Key events
Daughter of LA Times owner says decision not to endorse Harris due to Gaza
Nika Soon-Shiong, whose family owns the Los Angeles Times, says the paper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate was made by her family due to Kamala Harris’s position on the war in Gaza.
“As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement to the New York Times.
On X, she elaborated in a post: “For my family, Apartheid is not a vague concept. My father was an emergency surgeon at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. He treated students shot by the police during the Soweto Uprisings – where 176 died protesting the brutal system of racial segregation.”
Her father, Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the paper, said his daughter was speaking in her personal capacity. Mariel Garza, who resigned from the paper on Tuesday following the announcement that it would not endorse a candidate, said that explanation had not been communicated to the editorial board.
“If the family’s goal was to ‘repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children,’ remaining silent did not accomplish that,” Garza said.

Lauren Gambino
Harris will speak at another packed rally, this time at an event center in Kalamazoo, where the local ice hockey team plays.
The Saturday afternoon event featuring Michelle Obama is drawing thousands of people, many of them women sporting all kinds of Harris’s merchandise that, like the campaign, has grown ever more targeted in the final days of the election.
A group of women wore shirts emblazoned with “Kamalazoo” – a play on the name of the host city. Others were more blunt: “Feminists vs Fascists” was printed across one woman’s sweatshirt.
Pink pussy hats came out of the closet, and pearl necklaces were the accessory du jour.
Cousins Teressa Randle and Kisha McAllister of Kalamazoo said they were ecstatic to have the vice-president visit.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the first woman, first Black woman and first south Asian woman president,” Randle said. “I couldn’t stay home.”
Both women had already cast their ballots and said they could not understand anyone who had not yet made up their minds. “If you’ve been paying attention to anything that’s happened over the last eight years, it should not be a question,” Randle said.
Pro-Palestinian activists protest outside Harris event

Lauren Gambino
Outside of the Harris event, pro-Palestinian activists protest the Biden-Harris administration’s policy toward Israel. Waving Palestinian flags and holding signs that read “not another bomb,” they called on Harris to support an arms embargo.
The protestors stood in line, linked together by a chain of baby clothes that they said represents the thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese children who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes over the course of the yearlong war.
Michigan is home to a sizable population of Arab and Muslim voters furios over the president’s handling of the war. Many say they will skip the election or vote for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, as a way of expressing their discontent that Harris has refused to meaningfully separate herself from Biden.
Polls show the race in Michigan deadlocked, suggesting that even the smallest defections could swing the result.
Kamala Harris visited with reproductive healthcare providers and medical students in Portage, Michigan, en route to her rally in Kalamazoo this evening.
Harris spoke with six female providers at the offices of Dr Rockelle Rogers and Dr Amanda Henry, according to White House pool reports.
“We represent not only a safety net for our region here in the Midwest, but over the last 18 months, we’ve seen an influx of patients that are coming, particularly from the south,” one of the doctors told Harris.
Asked how abortion bans are affecting where they decide to practice medicine, one medical student told the vice-president: “I think as medical students, we kind of found ourselves in this sort of limbo. You know, we put all this hard work and time into doing what we want to but we’re supposed to be excited about that, but there is this decision to make on November 5 that has this chance to monumentally impact our careers before they even start.”

Lauren Gambino
Ahead of Harris’s event in Kalamazoo, Liz Morley of Oxford, Michigan, sells homemade pearl necklaces with a Chuck Taylor – two of the vice-president’s favorite accessories.
Outside of Harris’s event in Kalamazoo today, Liz Morley sells homemade pearl necklaces with a Chuck Taylor – a nod to two of the vice presidents favorite accessories. pic.twitter.com/Tozr9lQaEJ
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) October 26, 2024
In the battleground state, where the election has divided neighborhoods and families, Morley said she’s found that some Harris voters prefer more subtle displays of support.
“A lot of people are afraid to put lawn signs out and bumper stickers, and they feel better putting something on their person,” Morley said. Even in her own town, loyalties were split “50-50”. “It’s like every other house,” she said.
Both Harris and Trump will be in the state today, one of their many stops in an effort to claim Michigan’s (potentially decisive) 15 electoral votes.
Morley began making the necklaces in August after Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket. Competing with vendors selling Harris T-shirts and hats, Morley said her wares stood apart. Plus, at $10 a necklace, buying one was more affordable than buying a new pair of Converse or strand of pearls, she said with a smile.
In response to our reporting earlier this week, former model Stacey Williams says she has been attacked by Donald Trump’s online supporters. On Wednesday, the Guardian exclusively reported that Williams, who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993.
“Trump and his angry, divisive followers have attacked Stacey with the usual playbook of insults and lies,” said Mariann Wang of Wang Hecker, a representative of Stacey Williams. “As Stacey has courageously reported, Trump groped her breasts and entire body in front of his good friend Jeffrey Epstein as part of some kind of twisted game. Stacey was just 24 and Trump was almost twice her age. Stacey’s report is supported by the evidence, including a polygraph finding, Trump’s own handwriting on a postcard he sent her, and multiple witnesses she reported to over the years. Trump wants you to ignore Stacey – the most recent of dozens of women who have come forward to describe his assaults – and sweep all these women under the rug. Trump and his friend Epstein are one of a kind – men who believe their wealth and fame gives them power over young women and their bodies.”
Tim Walz will play Madden NFL on Twitch with New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tomorrow. Earlier this month, the Harris-Walz campaign livestreamed one of Walz’s rallies during a World of Warcraft stream. Ocasio-Cortez has previously made news for her video game streams, which she’s used to engage with young male voters.
Harris addresses Israel’s pre-dawn strikes on Iran

Lauren Gambino
Moments ago, Harris took a handful of questions from reporters on the tarmac in Michigan about the situation in the Middle East. She said she had a “lengthy and important” conversation with Biden and members of the national security team earlier on Saturday, following Israel’s pre-dawn strikes on Iran.
“We maintain the importance of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself,” the vice president said. “And we are also very adamant that we must see de-escalation in the region going forward and that will be our focus.”
Underscoring her dual roles as vice president and candidate, Harris was briefed on the situation before stepping on the stage in Houston for a rally with Beyoncé on Friday night.
“This war must end. We must get the hostages out and work toward a two-state solution,” Harris told reporters.
Asked about the views of the US’s Arab allies, Harris said there was a “consensus among leaders in the region, and certainly it is the strong perspective of the United States that there must be the de-escalation and not an escalation.”
She stressed the US would always defend Israel against an attack by Iran.
Donald Trump has been joined on stage by Bill Bazzi, the current and first Muslim mayor of Dearborn Heights, at his rally in Novi, Michigan.
“I have never seen the devastation that we’re seeing right now,” Bazzi said. “When President Trump was president, there was no wars.”
Donald Trump joined on Michigan stage by Arab and Muslim leaders
At his rally in Novi, Donald Trump was joined on stage by leaders of the state’s Arab and Muslim communities.
“We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace. He promises peace, not war. We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine,” one member of the coalition said. “We support Donald J Trump for his commitment to promoting family values and protected our children well-being, especially when it comes to curriculums and schools.”
Speaking to Michigan’s large Muslim community, which has expressed marked dissatisfaction with Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, Trump decried Harris for campaigning alongside former Republican senator Liz Cheney.
“Kamala is campaigning with Muslim-hating warmonger Liz Cheney, who wants to invade practically every Muslim country on the planet,” Trump said, implying that the October 7 attack in Israel wouldn’t have happened if he’d been president.
Adding that he’d met with a coalition of local imams earlier in the day, Trump said that his campaign is “winning overwhelming support from the Muslim and Arab voters here in Michigan”.
With just over a week left until election day, our latest polling shows that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a nail-bitingly close race.
Here’s Robert Tait with more analysis:
The Guardian’s 10-day polling tracking average shows Harris, the Democratic nominee and US vice-president, maintaining the single-point advantage over her Republican rival she had a week earlier, 47% to 46%.
Surveys for the seven battleground states are equally cliffhanging and provide little obvious clue as to who will reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes essential for victory.
According to poll averages, Harris leads by a single point in Michigan and by less than 1% in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump has a two-point lead in North Carolina and a one-point lead in Arizona.
Joe Biden is campaigning for Kamala Harris today at a voter turnout event with the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Pennsylvania.
“The choice couldn’t be more stark,” Biden said of the current election. “The only picket line Trump ever looks at is when he can cross, not walk, cross.”
Trump “doesn’t give a damn about union work. He views unions as getting in the way of the accumulation of wealth,” he added.
Liuna, which previously backed Biden, has endorsed Harris for president.
Donald Trump is currently campaigning in Novi, Michigan – a Detroit suburb – while his rival, Kamala Harris, visits the Kalamazoo area.
Trump kicked off his remarks by denouncing Harris’ rally in Houston last night. “Beyoncé went up, spoke for a couple of minutes, and then left, and the place went crazy. They booed the hell out of everybody,” Trump said.
Harris’ rally in Houston – where she spoke alongside Beyoncé and various women and families impacted by Texas’ abortion ban – was the campaign’s largest to date, drawing 30,000 people.
Our latest polling shows Harris is leading in Michigan by a narrow one-point margin.

Lauren Gambino
Kamala Harris will continue to highlight abortion access as she campaigns in Michigan on Saturday. Before rallying with Michelle Obama later this afternoon, Harris’s campaign said the vice president will meet with healthcare providers and medical students at a doctor’s office in Portage to make the case that their work could be threatened by a national abortion ban, even in a state where access is protected under the constitution.
On Friday night, Harris held a rally in deeply conservative Texas to elevate the stories of residents who have been harmed by the state’s harsh abortion ban. She made the case there that Trump should not be believed when he says he would not sign a federal ban. In her remarks, Harris name-checked battleground Michigan.
Harris stopped in Portage earlier this year before Joe Biden stepped aside for a moderated conversation on reproductive rights with a Republican voter and a former Trump official who has endorsed her.
In a social media post, Trump claimed abortion was losing salience, though polls show it remains one of voters top concerns. He repeated his preference that the matter be left to the states and that he supports exceptions for rape, incests and instances where the life of the mother is at risk.
But Harris is arguing that this approach has created the current “healthcare crisis” in which women in red states are falling gravely ill and in some cases dying because they have been denied an abortion.
Fueled by anger over the loss of abortion rights, women powered Democratic wins up and down the ballot in Michigan in the 2022 midterm elections. They also voted to enshrine abortion access into the state’s constitution.
Kamala Harris is expected to campaign across Philadelphia tomorrow while Donald Trump gears up for a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Harris is expected to focus her tour of Philadelphia on Sunday on the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods. She’ll begin by attending service at a Black church in west Philadelphia before traveling to north Philadlphia to visit a local Puerto Rican restaurant.
Meanwhile, Trump will be joined by the who’s who of far-right political figures at his rally in New York. A lineup released by his campaign includes many of the ex-president’s most loyal associates, such as Rudy Giuliani, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard.
The Trump campaign released a list of 29 people who will speak/perform at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden tomorrow. The list ranges from Mike Johnson to Rudy Giuliani.
Not on the list: The 7 Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races and Melania/Barron… pic.twitter.com/nptdofTNiC
— Libbey Dean (@LibbeyDean_) October 26, 2024
Donald Trump talks tariffs and RFK Jr on Joe Rogan’s podcast
Over the course of a three-hour interview last night, Donald Trump told Joe Rogan about his plans to eliminate income taxes and appoint Robert F Kennedy Jr to tackle healthcare issues if he is elected president. He also shared that the biggest mistake he made during his presidency was hiring ‘disloyal people’.
While discussing Trump’s planned tariffs, Rogan asked Trump if he was open to replacing income taxes with tariffs. “Well, OK,” Trump said, adding: “Yeah, sure. Why not? Because, we, ready, our country was the richest in the, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s. A president who was assassinated named McKinley – he was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs. And then around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to frankly an income tax.”
Trump also spoke about his relationship with Kennedy – whom he has not agreed with on every issue. Trump said he has told Kennedy: “Focus on health, you can do whatever you want.” The two have released an agenda titled “Make America Healthy Again” which focuses on processed foods and the pharmaceutical industry.
Here’s Edward Helmore with more on the interview:
Trump used his interview with Rogan on Friday to repeat his claim that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden was a “rigged” outcome. But Trump changed the subject when Rogan asked him if he was ever going to release evidence proving the election was “stolen”.
Beyoncé shows up for Harris in Texas last night
Beyoncé lent her star power to Kamala Harris at a high-octane rally in Texas on Friday, declaring that the US was on the “brink of history” as the vice-president warned that the state’s near-total abortion ban could become the law of the land if Donald Trump were to be elected, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reported from the event.
In an apparent reaction to Kamala Harris’s campaign rally in Houston – which 30,000 people attended, Donald Trump has posted on Truth Social, saying that “Abortion has dropped way down as an issue”.
Here’s a Harris campaign staffer sharing the ex-president’s Truth Social post:
Trump is clearly worried about Vice President Harris’ powerful event in Texas last night with survivors of the consequences of the state’s abortion ban. Insists “abortion has dropped way down as an issue.”
It hasn’t.
He’s about to find out next Tuesday just how much it hasn’t. pic.twitter.com/cCLhsWbySj
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) October 26, 2024
And here’s Lauren with more from Houston:
With the presidential race effectively deadlocked, Harris detoured briefly from the seven battleground states to appear in deep-red Texas. Here in a place she called “ground zero for the fight for reproductive freedom”, Harris sought to lay out the stakes in November for voters who have yet to make up their minds about the candidates – or whether to cast a ballot at all.
Report: Elon Musk worked illegally in the US early in his career
Elon Musk, who has become a vocal critic of “open borders”, worked illegally in the United States early in his career, the Washington Post reports. After arriving in the United States for a graduate program at Stanford, Musk never attended classes and did not have work authorization when he started building the company that became Zip2.
Here’s the Washington Post:
When the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures poured $3 million into Musk’s company in 1996, the funding agreement – a copy of which was obtained by The Post – stated that the Musk brothers and an associate had 45 days to obtain legal work status. Otherwise, the firm could reclaim its investment.
“Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” said Derek Proudian, a Zip2 board member at the time who later became chief executive. Investors agreed, Proudian said: “We don’t want our founder being deported.”
Good morning, with just over a week left before election day, the race is nail-bitingly close. We’ll be bringing you the latest headlines and analysis today as the campaigns continue.
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This morning, we’re expecting Donald Trump to deliver remarks at a rally in Novi, Michigan, before traveling to State College, Pennsylvania. His running mate, JD Vance, will similarly speak in Atlanta, Georgia, before heading to Erie, Pennsylvania.
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In her first event of the campaign, Michelle Obama will hold a get-out-the-vote rally alongside Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Michigan. M, Tim Walz will travel to Phoenix and Window Rock, Arizona – the capital of the Navajo Nation.
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In Houston yesterday, Kamala Harris was joined on stage by superstar singer Beyoncé, congressman Colin Allred, musician Willie Nelson, actor Jessica Alba, several Texas-based OB-GYNs and families affected by the state’s abortion ban in what her campaign is calling their largest rally to date. Harris focused her remarks on the state’s abortion ban, which sparked a slew of abortion restrictions nationwide.
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Donald Trump’s rally in Traverse City, Michigan, was delayed several hours last night after the ex-president’s interview with podcast host Joe Rogan lasted three hours.
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Harris and Trump are tied at 48% each for the popular vote for the US presidential election, according to the final New York Times/Siena College national poll published on today.
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The Washington Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since the 1980s. Some staffers and reporters have said the decision was allegedly made by the Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.
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