criticized Vance for crossing “virtual picket lines” with his op-ed. 

The Trump campaign filed a formal legal complaint this week with the Federal Election Commission over what the campaign calls “blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election in the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom, and accepted by Harris for President.” 

That claim remains unsubstantiated, and has been denied by both the U.K. Labour Party and its leader, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But lobbying firms and individual lobbyists formally registered as foreign agents of governments around the world — all with varying interests and including some autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are donating significant amounts of money to both Republican and Democratic parties and candidates in this election cycle, a CBS News analysis has found.  

It is not uncommon, and not illegal, for registered foreign agents and lobbyists to finance political campaigns. Any legal permanent U.S. resident can donate to a political candidate or campaign, subject to limits imposed by the FEC. 

Read more here. 

Republicans are investing 63% more in tossup Senate races than they did in 2022, according to AdImpact. And Republicans hold spending advantages in three of the four races considered to be tossups by the Cook Political Report — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

The dynamic comes as Republicans have a favorable map in the Senate this cycle, defending far fewer seats than Democrats as they look to flip control of the chamber. 

Megastar Beyoncé will appear with Harris at a rally in Houston on Friday, a source familiar told CBS News. Speculation has swirled for months about whether the singer would throw her support behind the Democratic nominee, especially after Taylor Swift announced she plans to vote for Harris in September.

The appearance in Houston, Beyoncé’s hometown, comes just 11 days before Election Day. Throughout her campaign, Harris has used Beyoncé’s “Freedom” as her walk-on song at rallies. 

Beyoncé has a long history of supporting Democratic candidates, including President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Biden in 2020. She also backed former Rep. Beto O’Rourke in the 2018 Texas Senate race. 

With less than two weeks until Election Day, the tone of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is shifting to focus on criticisms of former President Donald Trump. CBS News campaign reporter Nidia Cavazos has more.

Early voting kicked off Thursday in Maryland, with 97 voting centers open throughout the state. Early voting will run through Oct. 31.

In 2020, when the last presidential election was decided, more than 981,000 Marylanders voted early for the presidential candidates. More than 3,037,000 total Maryland votes were counted.

For more information on how to vote early in Maryland, visit CBS News Baltimore. 

In a televised debate on Wednesday night, New York congressional candidates Mike Lawler and Mondaire Jones sparred over the presidential election, the war in Gaza and a proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. 

Lawler — a Republican and the incumbent representative of New York’s 17th District in the House — faces a closely-watched competition against Jones, his Democratic challenger. The race that could determine which political party controls that chamber of Congress.

Jones accused Lawler of being a “mini-fascist” for supporting former President Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection, while Lawler accused Jones of being a socialist. 

They disagreed about a peace settlement in the Middle East and local issues affecting their region, like the MTA’s congestion pricing plan and whether abortion rights should be codified through a measure called the Equal Rights Act. Jones said Lawler “is rabidly anti-choice.” Lawler said Jones is “the only one who has disdain for women.”

Watch CBS New York’s Marcia Kramer’s analysis on the debate here or in the player above. 

If you’re a man in the Philadelphia area who’s inclined to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris but still not entirely sold on the idea, her team hopes you’ll listen to Duke, a Southwest Philadelphia resident and star of “She Can Do It,” a 30-second ad that begins airing on broadcast and cable television stations in the Philadelphia area on Thursday.

Sitting on a stoop, Duke tells someone off camera, “When I look at Kamala, I look at my aunt. I mean, we’ve got this Black lady, strong, who stands on business, who means what she says, is relatable. I see the empathy, that’s just, like, in their heart, the nature of a female.”

As footage of Harris flashes on screen, he adds: “She shows a lot of empathy when she speaks. Her actions — Kamala’s strong, she’s powerful. She stern, she means everything that she says. This November, I’m standing with Kamala.”

The ad is set to air during local broadcasts of Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball games, and during local cable ad breaks during TNT coverage of NBA games and its popular “Inside the NBA” pregame show, as well as on networks popular with Black viewers, including BET, OWN, and VH1. The ad is part of an ongoing $370 million national ad campaign that stretches from Labor Day to Election Day.

Read more here. 

As Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies continue to attack a ballot proposal aimed at enshrining abortion rights in the state Constitution, his administration pushed back in a legal battle about the state’s efforts to block a television ad supporting the measure.

Attorneys for the administration on Tuesday filed a document accusing the Floridians Protecting Freedom political committee, which is sponsoring what appears as Amendment 4 on the November ballot, of “intentionally spreading false factual information” about a state law restricting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

Floridians Protecting Freedom filed the federal lawsuit after the state Department of Health sent threatening letters to television stations running the commercial, which the department said posed a public “health nuisance.”

Read more from CBS Miami here. 

In the final stretch before the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on a three-state tour across battleground states to court swing voters — with a particular focus on those who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year. 

Harris’ pitch was remarkably similar to the foreign policy warning about Trump that Haley delivered when she was a presidential candidate.

“If Donald Trump were president, Vladimir Putin will be sitting in Kyiv — and understand what that would mean for America and our standing around the world,” Harris told Oakland County voters in Michigan on Monday. Claiming Trump would surrender Ukraine to Russia, Harris added, “that is signaling to the President of Russia he can get away with what he has done. Look at the map. Poland would be next.”  

Read more here. 

— Nidia Cavazos and Caitlin Huey-Burns

The number of registered Hispanic voters has doubled in the U.S. in recent years, and Latinos are the largest and fastest growing minority groups in the country while also being among the most diverse, meaning how Harris and Trump fare in the presidential election could come down to this electorate.

“CBS Mornings Plus” co-hosts Adriana Diaz and Tony Dokoupil looked at a poll Thursday conducted earlier this month by The New York Times and Siena College, which estimated a majority of the Hispanic electorate will support Harris for president, while 37% will support Trump. Hispanic voters, according to those figures, will skew toward the Democratic nominee overall, albeit by a smaller estimated margin than in 2020 or 2016. 

And, as Diaz pointed out, polling data from August indicates most Mexican and Puerto Rican Americans support Harris while most Cuban Americans support Trump. CBS News political analyst and Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez said this election will be the first in 40 years where Republicans are “competitive” with Democrats in pursuit of the Latino vote. 

“What I’d be watching is, is Donald Trump going to reach over that 40%?” Sanchez said of the steps each campaign can take to target Hispanic voters who can still be swayed. “On the Harris side, it’s turning out those urban areas, particularly Latinas. That’s the growth and the steadfast nature of the Democratic Party.”

Watch the full segment here or in the player above. 

Trump called his ability to divide people a “gift” when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump “why do you destabilize people this way?” during an appearance on his show.

“Well, it’s a gift,” Trump said. “It’s something maybe less than a gift, but it’s one way or the other, because I have a tendency to win. It’s a nice thing that bothers people. Sometimes I play a little bit rough, but they play rough. They are rough and vicious people. They are vicious people. They are dirty people.”

Trump insisted Democrats hate him because he wins, but when Hewitt pushed that Ronald Reagan had big wins and wasn’t so hated, Trump said it was a “personality type” because Reagan was a “softer person.”

On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday morning, Trump said he would fire special counsel Jack Smith “in two seconds” if elected.

When Hewitt asked if Trump would pardon himself or fire Smith, who has overseen the investigation into whether Trump subverted the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

“it’s so easy,” Trump answered. “It’s so easy. Jack, he’s a crooked person. We had a brave, brilliant judge in Florida. She’s a brilliant judge, by the way, I don’t know. I never spoke to her. Never spoke.”

Half of the eight battleground states in this year’s U.S. presidential election use the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a rate that hasn’t changed since 2009 despite a 47% surge in the cost of living since then. In essence, that means minimum-wage workers in those states have seen much of their purchasing power vaporized by inflation over the past 15 years. 

Donald Trump’s October 20 visit to a McDonald’s location in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, where the former president served food to pre-selected supporters, has renewed public attention on how much low-income workers earn. Asked by CBS News reporter Olivia Rinaldi if he thought the minimum wage should be raised after spending time behind the counter at the fast-food restaurant, Trump sidestepped the question. 

“Well, I think this. I think these people work hard. They’re great,” he said. “And I just saw something a process. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing to see. These are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs, and it’s good and great people working here too.”

Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the former president’s views on the minimum wage. 

Read more here. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to hold a campaign event Thursday in Georgia, which former President Barack Obama and the singer Bruce Springsteen will also attend. 

Springsteen’s involvement marks the first of several concerts taking place along Harris’ campaign trail, which are part of a series her campaign has called “When We Vote We Win.” The series will touch all seven battleground states, starting in Atlanta and moving next to Philadelphia on Monday.  Obama and Springsteen are both set to appear at Monday’s event, too, a senior campaign official told CBS New Philadelphia.

Former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump before retiring in 2022,  told The Detroit News on Thursday that he’s backing Harris in the 2024 presidential election. 

 Upton, who represented Michigan for more than three decades in the House and worked alongside Walz, said Trump is “totally unhinged.”

“We don’t need this chaos,” he told The Detroit News. “We need to move forward, and that’s why I’m where I am.”

Upton also told The New York Times that he cast his ballot for Harris, noting that it marked the first time he has supported a Democrat for president. 

Vice President Kamala Harris shared where she stands on key political issues at her CNN town hall on Wednesday night, with her positions on immigration and the United States’ approach to conflict in the Middle East being some of the event’s most notable takeaways. Harris also assured her administration would take a different approach to policies than the current one under President Biden, although she did not offer many specifics. 

Moderator Anderson Cooper pressed Harris on her views about immigration, an issue that has recurred in Republican attacks on her presidential campaign. Harris criticized the border wall proposed by former President Donald Trump during his time in office but did not respond directly when asked if she supports continuing that project now.

“I want to strengthen our border,” she said, pledging to push through a bipartisan bill focused on border security, which calls for $650 million initially earmarked under Trump.

Harris also commented on war in the Middle East, after an undecided voter asked how she plans to protect Palestinian civilians. The Democratic nominee called the death toll “unconscionable” and said she believes there is an opportunity to end Israel’s war with Hamas now that Yahya Sinwar has been killed.

As for how her policies would deviate from President Biden’s, Harris said she embodies “a new generation of leadership” in this country.

“My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration,” she said. “I will bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience.”