Joe Biden has joined a voting line at a polling station in New Castle, Delaware, the Associated Press reports.
When the president arrived at the polling place at the Delaware department of elections, there was a long line of people lined up waiting to vote, the agency said.
Joe Biden helps a woman in a wheelchair as he arrives to vote in New Castle, Delaware. Photograph: Craig Hudson/Reuters
Biden chatted with some of them, and was pushing an older woman in a wheelchair who was ahead of him in line.
It looks to be a carefully stage-managed photo opportunity. As president of the US, Biden could, if he so chose, be in and out quickly, surrounded by security detail.
Opting to take his place in line, conversing with voters as he waits, the commander-in-chief presents himself as a man of the people.
We’ll let you know if he has any comments for reporters.
Nearly half of US voters think government does a poor job of representing ordinary people, half are skeptical that self-governance is working, and three-quarters think democracy is under threat, according to one of the last polls before the 5 November presidential election.
The survey, published on Sunday by the New York Times in collaboration with Siena College, sketched out a deeply divided political landscape. Both sides of the divide expressed distrust of the other – and doubts in general about the US’s brand of democracy.
But they come together with an overall perception: a majority said the country was plagued by corruption, with 62% saying that the government was mostly working to serve itself and elites than any broader purpose of collective good.
Harris: 'Nonsense' Trump rally fueled by hate and division
Kamala Harris has responded to Donald Trump’s racist Madison Square Garden rally in comments just now on her way to campaign stops in Michigan.
The former president, she says, is “focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country”.
The Democratic presidential nominee was speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, in her first public comments since last night’s New York event in which numerous speakers spouted hatred, vitriol and racism – including calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.
Harris said of the Trump event:
It is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker. Nothing about what he is saying is actually going to support the aspirations, the dreams and the ambitions of the American people.
It is absolutely something that is intended to, and is, fanning the fuel of trying to divide our country. I’ve said many times there’s a big difference between he and I. If he were elected, on day one, he’s going to be sitting in the Oval Office working on his enemies list.
If I’m elected president of the US, which I fully intend to be, I will be working on behalf of the American people on my to-do list.
Harris was asked if she saw a comparison in the Trump rally with a Nazi event held there in 1939, and to expand on her economic plan for Puerto Rico, announced on Sunday:
What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same, and maybe more vivid than usual. Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division, and that’s why people are exhausted with him.
That’s why people who formerly have supported Donald Trump and voted for him are supporting me, voting for me. People are literally ready to turn the page. They’re tired of it.
In terms of Puerto Rico … my plan is about opportunity economy writ large, but a specific target will include a task force focused on the needs of Puerto Rico, understanding that it has very specific needs in terms of upgrading and repairing its electric grid.
I’m proud to have the support of folks like Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and others who were supporting me before that nonsense last night at Madison Square Garden, and are supporting me because they understand they want a president who is about uplifting the people and not berating, not calling America a garbage can.
Joe Biden is expected to cast his ballot for Kamala Harris, his vice-president, in Wilmington, Delaware, shortly.
The president had breakfast with Democratic congresswoman and Senate hopeful Lisa Blunt Rochester in New Castle this morning, the Associated Press reported.
Blunt Rochester has been Delaware’s lone House member since 2017 and is seeking to become the first Black woman elected to represent the state in the Senate.
Biden endorsed Blunt Rochester in a video released on Sunday evening by her campaign. He will cast his early-vote ballot then head for the White House.
Hundreds of presidential election ballots are believed to be lost lost after an incendiary device reportedly started a fire at a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, on Monday.
The ABC affiliate KATU posted photos to its website of thick gray smoke coming from inside the red ballot box, and reported that burning ballots were pulled from inside.
Ballot Box Fire - A Clark County Elections ballot drop box at the Fisher’s Landing Transit Center is smoking heavily. Police are on scene. #LiveOnK2pic.twitter.com/40E09hZolz
Fears about the security of drop boxes for ballots, and voting papers sent through the mail, have escalated in recent weeks. Police in Phoenix, Arizona, arrested a man last week for allegedly setting fire to a USPS mailbox containing mail-in ballots.
Disinformation and conspiracy theories about drop boxes and voting by mail have become a staple of rightwing efforts to discredit elections. Among the most prominent was hard-right provocateur Dinesh D’Souza’s debunked book and movie 2000 Mules which falsely claimed paid “mules” had carried illegal ballots to drop boxes in swing states in 2020.
An investigation published Monday by ProPublica reveals how one of Donald Trump’s key allies drew up plans for the US military to be used to quell domestic unrest, among other extremist measures to be deployed if he wins a second term of office.
Russell Vought, a hard-right aide who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, gave private speeches this year and last in which he boasted of drawing up a legal framework for Trump to make executive decisions unhindered by government lawyers or military leaders.
The allegations have added poignance given Trump’s comments in recent days about using the military against “the enemy within”, referring to US citizens and Democratic politicians who did not agree with or support him.
As well as plans for the military, Vought’s sweeping vision for a second Trump term includes defunding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and putting career civil servants “in trauma”, ProPublica reported.
ProPublica and Documented said they obtained videos of two speeches that Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump thinktank he leads.
Employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department lawyer who helped Trump scheme to reverse his 2020 election defeat; and Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of the homeland security department, ProPublica said.
The district attorney’s office in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to shut down billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial $1m giveaways to voters in Pennsylvania and other swing states, calling the gimmick “an illegal lottery”.
The move by Larry Krasner, the city’s DA, follows warnings from the justice department that the handouts by the prominent Trump acolyte, and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, might violate federal election laws.
Elon Musk speaks during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York, on Sunday. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
His lawsuit names Musk, and his political action committee America Pac, as the defendants.
“America PAC and Elon Musk are running an illegal lottery in Philadelphia (as well as throughout Pennsylvania),” Krasner said in a statement.
They were, he added: “lulling Philadelphia citizens – and others in the Commonwealth (and other swing states in the upcoming election) – to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1m. That is a lottery.”
South Africa-born Musk announced earlier this month he would give away $1m each day until election day to someone who signs his online petition supporting the US constitution. Numerous people have received money, according to reports.
The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland attended a “surreal” rally in Pittsburgh last weekend at which a Pennsylvania voter, Kristine Fishell, was unveiled as an early winner.
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary of Donald Trump’s campaign, on Monday issued a demand for an apology for “disgraceful comments” she believes were smearing the supporters of a presidential contender.
She was not, however, referring to the hateful, racist remarks directed towards Puerto Ricans by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally; or Tucker Carlson’s description of Kamala Harris as a “Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor”; or the radio personality Sid Rosenberg’s claim that Hillary Clinton is a “sick bastard”, made during a rant that included references to “fucking illegals”.
Leavitt’s outrage was directed instead at Tim Walz, Democratic vice-presidential nominee, for remarks he made claiming Trump had “descended into madness” in the past few weeks, and that his Sunday rally in New York had “a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the 1930s at Madison Square Garden”, namely a 1939 Nazi rally that took place there.
“Walz needs to apologize for his disgraceful comments smearing Trump supporters,” Leavitt said in a statement. “This kind of rhetoric has already inspired assassination attempts.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the outspoken Democratic New York congresswoman, called Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden event “a hate rally” during an appearance on Monday on MSNBC.
The politician known as AOC represents a district with a large Latino population:
This was not just a presidential rally. This was not just a campaign rally. These are mini-January 6 rallies. These are mini-stop-the-steal rallies. These are rallies to prime an electorate into rejecting the results of an election if it doesn’t go the way that they want.
Trump, and his fellow speakers, “do not respect the law of the US”, Ocasio-Cortez said, suggesting they were using rhetoric to take the election “by force”:
That is what they mean, and that is what they are doing when they are inciting violence and hatred against Latinos, against Black Americans, against Americans who don’t have children.
We have to understand how unhinged this campaign has gotten, and the only reason the rhetoric has gotten this far is precisely because they’re trying to prime the kind of froth that led up to the January 6 on the capitol. It’s important we connect those dots.
AOC rebukes Trump rally comedian's Puerto Rico jibe – video
Kerry Washington, John Legend and Stevie Wonder are among a number of prominent voices who will feature in campaign commercials for Kamala Harris this week targeting Black voters.
The Democratic national committee announced on Monday it was spending “a seven-figure sum” on the I Will Vote campaign targeting Black voters through ads in 55 Black publications and on 48 Black radio stations nationwide.
Kamala Harris listens as Stevie Wonder performs Redemption Song during an early voting rally in Jonesboro, Georgia, on Sunday. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
“The Black vote will play a major role in the outcome of this election, and there’s only one candidate who will prioritize the safety and dignity of the Black community while advancing our fundamental freedoms, rights, and economic opportunity,” Jaime Harrison, DNC chair, said in a statement announcing the buy-up.
Some recent polls have suggested Harris is losing support from Black voters, particularly Black men, while other experts say there is no need for Democrats to panic. My colleague Gloria Oladipo took a look at the issue earlier this month:
