Harris addresses first-time voters: ‘This is not political. This is your lived experience’
“We love our country. And when you love something, you fight for it,” Harris says.
Harris’s speech tonight, unsurprisingly, is a combination of last night’s major address in Washington DC and her previous speeches.
Her speech was interrupted near the start by a person calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and she responded quickly. If that person continued shouting “Ceasefire!” the sound was drowned out by the crowd cheering when Harris said: “I am speaking now.”
Harris addresses young, first-time voters: “You, who grew up with active shooter drills, are fighting to keep this country safe. You, who have fewer rights than your mothers.”
She also addressed the climate crisis, an issue that has been on the backburner for the Democrats during this campaign.
“This is not political,” Harris says. “This is your lived experience”.
Key events
Luca Ittimani
Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was meant to be a triumphant return to the city that made his name. Instead, the event has reheated simmering tensions on the island territory of Puerto Rico, where locals say they feel like second-class citizens, days out from a historic US election.
Comments from a comedian at Trump’s rally this week, describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, might have fired up local resentment against the Republican candidate, but those who live there will be unable to show their anger through the ballot box.
Residents of Puerto Rico are among the more than 3 million Americans whose votes won’t count, when the country elects its president next week.
Most residents of the US territories – Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianas – are citizens and pay federal taxes. Many have family on the mainland.
But the territories have no votes in the electoral college that ultimately decides the president.
“They’re just basically captive to whatever Congress and the president want to do to them,” says Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, a law professor at Indiana University. “To be a citizen means to be a member of the political community. Not in the US.”
It’s one of the few things uniting the disparate territories, which range from Puerto Rico, home to 3 million citizens in the Caribbean, to American Samoa, closer to Australia than America with a population of just 50,000.
One reason for Harris’s energy: as we reported earlier, a new CNN poll shows Kamala Harris leading over Trump by six points in the state.
Harris leads Trump by 51% to 45% among likely voters in Wisconsin.
A tale of two Wisconsin rallies: Trump kept his relatively tight, for him – it was just over 60 minutes – while Harris spoke for her usual 20 minutes.
Trump riffed on his appearance in a garbage truck earlier, and wore a reflective vest of the kind often worn by sanitation workers. The crowd laughed as he said that he liked the vest because it was flattering.
Harris spoke to a hugely enthusiastic crowd and seemed at ease and energetic. The strongest part of her speech was when she addressed first-time voters, specifically, telling them that issues including the climate crisis, gun control and abortion restrictions weren’t political to them: these were their lived experience.
Harris ends that hugely energetic speech, in response to which she received very loud cheers from the crowd.
Harris addresses first-time voters: ‘This is not political. This is your lived experience’
“We love our country. And when you love something, you fight for it,” Harris says.
Harris’s speech tonight, unsurprisingly, is a combination of last night’s major address in Washington DC and her previous speeches.
Her speech was interrupted near the start by a person calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and she responded quickly. If that person continued shouting “Ceasefire!” the sound was drowned out by the crowd cheering when Harris said: “I am speaking now.”
Harris addresses young, first-time voters: “You, who grew up with active shooter drills, are fighting to keep this country safe. You, who have fewer rights than your mothers.”
She also addressed the climate crisis, an issue that has been on the backburner for the Democrats during this campaign.
“This is not political,” Harris says. “This is your lived experience”.
Harris repeats her line: if Trump is elected, “on day one he will walk into the Oval Office with an enemies list,” she says. “I will walk in with a to-do list focused on your needs. And at the top of my list will be bringing down your cost of living.”
“It is time for a new generation of leadership in America,” Harris says.
Harris repeats her record as a prosecutor, saying she isn’t afraid of a tough fight.
“If you give me the chance to fight on your behalf as president, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way of fighting for you.”
“So Madison, early voting has started […] you can vote through November 3rd. And we need you to vote early, Wisconsin,” Harris says.
“And make no mistake: we will win.”
Harris is energetic, the crowd is energetic.
Someone in the crowd is chanting: “Ceasefire now!”
Harris stops her speech. “Listen,” she says, “we all want the war in Gaza to end.” She says she will do everything in her power to make that happen. Everyone has a right to be heard, she says. “But right now, I am speaking.”
There is a sustained and very loud cheer from the crowd – this is one of Harris’s most famous lines.
Harris holds rally in Madison, Wisconsin
Kamala Harris is on stage now in Madison, Wisconsin.
“It’s good to be back,” she says. “And many of you may know when I was five years old, my parents taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.”
In the days leading up to the election, mysterious monuments continue to pop up in cities across the US poking fun at candidate Donald Trump and his supporters, the Guardian’s José Olivares reports:
On Wednesday in Maja Park in Philadelphia, a large statue of Trump was propped up. Titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault”, the monument, showing Trump smiling and holding his hand in a suggestive manner, quotes from the infamous 2005 recording – leaked in 2016 – in which Trump is heard bragging about sexually assaulting women.
The monument was quickly removed, Philly Voice reported.
On Sunday, a similar satirical statue was found in Portland, Oregon. It was beheaded that day and further damaged by a Portland city council candidate and Trump supporter, who filmed himself chipping away at the base of the statue.
Read the full story here:
Alice Herman
There are 13,000 people at the Harris event in Madison, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.
Kamala Harris is expected to speak in 40 minutes’ time in Madison, in the swing state of Wisconsin.
Trump is wrapping up. “Just in conclusion”, he says, and repeats various falsehoods, mainly about Harris, whom he earlier criticised for speaking about him too much.
Trump begins with various things he will make America again. These include “healthy”, “proud”, “safe”, and, of course, “great”.
Trump is once again played off by Village People’s gay anthem, YMCA.
Village People sent Trump a cease and desist letter in 2023 asking him to stop using the song at campaign events.
The Guardian’s Alice Herman is in Madison, Wisconsin for the Kamala Harris event. She reports:
Mumford & Sons, the British folk-pop band, is now performing – an offering to the elder millennial rallygoers, who seem way more into this set than Gracie Abrams’s younger fans. (The young woman who sobbed throughout Abrams’s set appears unmoved by Mumford & Sons so far).
Harris has rolled out a series of celebrity endorsers and performers during her rallies so far this year, from Beyoncé, who appeared at a Harris rally in Texas, to Jennifer Lopez, who is scheduled to make an appearance at a Nevada rally later this week.
Alice Herman
The Guardian’s Alice Herman is in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Kamala Harris event.
She reports: Gracie Abrams, a popular gen Z singer-songwriter, is performing in Madison at the Alliant Energy Center, where Harris is scheduled to speak soon. Her performance was likely a draw for some in the crowd – including the young woman in the risers to my left who has been sob-singing every lyric during Abrams’s performance.
Trump plays a video about Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Texas when she was 12 yeas old by two Venezuelan men who reportedly entered the country illegally.
The video features Nungaray’s mother talking about her daughter and what happened, and is incredibly sad.
Trump has talked about Nungaray before. During Trump’s presidential debate against then presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump repeatedly brought up her murder and assault.
Chris Stein
As Trump began speaking about his “favorite chart” – the one about illegal immigration that he was talking about on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania when a gunman tried to kill him – a woman in the audience began shouting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
It’s what Trump shouted that July afternoon as the Secret Service hustled him away, and become a rallying cry for his supporters.
The audience picked up the chant, and Trump paused to soak it in, before saying: “That’s an aggressive youngster. He’s going to go places.”
Apparently he didn’t get a good look at who started the chant.
Trump is repeating his well-worn, racist and false statements about immigration.
He claims he wants to “protect the women of our country” – from immigrants.
He says he is going to protect women “whether they like it or not”.
It is a statement with menacing undertones, given that Trump has boasted about limiting abortion access for women: a procedure that can be key to keeping women safe. He has done this despite the majority of Americans supporting abortion rights.
More than 60% of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
“We broke Roe v Wade,” Trump has bragged:
