Harris and Cheney talk economy, women’s health and Trump in Michigan campaign event – as it happened

We’re ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along. Some links and key events from the day:

• Liz Cheney, former Republican congresswoman and longtime opponent of abortion rights, condemned Republican bans on the procedure and urged conservatives on Monday to support Kamala Harris.

• Jill Biden acknowledged on Monday that her husband made “the right call” by stepping down from his run for re-election.

• Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, said Elon Musk’s plan to give away $1m a day in support of Donald Trump is a reflection of a ticket with “no plan”.

• The Central Park Five sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during the presidential debate that they had pleaded guilty to a brutal rape 35 years ago, despite the fact that they had their convictions overturned.

• A Republican county supervisor in Arizona who refused to certify the 2022 midterm election has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

• The politics writer Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine have parted ways after she was placed on leave following the disclosure that she had engaged in a “personal” relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr.

• Key rightwing legal groups tied to Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states.

• Trump doubled down on false claims about the federal government’s hurricane recovery efforts and promoted baseless conspiracy theories about immigration.

Donald Trump is now on stage at a campaign event in Concord, North Carolina, with faith leaders. His former housing secretary, Ben Carson, spoke before the ex-president arrived, saying the election would determine whether the US is a secular nation or one under God: “We’re as close to losing it right now as we have been at any point in time.”

The former president leaned into religious messaging, saying of his assassination attempt, “God saved me for a purpose.” He also said: “We embrace followers of Jesus,” and later added:

I’m here tonight to deliver a simple message to Christians across America. It’s time to stand up and save your country.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has embraced a rightwing Christian worldview, working with evangelical leaders who have claimed he is “anointed” to fight “spiritual warfare” against Democrats, the AP recently reported.

Read more here form the Guardian’s past reporting on Christian nationalists’ embrace of Trump during the election:

Joe Biden gave a shoutout to Kamala Harris at a ceremony honoring winners of the National Medals of Arts and National Humanities Medals, AP reports:

“I know the power of the women in this room to get things done” and boost the next generation, Biden told the crowd, which included singer and actor Queen Latifah and poet Joy Harjo. He added that female winners were “proving a woman can do anything a man can do, and then some, that includes being president of the United States of America”.

Biden’s nod to the vice-president was met with a standing ovation, according to the AP. Hollywood heavyweights were in attendance, including Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg and Aaron Sorkin.

A Republican county supervisor in rural Arizona who refused to certify the 2022 midterm election has agreed to a plea deal, becoming the first person criminally sanctioned for refusing to certify an election since 2020.

Peggy Judd, a Republican supervisor in Cochise county, Arizona, agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge for failing or refusing to perform an official duty by an election officer. She will serve an unsupervised probation of at least 90 days and pay a maximum $500 fine, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, said in a press release announcing the plea deal on Monday.

Judd, who is still in office, will preside over the presidential election next month and be required to certify its results. The attorney general’s office said in court on Monday that the probation term lasted through the 2024 certification and that if Judd again refused, she would be in violation of her probation and would face up to 30 days in jail for the violation, the local outlet Capitol Media Services reported.

More here:

Judges in Michigan and North Carolina have ruled against two Republican lawsuits today seeking to challenge the legitimacy of ballots from Americans overseas, NPR reports.

A state judge in Michigan dismissed a recent Republican National Committee legal complaint that alleged certain overseas voters from the state were not eligible to cast ballots. The Michigan judge said the law “bars this 11th hour attempt to disenfranchise these electors” and that Republicans were seeking to challenge language from the state secretary of state’s office that is “consistent with federal and state law, and the Michigan constitution”.

And a North Carolina judge rejected a “request for the court to order that returned ballots of some overseas voters be set aside and not counted until the voters’ eligibility can be confirmed”, NPR reported. That judge said there was “absolutely no evidence” that anyone had taken advantage of the overseas rules and cast a fraudulent ballot.

From 2023 through September 2024, the committee and its affiliates have filed or been involved in 72 election lawsuits, a major legal blitz that experts say is designed to sow doubt about the results if Trump loses.

More background on those cases here:

Donald Trump repeated a litany of falsehoods and conspiracy theories about Hurricane Helene and the federal government’s response while campaigning in North Carolina today.

The former president falsely suggested, once again, that federal money meant for hurricane relief was “spent … on illegal migrants”. There is no basis for the claim that disaster funding was reallocated to services related to immigration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees the major US immigration agencies. But money allocated for a program to help migrants is separate and unrelated to disaster response funds.

Trump also falsely implied that the Democrats were spending money on undocumented people so that they could “vote in the election”, reiterating his frequently cited baseless claim about election fraud.

He also claimed Fema’s money is “all gone”. But this is false, CNN noted, as the federal agency told the network last week that its disaster relief fund had roughly $8.5bn remaining.

More here:

As Kamala Harris’s Michigan rally with Liz Cheney comes to a close, moderator Maria Shriver asks the vice-president how she copes with the stress of the race and what her message is to voters who are struggling with anxiety over the election.

Harris says, “I wake up in the middle of the night usually these days … but I work out every morning. I think that’s really important [for] mind, body and spirit … I try to eat well. I love my family, and I make sure that I talk to the kids and my husband every day … My family grounds me in every way.”

The vice-president adds:

We cannot despair … Every individual has the power to make a decision about what this will be … so let’s not feel powerless. I get the overwhelming nature of this all makes us feel powerless … That’s not our character as American people. We are not one to be defeated. We rise to a moment.”

Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman now campaigning with Kamala Harris in Michigan, outlines Trump’s threats on foreign policy:

He heaps praise on the world’s most evil people, while he attacks with venom his political opponents here at home … If you look at where the Republican party is today, there’s been a really dangerous embrace of isolationism, a dangerous embrace of tyrants …

Don’t think that Congress can stop him … all he has to do is what he’s doing and say, I won’t fulfill our Nato treaty obligations, and Nato begins to unravel.

Liz Cheney, campaigning with Kamala Harris in Michigan, criticizes commentators who assert that the vice-president isn’t ready to be president:

She is supremely qualified to be president of the United States. There sometimes are some men who suggest that she’s not, but if you look at her qualifications, there’s no question that she’s somebody that I know I can count on, who will put the good of this country first.

Cheney also emphasizes her conservative credentials while explaining her support for Harris: “The very first campaign I ever volunteered in was for President Gerald Ford … and ever since then, I have been voting for Republicans. I’ve never voted for a Democrat.”

Maria Shriver asks Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney if they ever imagined they would be campaigning together. Harris says she has long worked with Republicans, and given the threat Donald Trump poses, she is not surprised to be standing with the former Republican congresswoman:

What is at stake in this election is so fundamental for us as Americans … Do we take seriously the importance of a president who obeys the oath to be loyal to the constitution of the United States? Do we prioritize a president … who cares about the rule of law?

Cheney says: “Everyone who watched January 6th knows what Donald Trump is willing to do.” She adds:

I could have just said I’m going to do everything I can to work against Donald Trump, and there are a lot of Republicans who have said that … I have decided, and I am very proud, and I’m honored to have made the decision to endorse Vice-President Harris … As a mother, I want my children to know that there is someone sitting in the Oval Office that they can look up to, someone who can be a role model.

Shriver asks Cheney if she was afraid to endorse Harris, knowing the backlash she’d face. Cheney shares a message to Republicans who want to support the Democratic ticket, but are afraid: “You can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody … Vote him out.”

Maria Shriver, former first lady of California, has taken the stage at Kamala Harris’s campaign event in Royal Oak, Michigan, with Liz Cheney.

Shriver starts off by making a pitch for bipartisanship, saying: “I served as a Democratic first lady in a Republican administration in California. So I get this bipartisan thing. I’ve seen it up close. And now I’m a proud independent … People of both parties used to get along really well.”

Kamala Harris will soon make another appearance with Liz Cheney at a campaign event in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Earlier in the day, the vice-president and former conservative congresswoman made their pitch in Pennsylvania, geared toward Republican voters. Cheney said:

I’m a conservative, and I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the constitution. And you have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump, who is not just us predicting how he will act. We watched what he did after the last election.

Trump then went on to insinuate that he had been told he was a better president than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

He was harping on the border and the alleged ills of undocumented people, before going on to say that the border patrol had endorsed him. That’s not quite true – the government agency has not endorsed him, but its union, the Border Patrol Council has. Undeterred, Trump went on:

They’re great. They endorsed your favorite president. They didn’t only endorse me, saying I’m the greatest president there’s ever been … What about George Washington? No, you’re better. What about Lincoln? What about Abraham Lincoln? No, you’re better, they said, I’m tougher on the border than Abraham Lincoln.

The former president appeared to try to hit back at claims that, at the age of 78, he is “cognitively impaired”.

But Trump raised more questions than he answered by jumbling his words.

The moment came as he told the crowd in North Carolina, in a somewhat confusing anecdote, that he was talking to someone from the state on the phone, but was then distracted by watching one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets land.

He told the person on the phone to wait while he watched the rocket, then forgot he was on the phone. “I forgot he was on the phone because, and now they, all these idiots back there, will say he’s cognitively impaired because he put he’s cognitively impaired,” Trump said, apparently referring to reporters in attendance.

“You know, I do this stuff, five, six, seven times a day for 52 days without a break,” he said, by way of explanation for his misstatements. He appeared to then lose his train of thought:

I’ll tell you what they are, really not all of them, not all of them. I’d say about 92% couple of good ones. That’s a lot of cameras going on. There are a couple of good ones back there. Now it is crazy in the crazy what they do, and the level of meanness.