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US presidential election updates: Harris appeals to Republicans on Fox as Trump doubles down on pet eating claims

Democratic presidential nominee and US vice-president Kamala Harris focused her campaign on Republican voters, with an appearance at a Pennsylvania rally with more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials

Later, in a further appeal to right-leaning voters, Harris faced a tough interview on Fox news, with host Brett Baier pressing the vice-president on immigration, the economy and the Biden administration. “Let me be very clear,” she said, “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

Donald Trump meanwhile spoke at a town hall hosted by Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language network, where he doubled down on baseless claims he has made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.

Kamala Harris news and updates:

Surrounded by more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials, Harris urged GOP voters on Wednesday to put “country first” and abandon Donald Trump. Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term, she said. “America must heed this warning”.
In her interview on Fox News, Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill. Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
In the Fox interview, Harris singled out Iran when asked which foreign country she considers to be America’s greatest adversary. Baier questioned whether the Biden-Harris administration was “acting like Iran is the number one threat”.
Of Trump, Harris said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full-time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.” She added, “He’s not stable.”

Donald Trump news and updates:

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance answered “no” when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, at a Pennsylvania rally. “What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’” the reporter asked, eliciting boos from the crowd. Vance said, “No. I think there were serious problems in 2020”.
Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about “the enemy from within” made over the weekend. Before an all-female audience in Cumming, Georgia, Trump mocked Kamala Harris and her allies as “sick”, “evil” and “a party of soundbites”. He said, “They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” Trump told the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. “They’re the threat to democracy.”
The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.
In Trump’s Univision town hall he was asked to name three virtues possessed by Harris, which he did, before again attacking her. He said that “she seems to have an ability to survive”, that “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships” and that “she seems to have a nice way about her”. “I mean, I like the way some of her statements, some of her – the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country,” he said.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail

A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”. Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order on Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated included three that had garnered a lot of attention – one that required that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.
Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and tried to discourage young people from voting in the November election. The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”