Election 2024 live updates: Trump to appear on Joe Rogan podcast; Obama slams ‘whining’ ex president on campaign trail

Donald Trump suggested that if God could serve as “vote counter” for one day, he might win California.

The former president argued at a Greenville, North Carolina rally that while he boasts large crowd sizes in the historically blue state, he will probably lose due to voter fraud, so he hoped that God would count the votes instead.

Kelly Rissman has the story.

Kamala Harris will campaign in Houston, Texas, on Friday, with a focus on the state’s abortion restrictions.

She will be joined by Democratic Senate nominee Colin Allred who is running to try and unseat incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

Democrats have long dreamed of turning Texas purple, but polling in the presidential race still sees Donald Trump leading by more than the margin of error.

Cruz is leading Allred, a former professional football player, but the margins are somewhat closer and he was deemed to have performed well in their recent debate.

A decade ago, Jessie McGrath began a physical transition to make her body match her gender identity. More recently, she underwent a political transformation.

A veteran, NRA member and lifelong Republican, McGrath stuck with her political leanings even after starting gender reassignment surgeries in 2014 at the age of 53. Then Donald Trump and his opposition to gender reassignment surgery changed her mind.

“The Trump campaign and his history show he is no friend of trans people,” she told The Associated Press.

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NBC News reports there are concerns within the Harris-Wlz campaign that a crack might be developing in the so-called “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — winning these three tends to pave the path to a Democratic candidate taking the White House.

Citing three sources with knowledge of the campaign’s strategy, the network reports that there is concern that Donald Trump could win either Michigan or Wisconsin, while the other two states go to Kamala Harris.

Per the network:

Losing Wisconsin or Michigan would mean that even if Harris secures Pennsylvania — where both Harris and Trump have spent the most time and resources — she would not reach the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House without winning another battleground state or possibly two.

“There has been a thought that maybe Michigan or Wisconsin will fall off,” said a senior Harris campaign official, who stressed that the bigger concern is over Michigan. Two other people with knowledge of campaign strategy — who, like others in this article, were granted anonymity to speak candidly — also underscored deep concern about Michigan. Those people still believe that all the states are close and that there are alternative routes to victory.

A campaign spokesperson rejected the notion that they are worried about either of those states, noting that recent polling had Harris with a small lead in both.

NBC also reports that while a few weeks ago the Harris campaign was bullish about the possibility of winning North Carolina, that optimism has receded in the wake of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene and the rampant spread of disinformation that followed.

However, Harris battleground state director Dan Kanninen said in a recent interview: “I don’t see a blue wall path or a Sun Belt path or a Southern path. I see seven states that are as close as it gets that will all be decided by margins on the ground ... truthfully, one of the seven has as good a chance as any other to be the tipping-point state.”

CNN reports that Eminem will open for former President Barack Obama tonight at a rally for Kamala Harris in Detroit, Michigan.

Per the network:

A Democratic official familiar with planning for the event said Eminem is not expected to perform, but rather to welcome Obama to the Motor City for a get-out-the-vote rally for Kamala Harris. In doing so, Eminem is expected to offer his thoughts on the presidential race, which he has rarely done.

But Eminem’s views of Donald Trump are well known, accusing the former president of “brainwashing” his supporters. He delivered a blistering critique on Trump that went viral at the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards.

Here’s our report on the rapper’s takedown of Trump in 2017:

We’ll be following the rally live this evening.

The Department of Justice has confirmed to CBS News that it has received an enquiry from former federal prosecutors and Republican appointees to “request that [the DOJ] review payments that are being made by the Elon Musk-founded America PAC to voters in Pennsylvania and other states that experts say raise serious questions under applicable law.”

Here’s Alex Woodward’s report from Monday on this very issue:

If the former president wins the November election and institutes his planned agenda, the Social Security Trust Fund may be empty in just six years, according to a new report.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which opposes large federal deficits, said in their report released on Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposed policies wouldn’t change the current timeline.

As the US is aging, the funding of the program will come into sharper focus as the current prediction by trustees that the fund will become insolvent in 2035 gets closer.

The CRFB found that Trump’s policies would bring that deadline closer by a magnitude of years.

The group found that many of his proposed policies for a second term push the fund towards insolvency.

Gustaf Kilander has more.

Andrew Feinberg speaks to the former Trump voters who are now planning to pull the lever for Harris – and the campaign politicos who came up with an unusual strategy.