An advert narrated by Julia Roberts encouraging women to keep their votes a secret from their husbands has triggered fury among Republicans.
“Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth,” the actor says in the video, which encourages women to cast their ballot for Kamala Harris.
“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” she adds.
In the clip, two woman can be seen filling in their ballots before sharing a conspiratorial wink.
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Vote Common Good | X/@VoteCommon
Conservatives branded it “nauseating” with Fox News host Jesse Watters suggesting the secrecy amounted to lying to your spouse.
Others mocked the idea that women needed to be reminded of the power of their vote.
Cheryl Chumley, a columnist for the Washington Times, called the advert “beyond condescending”. “But then again, the story line plays right into how Democrats regard women who dare to vote conservative,” she wrote.
It is just the latest pitch by Democrats to women, with polls suggesting the White House race will be determined by a historically wide gender gap.
Last week, Michelle Obama told female voters: “In a household of men that don’t listen to you… your vote is a private matter”.
Liz Cheney, a former high-ranking GOP congresswoman who has endorsed Ms Harris, has also urged Republican-leaning women to “vote [with] your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody”.
Ms Harris led Donald Trump among women by 53 to 36 per cent in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll this month. The Republican had a near mirror inverse lead among men, 53 to 37 per cent.
Campaign on abortion
A recent CBS News poll found female voters were supporting Ms Harris by a 10-point margin, with 56 per cent of registered women voters saying the Trump campaign paid too little attention to their concerns.
While Ms Harris, 60, has not made her gender a feature of the race, she has campaigned heavily on the rollback of abortion rights in Republican-controlled states in the last two years.
Her team has been buoyed by early voting figures, with more than 65 million ballots already cast according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Voter registration data suggests women are far outpacing men in early voting, with a 10-point gender gap across the critical battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, according to Politico’s analysis of the data from the University of Florida.
Trump, 78, has made an overt pitch to women in recent weeks, proclaiming himself the “father of IVF” and vowing to force either the government or insurance to cover the hefty cost of the procedure.
At a rally in Wisconsin this week, the former president vowed to protect women, “whether the women like it or not”, in comments he conceded his own advisers had warned him against making.
His outreach has been hampered by other comments, including his suggestion that he would like to see how Ms Cheney, whom he branded a “very dumb”, “radical war hawk”, would fare “with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her”.
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In response, Ms Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, said: “This is how dictators destroy free nations.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has made transgender rights a wedge issue to appeal to moderate suburban women who may be considering casting a vote for Ms Harris.
The Ohio senator suggested there were “incentives” for upper-middle class children to identify as transgender in order to gain places at America’s top universities, claiming rejecting “white privilege” was a fast-track to admission.
Mr Vance, 40, also criticised the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports and questioned the benefits of gender-affirming health care during a three-hour interview with prominent podcaster Joe Rogan.
10:02 PM GMT
Donald Trump pans ‘pitiful’ jobs report
Former president Donald Trump panned the latest jobs report as ‘pitiful’.
“Nationwide, the economy created — this is the lowest number in years — a pitiful 12,000 jobs last month — hundreds of thousands of jobs less than what it should be,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Michigan.
“I’ve never heard of 12,000 jobs. That’s not even believable,” Trump added. “This is not good news for them.”
The latest jobs report that says America’s employers added just 12,000 jobs in October, which is significantly fewer than the 223,000 jobs added in September due to the effects of strikes and hurricanes and a Boeing workers’ strike that has affected tens of thousands of employees.
The former president also falsely claimed that American is “in a depression”. Depressions are marked by sustained periods of economic downturn.
09:25 PM GMT
Pictured: Harris addresses crowds in Wisconsin
09:00 PM GMT
RFK Jr. is the ‘exact last person in America’ who should be in charge of healthcare, says Harris
RFK Jr. is the “exact last person in America” who should be in charge of healthcare, Kamala Harris has said.
Ms Harris accused the former presidential candidate of pedalling “crazy conspiracy theories” and said he should not be responsible for the welfare of Americans.
“He has indicated that the person who would be in charge of health care for the American people is someone who has routinely promoted junk science and crazy conspiracy theories,” the vice president said in Madison, Wisconsin.
It comes after Donald Trump said that the vaccine sceptic RFK Jr. would “take care of health” if he wins another term in the White House.
“I say, Bobby – I love you looking at health,” Trump said on Thursday night. “I want you to take care of the women of this country, the men of this country, and the children of this country.”
08:35 PM GMT
State of Georgia sued over delayed mail-in ballots
A county in the US state of Georgia violated the law by delaying sending out around 3,000 mail-in ballots for Tuesday’s election, a group of civil rights groups has claimed
Under Georgia state law, eligible voters may request an absentee ballot up to 11 days before any election. The county’s election board has said that, as of Wednesday, the ballots had still not been mailed out. It said it was working with postal and delivery companies to expedite them and ensure their return in time for the election on November 5.
In their lawsuit, the rights groups asked a judge to extend the return deadline on the ballots in Georgia’s Cobb County by three days to November 8.
“With Election Day approaching, these voters are still without their absentee ballots. Without immediate action, these voters may be denied their constitutional right to vote,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
Cobb County said that absentee ballot requests had surged to an average of 750 per day in the last week, with 985 requests submitted on the Oct 25 deadline.
“Unfortunately, we were unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly,” Cobb County board of elections chairwoman Tori Silas said.
07:49 PM GMT
Arizona top prosecutor investigates possible death threat by Trump against Liz Cheney
Arizona’s top prosecutor is investigating whether Donald Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney violated state law and constitute a death threat.
“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analysing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Democratic Attorney General Mayes told 12News.
“I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state.”
Trump sparked fury yesterday after calling Ms Cheney a “radical war hawk” and suggesting she might not be as willing to send US troops to fight abroad if she had “nine barrels shooting at her”.
Arizona is one of seven battleground states that could swing the election on Tuesday, with polls showing Trump and Kamala Harris are neck and neck.
07:29 PM GMT
Pictured: President Biden en route to Philadelphia
07:24 PM GMT
Democrats ready emergency response if Trump falsely claims election win, reports suggest
Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory, Harris campaign and party officials reported.
The campaign is allegedly planning to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should the former president falsely claim that he has won the election, as he did in 2020.
“As soon as he (Trump) falsely declares victory, we’re ready to get up on TV and provide the truth and tap a broad network of people who can use their influence to push back,” a senior Democratic National Committee official told Reuters.
A senior Harris campaign official added that they “fully expect” that Trump will falsely claim victory on Tuesday night, before all the votes are fully counted. “He did this before it failed. If he does it again, it will fail,” they said.
It comes after Kamala Harris warned earlier this week that Democrats “are prepared to respond” to efforts by Trump to whip up uncertainty on election night.
“We are sadly ready if he does and, if we know that he is actually manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people … we are prepared to respond,” she told ABC.
In 2020, Trump declared himself the winner in the early morning hours after Election Day, three days before the first television networks called the race for President Joe Biden.
07:06 PM GMT
Pictured: Kamala Haris on the campaign trail is Wisconsin
06:47 PM GMT
Trump doubles down on Liz Cheney ‘war hawk’ claims
Donald Trump has doubled down on claims that Liz Cheney is a “war hawk”, adding that she wouldn’t have “the guts” to fight herself.
“All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself,” he posted on Truth Social.
It comes after Ms Cheney accused Trump of threatening her with “death” amid a row over the former president’s description of guns being pointed at her.
The former president went on to depict Ms Cheney as a coward and claimed her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, “decimated the Middle East”.
”It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!’ Trump said.
“Her father decimated the Middle East, and other places, and got rich by doing so. He’s caused plenty of DEATH, and probably never even gave it a thought. That’s not what we want running our Country!”
06:08 PM GMT
Trump has threatened me with death, says Liz Cheney
Liz Cheney has accused Donald Trump of threatening her with “death” amid a row over the former president’s description of guns being pointed at her.
On Thursday, Trump called Ms Cheney a “radical war hawk”, and suggested she might not be as willing to send US troops to fight abroad if she had “nine barrels shooting at her”.
Ms Cheney, who is the daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, is backing Kamala Harris and has been one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics.
“Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a campaign event in Arizona.
In a post on X, Ms Cheney responded: “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death.
“We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala.”
#WomenWillNotBeSilenced has become an online rallying cry for women who intend to vote for Kamala Harris.
Democrats see the female vote as key to victory and have made reproductive rights a central campaign issue.
05:48 PM GMT
US intelligence blames Russia for doctored videos
US intelligence has blamed Russia for making a video that falsely purports to show a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in the state of Georgia.
Georgia is one of seven battleground states in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This judgement is based on information available to the IC [intelligence community] and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” the agencies said in the statement.
It was issued jointly by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
It comes after Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia, made similar comments on Friday.
05:18 PM GMT
Trump rally Puerto Rico joke ‘turning undecided voters’, Harris campaign believes
Kamala Harris’ campaign team views last week’s Trump rally at Madison Square Garden as a turning point for undecided voters.
“It really broke through,” a campaign official told the Washington Post, referring to comments made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the rally. Mr Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.
The Harris campaign now believes it is winning by double digits amongst battleground state voters who only decided how to vote last week.
04:55 PM GMT
Russia likely interfering in election, says Georgia official
Russia is likely actively interfering in the US election, Georgia’s secretary of state has said.
Brad Raffensperger made the comments after a fake video emerged purporting to show Haitians saying they had voted for Kamala Harris.
“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine faith in our institutions — or each other,” he said, adding that Russia troll farms were likely responsible.
04:39 PM GMT
Trump supporters line up four hours before rally
Donald Trump supporters are lining up four hours before his rally in Michigan tonight.
The former president will speak at around 8.30pm UK time – before heading to Wisconsin, where Kamala Harris is also holding a rally this evening.
04:33 PM GMT
Harris: Trump is the architect of abortion crisis
Donald Trump is the “architect” of the abortion “crisis” taking place in the United States, Kamala Harris has said.
“If elected, he will go even further to ban abortion nationwide and strip away reproductive freedom in all 50 states,” the vice president said.
Trump Abortion Bans have had devastating consequences for women across America.
Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis. If elected, he will go even further to ban abortion nationwide and strip away reproductive freedom in all 50 states. pic.twitter.com/eglE7Smdrr
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2024
04:29 PM GMT
‘Joe Rogan exposed the JD Vance the liberal media don’t want you to see’
He swears, he bakes, he calls other men “dude” – but the most surprising revelation of the Joe Rogan/JD Vance interview was JD’s reaction to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
He said he rushed home, gathered his kids, “loaded all my guns, and stood like a sentry at our front door”. The Republican vice-presidential nominee is what Sarah Palin might call a “Papa Grizzly”.
The three hour-plus, freewheeling conversation with Rogan will not shift a single vote in this election, but it might set the scene for the next.
Read Tim Stanley’s column in full here.
03:54 PM GMT
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03:39 PM GMT
Musk accuses Philadelphia DA of creating ‘phony emergency’
Elon Musk’s lawyers accused Philadelphia’s district attorney of “manufacturing a phony emergency” after accusing the tech boss of interfering with the election with his $1 million giveaway to registered voters.
The scheme offers voters a chance to win $1 million by signing a petition pledging support for free speech and gun rights.
The lawsuit against the SpaceX and Tesla chief executive’s America PAC was filed in a Pennsylvania state court by district attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat.
Despite suggestions that Mr Musk, the richest man in the world, could be charged with contempt of court, Judge Angelo Foglietta declined to immediately sanction him.
03:27 PM GMT
US jobs growth plunges days before election
US hiring slowed significantly last month, in what marked the weakest jobs growth reported under President Joe Biden, writes Adam Mawardi.
Friday’s downbeat employment update, released just days before the US election, revealed just 12,000 non-farming jobs were added in October, down from 223,000 a month earlier.
This marked the slowest rate of growth since late 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as analysts blamed the impact of hurricanes and strike action at Boeing.
While hiring slowed, America’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1pc.
Read the full story here.
02:59 PM GMT
Trump campaign attacks Harris and Biden after steep decline in US job openings
The Trump campaign has attacked the “Harris-Biden economic agenda” after the latest US jobs report showed a steep decline in the number of openings created in October.
“This jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said.
“Working families are being ripped off by the Harris-Biden economic agenda. Kamala broke the economy. President Trump will fix it,” she added.
US employers added just 12,000 jobs in October, the report said, the weakest monthly gain since December 2020.
The US economy had added an average of 170,000 jobs per month in 2024 until October.
Experts however said that October’s report had been impacted by two massive hurricanes across America’s southwest and a major strike at Boeing.
02:42 PM GMT
Harris has big lead over Trump in early voter polls
Kamala Harris has a big lead over Donald Trump among American voters who say they have already cast their ballots, according to several US major polls.
Recent studies by ABC News-Ipsos, New York Times-Siena College and CNN show Ms Harris with an advantage between 19 and 29 points over her Republican rival.
The lead is larger than that the one Hilary Clinton had over Donald Trump in the run up to the 2016 election, when polls showed the then Democratic nominee leading between eight and 16 points.
Joe Biden had a greater margin in late 2020 polls, when Democrats embraced mail voting and Trump attacked it and persuaded his supporters not to do it.
Polling also suggests that Ms Harris has a significant advantage in swing states, where the two parties have similar levels of support and where the outcome of the election will likely be decided.
02:09 PM GMT
Pictured: Fight breaks out over ‘Let’s go Brandon’ hat
A fight broke out between a voter and poll workers on Wednesday after he was told to remove a hat with the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon” on the front while attempting to cast his vote in South Carolina.
The incident occurred at the Orangeburg County Library.
“Let’s go Brandon” is widely regarded as a euphemism for “F*** Joe Biden”.
12:56 PM GMT
Pictured: Pro-Harris sticky notes in women’s lavatories
Ashley Glass, 50, a small business owner in Roswell, Georgia, has travelled throughout her county in recent weeks with stacks of hand-written sticky notes she places in public women’s lavatories, encouraging others to vote for Kamala Harris.
“They can pay lip service to their Trump-supporting husbands if they need, but nobody knows your vote in the booth but you,” she said.
“I think the hidden women’s vote may be the deciding factor in electing a candidate who stands up for women’s reproductive rights.”
12:41 PM GMT
Trump and Harris to hold duelling rallies in crucial swing state
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will today hold rallies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – the battleground state that picked the winning presidential candidate in both 2016 and 2020.
Trump has described the Midwestern state as “really important… if we win Wisconsin, we win the whole thing”.
A Washington Post polling average showed Ms Harris to have a narrow two-point lead in the state, although the newspaper said it could go either way as this is within its polling error margin of 3.5 points.
Trump will also head to Michigan on Friday, where running mate JD Vance is campaigning. Ms Harris will make a second stop in Wisconsin in the city of Appleton.
11:51 AM GMT
Pictured: Scraps of charred ballot paper after voting boxes set on fire
Scraps of charred ballot paper are shown in the Clark County Elections Office in Vancouver, Washington after an arson attack on ballot boxes on Monday.
Four ballot boxes were set on fire across Washington and Oregon, officials said. The FBI said it believed they were set alight by the same culprit.
Over 500 damaged ballots were salvaged although an unknown number were destroyed, it was reported on Wednesday.
11:27 AM GMT
Easier for students to get into Ivy League schools if they’re trans, says JD Vance
White, middle class parents are allowing their children to undergo sex changes because it makes it easier to get into an Ivy League university, JD Vance has claimed.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the Republican vice-presidential candidate said gender transition could provide routes into schools like Harvard and Yale through what he claimed was the “DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] bureaucracy in this country”.
Mr Vance said: “If you are a middle class or upper middle class, white parent and the only thing you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, obviously that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle class kids.
“But the one way those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”
You can read the full story here.
11:24 AM GMT
Pictured: ‘Racist’ Halloween display depicts Harris in ‘chains’
Organisers of a Halloween display outside Pittsburgh have come under fire for depicting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris ‘chained up’ to the back of a golf cart.
The photos have gone viral on social media, with many users saying the scene was racist and offensive.
Local mayor Diane Bailey said she was “shocked” and “had no idea that that particular float or whatever you want to call it was going to be in the parade”.
10:11 AM GMT
Did Biden call Trump supporters garbage and will it affect the election?
Joe Biden has provoked a media firestorm by appearing to suggest Donald Trump’s supporters are “garbage”, in remarks that have been seized upon by Republicans.
The White House later pushed back, issuing a transcript of Mr Biden’s remarks that included a longer quote and an apostrophe that suggested he had misspoken.
But according to AP sources, including two US government officials and an internal email obtained on Thursday by the news agency, White House press officials altered the official transcript of the call.
You can read the full article here.
09:59 AM GMT
Pictured: Trump with Tucker Carlson in Arizona
09:56 AM GMT
Trump says Liz Cheney is a ‘radical war hawk’
Donald Trump has attacked Liz Cheney, one of his most vocal Republican critics, labelling the former Wyoming congresswoman “a radical war hawk”.
At Trump’s final campaign event in Arizona on Thursday, he suggested Ms Cheney might not be as willing to send US troops to fight abroad if she had guns pointed at her.
“Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said while speaking to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
He said that Ms Cheney was “a deranged person”, adding that “if it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries”.
“You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh gee, well let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,” Trump said.
Ms Cheney, who is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, has said she would turn her back on the Republican party and vote for Kamala Harris due to the “danger” Donald Trump poses.
09:38 AM GMT
Inside the remote county that’s picked the winning president for 100 years
In Clallam County
Annika Barragan, a 31-year-old HR consultant in the state’s Department of Natural Resources, is not hiding her preference. She has decorated her house in Forks with eight years’ worth of yard signs from Trump’s three presidential campaigns.
After one of them was torn down by some local teenagers this year, she replaced it and attached a tripwire connected to a blank 12 gauge shotgun shell.
“When you walk past it, it blows up and scares the crap out of people,” she laughs.
You can read the full article here.
09:14 AM GMT
Pictured: Trump supporters at a campaign event in Atlanta
09:11 AM GMT
Court orders Arizona to release list of voters whose citizenship is unverified
Arizona state officials must release a list of tens of 218,000 voters who may not have provided the proof of citizenship required to vote, a judge ruled on Thursday.
It comes one month after Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, revealed that a computer glitch had allowed people to register to vote without providing proof of citizenship.
Mr Fontes’ office initially denied a public records request for the list, saying those on it may face threats or harassment if their names were released. He was then sued by conservative group America First Legal, led by a former adviser to Donald Trump.
A judge said the court received no credible evidence that publication of the list would encourage violence towards those on it, and said the information must be published by Monday.
08:46 AM GMT
Watch: Jennifer Lopez gets emotional while endorsing Harris
Singer Jennifer Lopez got emotional while speaking at a Kamala Harris campaign event in Las Vegas on Thursday.
The 55-year-old, who was born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, pushed back at comedian Tony Hinchfliffe, who called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” while speaking at a Donald Trump rally in New York on Sunday.
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day — it was every Latino in this country, it was humanity and anyone of decent character,” Ms Lopez said.
Puerto Rico is a US island territory in the Caribbean. Its residents cannot vote in US presidential elections, but there is a large diaspora across the US who can.
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08:24 AM GMT
Pictured: Trump touches down for campaign rally in Albuquerque
08:22 AM GMT
Georgia official: Video showing Haitians illegally voting is likely Russian interference
A video purporting to show Haitians claiming they illegally voted for Kamala Harris is likely a fake Russian production, an official in the state of Georgia has warned.
“This is obviously fake, and likely it is a production of Russian troll farms,” Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said.
“As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine faith in our institutions – or each other,” he added.
In the video, a man who says he is from Haiti looks at the camera and says, “We’re voting Kamala Harris. Yesterday, we voted in Gwinnett County, and today we’re voting in Fulton County”.
“We have all our documents, driver’s licence. We invite all Haitians to come to America and bring families.”
Mr Raffensperger’s office said they looked up the driver’s licence of one of the alleged voters and determined it was fake.
