Trump adviser Stephen Miller, one of the architects of the former president’s immigration policies, is stirring a Trump rally crowd in Atlanta by blasting Harris as solely responsible for an “open border” that he says led directly to murders of U.S. citizens.

Under Harris, he says, “It is a certainty that American wives, American daughters ... that American blood will be spilled ... that American children will have their whole future ripped away from them.”

Sen. JD Vance defended the Trump campaign’s Madison Square Garden rally on Monday after critics condemned the racist remarks of some speakers and equated the event to the 1939 neo-Nazi rally that took place in the same venue.

“It was a celebration of America,” Vance said during a political rally in Wausau, WI. He dismissed claims that the event was racist or featured discriminatory language.

“They decided to compare us to literal Nazis for gathering in Madison Square Garden and celebrating the United States of America. These are the same people, of course, who call us racists for wanting to secure the southern border,” Vance told a crowd.

“They’re the same people who have no plans, no ideas and no solutions,” Vance said, urging the crowd to vote for Trump and himself and “reject … ridiculous name-calling over actual governance.”

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff says voters have a choice of whether to empower the voices fighting antisemitism or those fomenting it — declaring that he and Kamala are committed to “extinguishing this epidemic of hate.”

Delivering remarks on antisemitism in America Monday in Pittsburgh, a day after the anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre, Emhoff says, “There is a fire in this country, and we either pour water on it or we pour gasoline on it.”

“One thing we know about antisemitism is that whenever chaos and cruelty are given a green light, Jew-hatred has historically not far behind,” Emhoff says. “And that matters so much today because Donald Trump is nothing if not an agent of chaos and cruelty.”

Emhoff credits his wife for urging him to “use my voice” on the issue and says she has an “unwavering” commitment to support Israel. “Kamala feels it in her kishkes.” He contrasted her commitment with Trump, who according to former aides has praised Nazis.

Harris made the comment while standing before a few union members at a training facility in the key Michigan county. “He gives a lot of talk about what he cares about, but on the issues, specifically for what is good for unions and union labor, he has been awful.”

Harris specifically called out the way Trump filled the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforced labor laws in the United States, with anti-union figures, a frequent attack levied against Trump by union members. She also hit Trump for lauding ally Elon Musk, the businessman and owner of the social media platform X, for discussing firing striking workers.

“You’re here, he’s not,” a worker said to Harris after her critiques of Trump.

Union workers are important in a series of key swing states. While Democrats have long enjoyed the support of union leadership, Trump has improved Republican’s standing with rank-and-file union workers in both 2016 and 2020.

Trump talked about his experience with faith and fatherhood at the National Faith Advisory Board summit. Trump recounted his upbringing in New York, saying that he at times enjoyed religious ceremonies but broadly sidestepped questions of his own faith.

Trump praised conservative Christians as a key part of his administration and said that a revamped office of faith would have a direct line into the Oval Office. He also promised to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which bars 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations from supporting or opposing political candidates.

“I shouldn’t scold anyone, but Christians aren’t known for being very solid voters,” Trump said to the crowd.

“We have to save religion in this country. No, honestly religion is under threat,” he warned.

Conspiracy theorist and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is pushing back at Donald Trump’s harshest critics.

“We are fed up being called Nazis and fascists,” Greene, R-Ga., said at Trump’s rally on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. “Those are absolute lies, and we’re not going to take it any more.” Greene suggested Trump supporters file a class-action lawsuit against media and others that have circulated those labels about the former president and his supporters in the 2024 election.

She did not mention that Trump has many times referred to Harris as a “communist” and “fascist.”

She blasted Harris and all Democrats as incompetent, arguing their policies don’t work “and neither did their stupid vaccine” to combat COVID-19. Greene is among the loudest anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.

Harris’ campaign will begin running a new ad condemning the racist joke calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” told yesterday at Trump’s rally by a comedian.

The Harris ad opens with audio of the joke, before Harris says, “I will never forget what Donald Trump did. He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults,” referring to the then-president’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. When Trump visited the island after the deadly hurricane, he threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd of people.

“Puerto Ricans deserve better,” Harris says on camera. “As president, I will always fight for you and your families and together we can chart a new way forward,” she adds.

The Harris campaign says the ad will run on digital platforms in all battleground states, but will specifically target zip codes with high concentrations of Latino voters.

Republicans on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order in Pennsylvania that could result in thousands of votes not being counted in this year’s election in the battleground state.

Just over a week before the election, the court is being asked to step into a dispute over provisional ballots cast by Pennsylvania voters whose mail ballots are rejected for not following technical procedures in state law.

The state’s high court ruled 4-3 that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were voided because they arrived without mandatory secrecy envelopes.

The election fight arrived at the Supreme Court the same day Virginia sought the justices’ intervention in a dispute over purging voter registrations.

In their high-court filing, state and national Republicans asked for an order putting the state court ruling on hold or, barring that, requiring the provisional ballots be segregated and not included in the official vote count while the legal fight plays out.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told a Wisconsin audience Tuesday that the rhetoric used during former President Donald Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday highlighted the antagonistic tone of the Republican campaign’s closing message.

“Their closing argument last night was clear to the rest of the world: It’s about hate, it’s about division,” said the Democratic nominee for vice president, speaking at Copilot Coffee Co. in downtown Waukesha, Wisconsin.

The rally, which saw thousands of Trump supporters at one of the most iconic arenas in the country, was filled with crude and racist insults.

Democrats have lambasted the remarks, particularly one comment where a speaker called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”

Walz said he and Harris offer “a new way forward” and lamented that Trump’s version of the Republican Party is “fundamentally different” from former Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Police say they have identified a “suspect vehicle” connected to incendiary devices that set fires in ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington state early Monday.

Surveillance images captured a Volvo stopping at a drop box in Portland, Oregon, just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box.

That fire damaged three ballots inside, while officials say a fire at a drop box in nearby Vancouver, Washington, early Monday destroyed hundreds of ballots.

Authorities said at a news conference in Portland that enough material from the incendiary devices was recovered to show that the two fires Monday were connected — and that they were also connected to an Oct. 8 incident, when an incendiary device was placed at a different ballot drop box in Vancouver.

Kamala Harris, campaigning in Michigan on Monday, told an audience at a semiconductor facility in Saginaw County that on “day one” of her possible presidency she will reassess which federal jobs require a college degree.

The comment is both a policy proposal and a political bridge.

One of the clearest political divides in the nation over the past few presidential cycles has been between college-educated and non-college-educated voters, with Democrats acknowledging they need to cut into Donald Trump’s support among the latter group.

“One of the things immediately is to reassess federal jobs, and I have already started looking at it, to look at which ones don’t require a college degree,” she said. “Because here is the thing: That’s not the only qualification for a qualified worker.”

Earlier in her speech, Harris said, “We need to get in front of this idea that only high-skilled jobs require college degrees.”

Vice President Kamala Harris told an audience at a semiconductor facility in Saginaw County, Michigan, on Monday that their work represents “the best of who we are as a country,” balancing the traditions of the nation and the desire to push technology forward.

“When we understand who we are as a nation, we take great pride in being a leader on so many things. And we have a tradition of that,” she said at the Hemlock Semiconductor facility in central Michigan. “But I think that what we know as Americans is that we cannot rest on tradition.”

Harris added: “We have to constantly be on top of what is happening, what is current, and investing in the industries of the future, as well as honoring the traditions and the industries that have built up America’s economy.”

Hemlock Semiconductor recently received a $325 million federal grant for a new factory.

The Democratic and Republican presidential tickets are heading into the final week of campaigning with a familiar strategy: Rally supporters in the handful of states that will decide the race.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin have received the most attention from Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and their running mates since the Labor Day weekend — the point when campaigning traditionally intensifies.

The Democratic ticket has been more active over the past two weeks, according to Associated Press tracking of the campaigns’ public events.

From Oct. 14 through this past weekend, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, held 42 campaign events over the seven swing states while Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, held 25.

There has been a stark contrast in Wisconsin: Harris and Walz visited the state eight times between Oct. 14 and Sunday, compared to just one visit by Trump and Vance during that span. The Republicans are headed back to Wisconsin this week, including a rally in Milwaukee.

The AP tracker shows that from Labor Day through this past weekend both campaigns have made more visits to Pennsylvania (43) than to Georgia, Arizona and Nevada combined (40). See where the campaigns have been traveling with this AP interactive map.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, says she won’t vote for him or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in the general election.

“I want to vote for somebody and not against someone,” she told the Anchorage Daily News. She added she was disappointed with the choices from both major parties.

Murkowski voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection and also called for him to resign. She said she didn’t vote for him in 2016 or 2020.

“I am going to be voting for someone and hopefully I will feel good about that, even knowing that that individual probably is not going to be in the winner column,” Murkowski said.

Murkowski declined to say who would get her vote.

There are six other candidates on the Alaska ballot for president, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. even though he dropped out of the race in August.

American voters are approaching the presidential election with deep unease about what could follow, including the potential for political violence, attempts to overturn the election results and its broader implications for democracy, according to a new poll.

The findings of the survey, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, speak to persistent concerns about the fragility of the world’s oldest democracy, nearly four years after former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results inspired a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

About 4 in 10 registered voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results after the November election. A similar share is worried about legal efforts to do so. And about 1 in 3 voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about attempts by local or state election officials to stop the results from being finalized.

▶ Read more about the latest AP-NORC poll

President Joe Biden swung by a breakfast spot near his home outside Wilmington, Delaware, with a longtime ally who is vying to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate.

The president and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester headed to The Legend Restaurant & Bakery in New Castle. Blunt Rochester, who has served as Delaware’s lone House member since 2017, is trying to become the first Black woman elected to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate.

Biden formally endorsed Blunt Rochester in a video released on Sunday evening by the lawmaker’s campaign. He is set to cast his early-vote ballot later Monday before heading back to Washington.

As former President Donald Trump continues to attack Vice President Kamala Harris with deeply personal insults, he has also suggested she should take a cognitive test.

In an interview with CBS News, Harris said “sure” when asked whether she’d take such a test.

“I would challenge him to take the same one,” Harris said. “I think he actually is increasingly unstable and unhinged and has resorted to name-calling because he actually has no plan for the American people.”

It’s the same line Trump used when President Joe Biden was still running for president as questions swirled about the 81-year-old’s age and mental acuity following his disastrous debate performance in June.

Trump is 78 and is now the oldest candidate to run for office.

What happens in the coming days will be pivotal in deciding the winner. Here’s a few things we’re watching:

1. Will wars in the Middle East shift the focus?

It’s still unclear how Iran would respond to Israel’s unusually public airstrikes across Iran on Friday. The answer could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilizing level of violence.

2. Will Harris’ closing message harness Democrats’ anxiety?

Harris will try to alleviate Democratic anxiety on Tuesday when she delivers her “closing argument” at the Ellipse, the same spot near the White House where Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021 shortly before his supporters attacked the Capitol.

3. Can Trump stay on message (relatively speaking)?

And with eight days to go until Election Day, history suggests Trump is virtually guaranteed to say or do something else controversial in the final stretch. The only question is whether it will break through.

4. Where will they go?

The candidates’ evolving travel schedules will tell us much about the battlegrounds that will matter most on Election Day.

5. Will the early voting surge continue?

More than 41 million votes have already been cast in the election nationwide. Democrats generally have an advantage in early voting, but so far, at least, Republicans are participating at a much higher rate than they have in the past.

6. How hard will Trump work to undermine election results?

History may one day decide that the most significant thing Trump said in the closing days of the 2024 election is the thing that many voters barely notice anymore: his persistent warnings that this election is rigged against him.

▶ Read more about what to watch in the final days of the campaign