Harris hits out at Trump for calling himself protector of women ‘whether they like it or not’ – US election live updates

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Stormy Daniels honored at witches’ ceremony in Salem, Massachusetts

Anna Betts

Practising witches from around the world gathered in Salem by the hundreds on Thursday night to honour Stormy Daniels at their annual “magic circle” ceremony recognizing loved ones who have died.

Daniels – the adult film actor who allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump and was at the center of his May criminal trial that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felonies – was chosen to be honored in the Halloween ceremony as the organisers believe that she has been the victim of a modern-day witch-hunt.

The event, which started at 5pm at Salem Common in Salem, Massachusetts, was part of the Festival of the Dead, an annual event series exploring “death’s macabre customs, heretical histories and strange rituals”.

The magic circle ceremony is intended to be a time to “renew connections, mourn those you miss and to celebrate all that these cherished souls brought to your life”, according to the event details:

Donald Trump is talking again about Biden’s “garbage” gaffe, saying he thinks it is “worse than ‘deplorables’ – am I right?”

“And how did that go for Hillary?” he asks.

Trump was quick to lambast his opponent Kamala Harris. “She is the worst vice-president in the history of our country. Kamala, you’re fired! Get the hell out of here. She is horrible. And she lies. Every time she gets up she tells a lie.”

He added: “She lies about everything. She’s worse than Crooked Hillary, actually.”

Trump trotted out his familiar lines, accusing Harris of violating her oath, eradicating the border and unleashing an army of gangs and criminals from prisons, jails, “insane asylums and mental institutions from all around the world, from Venezuela to the Congo”.

Trump at the rally. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

He is now playing a video about the murder of a 12-year-old girl, allegedly by undocumented immigrants. The crowd is lapping it up.

Some fans are wearing yellow vests to resemble garbage collectors, a reference to Joe Biden’s recent alleged gaffe. When Trump asked who had already voted, a big cheer went up. But he has failed to draw a capacity crowd: there are a few rows of empty seats behind me.

The Guardian’s David Smith is at the Trump rally in Nevada, where the Republican nominee asked the crowd if they felt they were better off now than they were four years ago.

The crowd yelled: “No!”

Trump speaks in Henderson, Nevada. Photograph: Ian Maule/AFP/Getty Images

Coming up

Here’s what’s coming up over the next few hours:

• Kamala Harris will hold a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada in the early evening.

• Harris will also a campaign rally and concert in Las Vegas.

• Trump will attend a Tucker Carlson tour event in Glendale, Arizona.

This is Helen Sullivan taking over the Guardian’s live US politics coverage – my colleagues and I will bring you the latest from those events, and any other breaking news.

Summary

There are five days left until the US election. Here are the key recent developments:

• Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.” She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.

• Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque, where Trump is holding a rally, said last Friday that the Republican presidential candidate owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills from his last visit. The Trump campaign owed the city $200,000 for when he hosted his last rally at its convention center in 2019, which has climbed to almost $445,000 with interest. The costs covered police coverage, barricades and other expenses. Trump is banned from rallying in the city over the unpaid bill – his event is being held instead at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque international sunport.

• Billionaires have flushed the election with cash – roughly $1.9b to be exact, largely to the benefit of republican candidates like Trump. “Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director.

• Voter enthusiasm is at a historical high for a presidential election, a Gallup poll found. Similar to November 2020, 70% of registered voters nationwide said that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting now compared to March, when only 56% expressed enthusiasm.

• Trump’s former attorney Kenneth Chesebro has been suspended from practicing law in New York. Chesboro was indicted on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia.

• Harris has received more endorsements today. Former New York mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and the Economist have publicly expressed their support.

• Harris said on Thursday that Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability 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 swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

• Harris will be joined by Jennifer Lopez for her rally in Las Vegas, Nevada - a critical swing state.

• Ex-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona before the former president heads to his own rally in Nevada.

Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, was ordered to turn over a list of 98,000 voters who may not have provided proof of citizenship.

The list was sought by a group called Stronger Communities Foundation. A county judge ordered Fontes to hand over the list of voters by Monday.

Fontes argued that he was entitled to withhold the information to protect the safety of the voters, which includes a small group of people who may hold pre-1996 drivers licenses and, due to some complex bureaucracy, may not have been asked to provide proof of citizenship at voter registration as required by a later, 2004 law.

The judge who made the order said there was “lack of any evidence that any individual life was in danger,” but also forbade Stronger Communities from using the list to contact voters before Election day.

Hannah Fried, executive director of All Voting Is Local, wrote that the order to release the list got her attention, but that laws protect voters from intimidation, regardless.

Elon Musk launched an ‘election integrity community’ on X, full of baseless claims

While Elon Musk faces his own election integrity questions offline, the X owner has deputized his followers to spot and report any “potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities”. The community he spawned is rife with unfounded claims passed off as evidence of voter fraud.

Musk opted not to show up to a required court appearance Thursday in Philadelphia to respond to a lawsuit challenging his political action committee’s daily $1m voter giveaway. Meanwhile, online, he has started a dedicated community space on X, formerly Twitter, where he’s asked users to share any issues they see while voting. Users posting on the self-contained feed, the “election integrity community”, quickly began pointing out what they deemed as evidence of fraud and election interference.

Tweets showing everything from ballots that arrived ripped, an ABC news system test, a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail-in ballots were all presented as evidence that the upcoming presidential election had been compromised. Some users posted videos of individuals they deemed suspicious, despite providing little or no proof of suspicious activity and asked others in the community to help identify them.

Among the tweets are attempts at doxxing and identifying people who users falsely accuse of ballot box stuffing or preventing Trump supporters from voting. In one case, a post with 14,000 shares and 31,000 likes includes a video of a postal worker bringing ballots into a polling location in Northampton county, Pennsylvania.

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has endorsed Kamala Harris, writing: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me.”

The endorsement isn’t a surprise – James has supported Democrats before, and been critical of Donald Trump.

Supporters of Donald Trump, gathering for a campaign rally in Henderson, near Las Vegas in Nevada, are confident that he will win next week’s presidential election – and some refuse to contemplate defeat.

Bob Diaz, 69, who is Latino and teaches at a college, said Trump is doing “a lot better” with Latino voters this time. “People will be blown away about how much he actually won by,” he said. “He’s going to get the electoral votes and the popular vote as well.”

His wife, Audrey, also 69, a homemaker and mediator, added: “Polls are just polls. I believe he’s going to win. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been involved with other campaigns. I’ve never seen so many age groups, so many cultures, so many countries, so many languages. I’ve never, ever seen this before.”

She believes that border security is a winning issue for the Republican nominee. “I wish he didn’t cuss, I wish he didn’t say weird things, but he’s going to protect our borders and clean it up from the inside and protect it from the outside. Bottom line.”

Some here say they would not accept a Trump defeat. Kathy Holesapple, 56, an entrepreneu, pilot and aircraft mechanic, said: “We won’t. None of us will. We know he didn’t lose in 2020 either.

“God’s going to bring it in and take down the wicked. The righteous will be lifted up and the wicked will fall and those who support the death of innocent children in America and around the world will not survive in this nation. They will not be in power for much longer.”

Enrique Lopez, 32, a physical therapy student and military veteran, warned: “No matter what happens, there’s going to be a lot of chaos on both sides. Whether Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be so much chaos.”

Harris says Trump doesn't believe women should 'make decisions over their own bodies'

Kamala Harris has taken the stage in Phoenix, telling supporters: “We have five days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime.”

She emphasized the threats a Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights. “Did everyone hear what he just said yesterday, that he will do what he wants, whether the women like it or not?” she said, referencing his appearance in Wisconsin, when he declared he would protect them “whether the women like it or not”.

“There’s a saying that you gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” she said. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies.”