Liz Cheney to join Kamala Harris for campaign event at GOP birthplace: US election live updates

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Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir

Melania Trump made an extraordinary declaration in an eagerly awaited memoir to be published a month from election day: she is a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body – including the right to abortion.

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

You can read the full story by my colleague, Martin Pengelly, here:

Kamala Harris to be joined by Liz Cheney for campaign event in GOP birthplace

Good morning, US politics readers.

The US vice president, Kamala Harris, is set to be joined by Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, on Thursday for a campaign event in Ripon, a small Wisconsin town known as the birthplace of the Republican party. They will appear together in a historic white schoolhouse in Ripon, where a series of meetings held in 1854 to oppose slavery’s expansion led to the birth of the GOP.

In a further bid to appeal to more moderate Republican voters and independents, Harris is expected to praise Cheney – a vocal opponent of Donald Trump – for what she will describe as her patriotism and commitment to put country before her party.

In her speech, Harris will say she will uphold the constitution and the rule of law if she wins the November presidential election, stressing that her outlook is not dictated by rigid ideology.

She will say that anyone who has called for the termination of the constitution should never be allowed to serve as president (in December 2022, Trump called for the termination of the constitution to overturn the 2020 election – which he falsely claims he won - and reinstate him to power).

Wisconsin is a battleground state both Harris and Trump are eager to win. Trump in particular is probably going to need to take the so-called Badger state, one of the closest swing states of recent elections. In 2016, he won the state by less than 1% of the vote and then lost it four years later by an even narrower margin.

Liz Cheney with her father in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2022. Photograph: Jabin Botsford/AP

Cheney, the former representative of Wyoming and daughter of the former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, endorsed Harris for president last month. She voted to impeach Trump, the former Republican president, after the 6 January insurrection and led the committee that would refer him to the justice department for criminal prosecution.

Her father, who was seen as an influential figure during the presidency of George W Bush, endorsed Harris a couple of days later, saying there had “never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”. Hundreds of former and current Republican officials in the military, national security and local governments have publicly backed Harris for president.

Recent polling shows Harris is struggling to gain traction with Republican voters despite already having moderated many of her positions on key policy areas to appeal to them. She abandoned her opposition to fracking and private healthcare, for example. Harris is also alienating many Democratic voters by staunchly supporting Israel, despite its war on Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.

While Harris led Trump 47% to 40% among all voters in a 20-23 September Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 5% of the poll’s Republican respondents said they would back her in the election.