Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs if they don’t stop migrants from entering US
Donald Trump has finally taken the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, and announced a new policy: he would impose tariffs on Mexico if the United States’s southern neighbor does not stop migrants from crossing their shared border.
Referring to Mexico’s recently inaugurated president Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said: “I haven’t met her, and I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America.”
“It’s only got a 100% chance of working, because if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 50, and [if] that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. For the tough guys, and I’ll make it 100,” Trump said, predicting Mexico will deploy soldiers to its southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop migrants heading north.
“You know, their southern border’s where they come in, they come right through. And by the way, there’s 100% chance of working. It’s only a question,” he said. He called Mexico America’s top trading partner, which isn’t quite right – according to the US trade representative, it is the number-two supplier and purchaser of American goods.
Key events
Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, made one final visit to the key swing state of Wisconsin before election day where he urged voters to back the Republican ticket even if “you don’t agree with everything that Trump says.”
“Our message to the swing voters of the state of Wisconsin is very simple: it doesn’t have to be like this,” Vance addressed supporters in La Crosse on Monday.
“You don’t have to agree with everything that I say, every policy proposal that we have. But what we know is that when Donald Trump was president, you could afford to pay your bills.”
Vance delivered a tight speech about border security and the economy, arguing that Americans were “playing by the rules” but have been “falling farther and farther behind” thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies.
“When Donald Trump is president, we get back to an old age of American prosperity,” Vance said.
The day so far
The final day of campaigning before Tuesday’s election is here, and Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz will be on the road rallying voters all day. We already heard from the former president, who told supporters in North Carolina that he would put tariffs on Mexico to force them to stop migrants from entering the United States, while distorting his economic record and attacking Barack and Michelle Obama. Harris, meanwhile, will be spending her time in Pennsylvania, and has so far today avoided talking about her opponent in what will be one of her last chances to reach the voters who could send her to the White House.
Here’s what else has been going on today:
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We can expect to see some of the final polls of the presidential race released today. One survey that came out, from Emerson College and The Hill, confirms that the two candidates are ties in the swing states.
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Election administrators have stepped up their security as they face threats and harassment connected to Tuesday’s vote.
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If recent history is any guide, tomorrow’s election may take days to call – or merely hours. Here’s a look at why calling election winners can be so unpredictable.
Maanvi Singh
An official in Washoe has raised concerns about a new voter registration system in Nevada.
Cari-Ann Burgess, the former interim Washoe County registrar who has been on administrative leave since September and is facing charges of insubordination and poor job performance, has said that the county’s new voter registration and management system that went live eight days before the early voting in Nevada started has issues that still needs to be worked out. Her complaints are detailed in a recent article by ProPublica.
Burgess has alleged that the new system lacked safeguards to keep non-citizens from voting, and that issues with transferring data from the old to the new system could have left some registered voters off.
But the secretary of state’s office has strongly denied any issues, and noted that a lack of issues with early voting are a sign that things are working well.
Maanvi Singh
Early voting ballots are being tallied in Washoe County, Nevada – and observers from both major parties have been holed up in the plexiglass observation room to watch the count.
Washoe, which includes the mountain city of Reno, is what many locals call the “swingiest” county in a key swing state, one that could help determine the outcome of the presidential election. During the midterms this year, the county’s Republican commissioners voted against certifying the election, spurring legal action, before reversing course.
Ahead of Election Day, the office has been fielding a deluge of questions and public information requests, working to reassure the public that the vote count is coming along smoothly.
Bob Blackstock, who is one among several observers with the local Democratic Party, said he was compelled to get involved in the elections process in 2022. “It’s not even that I’m so passionate about being a Democrat, it’s that I’m passionate about democracy,” said Blackstock, who is an organizer with the Washoe Democrats, but was speaking from his personal capacity.
“If we lose our democracy I don’t know what is left.”
Blackstock anticipates that his biggest responsibility will be to testify at the commission’s vote to approve the canvass – and providing a counterpoint to election deniers.
“It really seems like people have already made up their minds,” he said. Even though those who believe there is fraud have been able to watch the count and ask officials detailed questions, he worries that those looking for anything suspicious will think they see it.
“It’s self-confirmation bias,” he said.
Despite presiding over mass layoffs, Trump makes false claim about employment
Donald Trump just told a whopper of a lie about the economy, saying that the most recent employment numbers were “the worst … in modern history”.
In fact, that distinction goes to April 2020’s data, which showed more than 20 million people had lost their jobs and unemployment had skyrocketed to 14.7% due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Who was president then? Trump, whose administration was roundly criticized for mishandling the pandemic.
Last month’s jobs report was indeed weak, though it remains to be seen if the trend will persist, or if the data was just reflecting the impact of an industrial strike and two major hurricanes:
In something of a throwback to his first presidential campaign (and many years of Republican attacks before that), Trump made a point to mention Barack Obama’s middle name, and also attacked former first lady Michelle Obama.
“Barack Hussein Obama, I call him the great divider,” Trump said during his ongoing speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hussein is Obama’s middle name, but Republicans, including Trump, have made a point of mentioning it while simultaneously propagating baseless claims that he is Muslim, or was born outside the United States.
Trump then complained that Michelle Obama insulted him: “Michelle hit me there. I was so nice to her, out of respect. I was saying she hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.”
Michelle Obama recently appeared with Kamala Harris at a rally in swing state Michigan:
As he has campaigned this year, Trump has become known for his lengthy speeches that typically run around 90 minutes.
The former president is clearly aware that much has been written about his penchant to go on and on, saying at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina: “By the way, the press will say, Oh, he rambled.”
“That was genius,” he said of his speech. “The rest of it I don’t really even have to talk about.”
Trump has dubbed his rambling speaking style “the weave”, and called his speech in Raleigh “the ultimate weave”. He added: “And think of it, isn’t it nice that you can have a president that doesn’t need to use a teleprompter?” Trump definitely uses a teleprompter, but often does not follow what’s on it.
Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs if they don’t stop migrants from entering US
Donald Trump has finally taken the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, and announced a new policy: he would impose tariffs on Mexico if the United States’s southern neighbor does not stop migrants from crossing their shared border.
Referring to Mexico’s recently inaugurated president Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said: “I haven’t met her, and I’m going to inform her on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America.”
“It’s only got a 100% chance of working, because if that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 50, and [if] that doesn’t work, I’ll make it 75. For the tough guys, and I’ll make it 100,” Trump said, predicting Mexico will deploy soldiers to its southern border with Guatemala and Belize to stop migrants heading north.
“You know, their southern border’s where they come in, they come right through. And by the way, there’s 100% chance of working. It’s only a question,” he said. He called Mexico America’s top trading partner, which isn’t quite right – according to the US trade representative, it is the number-two supplier and purchaser of American goods.
Donald Trump is a bit late to his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, but his son Donald Trump Jr just came onstage to give voters a pep talk, one angled on encouraging them to look for the voter fraud that Republicans claim, without much evidence, mars elections in the US.
“So, you guys, at this point is up to each and every one of you. So, whatever you would do if you woke up on November 6 and Kamala Harris was president-elect, whatever you would do to stop that disaster for our country, for the world and for Western civilization, whatever you would do, do it now,” Trump Jr said.
“Do it till the polls close tomorrow night, and then start calling your friends on the west coast to make sure they’re doing it, too. Get in line, dear friends, stay in line. If you see nonsense, video it, show it to everyone. Do not let them play their games.”
Lauren Gambino
Conspicuously absent from Kamala Harris’s closing argument? Donald Trump.
At least in name. In the campaign’s closing ad and in the final days on the campaign trail, the vice-president has made no explicit reference to her opponent, instead opting to end on a positive, forward-looking note.
“Our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” Harris said at a high-energy rally in Michigan on Sunday night. “A fight for a future with freedom and opportunity and dignity for all Americans.”
At a Black church in Detroit, Harris appealed to “Americans from so-called red states to so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice” and declared the country ready to “turn the page and write the next chapter of our history.
It’s a shift from just a few days ago, when the vice-president focused on Trump’s threat to American democracy and agreed with Trump’s former aides who said he was a “fascist.”
But in the final days, the Harris campaign is betting that the slice of undecided voters left need an affirmative reason to vote for Harris. If they were scared of the threat Trump poses, they’d likely have made up their minds long ago.
Trump to rally in North Carolina, first of four events in final day of campaigning
We expect Donald Trump to soon take the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, kicking off his final sprint of campaigning before polls open in tomorrow’s presidential election.
The former president has four events scheduled today. After Raleigh, he’s set to appear in Reading, Pennsylvania at 2pm, then in Pittsburgh at 6pm, and finally in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 10.30pm.
