US election: Trump, Harris rally in Milwaukee

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump hosted rallies just miles apart from each other on Friday in Milwaukee — Wisconsin's largest city. 

Democrat nominee Harris addressed a campaign rally in Milwaukee's West Allis suburb. 

She told the crowd that Trump is bad for the economy, health care and women's reproductive rights.

"We know who Donald Trump is," the Vice President  said. 

"This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, he is consumed with grievance and the man is out for unchecked power."

Harris was joined by rapper Cardi B on the stage . 

"Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?" Cardi B said, referring to Trump saying he'll protect women "whether they like it or not."

"Donny, don't," she said. "Please."

Republican candidate Donald Trump held a rally in downtown Milwaukee where he criticized the economy under Biden. 

He said that a US jobs published on Friday showing that employers added just 12,000 jobs in October, suggests that the Biden-Harris administration is failing on the economy.

"This is like a depression," Trump said. 

Trump was addressing the same venue where he earned the Republican Party nomination this summer and gave an acceptance speech following an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

A Pennsylvania court ordered the Erie County Board of Elections to offer new ballots for nearly 17,000 voters who did not receive them.

Judge David Ridge, who serves on the Erie County Court of Common Pleas, also ordered the county board of elections to extend early voting through November 4.

The state's Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against Erie County on Wednesday, challenging its failure to send out between 10,000 and 20,000 requested mail-in ballots.

In the lawsuit, the party said the failure led to "substantial delays and hardships in casting ballots" and potentially violated many electors' right to vote.

Separately on Friday, the US Supreme Court rejected a Republican bid to block counting provisional ballots cast by voters in Pennsylvania who make mistakes in their mail-in ballots.

Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler and Democratic National Committee spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin applauded the Supreme Court ruling in a statement.

"In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks," the statement read. " [Friday's] decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted."

With 19 Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania is considered the biggest of this election's seven swing states that will likely determine who wins the presidential election.

In 2020, President Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes, while Donald Trump won it in 2016.

A federal judge has returned to a Pennsylvania court a lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk's $1 million giveaways to registered US voters.

Musk went ahead with the lotteries while the lawsuit, filed by Philadelphia's chief prosecutor, was pending. He gave a Michigan man on Friday $1 million and said he would keep giving out the daily award until Election Day. 

The prosecutor, a Democrat, sued Musk and his pro-Trump political action committee (PAC) earlier this week, saying the giveaways were "an illegal lottery scheme."

Musk's lawyers sought to move the case to federal court. 

According to PAC's website, 14 people have received the money so far. Applicants have to show they are a registered voter in a swing state who have also signed a petition in support of First and Second Amendment rights to free speech and gun ownership.

Musk is believed to have donated millions of dollars, reportedly $118 million, to his political action committee. He has made appearances in several Trump rallies since endorsing him in July, shortly after the assassination attempt against the former president. 

Russian influence impacted the 2016 US presidential election, undermining many voters' confidence that their elections were safe from foreign meddling. Authorities warn that Russia hasn't backed off, and China has entered the ring. Watch DW's report on what those efforts are:

US intelligence agencies blamed "Russian influence actors" for a video that falsely purports to show a Haitian immigrant claiming he had voted multiple times in the battleground state of Georgia.

"This judgment is based on information available to the IC [intelligence community] and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities," said a joint statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The video shows a man who claims to be a Haitian immigrant and talks about how he's intending to vote for Harris multiple times in two Georgia counties. He claims to have secured US citizenship within a matter of months. It's apparent in the video from his eye movements that he's reading a statement from a source near the camera.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the video was "obviously fake," and likely made by Russian trolls "attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election."

The US intelligence community has repeatedly warned that Moscow's influence operations were pushing divisive narratives and promoting support for Trump. Russia denies the accusation.

If the election on November 5 were to be held in Germany, it seems Harris would easily beat Trump.

Pollsters infratest-dimap, working on behalf of the public broadcaster ARD, asked German voters which of the candidates they found more convincing, and the answer was clear: Some 74% said Harris, while Trump could persuade only 11% of respondents. 

Why do Germans prefer Harris? Read DW's analysis. 

Trump suggested former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent critics within the Republican Party, should face rifles to see if she would still support sending US troops to fight. 

"She's a radical war hawk," Trump said of Cheney in an on-stage interview with talk show host Tucker Carlson in Arizona. 

"Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face," he added. 

"You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'oh gee, well, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,'" Trump said.

Cheney, who is the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and who has campaigned with Kamala Harris, described Trump as a "cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant" after his remarks. 

"This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death," she said.  

A Trump campaign spokesperson said his comment was being taken out of context, and that it was merely about Cheney's foreign policy. 

The US president is not directly elected by a majority vote, but through an institution called the Electoral College, a state-by-state system that ultimately determines the winner of the US presidential election.

When US citizens vote in the presidential election, they are voting for the candidate's electors. In most states, if a candidate wins the general popular vote they will receive all its electors in that state. 

The number of electors from each state is based on how many members it has in Congress and by extension on the state's population.

Why does this system exist? What happens if no candidate gets a majority? Read DW's explainer on the Electoral College.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have each raised hundreds of millions this election cycle, with donations topping $1 billion (€9.2 billion) each. A great deal is being spent in the final days of the campaign. Where did it all come from, and where did it go?

The Democratic and Republican candidates for president are making their final pitches to voters with four days to go to Election Day.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both holding rallies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Their dueling rallies will take place within 7 miles (about 11 kilometers) of each other. Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic voters in the swing state, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live.

Trump will also host a rally in Warren, Michigan.

Also on Friday, the United States will release its monthly employment figures, providing a crucial economic snapshot at the end of a tight presidential election campaign focused on cost-of-living issues.

Both campaigns will closely examine the Labor Department's report. 

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are holding competing campaign rallies in Milwaukee on Friday, making last-minute appeals to undecided voters with Election Day approaching. 

Trump, the Republican candidate, will revisit the venue where he accepted his party's nomination this summer.

Meanwhile, Democrat Harris will be joined by rapper Cardi B.

Polls show a close contest between Harris and Trump, with the outcome of Tuesday's vote likely to be decided in seven battleground states.

Wisconsin was decided by less than one percentage point in 2016 and 2020, and the race for its 10 Electoral College votes is just as tight this time around.

The dueling rallies may be the candidates' last appearances in battleground Wisconsin before election day.

Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former President Donald Trump on Thursday for asserting that he would protect women "whether they like it or not."

The Democratic presidential nominee said Trump did not understand women's rights "to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies."

"I think it's offensive to everybody, by the way," Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

Harris followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix. "He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what's in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women."

Actress and singer Jennifer Lopez introduced Harris at a Las Vegas rally and emphasized the importance of women for the Democratic nominee.

"I believe in the power of women," Lopez said. "Women have the power to make the difference in this election."

Republican nominee Trump is once again claiming that the only way he would lose the presidential election is through cheating, a claim he made four years ago when he lost to Joe Biden.

"The only thing that can stop us is the cheating," the former president said in a conversation with media personality Tucker Carlson at a campaign event in Arizona. 

Despite his assertions of leading in battleground states and uncovering fraud, there is no evidence to support his statements.

Trump also attacked former Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has been supporting Harris. 

"But the reason she couldn't stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we'd be in 50 different countries."

After calling Cheney "a very dumb individual," Trump said: "She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

Campaigning continued even as more then 60 million votes had reportedly been cast in early or mail-in voting — around 40% of the total votes cast in 2020.

lo/kb (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)