EDINA, Minn. — Hennepin County officials say there is no evidence of tampering after a photo was posted to social media showing an open, unattended vehicle full of ballots.
“Do these ballots look secure to you,” the tweet said, garnering over 1,000 likes.
A spokesperson for Hennepin County said on Saturday that the county and courier have taken corrective actions to prevent a recurrence, and the driver has been terminated.
“Election security is of utmost importance, and leaving ballots unattended is simply unacceptable,” Hennepin County Auditor Daniel Rogan said. “Hennepin County is reinforcing its transfer protocols with county staff and vendors. An incident like this underscores the value of strong chain-of-custody processes, so that risk can be addressed and integrity can be verified.”
Hennepin County reports all expected ballots have been accounted for and found no evidence of tampering with sealed transfer cases. Individual ballots were also inspected and staff determined all were received in sealed condition. Both inspections are routine election integrity processes.
The vehicle contained ballots that were picked up from other cities before coming to Edina, according to the city.
Riley Moser is a digital producer who covers breaking news and feature stories for CBS Minnesota. Riley started her career at CBS Minnesota in June 2022 and earned an honorable mention for sports writing from the Iowa College Media Association the same year.
Vice President Kamala Harris turned to star power Saturday on the campaign trail, as she held events with musicians Lizzo and Usher in Michigan and Georgia, while former President Donald Trump rallied in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania.
At a rally in Atlanta, Harris said that Trump was “cruel” for how he talked about the grieving family of a Georgia mother who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her complications from an abortion pill, as she put combating restrictions on reproductive care at the center of her pitch to voters.
Harris blamed Amber Thurman’s death on Georgia’s abortion restrictions that took effect after the Supreme Court in 2022, with three Trump-appointed justices, overturned Roe v. Wade. It comes as Harris is looking to the issue to propel support to Democrats, who have pledged to restore a national right to abortion if they win the White House and enough seats in Congress.
“Donald Trump still refuses to take accountability, to take any accountability, for the pain and the suffering he has caused,” Harris said.
Thurman’s story features at the center of one of Harris’ closing campaign ads, and her family attended her Atlanta rally, with her mother holding a photo of her daughter from the audience. Harris showed a clip of Trump saying during a recent Fox News Channel town hall, when he was asked about the Thurman family joining a separate media call, “We’ll get better ratings, I promise.”
Early voting is also underway in Georgia. More than 1.2 million ballots have been cast, either in person or by mail. Democrats hope an expansive organizing effort will boost Harris against Trump in the campaign’s final weeks. Harris referenced that former President Jimmy Carter recently voted by mail days after his 100th birthday.
“If Jimmy Carter can vote early, you can too,” Harris said.
Harris was joined at the rally by hometown music icon Usher, drawing again on star power as she looks to excite voters to the polls. Earlier Saturday she appeared with Lizzo in the singer’s hometown of Detroit, marking the beginning of in-person voting and lavishing the city with praise after Trump recently disparaged it.
“All the best things were made in Detroit. Coney Dogs, Faygo and Lizzo,” the singer joked to a rally crowd, pointing to herself after listing off the hot dogs and soda that the city is famous for.
Heaps of praise for the Motor City came after Trump insulted it during a recent campaign stop. And Harris continued the theme, saying of her campaign, “Like the people of Detroit, we have grit, we have excellence, we have history.”
More than 1 million Michigan residents have already voted by mail in the Nov. 5 election, and Harris predicted that Detroit turnout for early voting would be strong.
She slammed Trump as unstable: “Somebody just needs to watch his rallies, if you’re not really sure how to vote.”
“We’re not going to get these 17 days back. On Election Day, we don’t want to have any regrets,” the vice president said.
Lizzo also told the crowd, “Mrs. Commander-in-Chief has a nice ring to it.”
“This is the swing state of all swing states, so every last vote here counts,” the singer said. Then, referencing her song of the same title, Lizzo added, “If you ask me if America is ready for its first woman president, I only have one thing to say: “It’s about damn time!”
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign had suggested he would begin previewing his closing argument Saturday night with Election Day barely two weeks away. But the former president kicked off his rally with a detailed story about Arnold Palmer, at one point even praising the late, legendary golfer’s genitalia.
Trump was campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father, who suffered from polio and was head pro and greenskeeper at the local country club.
Politicians saluting Palmer in his hometown is nothing new. But Trump spent 12 full minutes doing so at the top of his speech and even suggested how much more fun the night would be if Palmer, who died in 2016, could join him on stage.
“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man.”
Then he went even further.
“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters before the speech that Trump planned to preview his closing argument against Harris and “start to get into that framing.”
Trump eventually hit many of his favorite campaign themes but didn’t offer much in the way of new framing of the race or why he should win it. He instead boasted of creating strong tax policies and a strong military during his first term in office.
He slammed Harris as “crazy” and added a profanity.
“You have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore, we can’t stand you anymore, you’re a s— vice president,” Trump said to roars of the crowd. “The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here.”
He also criticized Harris for suggesting during her unsuccessful run for president in 2020 that she’d support a ban on hydraulic fracking, which is important to Pennsylvania’s economy and a position Harris’ campaign says she no longer supports.
Trump invited on stage members of a local steelworkers union that endorsed him. He donned a construction hat with his name on it.
“He said, ‘It’s incredible what’s happened,’” Trump said of the Netanyahu call before moving to a criticism of President Joe Biden, saying that the Israeli prime minister “wouldn’t listen to Biden.”
A judge on Friday unsealed more than 1,800 pages of documents in the federal 2020 election interference case against former President Donald Trump. Much of the unsealed documents, including interview transcripts and court hearings, remain heavily redacted. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane has the details.
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Supporters of Proposition 36 say it will force people into treatment and get them off the street. Opponents, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, argue that it will fill up jails and mark a return to the 1980s war on drugs.
CBS News California took a closer look at the drug component of the high-profile ballot measure to fact-check those claims and analyze the concerns.
Will Proposition 36 revive drug treatment courts?
To understand this debate, you must go back ten years to November 2014 when California voters passed a different ballot measure: Proposition 47.
Proposition 47 made hard drug possession a misdemeanor instead of a felony and, along with other reforms like Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 57, helped reduce the state’s prison population. End-of-year data from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation show that from December 2014 to December 2023, California’s prison population dropped by more than 40,000.
However, court data suggests there were also unintended consequences. CBS News California analyzed county data from across the state and found a consistent drop in drug court participation after Proposition 47 was approved.
For instance, Sacramento County saw more than an 80% drop in drug court participation between 2015 and 2023. However, much of that drop came after the pandemic.
Yolo County’s drug court caseload dropped from 270 cases in 2015 to just three in 2023.
In Santa Clara County, drug court participation dropped so low that the county stopped tracking drug court cases and merged its drug court and mental health court.
While there is no reliable statewide drug court data, a 2020 survey from the Center for Court Innovation examined 67 drug courts in California. The average participation rate across those drug courts dropped from 51% to 39%.
Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan are among a growing number of high-profile elected Democrats going against Newsom to support the new treatment-mandated felonies for hard drug possession under Proposition 36.
Mahan and Ho say that when California slashed sentences for drug possession, it also reduced the incentive for people to choose court-supervised treatment instead of jail time.
“If you get arrested, it’s a cite-and-release for possession of drugs. It’s a misdemeanor,” Ho said. “And when the judge tells you, ‘You can get two or three days in jail or you can go to a treatment program that’s going to be a year long,’ what are you going to take?”
Under Proposition 36, the first two convictions for drug possession would still be misdemeanors. The third is a treatment-mandated felony, which means the charges would be dismissed if treatment is completed.
With a fourth conviction, a judge could issue a maximum three-year sentence, but only if someone is not eligible for treatment.
“It focuses on repeat offenders, and it allows a judge to give someone a choice between engaging in treatment or detoxing in jail,” Mahan said.
In a statement sent to CBS News California, the No on Proposition 36 campaign claimed that “22 counties have no residential treatment facilities,” echoing a statement made by Newsom in August.
We reached out to the Governor’s Office for clarification on what 22 counties he was talking about. They could not tell us, and instead, we received a link to California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) webinar slides from January 2022, based on information collected during the pandemic, which, according to the state, referenced 22 counties not participating in a specific drug delivery program.
The DHCS said it can confirm that “all but 15 counties (Alpine, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Imperial, Inyo, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono, Plumas, Sierra, Siskiyou, Trinity)” currently have state-licensed residential treatment facilities, and in those counties, “clinics, health facilities, community and residential care facilities, jails and prisons can also offer these services.”
“I also think the voters need to hold the state and county accountable for building the treatment capacity we need,” Mahan said.
Soto DeBerry’s criticisms of Proposition 36 include that there is no funding attached to the ballot measure or a mandate to create sufficient treatment options.
Supporters of Proposition 36 point to a variety of funding sources ranging from Proposition 1’s mental health bonds to opioid settlement funds, but critics say that still won’t be enough.
Soto DeBerry also said that it often takes multiple attempts to successfully get an offender treatment, claiming that “under Prop 36, they won’t get a second chance; they’ll be sent to prison.”
“A person shall not be sentenced to jail or prison pursuant to this section unless a court determines that the person is not eligible or suitable for treatment…”
That brings us back to the governor’s argument that Proposition 36 is about mass incarceration.
For context, there are currently around 90,000 people in state prisons. At its peak in 2006, there were over 170,000 people incarcerated, according to CDCR data.
Getting arrested saved his life
On graduation day in Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Larry Brown’s mental health court, Cesar, whose last name we are omitting, had plenty to smile about.
Cesar was arrested in Sacramento County, which has a robust system of “Collaborative Courts” — including drug court and mental health court — and related treatment programs. While in treatment, his case worker helped find him housing and work.
“I was homeless,” he said. “Nothing would stop me from getting high.”
Cesar attended all of his court-mandated treatment appointments. Completing his program resulted in his conviction being erased.
“I got a second chance in life,” he said.
Cesar’s story is a powerful example of the potential of California’s treatment courts.
“I didn’t know another life until I got arrested,” Cesar said. “And I quit cold turkey. Now, I’m sober. Now, I see how a real man feels.”
Proposition 36 supporters point to stories like Cesar’s in their argument that it will result in more people receiving treatment and getting off the streets.
Julie Watts is a national-award-winning investigative correspondent for CBS News, covering California. Her investigations, Capitol accountability reports, and solutions-oriented journalism air weekly on CBS stations across California.
Former President Donald Trump attended a Univision town hall with Latino voters a week after the television station held a similar event with Vice President Kamala Harris. Town hall moderator Enrique Acevedo joins “The Daily Report” to explain its value and the top issues discussed.
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Over the last few years, elections for public education officials have gone from overlooked and low-profile to heated and politicized affairs, a shift that’s due in large part to conservatives increasingly eyeing schools as places where they can wield significant influence and enact a specific agenda.
Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that popped up in Florida during the COVID pandemic and has since campaigned nationwide for a variety of conservative causes, is a significant driver of this shift. The so-called “parental rights” organization has thrown its support behind school board candidates across the country who have gone on to ban books, pass policies that hurt LGBTQ+ kids, and limit what teachers can do and say in their classrooms.
In 2022, more than half of the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their races, with those in Florida seeing particular success. But the following year, the group’s high-profile attempts in Pennsylvania were largely a dud.
This year, the group said it has identified 77 candidates for endorsements but has not publicly released the list.
“We continue to strive to have all voters across the country engage in their local school board elections and get to know the candidates because we know that change happens at the local level,” Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in an emailed statement to HuffPost. “We have seen an incredible win rate the past two years that shows the power of our grassroots organization and we are excited to see that same kind of win rate this year.”
But even as the group keeps a lower public profile than it has during previous elections, its impact is clear. Across the country, far-right extremists are looking to get on school boards and reshape public schooling.
The blueprint for a right-wing, Moms for Liberty-style candidate has been made, and conservatives are following it. These candidates typically rail against “critical race theory,” a college-level academic framework for understanding structural racism that has been co-opted by conservatives to mean talking about race at all and making white people feel uncomfortable. They falsely claim books about gender or sexual identity are inherently pornographic. They may smear teachers as groomers, and make sure transgender children are targeted and ostracized at school.
Parental rights and fighting to keep trans kids from playing sports are now Republican talking points at all levels of government.
“The work of Moms for Liberty hasn’t been as visible. But the rhetoric they use and their candidates are very much visible,” Tamika Walker Kelly, the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, told HuffPost.
In blue, red, and purple states alike, this election is shaping up to have dozens of hotly contested school board races that feature right-wing candidates going up against their more liberal counterparts and hoping to shape the next generation of public school students.
North Carolina
There is perhaps no state where more is on the line for public education than North Carolina. Some of the largest school districts in the state could end up with an ultraconservative majority, and the Republican candidate for the top statewide educational role attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol and has no experience in education.
The Wake County school board, the state’s largest school system, is at the epicenter of the fight for North Carolina’s schools. Five of the board’s nine seats are up for grabs.
This isn’t the first time right-wingers have tried to influence Wake County schools. In 2009, after a Tea Party takeover of the school board led to the erosion of long-term integration policies, the Democrats took action and have managed to keep the school board liberal for the last decade and a half.
But now, Republicans in Wake County are trying to make inroads in the schools again. Conservative activists have tried banning books in the county and recently ginned up a moral panic about sexually explicit content in schools after a high school student claimed a book she read in class was inappropriate. (The book in question was “Tomorrow Is Too Far” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which depicts a relationship between cousins and has the line “he tried to fit what you both called his banana into what you both called your tomato.”)
To Democrats, the GOP vision is clear. “Their goal is to make public schools go away,” Kevyn Creech, the chair of the Wake County Democrats, told HuffPost. “They want to get rid of the Department of Education, make everything religious, and privatize it all.”
Democratic leaders are particularly worried because a Republican win for state superintendent, coupled with GOP victories at the county level, could create the perfect storm.
The state superintendent for public instruction oversees more than 2,500 schools in North Carolina and an $11 billion budget. The race is between Democrat Mo Green, the former superintendent of Guilford County schools, and Republican Michele Morrow, who homeschooled her own children.
After defeating the Republican incumbent in March, Morrow made headlines when CNN discovered that she had attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with her children. (There is no evidence that she entered the Capitol building or committed any crimes.) She has also called for the execution of prominent Democrats and made a video saying former President Donald Trump should use the U.S. military to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020.
Morrow ran for school board in Wake County in 2022 and lost by 20 points. As a candidate for superintendent, she has lobbed homophobic and transphobic attacks at Green and vowed to rid the state’s schools of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and censor what teachers can say in the classroom.
Educators believe that a Morrow win will set the state’s schools on a dark path.
“Morrow and her extremist agenda will push our public schools further behind,” Walker Kelly said. “We will continue to see the further underfunding and disrespect of our public school system.”
The state superintendent would work closely with the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly — meaning Morrow could wield influence over the schools and usher in her extremist agenda, which centers white conservative Christian ideology.
“As a department of the state, there’s still enough power to do damage to public schools,” Walker Kelly said.
South Carolina
In South Carolina, the school board race in Berkeley County, a Charleston suburb, is shaping up to feature right-wing candidates looking to further entrench a Moms for Liberty-style agenda against a slate of candidates who have branded themselves as the “education over politics” group. Five of the board’s nine seats are up for grabs.
Moms for Liberty has already made its mark in the county. In 2022, six of the new board members were endorsed by the group. One of their first actions was to fire the superintendent and ban critical race theory.
At a school board meeting, she said the books she challenged were “unconstitutional and ungodly.”
“Why is it acceptable to make choices for my child, choices I’m not included in, choices I do not agree with?” she said. Board members told Davenport was free to opt her child out of any material she found objectionable.
Maryland
Further north in Maryland, there’s yet another school board race with at least one extreme candidate.
In Anne Arundel County, home to the state’s capital of Annapolis, all seven seats on the board are open. One candidate, Chuck Yocum, is running on parental rights and barring transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. His campaign website features a long screed about how public schools used to be good but have been ruined by teachers unions and the creation of the Department of Education.
“Unions, once held in high regard as fighting for fairness are fighting to take parents rights and put biological males in female locker rooms and sports,” he wrote. “Something that until about five minutes ago would have gotten a young man arrested. Now, it’s encouraged.”
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Two months before Election Day, a photo of singer Elton John in a pink coat with the letters “MAGA” on it surfaced on social media, suggesting the global superstar had endorsed former President Donald Trump.
But the photo wasn’t real. It’s the latest in a series of images and videos created using artificial intelligence that aim to dupe viewers into thinking their favorite celebrities have endorsed political candidates.
Stars including Will Smith and Taylor Swift have also had their likeness used to falsely claim they are supporting Trump in the upcoming presidential election.
When Swift publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in an Instagram post, she referenced AI-generated images that falsely suggested she had endorsed Trump, adding that the incident “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
An AI-generated video of Will Smith and Chris Rock, which amassed over 700,000 views on X, showed the stars eating large plates full of spaghetti with Trump.
How to identify AI-generated images
There are three main ways to tell if an image or video has been AI-generated or manipulated, Claire Leibowicz, head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the nonprofit technology coalition The Partnership on AI, told CBS News.
The first way is to look for airbrushing, smudging or “things that defy the laws of physics,” Leibowicz said.
The second is to find any visual inconsistencies. In the case of the Elton John image, for example, the MAGA letters on his jacket were sewn across the lapels and his glasses were too close together.
The third way to find out if an image is real is to find the original source through reverse searching online. This can be done by taking a screenshot and uploading it to Google Lens or similar tools, and the results will show whether there’s a match out there, helping you verify where it came from.
“This is getting harder, and we’re [going to] need journalists and other experts to really be helping us authenticate content.”
A poll conducted by the Polarization Research Lab in March found that nearly 50% of Americans believe AI will make elections worse, about 30% are unsure and 20% believe AI will improve the election process.
Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness.org, a global nonprofit that uses video and technology to protect human rights, told CBS News, “Most of the information that will mislead us around the elections is likely to be powerful leaders telling lies or misrepresenting the truth in public.”
The Department of Homeland Security released a bulletin in May warning the public of the challenges AI can create for the November presidential election, saying the “timing of election-specific AI-generated media can be just as critical as the content itself, as it may take time to counter-message or debunk the false content permeating online.”
Erielle Delzer is a verification producer for CBS News Confirmed. She covers misinformation, AI and social media. Contact Erielle at erielle.delzer@cbsnews.com.
Princeville, North Carolina — On a single-lane road in Eastern North Carolina, surrounded by farmland, the congregation at Mark Chapel Baptist Church listens to a sermon on faith — and the importance of their vote as part of the “Black Belt,” a stretch of majority-Black congressional districts in the South.
The 1st Congressional District hasn’t elected a Republican since 1883, and African Americans have represented the district since 1992, but this year, that could change.
Residents here find themselves in a new political reality. The key swing state has 16 electoral votes at stake, and though a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since 2008, the margins for Republicans have diminished in the past two elections. Donald Trump won in 2016 by 3.6 points and in 2020, just eked out a win over Joe Biden by 1.3 points. The First District has the state’s only competitive congressional race after North Carolina’s redistricting.
Currently, there are seven Democrats and seven Republicans in North Carolina’s congressional delegation. The new map is expected to result in 10 Republicans and three Democrats, with the 1st District a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report.
On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited East Carolina University in Pitt County, which was redistricted out of the Democratic-leaning 1st Congressional District to the 3rd Congressional District, which is expected to elect a Republican. The 1st District’s incumbent Democratic Rep. Don Davis, spoke shortly before Harris took the stage.
Rep. Don Davis takes the stage to speak at a rally with Vice President Kamala Harris at East Carolina University on Oct. 13, 2024.
CBS News
“The young man who’s now in the 1st Congressional District went in on the old map,” said former Rep. Eva Clayton, who used to represent the district. “Now he’s doing the new map, and that’s — he’s having some challenges.”
The 1st Congressional District is home to some of the oldest Black communities in the U.S. and a centuries-long legacy of political organizing. Princeville is the oldest town chartered by African Americans in the country, formed at the end of the Civil War. In nearby Warren County, a 1982 protest is credited with originating the term “environmental justice.” The district is also home to Soul City, a utopian project inspired by the 1970s civil rights movement.
Princeville has suffered frequent flooding that has threatened residents for decades. One of Mayor Bobbie Jones’ biggest challenges has been protecting the historic town from increasingly severe flooding.
“It makes me feel disenchanted, frustrated, but by the same token, it’s the hand that we’ve been dealt,” Jones told CBS News. “There’s nothing we can do about that outside of moving, and that’s not an option.”
The historic town of Princeville, North Carolina. October 2024. Princeville is the oldest town chartered by African Americans in the country.
CBS News
Princeville has benefited from the Biden administration’s focus on climate infrastructure. In 2024, the town was awarded $11 million to build flood reduction infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding is also part of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which aims to give 40% of federal climate grants to disadvantaged communities like Princeville.
And this year, Jones is seeing his community invigorated in ways he hasn’t seen in over a decade.
“I’m excited to see the enthusiasm from our young people who want to vote and who are talking about voting. I haven’t heard this a lot lately, since President Obama,” Jones told CBS News.
In nearby Warren County, community leaders focus on teaching younger generations about historical political movements that began in their backyards. Rev. Bill Kearney’s family lived next to a landfill where the federal government dumped PCB chemicals. In the 1980s, protesters gathered at the nearby Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church to march to the landfill to protest the adverse effects of dumping toxic soil in a majority-Black community. Five hundred people were arrested, and the protest is considered to be the beginning of environmental justice as a movement.
“They’re about two or three generations moved from that, and they’re looking somewhere else for heroes, and we got so many heroes right here who are doing great things,” Kearney told CBS News.
The PCB protests also propelled change in race relations. Wayne Mosely, who is White, marched in the protests and believes it changed the political landscape of the county.
“You rarely saw Blacks and Whites socializing together, but this is the first time I had ever known Blacks and Whites to eat together, join hands, march together, sing together,” he told CBS News.
He believes the protests represented a turning point, when the predominantly Black county began electing more Black elected officials, including Clayton.
Clayton, the first Black woman elected to Congress from North Carolina, was elected in 1992. She believes turnout in the Black Belt’s rural Black communities, which have been overlooked by Democratic campaigns in the past, is key to winning both the1st District and the state for a Democratic presidential candidate.
“You can’t do it just on the urban front,” she said. “You should not ignore that the Blacks who are in rural areas are there.”
Former Rep. Eva Clayton of North Carolina speaks to Taurean Small. October 2024.
CBS News
Across rural Eastern North Carolina, organizations, like Woke Vote, a nonprofit working to increase voter turnout and community engagement in politics, are working to get out the vote.
One Sunday this summer, the group paid a visit to Mark Chapel Baptist Church to speak to the community. Tilda Whitaker-Bailey, Edgecombe County Lead at Woke Vote, helped register voters and inform them about the identification they’ll need to vote and a plan to get to the polls.
“They are waking up to the fact that they need to get involved,” she said. “They need to do something to change those numbers. They are aware that they haven’t shown up well because they haven’t gotten the results that they want to see.”
As a result, church leaders have been urging their congregants to register. Some, like Pastor Douglas Leonard at Mark Chapel, are coordinating transportation.
“We just want to educate folk on the importance of voting, how significant it is, and why we as people of color should always go to the polls,” he told CBS News. “So many of our ancestors even died that we will have the right to vote, and we don’t want their death to be in vain.”
After Georgia voters began heading to the polls Tuesday for the first day of early voting in the state, a judge enjoined election officials from moving forward with a controversial new rule that would require the hand counting of ballots when polls close on Nov. 5.
Judge Robert McBurney called the rule “too much, too late.”
The judge expressed concern that the “11th-and-one-half hour implementation of the hand count rule” would lessen public confidence in the election results. Thousands of poll workers would be handling and counting ballots “in a manner unknown and untested in the era of ballot scanning devices,” without time for uniform training, McBurney wrote.
“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy. Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public,” McBurney wrote.
The judge wrote that there was “a substantial threat of irreparable harm,” if the hand count rule were to be implemented for the upcoming election.
Lee County poll workers Debbie Jack (L) and Donna Mathis (R) practice counting ballots as part of new election hand count rules instituted by the Georgia State Election Board, in Leesburg, Georgia, on Oct. 2, 2024.
BECCA MILFELD/AFP via Getty Images
The hand count rule and others were passed in September by the five-person State Election Board on a 3-2 vote, pushed through by a trio of supporters of former President Donald Trump. The rule would require precinct poll managers and poll officers to unseal ballot boxes and count the ballots by hand individually to ensure the tallies match the machine-counted ballot totals.
Multiple lawsuits were filed by local and national officials, and the new rules drew criticisms from members of both parties, including Georgia’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state.
The election board in Cobb County asked a judge to strike down the new rules, which also include other new requirements for the ballot counting process.
McBurney wrote that with Election Day around the corner, “there are no guidelines or training tools for the implementation” of the rule.
The Cobb County board argued in its complaint that the new rules would “substantially alter Georgia’s election procedures on the eve of” the election. During a hearing on Tuesday, an attorney for the board asked for a temporary restraining order, saying it was too late to adequately adjust staffing and training. He added that such rules are usually implemented in years without major elections.
Lawyers arguing for the Cobb County board pointed to a Sept. 19 memorandum in which Georgia’s attorney general concluded that changing rules so close to an election could “result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls.”
An attorney arguing for the state board told McBurney that and other concerns amounted to a “hypothetical, on top of conjectures, on top of speculation.”
The state board argued on Tuesday that it would not be difficult to train election workers for the new rules.
Democrats quickly lauded the decision Tuesday.
“From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it. We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count,” said Vice President Kamala Harris’ Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks, Democratic National Committee co-executive director Monica Guardiola and Rep. Nikema Williams, who is chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, in a joint statement.
It’s a busy week of election cases for McBurney, who on Monday issued a ruling concluding that election officials are required under Georgia law to certify election results even if they have concerns about fraud. He wrote that if such concerns arise, their job is to forward those concerns to law enforcement.
McBurney, who presided over the Georgia special purpose grand jury that in 2023 voted to recommend Trump be indicted for seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 results, is also overseeing a similar case brought by the national and state Democratic parties challenging the rules.
A hearing in that case is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at KatesG@cbsnews.com or grahamkates@protonmail.com
After Georgia voters began heading to the polls Tuesday for the first day of early voting in the state, a judge enjoined election officials from moving forward with a controversial new rule that would require the hand counting of ballots after polls close on Nov. 5.
The hand count rule and others were passed in September by the five-person State Election Board on a 3-2 vote, pushed through by a trio of supporters of former President Donald Trump. The rule would require precinct poll managers and poll officers to unseal ballot boxes and count the ballots by hand individually to ensure the tallies match the machine-counted ballot totals.
Multiple lawsuits were filed by local and national officials, and the new rules drew criticisms from members of both parties, including Georgia’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state.
The election board in Cobb County asked a judge to strike down the new rules, which also include other new requirements for the ballot counting process.
Judge Robert McBurney wrote Tuesday that “the hand count rule is too much, too late.” McBurney wrote that with Election Day around the corner, “there are no guidelines or training tools for the implementation” of the rule.
The Cobb County board argued in its complaint that the new rules would “substantially alter Georgia’s election procedures on the eve of” the election. During a hearing on Tuesday, an attorney for the board asked for a temporary restraining order, saying it was too late to adequately adjust staffing and training. He added that such rules are usually implemented in years without major elections.
Lee County poll workers Debbie Jack (L) and Donna Mathis (R) practice counting ballots as part of new election hand count rules instituted by the Georgia State Election Board, in Leesburg, Georgia, on Oct. 2, 2024.
BECCA MILFELD/AFP via Getty Images
Lawyers arguing for the Cobb County board pointed to a Sept. 19 memorandum in which Georgia’s attorney general concluded that changing rules so close to an election could “result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls.”
An attorney arguing for the state board told McBurney that and other concerns amounted to a “hypothetical, on top of conjectures, on top of speculation.”
The state board argued on Tuesday that it would not be difficult to train election workers for the new rules.
Democrats quickly lauded the decision Tuesday.
“From the beginning, this rule was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome, and our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it. We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count,” said Vice President Kamala Harris’ Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks, Democratic National Committee co-executive director Monica Guardiola and Rep. Nikema Williams, who is chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, in a joint statement.
It’s a busy week of election cases for McBurney, who on Monday issued a ruling concluding that election officials are required under Georgia law to certify election results even if they have concerns about fraud. He wrote that if such concerns arise, their job is to forward those concerns to law enforcement.
McBurney, who presided over the Georgia special purpose grand jury that in 2023 voted to recommend Trump be indicted for seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 results, is also overseeing a similar case brought by the national and state Democratic parties challenging the rules.
A hearing in that case is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at KatesG@cbsnews.com or grahamkates@protonmail.com
Arizona is one of the seven battleground states that will help determine the result of the 2024 presidential election. The state’s Senate race could also determine the balance of power in Congress and a ballot measure will decide the state’s abortion laws. Arizona Republic national political reporter Ron Hansen joins CBS News to discuss Arizonans’ top issues.
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In a California fundraiser hosted at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home Tuesday in Sacramento, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz advocated for doing away with the Electoral College system, stating that “we need a national popular vote.”
“I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go,” the Democratic vice presidential candidate said. “But that’s not the world we live in. So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada and win.”
The comments were immediately seized on by the Trump campaign and prominent Republicans, who accused Walz of attempting to throw the results of a victory by former President Donald Trump into question if Trump were to win in November.
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned if Walz was attempting to lay “the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?” in an X post.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign said that “Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket. He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”
Getting rid of the Electoral College is not a position the campaign holds, a campaign official said.
The comment from Walz, and the swift clarification, comes just days after he told Bill Whitaker on “60 Minutes” that his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, said he needs to be more careful when he speaks.
Since being thrust into the national spotlight, the Minnesota governor has faced scrutiny about his misrepresentations of his military status regarding when he retired from the Army National Guard as well as his whereabouts when pro-democracy protests broke out in China and Hong Kong in 1989.
“I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer. I will tell you that,” Walz told CBS News in a press gaggle last week.
The Electoral College was established by the Constitution, so changing it would require a Constitutional amendment. But calls to do so have gained traction in some Democratic circles, such as after 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes, but lost the electoral vote to Trump. The same occurred to former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, 63% of Americans favor the election being decided by who wins the popular vote, not the Electoral College system.
In the Electoral College system, there are a total of 538 electoral votes, divided among the states in a way that mirrors each state’s congressional delegation, with one vote allocated for each member of the House, plus two more for the two senators. Most states have a winner-take-all system, which means that all of the state’s electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.
“We need to roll an orange this weekend,” I texted the group chat of reporters that pack their lives into a suitcase and embeds with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, traveling across the country with the Democratic vice presidential candidate.
It’s a decades-old tradition stemming back to the days of late President Ronald Reagan. The press corps traveling with a candidate rolls an orange up the aisle of the campaign jet with a question written on it. An answer is written on the orange and then rolled back to reporters.
Continuing the tradition with an almost-out-of-ink Sharpie, reporters on Sunday embedded with Walz asked him who his dream dinner guest was.
I attempted to bowl the orange up the aisle of the Boeing 757-200, but it made it about halfway up the aisle and hit another passenger’s seat. I motioned for the passenger to roll the orange up further, and once he did, it was lost. Or so we thought.
On Monday night, the orange was returned to us in the press motorcade with Walz’s answer: “Bruce Springsteen.”
Words written on an orange by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz aboard a campaign flight on Oct. 7, 2024, in response to a question, also written on the orange, from press corps reporters about who is dream dinner guest would be.
CBS News
Walz has been open about his love of Springsteen’s music. In March 2023, he declared “Bruce Springsteen Day” in Minnesota.
Springsteen, a 20-time Grammy-winner, endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket last week in a video.
“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are committed to a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, political point of view or sexual identity,” Springsteen said. “That’s the vision of America that I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”
Reporters embedded with Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, did their own orange roll Tuesday.
“To Vance: Fave song?” they wrote.
“Led Zeppelin Ten Years Gone,” the orange read when it was swiftly returned, according to pool reports.
In what has been an intense presidential campaign, this was a tradition that gave reporters and candidates a chance to lighten things up.
Former President Donald Trump will rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday after an assassination attempt unfolded at his July 2024 rally there. Enhanced security measures were put in place, like trailers blocking the line of sight from the shed Thomas Crooks fired from. CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns and CBS News Pittsburgh reporter Jennifer Borrasso have the latest.
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has not endorsed Donald Trump, the financial giant said Friday after the former president claimed in a social media post that the executive, America’s most prominent banking industry leader, was supporting him.
“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone. He has not endorsed a candidate,” Joe Evangelisti, a spokesperson for the New York-based bank told CBS News in a statement.
The denial came after the Republican presidential nominee posted a screenshot on his Truth Social account falsely stating, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for president.”
Trump told NBC News he didn’t know about the post, which was still visible on his account as of 5:10 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seemingly coming from a verified account on X earlier in the day, the post swiftly drew attention from various pro-Trump accounts before Trump weighed in.
Before Trump won the Republican nomination for president, Dimon had expressed support for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley during the party’s primaries.
Friday’s Truth Social post is not the first in which Trump incorrectly suggested winning support from a high-profile person. The former president in August posted AI-generated images claiming that Taylor Swift was backing him. The superstar endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris, a few weeks later.
MINNEAPOLIS — A campaign ad from Republican congressional candidate Joe Teirab is making waves in Minnesota’s 2nd District race.
That ad blames Democratic Representative Angie Craig for a series of problems from inflation to corruption — but is it true?
As the former Marine and federal prosecutor is jogging, he links three-term Democrat Angie Craig to skyrocketing inflation — and much more — with the number 20% projected on a building wall.
“Career politicians like Angie Craig are killing the American Dream,” Teirab says in the ad. “Skyrocketing inflation, open borders, insider deals and corruption.”
The 20% inflation claim is a whopper and it needs context.
U.S. inflation did not hit 20%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. It did reach a painful 9.1% one month in 2022 following the pandemic. It is now 2.5%.
Consumer prices did climb about 20% in the last four years compared to around 8% under former President Trump.
In the ad, Teirab calls Craig a career politician.
“Now, I’m running for Congress because career politicians like Angie Craig,” he says in the ad.
Craig is not a career politician by almost any definition. She has served six years in Congress. Before that, she was a longtime business executive in Minnesota.
“Open borders” is a derogatory political phrase aimed at Democrats.
It is not a policy and it is false to say Craig is in favor of no security measures at the border.
Illegal border crossings are a serious problem and Craig has voted with Republicans for tougher enforcement.
The Teirab ad also links Craig to “insider deals” and “corruption.”
Craig has never been accused of either and it is false to suggest that she has.
With Election Day just a few weeks away, longtime church members Lucky Hartunian and Janie Booth sat outside the Revival Christian Fellowship’s sanctuary in Menifee, inviting congregants to register to vote.
The women urged those streaming into the evangelical church’s Saturday morning, civic engagement event to “make their voices heard as Christians.” After mail-in ballots go out statewide, Booth and Hartunian will be among church volunteers collecting completed, sealed ballots and dropping them off at the county office the next day.
It’s a practice known as ballot gathering – or ballot harvesting — that’s been a source of national controversy over the years.
Booth said her task is a big responsibility, but she’s not nervous.
“A lot of people don’t trust the mail,” she said. “So I feel honored and privileged to do this. I’m doing this for my kids and grandkids.”
Revival Fellowship volunteers Janie Booth, left, and Lucky Harutunian register voters during a Comeback California Tour event, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in Menifee, Calif. (AP Photo/Zoë Meyers)
Dramatic Change of Course
Conservative voters who have been skeptical of mail voting and ballot gathering – a strategy often used by Democrats – are now warming up to it. Evangelical Christians, in particular, are embracing it this year.
Leading conservative figures Charlie Kirk and Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump have called on Christians and conservatives to collect ballots. Megachurches like Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California are leading the charge, urging – even training – congregations to collect ballots. They praise it as a valuable tool to raise voter turnout and elect candidates who align with their views on issues such as abortion, transgender rights and immigration.
Robert Tyler, a California-based attorney who represents conservative churches and pastors, said he still believes “ballot harvesting and universal vote by mail creates opportunities for fraud.”
“But the rules of the game have changed,” he said. “Until the law changes, we have to get out and gather ballots like they are doing.”
To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in any state related to mail voting. Some isolated cases of potential fraud involving ballot collections have been caught and prosecuted.
Tyler’s comments reflect a dramatic change of course for conservatives, some of whom amplified rumors about mail ballots to explain Donald Trump’s 2020 loss. Republican leaders see it as necessary if they are to be competitive in an election this year that is likely to be decided by thin margins in a few swing states.
Trump has long criticized this voting method as rife with fraud — an unfounded assertion. Now he and other top GOP officials are encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail. The party has launched an effort to “correct the narrative” on mail voting to coax those who were turned off to it by Trump to reconsider for this year’s election.
The practice of ballot gathering – where individuals chosen by voters return mail-in ballots on their behalf – is legal in 35 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Rules vary, but in California, where there is no limit on how many ballots a single person can collect, a collector cannot be compensated and must turn in the ballot in person or by mail within three days of receiving it, or before polls close on Election Day.
Training churches to gather ballots
Gina Gleason, executive director of California-based Real Impact, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, said she saw how Southern California Democrats used this strategy to get their congressional candidate elected by a narrow margin in 2018. In 2020, her church began collecting ballots every Sunday in the weeks before Election Day.
Audience members pray with Pastor Jack Hibbs at a Comeback California Tour event at Revival Fellowship, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in Menifee, Calif. (AP Photo/Zoë Meyers)
“Voters handed their signed and sealed ballots to us,” she said. “We placed them in lock boxes and personally turned them over to the county offices where they needed to go.”
The initiative was somewhat successful in 2020, when the church collected about 6,000 ballots. In 2022, that number rose to over 13,000, Gleason said, adding that while most ballots were from church members and their families, some were from members of other churches who drove to Chino Hills to submit their ballots.
“This is the kind of impact we’re looking for that can flip school boards and make a difference in our communities by changing laws we don’t want to live under,” she said, citing a law signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to prevent schools from outing transgender and gay students to their parents. “We don’t want the government telling us what we can or cannot do when it comes to the health and safety of our children.”
When she trains church volunteers, Gleason includes key instructions, like making sure the outside envelope is filled out correctly and ballots are returned to the appropriate registrar’s office. Her church collects ballots from residents of Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California.
“And of course, no one should be electioneering or telling people whom or what to vote for,” she said.
Over the summer, Gleason trained more than 120 people from various churches who are now ready to collect ballots, including the one in Menifee. She and Pastor Jack Hibbs, who leads her church, have been traveling the state on their “Comeback California Tour” with the goal of “getting Christians energized and engaged.”
Conservative groups hope these initiatives will proliferate in other states. Timothy Head, executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a conservative political advocacy nonprofit, said ballot gathering is gaining traction among once reluctant churches in competitive states such as Nevada and Virginia. He calls it the “crawl, walk, run effect.”
“We expect it to significantly increase this time. … Every vote counts and every effort to maximize votes counts.”
Plus, churches are natural choices, he said.
Pastors John Miller, left, and Jack Hibbs pray at the closing of a Comeback California Tour event at Revival Fellowhip, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, in Menifee, Calif. (AP Photo/Zoë Meyers)
“Congregations gather at least once or twice a week. As long as they are not explicitly partisan, it is a great place where voters can get civically engaged.”
Hibbs spoke forcefully during the church event in Menifee, urging Christians to take a stand.
“That doesn’t mean I want a Christian nation,” he said. “I just want our country to be a place where a devout believer and an atheist have the same rights.”
He ended his discourse by telling his audience that Trump may have gotten a “little wiggly and wobbly on abortion,” and told them to “forget (Trump’s) rhetoric and shenanigans, the crazy and off-color talk.”
“Fewer children will die under Donald Trump than under Kamala Harris,” he said, referring to abortions. “So that’s how I’ll be voting.”
The audience burst into applause. One man yelled out: “Yeah, Trump.”
The issue of trust
Richard Hasen, who leads the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, said he is not aware of credible allegations of fraud involving ballot gathering. He would still prefer that states set limits on the number of ballots that can be collected.
“It’s low-risk, but not no-risk, and the fact we haven’t seen major problems is a good sign,” he said. “Still, any time people get together to vote, you want to make sure they are making free and fair choices – whether that place is a church, nursing home or union hall.”
Former Orange County Registrar Neal Kelley believes ballot gathering can help increase voting, but has not made a big dent on elections so far. He also is not too worried about ballot tampering, which is one concern critics have raised in the past regarding this practice.
“The general public doesn’t understand all the ways we have to determine that ballots have been tampered with,” he said. “We can tell when envelopes have been opened and resealed. If votes are being changed, we’ll see a pattern.”
Ada Briceno, chairperson of the Orange County Democratic Party, said ballot gathering allows more people to vote, especially in communities of color where people are working two or three jobs or may struggle with language issues.
“We want more people to have their voices heard, and this is just one more tool,” she said. “Republicans were the ones who were all upset about turning in mail-in ballots. And now they’re doing it. It’s just hypocritical.”
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference who has advised Trump, said he sees nothing wrong with churches gathering ballots.
“If other community groups are doing it, why not churches?” he said. “I have no doubt that churches will make sure everything is done legally and correctly because they have a higher level of accountability and that moral compass of integrity — more so than any community group.”
Progressive groups have also trusted churches to get the vote out, said Juan Sepulveda, political science professor at Trinity University in San Antonio. Among the groups that pioneered such initiatives was the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national interfaith network established in 1940 by a community organizer, a Catholic bishop and the Chicago Sun-Times’ founder.
“With the church, you have those natural bonds of trust,” Sepulveda said. “You didn’t have to create trust. It was already there.”
“We want reading, writing and arithmetic,” Trump said in a conversation about his plans for education reform if he wins the election next month. “Right now, you have mostly transgender. Everything’s transgender.”
“Some of these school programs, I looked at it the other night ― they’re destroying our country,” the former president added.
Trump prefaced his outrageous assertion ― yet another salvo in the culture wars ― by alluding to his plan to close the Department of Education and turn over education completely to the states. “And they’ll do great,” he said.
The Republican nominee noted that the U.S. spends more money per pupil than any other developed nation ― a claim that the data somewhat supports ― and yet is underperforming globally.
“We want school choice, but we have to get out of this Washington thing,” he said. “We’re gonna move it back to the states.”
The president has leaned on transphobia to characterize public schools as a breeding ground for extreme ideology on gender ― and his online plan for education reflects that.
Cutting federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children” is the top priority listed on that page.
The plan also lists “Keep men out of women’s sports” as a priority, another sign of the campaign’s embrace of transphobia.
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The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. We hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
Former President Donald Trump meandered Saturday through a list of grievances against Vice President Kamala Harris and other issues during an event intended to link his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings.
A day after Harris discussed immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump spoke to a crowd in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, about immigration. He blamed Harris for migrants committing crimes after entering the U.S. illegally, alleging she was responsible for “erasing our border.”
“I will liberate Wisconsin from the mass migrant invasion,” he said. “We’re going to liberate the country.”
The Republican nominee also intensified his personal attacks against Harris, insulting her as “mentally impaired” and a “disaster.”
“Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” Trump said. “Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.”
The personal attacks have been something of a trend for Trump since Harris entered the race. In July, Trump falsely questioned Harris’ racial identity during a panel with the National Association of Black Journalists.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said at the time. “So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”
When asked in an interview with CBS News last month if he believes the personal attacks will hurt him with voters, he responded, “No, I don’t think so.”
Trump, meanwhile, hopes frustration over illegal immigration will translate to votes in Wisconsin and other crucial swing states. The Republican nominee has denounced people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border as “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to stage the largest deportation operation in American history if elected. And polls show Americans believe Trump would do a better job than Harris on handling immigration.
Trump shifted from topic to topic so quickly that it was hard to keep track of what he meant at times. He talked about the two assassination attempts against him and blamed the U.S. Secret Service for not being able to hold a large outdoor rally instead of an event in a smaller indoor space. But he also offered asides about climate change, Harris’ father, how his beach body was better than President Biden’s, and a fly that was buzzing near him.
“I wonder where the fly came from,” he said. “Two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer. We can’t take it any longer.”
Trump repeatedly brought up Harris’ Friday event in Douglas, Arizona, where she announced a push to further restrict asylum claims beyond Biden’s executive order announced earlier this year. Harris denounced Trump’s handling of the border while president and his opposing a bipartisan border package earlier this year, saying Trump “prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
“I had to sit there and listen” to Harris last night Trump said, eliciting cheers. “And who puts it on? Fox News. They should not be allowed to put it on. It’s all lies. Everything she says is lies.”
Trump professed not to understand what Harris meant when she said he was responsible for taking children from their parents. Under his administration, border agents separated children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in a policy that was condemned globally as inhumane and one that Trump himself ended under pressure from his own party.
Harris, at a rally in San Francisco, told supporters there were “two very different visions for our nation” and voters see it “every day on the campaign trail.”
“Donald Trump is the same old tired show,” she said. “The same tired playbook we have heard for years.”
She said Trump was “a very unserious man.”
“However the consequences of putting him back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said.
The Harris campaign Saturday again challenged Trump to a second debate, this time in the form of a football-themed television ad. Following his Wisconsin rally, Trump traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game Saturday evening, and the Harris campaign premiered the ad during the game.
“Champions know its anytime, anyplace, but losers, they whine and waffle,” the ad’s narrator said.
MINNEAPOLIS — The vice presidential debate is Tuesday night. Gov. Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance will be in the spotlight in front of millions of people. Some analysts agree this debate could change who wins the November election between former President Trump and Vice President Harris.
“I think the main focus of JD Vance’s debate performance is going to be on Minnesota,” said Professor Larry Jacobs from the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. “It’s going to be on Tim Walz as governor as a proven radical liberal.”
Republican analyst Amy Koch says she wouldn’t normally consider a vice presidential debate to have a big impact, but she views this one differently. “The vice presidential candidates have been in the spotlight far more, particularly Vance,” Koch said.
She continued, saying Vance would have to make some amends and strides with female voters.
Democratic analyst Abou Amara says the independent voters could have a big sway in the election, and that’s where Walz’s focus should be.
“Walz is an everyday, regular guy,” Amara said. “He’s got to communicate in that way to reach some of those independents in the blue wall, and really contrast Vance as both extreme and elite.”
CBS News will host the only planned vice presidential debate between Vance and Walz on Tuesday, October 1 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS and CBS News 24/7. Download the free CBS News app for live coverage, post-debate analysis, comprehensive fact checks and more.
Esme Murphy, a reporter and Sunday morning anchor for WCCO-TV, has been a member of the WCCO-TV staff since December 1990. She is also a weekend talk show host on WCCO Radio. Born and raised in New York City, Esme ventured into reporting after graduating from Harvard University.
