US election: Harris says Trump wants ‘unchecked power’ – DW – 10/30/2024

Partial passwords to some of Colorado’s state voting systems were accidentally posted online late on Tuesday, the Colorado Department of State said.

A spreadsheet containing the passwords was “improperly” posted to its website, the department said. However, it added that “this does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted.”

The Department of State said it had reported the problem to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“We understand the incident only impacts voting systems in Colorado and defer to the Secretary of State’s office for mitigation specifics,” a CISA spokesperson said.

Hope Scheppelman, the vice chair of the state’s Republican party, said the passwords had been up since at least August and were not encrypted. The state of Colorado did not confirm her comments.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said the European Union would have to “pay a big price” for not buying enough American exports if he’s elected.

“I’ll tell you what, the European Union sounds so nice, so lovely, right? All the nice European little countries that get together,” Trump said during a rally in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, after promising to pass the “Trump reciprocal trade act.”

“They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our farm products. They sell millions and millions of cars in the United States. No, no, no, they are going to have to pay a big price,” he said.

Trump has vowed to impose a 10% tariff on imports from all countries, and a 60% tariff on imports from China. Economists warn that such a move would hit supply chains around the world, likely triggering retaliation and raising costs.

US President Joe Biden has come under fire for apparently referring to Republican Donald Trump’s supporters as “garbage.”

In a video call with the nonprofit VotoLatino, Biden addressed the controversy that erupted after one of Trump’s warm-up speakers at a New York rally Sunday called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” Biden said. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it’s un-American.”

The comments were seized upon by Trump’s campaign, with the Republican presidential nominee calling them “terrible,” while Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance called Biden’s words “disgusting.”

However, the White House said Biden had been referring to Trump’s rhetoric, not to his supporters. “The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage’,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.

Michelle Obama went on the stump in Georgia, saying she’s not fighting Donald Trump, but apathy.

The former first lady’s “When We All Vote” organization held a rally for more than 2,000 people at an arena in College Park, near Atlanta’s airport. 

The nonpartisan event was dominated by earnest pleas from a star-studded roster to vote.

“You know how close this election is going to be,” Obama said. “Four years ago, the presidential election in Georgia was decided by less than 12,000 votes.”

Obama made a special plea to people who might not think it worthwhile to vote. “If they respond by saying that they can’t trust the government or that all politicians are the same, ask them where they’re hearing that nonsense from,” she said.

“Because the folks whispering that stuff into their ears, I guarantee you, do not have their best interests at heart,” Obama added.

Donald Trump’s campaign has responded to Kamala Harris’ speech in Washington DC, calling it backward-looking.

“Kamala Harris is lying, name-calling, and clinging to the past to avoid admitting the truth — the migrant crime crisis, sky-high inflation, and raging world wars are the result of her terrible policies,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement.

She also noted Harris has been in office for nearly four years.

Earlier, in her campaign’s “closing argument” outside the White House, Harris called her Republican rival Trump “unstable” and “obsessed with revenge.”

Kamala Harris utilized the historic setting to remind her audience of the events that transpired at the Ellipse in Washington just under four years ago. She began her 40-minute speech by labeling Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, recalling the January 6 2021 incident in which he incited a mob to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. While she has made similar statements before, the gravity of the occasion gave her words a heightened urgency.

Following her advisers’ guidance, she didn’t stop there. Harris skillfully distanced herself from Joe Biden without directly criticizing him — an essential move to engage those who strongly disagree with his policies. She needs to refine this approach to win over more supporters who feel alienated by Biden’s administration.

This speech may be regarded as one of Harris’ strongest to date. She presented herself as a powerful advocate for women’s rights, a daughter who rose through hard work without the backing of wealth, and someone attuned to the realities beyond Washington DC. Whether this will be sufficient in the razor-thin race to sway undecided voters in this unprecedented election year remains to be seen. However, the more than 50,000 attendees at the mall appeared to be convinced.

Ines Pohl is DW’s Washington bureau chief.

Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris told tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington DC that her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is seeking “unchecked power” as president.

“We know who Donald Trump is,” Harris said, adding that the former president “sent an armed mob” to the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” Harris said at the Ellipse, the site near the White House where Trump addressed his supporters on January 6, 2021, before they attacked the US Capitol.

Trump “has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other: That’s who he is,” Harris said. “But America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are.”

Harris promised to “put country above party and above self” as she delivered the “closing argument” of her presidential campaign. 

The rally, which comes just a week before Election Day, drew 75,000 people, according to the organizers. The number could not be immediately verified.

Large crowds have turned out to hear Vice President Kamala Harris deliver her campaign’s “closing argument” in front of the White House in Washington DC.  

Organizers told police they expect the rally may attract more than 50,000 people, NBC4 Washington reported.

One voter attending the event, 21-year-old Liam, told DW correspondent Carla Bleiker he’s excited about the possibility of the US getting its first female president.

“We need change in this country, and I think a woman could do that,” he said.

The rally is taking place at the same spot where former President Donald Trump spoke on January 6, 2021, before his supporters staged an assault on the US Capitol.

The US Supreme Court has rejected a bid by former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be removed from the November 5 ballot in Wisconsin and Michigan. 

Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald Trump’s candidacy. Kennedy has urged his supporters everywhere to support the Republican nominee and has withdrawn from the ballot in a number of Republican-leaning states.

Michigan and Wisconsin are among a handful of battleground states expected to determine the outcome of the race between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist known by his initials RFK Jr., has sought Supreme Court intervention in his attempts to stay on the ballot in some states while dropping out in others.

The US president is not directly elected by a majority vote, but through an institution called the Electoral College, a proportional system that ultimately determines the winner of the US presidential election.

When US citizens vote in the presidential election, they are voting for the candidate’s electors. In most states, if a candidate wins the general population vote they will receive all its electors. 

The number of electors from each state is based on how many members it has in Congress.

Why does this system exist? What happens if no candidate gets a majority? Read DW’s explainer on the Electoral College. 

Many in Iran believe that a Harris victory would mean a continuation of the status quo in their country, and are hopeful that a Trump victory could remove the Islamic regime from power.

“Trump’s statements are perceived selectively not only in the US but also in Iran,” Iranian political journalist Fariba Pajooh told DW. 

“Many Iranians believe he could topple the regime in Iran,” and end the country’s economic crisis, Pajooh said, bu also pointed out that Trump has never said he intends to take down the government in Tehran.

Read more: Why many in Iran want Donald Trump to win the US election

Politicians say the only poll that matters is the one on election day, and right now, polls are pointing to a historically tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Polls might show Harris leads Trump by around 2%, but it’s also true that Trump has never been closer in the national polls to a Democratic rival.

Even though most pollsters correctly predicted Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, his eventual margin over Trump was far closer than pre-election polls suggested.

There’s an art to the science of correctly representing the opinions of hundreds of millions of American voters. We asked pollsters how it’s done.

Speaking at a campaign event in his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump spoke of his New York rally days earlier that featured speakers who made offensive and racist remarks.

A comedian at that event had joked about Puerto Rico, a US territory, calling it a “floating island of garbage.”  

“Politicians that have been doing this for a long time — 30 and 40 years — said there’s never been an event so beautiful. It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved,” Trump said of his Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden.

Trump, however, did not directly address the backlash. 

The Republican nominee is set to head later to the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

US entertainment news magazine People published exclusive statements from Barbara Pierce Bush on Tuesday, the daughter of former President George W. Bush, in support of Vice President Harris.

Bush told the magazine that she spent the weekend campaigning in Pennsylvania for Harris and her VP nominee Tim Walz.

“It was inspiring to join friends and meet voters with the Harris-Walz campaign in Pennsylvania this weekend,” the 42-year-old said. “I’m hopeful they’ll move our country forward and protect women’s rights.”

Bush has previously said that she is not a member of any US political party.

Kamala Harris is set to deliver her “closing arguments” speech at the same spot in Washington, DC where her rival Trump addressed a crowd of supporters shortly before they stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Ellipse, a park outside the White House, is preparing to welcome some 20,000 Harris supporters.

Her campaign said in a statement that the former prosecutor would deliver a “major closing argument” and “make the case that it is time to turn the page on Trump and chart a new way forward.”

The speech is set to be an “optimistic and hopeful message” to voters, the campaign said, following rumblings from within the Democratic party that she has focused too much on Trump and not enough on her policy proposals in recent days.

Despite framing the speech as “closing,” Harris is still on track to keep up a grueling campaign schedule through Election Day on November 5.