Obama says ‘you can count on Kamala’ at Philadelphia rally – as it happened

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The Guardian’s Alice Herman was at the rally given by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders for Harris in Wisconsin earlier.

At the rally, Ocasio-Cortez likened Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks to the words of Adolf Hitler and sought to rally progressive support for Harris.

The New York congresswoman called the election a “precipice” and condemned the former president’s Madison Square Garden rally, where a comic referred to Puerto Rico as “garbage”, spurring widespread outrage on the island.

“They knew exactly what they were doing; let’s dispense with this idea that this is a joke,” said Ocasio-Cortez. She denounced Trump’s guests for saying “absolutely horrific things” about women and minorities.

“It’s the same kind of logic that says a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx has no business connecting with the community of Madison, Wisconsin,” said Ocasio-Cortez, in a speech that sought to reject Trump’s racist rally and project a vision of unity.

Here is our full report on Obama’s rally for Harris earlier, from Matthew Cantor and Lois Beckett:

Barack Obama made an impassioned pitch for Kamala Harris at a Philadelphia rally with Bruce Springsteen on Monday, telling voters: “It’s not just policies that are on the ballot, it’s who we are.

“Whether this election is making you feel excited or scared, or hopeful, or frustrated, or anything in between: do not sit back,” the former president said. “Put down your phone and vote.”

Speaking in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania as Democrats make a final push for support, Obama – sleeves rolled up and relaxed – ripped into Donald Trump with a blend of criticism and humour. “We have to reject the kind of politics of division and hatred that we saw represented” at Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally, where a comedian opening for Trump made a series of racist jokes.

“Here’s a good rule,” Obama said. “If somebody does not respect you, if somebody does not see you as fellow citizens with equal claims to opportunity, to the pursuit of happiness, to the American dream, you should not vote for them.”

David Simon, who wrote the TV show the The Wire, among other things, has added his name to the growing list of people cancelling their Washington Post subscriptions following the editorial board’s decision not to endorse a candidate this election.

Simon says he wasn’t going to cancel, but after reading Jeff Bezos’s op-ed explaining the decision, has decided to do so:

In his essay Bezos – who founded Amazon – said he had taken the decision because he was worried that people had lost trust in the traditional US media and were getting their news from social media, leaving them vulnerable to disinformation.

“Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose,” Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, said.

He added: “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say: ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Here is our full report from Trump’s rally earlier in Atlanta:

Donald Trump yet again descended upon Atlanta with a week and a day to go, looking for votes in a state that is rapidly running out of voters to woo.

“I do hear the votes are coming in very nicely,” the former president said. When he asked the crowd who had voted, about half raised their hands and cheered. “We’ve got to finish it off.”

Just before Trump took the stage on Monday afternoon across the street from the CNN debate stage that took Joe Biden out of the race, Georgia’s early vote count crossed the 3m mark. More than 40% of Georgia voters have already cast a ballot. About 5 million people voted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential race.

Trump refrained from his regular practice of trashing Atlanta, though he disparaged Fulton county’s district attorney Fani Willis and the election interference charges he still faces, referring to “Fani and her boyfriend” attempting to lock up their “political opponent”.

He described the Harris campaign as one of “demonization and hate”, then referred to her “radical, lunatic left policies”.

“They say: ‘He’s Hitler.’ They say: ‘He’s a Nazi.’ I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he said. “How can Kamala Harris lead America when she hates Americans? … They’re very bad people who are a threat to democracy.”

Trump took issue with recent criticism made by Michelle Obama. “She was nasty,” Trump said.

There are nearly a million Puerto Ricans living in swing states, according to Politico. Because they live on the US mainland, they are eligible to vote next week.

Almost half a million live in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.

The Archbishop of the Puerto Rico Archdiocese, Roberto O. González Nieves, has called on Trump to personally apologise for the racist anti-Puerto Rican remarks made at his Madison Square Garden rally in New York, Politico reports.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has released a video addressing voter concerns about the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

In it, he seeks to address a comment and question he says he has heard repeatedly: “I disagree with Kamala’s position on the war in Gaza. How can I vote for her?”

In the video, Sanders says that his best answer is, in part, “Even on this issue, Donald Trump and his rightwing friends are worse. In the senate, in Congress, the Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. The president and vice-president both support getting as much humanitarian aid as possible into Gaza as soon as possible.”

He then repeats comments made by Trump, including saying that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has is” doing a good job” and that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beach-front property for development.

“After Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change US policy towards Netanyahu,” Sanders says.

“And let me be clear. We will have in my view a much better chance of changing US policy with Kamala than with Trump […] but let me also say this, and I deal with this every day as a US senator. As important as Gaza is, and as strongly as many of us feel about this issue, it is not the only issue in this election.”

Sanders then talks about threats to abortion and to addressing climate change.

Here is the full video:

It’s been an evening of intense overlapping rallies across the US, as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump make their final pitch to swing state voters in a race that still appears to be incredibly close. Some key updates from this evening’s political rallies:

• In Atlanta, on a day his campaign is facing furious backlash for a comedian’s racist remarks about Puerto Rico and Latinos at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally the night before, Donald Trump returned to attacking immigrants and once again pledged to carry out the biggest mass deportation in US history. He blamed immigrants for raping and murdering American women and girls.

• Trump repeatedly compared migrants and asylum-seekers to an invading army. “The United States is now an occupied country,” he said. “November 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America. On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history. We are going to get these criminals out.”

• In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kamala Harris struck a characteristically more optimistic and unifying tone: “We’re not about the enemy within. We know we’re all in this together.” She also highlighted the frustrations of younger voters.

• More than a dozen Gaza solidarity protesters briefly interrupted Harris’s speech. “Stop the genocide!” one yelled. Another was carrying a sign reading “Abandon Harris.”

• In Philadelphia, Barack Obama joined Bruce Springsteen to rally support for Harris, describing her as an empathetic and experienced leader, and one who would work for the people, not for herself. Mostly, Obama spent his speech ripping into Trump, including mocking the Trump-branded Bibles the candidate is selling arguing that the good economy during Trump’s first term was the result of his own eight years in office.

• In the face of ongoing backlash to the Washington Post’s billionaire owner blocking the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Harris, Jeff Bezos himself has written a note in the newspaper explaining why he thinks newspaper political endorsements are a bad idea.

Amid massive backlash and a reported 200,000 cancelled subscriptions to the Washington Post, the paper’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, has published an explanation of his decision. You can read it here.

The first reactions have not been very positive, as some on social media are noting.

More coverage here:

Republicans ask supreme court to weigh in on ballot-counting in Pennsylvania

An important update from Reuters:

Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to block a judicial decision from Pennsylvania requiring the counting of provisional ballots cast by voters who make mistakes on their mail-in ballots, potentially affecting thousands of votes in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Pennsylvania asked the justices to put on hold the Oct. 23 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in favor of two Butler County voters who sought to have their provisional ballots counted after their mail-in ballots were rejected during that state’s primary election for lacking secrecy envelopes…

If the justices are not inclined to pause the state court’s ruling in its entirety, the Republicans asked for an order segregating the provisional ballots at issue in the case, which potentially would give the U.S. Supreme Court time to review the legal dispute after the election.

The Harris campaign said there were 21,000 attendees at the rally she and Tim Walz held this evening in Ann Arbor, Michigan, according to the White House pool reporter.