NEW YORK (AP) — After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
“Sorry about that,” he apologizes. “Tech hell.” Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the “devil’s tinderbox.”
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Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
This image released by A24 shows, from left, Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher, and Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
FILE - Actors Hugh Grant, left, and Sandra Bullock appear at a screening of their film, "Two Weeks Notice," in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, on Dec. 18, 2002. (AP Photo/Chris Weeks, File)
FILE -- Actor Hugh Grant appears during a portrait session in Los Angeles on March 7, 1994. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
This image released by A24 shows Sophie Thatcher, left, and Chloe East in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
“I think they’re killing us. I hate them,” he says. “I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous.”
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant’s new film, “Heretic.” In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they’ll soon regret visiting. They’re welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in “Heretic,” a horror thriller from A24, Grant’s turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in “Love Actually” is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
“It was a challenge,” Grant says. “I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you’ve climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up.”
“Heretic,” which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of “A Quiet Place.” In Grant’s hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's “Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey from rom-com idol to horror villain and his abiding affection for “The Sound of Music.”
GRANT: Yes, thank you. It’s not easy for any actor.
GRANT: It’s hard to remember which was the writers, which was me. But I’m pretty sure doing the Jar Jar Binks impersonation was my idea.
GRANT: No, I didn’t. I just thought it would be fun if the character did that because it’d be just weird. And, in fact, what’s odd about me is that I’ve never seen a "Star Wars” film.
GRANT: I can’t. They’re too frightening for me. I watched “The Exorcist” when I was too young and I’ve been in counseling ever since. I watched one by mistake recently, which was “Midsommar.” I thought it looked like a jolly, Swedish comedy. I put it on one evening for my Swedish wife who needed cheering up and she’s still very, very traumatized.
GRANT: It’s fascinating, isn’t it? I don’t know. Maybe these are the end of times, the end days, the apocalypse. We know it deep down but for some reason we won’t confront it. I don’t know, but it’s wonderful that it sends people into the cinemas.
GRANT: It is. Talk about the end of days. To me, one of the gloomiest signs or omens is the gradual closing of cinemas — and not just that, where I live in London, but the closing of bars. The bar where I met my wife, which was party night every night of the week, is now largely closed. I think the fact that we’re all staying in, staring at our devil’s tinderboxes is deeply tragic, or watching things on streaming by ourselves with maybe one or two other family members. These things should be collective experiences.
GRANT: My ability to gauge what’s entertaining, I used to be very proud of it. In the old days, my old career, I used to say, “I’m not so proud of my acting but I’m proud of the fact that the films I’ve done, on the whole, have been entertaining and I’ve been good at choosing them.” And then, suddenly overnight, I became very bad at choosing them. I don’t know, I lost the zeitgeist, I suppose. That can happen. Now, I feel like I’ve found something again. If the character amuses me and I think I’m going to enjoy being that person, then I tend to do the job. Sometimes, when actors are enjoying it, it works.
GRANT: Yes, I’ve got nothing else to go on. And I’m not the lead character, the film doesn’t rest on me. I don’t have to worry that much if it does well, medium or badly. I just go by: Do I think I’m going to have some fun in this?
GRANT: The big shift was after “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” That was sort of officially the end of romantic comedy for me. Nothing much happened after that in showbiz terms. I went off and did political campaigning and I was quite happy, in fact. But in drips and drabs, strange little projects, like the Wachowskis' “Cloud Atlas,” then Stephen Fears came along with “Florence Foster Jenkins” and “A Very English Scandal.” “Paddington 2.” These interesting, complex, often not very nice, narcissistic weirdos started to emerge from the woods.
GRANT: Looking back, I was very lucky. I had Richard Curtis on the one hand, who is not only a gifted comic writer – he can just do flat-out comedy like “Black Adder” – but he’s an unrecognized dramatist. Those comedies are based on pain. The comedy is there to deal with pain. It’s people with unrequited love, lost love, bereavement, brothers with mental illness — proper pain. So I was lucky with him.
And I think I was very lucky with Marc Lawrence who just had a wonderful gift for the celebration of life. He actually likes people, which is so weird. So films like “Music and Lyrics” have a very sustaining and uplifting buoyancy to them. He’s an unrecognized talent.
GRANT: You know who really loves them? The most surprising person in the world. Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino pushed his way through a crowd at a party in London once to say, (does Tarantino impression) “Man, I loved ‘Music and Lyrics’ and ‘Two Weeks Notice.’” He told me the whole plot of both films and how he was watching one of them on a plane and the plane landed and he had to rush off to a DVD shop to buy the disc so he could watch the end of it. I thought maybe he was joking but I don’t think he was. Someone told me at his cinema here in Hollywood, a rather cool, 35mm-showing theater, he’s been showing “Music and Lyrics,” no less.
GRANT: Yes, my enthusiasm for that film has spread. I’ve just been invited to a 60th anniversary next year in Salzburg. I might go. I might wear lederhosen. Or I might wear a white dress with a blue satin sash, as I did in school when I played Brigitta Von Trapp.
GRANT: Yeah, I was at all-boys English school and I played, I think, the third youngest daughter.
GRANT: The older I get the more I love song and dance. I find myself watching a lot more Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, things like that. Because life is so stressful and the news is so ghastly that it’s hard to watch very serious stuff and pick yourself up afterwards. I did watch “The Zone of Interest” coming over from London the other day. And I have to say that’s just about as good as filmmaking gets. Short of “The Sound of Music,” obviously.
GRANT: Yes, weirdly it has, and it’s hard to say why. Is it a sort of exorcism or something? I don’t know. Way back in my 20s, when I started out acting, the only thing I thought I could ever bring to entertainment was doing silly characters, doing voices. I did them as a kid to the point where I drove people mad. I was never myself. My parents and my school teachers used to say, “Come on, just drop it. Who’s the real Hugh Grant?” So it was a bit weird to have a career as a leading-man romantic comedies where I didn’t get to be anyone unusual or weird. So I feel like this is something I can do, and quite like doing. At the same time, I learned some tricks of film acting and got a little bit better.
GRANT: The big thing for me was I learned to trust myself a bit more when you’re actually in front of the camera. There’s a terrible danger when people do film acting. They’re so frightened of this big, pressure moment that’s coming up that they sort of pre-rehearse and think, “I’m going to say the line this way, and it’s excellent that way, and I shall just try to reproduce that on the day.” But that’s no good. You’ve got to reinvent it on the day.
The prep work should not be how you’re going to say the lines, the prep work should be — well, for me, anyway — a kind of absurdly prolonged in-depth marinade like a piece of old meat that you leave soaking for weeks and months in sauce until it’s full of flavor. So my marinade takes the form of very, very painstaking, minute examination of the script: Why do I say this? Why do I do this? What happened in childhood for this person to behave like this? What was his mother like? What was his father like?
In the case of Mr. Reed in “Heretic,” it’d be: Let’s look at some serial killers. Let’s look at some cult leaders. Let’s look at some atheists. It’s funny how important costume is. Suddenly some thing, one thing, one visual, physical thing makes you go: That’s him. With Mr. Reed it was the idea of double denim. I don’t actually wear double denim in the film but I realized, yes, he’s Mr. Double Denim. He thinks he’s a groovy teacher at university, the one who’s down with the kids, making jokes.
GRANT: Yeah, that’s true. But doing it on those romantic comedies, I’m not sure I really got anywhere particularly. I wasn’t really creating monsters. It’s easier when you’re creating monsters. I’m fascinated by the bizarre, weird distortions that human beings twist themselves into emotionally, intellectually, physically from the trials and tribulations of life. I’m not sure that any of my characters in the romantic comedies were sufficiently twisted to fully get my juices flowing.
GRANT: Not necessarily from the point of view of religion. But there is a part of me — probably a not very attractive part of me — that likes to smash people’s idols. Anyone I feel is being a bit too smug or too pretentious, I don’t like to see that. I like to just take them apart a little bit. My mother did it. She didn’t like me or my brother being too up and she’d find some way to bring us back to ground level.
GRANT: I agree.
GRANT: It’s a very good question that I do not have the answer to. As a matter of fact, there is one thing sitting on my desk in the other room here which is pretty weird and relatively fresh. I agree, I’m not quite sure where to go from here. Maybe it’s song and dance.
Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
This image released by A24 shows, from left, Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher, and Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
FILE - Actors Hugh Grant, left, and Sandra Bullock appear at a screening of their film, "Two Weeks Notice," in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, on Dec. 18, 2002. (AP Photo/Chris Weeks, File)
FILE -- Actor Hugh Grant appears during a portrait session in Los Angeles on March 7, 1994. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
This image released by A24 shows Sophie Thatcher, left, and Chloe East in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Hugh Grant in a scene from "Heretic." (Kimberley French/A24 via AP)
Hugh Grant poses for a portrait to promote the film "Heretic" on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
The presidential campaign comes down to a final push across a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.
Kamala Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh, then ending in Michigan
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here's the latest:
Washington D.C. police are increasing patrols in areas downtown and near the White House around Election Day, though officials say there are no known credible threats to the nation’s capital.
D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters Monday that the increased patrols are a “preventative measure.” Police will also be using a helicopter and drones to monitor areas downtown, she said. Police will be working out of a new command center to coordinate other agencies and respond to events from election week through the inauguration in January.
Four years after a mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, D.C. officials say they welcome peaceful protests but will have no tolerance for violence.
“We will hold all offenders accountable,” Smith said. ”We will not tolerate the destruction of property, and we will not tolerate threats to public safety as well as this election process.”
Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico even though his family is Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he’ll vote for Trump tomorrow.
“Grow a pair. Boohoo, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. I will never cry over Puerto Rico being called garbage,” he said at the arena entrance, near a man wearing an orange Trump mask. He acknowledged that the comments weren’t funny, but he said Trump didn’t need to apologize because he didn’t say it at his rally.
Feliciano said that even if candidates insulted Latinos using a racial epithet, he’d be OK if they address the pressing issues for Americans.
“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.
But they say they’re confident it won’t be possible for foreign adversaries or anyone else to alter the results of the election in any meaningful way.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters Monday that state governments have already encountered disruptions such as the criminal destruction of ballot drop boxes and cyberattacks that have taken websites temporarily offline.
She said that while assorted problems may continue Tuesday and in the following days, built-in safeguards make it all but impossible to hack voting systems or cause other disruptions that could affect the results of the election.
Easterly said, “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”
Besides physical concerns, officials are also attuned to what they say is an “unprecedented” level of disinformation about the election from Russia and other countries, and are working to call out false claims.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told an audience in Wisconsin on Monday that if he and Vice President Kamala Harris defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, voters “aren’t ever going to have to see this guy on TV again and listen to him.”
The prediction, which led to roars from the audience of supporters in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, hints at an open question around the 2024 campaign: If Trump loses a second presidential bid in a row, what happens to his political movement and does he run again? Democrats are eager to cast the 2024 campaign as the final battle with Trump after three straight elections with the Republican as their general election competition.
“Just tell yourself how great it is going to be. We get this thing done. … We will win, and when that thing is done, we aren’t ever going to have to see this guy on TV again and listen to him,” Walz said, referring to Trump.
Trump’s campaign has handed out pink signs that say “Women for Trump” to members of the audience seated in the rows of bleachers behind him at his rally in Reading, Pennsylvania.
His rallies lately have had more women seated behind him and appearing on camera wearing pink “Make America Great Again” hats. The former president has faced a gender gap in the race and had been aggressively courting men as part of his strategy.
Trump’s crowd in Reading, Pennsylvania responded with a roaring “No!” as Trump opened his second rally of the day by asking the crowd whether they are better off now than four years ago.
He called the 2024 presidential election “the most important political event in the history of our country.”
The former president, who has refused to acknowledge he lost the presidential election four years ago, said of Tuesday’s election: “I’ve been waiting four years for this.”
“One day. You’ve got to show up,” he added. He also told his supporters they need to show up in droves and “just swamp them tomorrow.”
He said that if he wins Pennsylvania, “we win the whole ball of wax.”
Football is important to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But even he can’t put the National Football League trade deadline over Election Day.
Tuesday is both, the last day NFL teams can make trades and the day the country picks their next president, something that was not lost on Walz, Democrats' vice presidential nominee, as he spoke in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, on Monday.
“Tomorrow is an important day,” he said. “No, not NFL trade deadline. … It is that and we probably need a little help.”
Walz, a Minnesota Vikings fan, was speaking a short 90-minute drive west of Lambeau Field, the home of the Green Bay Packers, the Vikings’ rivals.
Farage has long been a Trump ally and is the leader of the right-wing party Reform U.K.
It was not clear if Farage planned to speak during Trump’s remarks in Reading, Pennsylvania, but he was seen in the audience before Trump took the stage.
Harris campaign attorney Dana Remus says that efforts by Republican Donald Trump to sow fraud and discord will not work. She says the volume of cases brought by Republicans so far does not mean their claims are legitimate or that there is fraud.
“They know they can’t win at the ballot box because their candidate can’t earn the votes,” Remus said on Monday, so Trump and his allies are instead trying to sow doubt.
She added that the election systems nationwide are stronger than ever.
Trump has drawn thousands of supporters to Santander Arena, but once again, many of the venue’s 7,200 seats remain unfilled more than an hour after he was scheduled to take the stage.
The campaign has hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking view of the back sections, behind the press riser, which are empty.
A 24-year-old man was arrested after punching an election judge at a polling place in Orland Park, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.
The man on Sunday walked past people waiting in line to enter the voting area at about 11 a.m. at the township office, Orland Park police said Monday in a news release.
An election judge posted at the entrance told him to go to the back of the line and wait his turn. After the man refused, he tried to push past a second election judge and was prevented from entering, police said.
The man yelled profanities and hit at least one of the election judges, police added.
When officers arrived, he was being being restrained by several other people.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved two counts of aggravated battery to a victim over 60, two counts of aggravated battery in a public place — both felonies — and misdemeanor resisting arrest and disorderly conduct against the man. He was jailed overnight.
Campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris was going to “end this campaign the way she started it: speaking directly to the voters that are going to decide this election.”
Tyler said Harris would do radio interviews in all seven battleground states to make sure “that those final voters who are on their way to work, on their way home, taking a lunch break, understand the stakes” of the election and where Harris intends to take the country if elected.
According to the Republican National Committee, the elections commission announced over the weekend that certain precincts will be limited to only one Republican and one Democratic poll watcher on Election Day.
The commission hasn't disclosed which precincts will be affected, according to the RNC.
The lawsuit seeks an emergency injunction prohibiting the commission from implementing or enforcing any arbitrary restrictions on the number of observers. The commission denied in a statement that observers will be arbitrarily limited but said they are subject to “reasonable limitations” under state law.
Republican observers will be allowed on Election Day, the commission added.
“Let’s get out the vote,” Vice President Kamala Harris chanted at her first event of the day in Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee throwing her first in the air as she tried to fire up people about to knock on doors for her.
Harris spoke to her supporters at a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, a key area in Pennsylvania that could go a long way to deciding whether she or former President Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania this year.
Polls have the state tied headed into Election Day.
“All right, let’s get to work — 24 hours to go,” Harris said.
Harris, on the precipice of an Election Day featuring her name atop a major party’s presidential ticket, recalled the more humble kind of campaigning that started her political career.
“When I first ran for office as DA, I started out at 6% in the polls, so anyone who knows that is six out of 100. No one thought I could win. And I used to campaign with my ironing board,” she told supporters at an event in Scranton on Monday.
“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris added, recalling how she would tape posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out of the grocery store.”
“That is how I love to campaign. I don’t do it as much anymore, obviously,” Harris said, sounding wistful.
Harris was elected as District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003.
Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off election eve with a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, urging supporters who were about to knock on doors for her to “enjoy” the final 24 hours of her campaign.
“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.
Tables near the vice president were full of campaign literature, including door hangers that will be left on doors across the Scranton area. She urged supporters to understand “there’s a huge difference between me and the other guy,” referring to Trump.
Harris’ final day of campaigning will be about one state — Pennsylvania — with the Democratic nominee covering the commonwealth over four events. Polls have the candidates tied heading into Election Day.
“Over these next 24 hours, let’s enjoy this moment to knock on a neighbor’s door,” she said.
Trump appeared Monday on the podcast hosted by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and sportscaster Jim Gray in which he said he feels “great” about the election and said he’s going up against “a system” with the Democratic Party.
“It’s a system. It’s just the way it is. And it’s very interesting to watch,” Trump said. “Let’s see if I can take down that system. I did it once, very successfully.”
The former president also noted how many rallies he’s doing in the final days, with three or four daily.
“It’s been an amazing experience for me,” he said. “I think we’re doing really well.”
Standing in line for Kamala Harris’ rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat who will vote for just the second time in his life.
Kessler, 54, said he switched parties after he began identifying with the Democrats’ support of gay marriage and abortion rights and sees Donald Trump as lacking integrity, wielding hateful speech and posing a threat to democracy.
For a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate. And now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty and it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country which I supported for 22 years of my life."
Kessler voted for the first time in 2020 — for Biden.
At a pre-election briefing for reporters, Secretary of State Steve Simon said his wish for Election Day is for “high turnout and low drama.”
Minnesota often leads the nation in turnout, he noted, but Maine was No. 1 in 2022. He said Minnesota’s challenge in getting back to No. 1 is that other states have also upped their game.
“By the time Minnesotans are eating breakfast (on Wednesday), they should know all or substantially all of the results in Minnesota,” he said.
He noted that the counting will take longer in several other states because of different procedures, including some presidential battleground states.
Simon’s security chief, Bill Ekblad, said that despite warnings from federal agencies about efforts by “foreign and domestic bad actors” to disrupt the U.S. elections, “we are not currently aware of any, specific credible threats to Minnesota elections.”
Former President Donald Trump says with the growing popularity of gambling in U.S. professional sports that corruption is something that can’t be avoided.
“Well, there will be corruption and the only question is, will it be massive corruption or will it be, you know, regular standard corruption,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with former NFL coach Bill Belichick and veteran broadcaster Jim Gray that aired Monday.
Trump added, “But there’s going to be corruption, and we’ll see how it works out.”
Trump’s campaign has been putting great effort into trying to get lower-propensity voters to turn up for him at the polls. The appearance on the podcast was just the latest effort to reach young male voters Trump hopes will be difference-makers for him.
Trump also made clear that he’s not a fan of a change in rules that allow college athletes to be compensated through brand deals and de facto salaries through donor-funded collectives.
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe told reporters during a teleconference Monday that she anticipates the large number of absentee ballots local clerks have received will likely lead to delays in tallying.
Wisconsin law prohibits clerks from counting absentee ballots before Election Day. As of Monday morning, local clerks have recorded more than 1.5 million returned absentee ballots, including nearly 950,000 absentee ballots voters cast in-person in clerks’ offices and other locations.
Wolfe added that election officials have been working for the last four years to head off claims of late-night ballot dumps, explaining clerks know exactly how many absentee ballots have been requested and returned.
It’s the first presidential election since Michigan in 2022 added days of early voting to the calendar.
“Some (were) waiting in line for up to an hour,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who noted that more than 189,000 people voted Sunday. Voters have cast ballots either in person or with an absentee ballot.
The presidential campaign is coming to a close.
As with previous elections, the candidates have largely stuck to the swing states they’ll need to try to reach the 270 electoral votes required to claim the presidency. The U.S.’s unique Electoral College method of electing the president forces the candidates to appeal to voters in the states that could go either way, rather than trying to win the nation’s popular vote.
Seven states are considered in play this year, representing less than 20% of the U.S. population. Of those, the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets have focused most on Pennsylvania, the swing state with the greatest number of electoral votes.
Going back to March, when President Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic nominee, here are the number of visits the campaigns have made to those seven states through Monday, according to Associated Press tracking of the campaigns’ public events:
▶ For a detailed look at all campaign visits by the presidential tickets, see the AP’s interactive map
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ratcheted up the pressure on the next 24 hours at his first event of election eve Monday, arguing that keeping former President Donald Trump out of the White House would have implications far beyond the next four years.
“The thing is upon us now, folks,” Walz said at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “I know there is a lot of anxiety, but the decisions that are made over the next 24-36 hours when those polls close, will shape not just the next four years, they will shape the coming generations.”
Walz was joined at his event by his wife, Gwen, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Election officials in Oklahoma say power was restored Monday to some polling locations that lost electricity after a second round of storms battered the state with high winds and heavy rain.
There were no reports of damage to polling locations after a series of storms, including tornadoes, rolled through Oklahoma on Sunday and State Election Board spokesperson Misha Mohr said election officials had been in contract with power companies to prepare for any unforeseen problems that might occur.
Mohr said each of Oklahoma’s 77 county election boards also have backup polling places in case of power outages or damage from severe weather.
German Vega was at New York’s Madison Square Garden when stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a Trump rally.
“It was absurd,” said Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania, and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”
Vega, who describes himself as “pro-life,” voted for Trump in 2020 and he plans to vote for him again tomorrow. He couldn’t attend the Trump rally in Reading because he had to work, but he said his 18-year-old son, who’s still undecided, planned to be at the rally in the mostly Latino city.
The comments at the New York Trump rally also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people. But Vega said he sees them as part of a strategy to court votes.
“It didn’t surprise me,” he said. “From both sides, but especially from the Republicans, there’s been a lot of racism to get the white vote.”
North Carolina’s elections chief says voter participation so far in the western counties harmed by Hurricane Helene’s historic flooding continues to outpace turnout statewide.
State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in a news conference Monday that 59% of registered voters from the 25 counties affected by the storm have cast ballots through traditional absentee voting or at early in-person voting sites that closed Saturday afternoon.
That compares to the 57% turnout — or 4.45 million ballots cast — so far statewide, according to board data.
“That’s just a testament to the dedication and the extraordinary effort by the election officials, by our partners at the state, local and federal levels to make sure that even when devastation struck, that that did not stop voting,” Brinson Bell said.
More than 2,650 polling places will be open on Election Day. Brinson Bell said seven sites in four counties among the hardest hit by Helene are temporary tents that were acquired with help from emergency officials. She says there’s road access to every one of those sites.
That’s two weeks after a comedian who spoke at a Trump rally in New York referred to it as a “floating island of garbage.”
“I mean Puerto Rico is great,” Trump said Monday at a rally in North Carolina on the last full day of campaigning.
“We helped Puerto Rico more than anybody,” he told his Raleigh audience.
Commedian Tony Hinchcliffe, among the speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally, known for his podcast “Kill Tony,” said: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the U.S. election, but there are more people of Puerto Rican descent in the United States who can than are of voting age who populate the island. In the battleground states, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County is home to the state’s largest population of Puerto Rican voters.
In September 2020, after criticism for a slow response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, Trump released $13 billion in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage. It took Trump two weeks to visit the island after the storm and he was criticized for an appearance where he threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd.
Kamala Harris supporters are banding together on Election Day for what they’re claiming will be the largest phone bank operation of all time.
Participants will include celebrities such as John Legend, Jessica Alba, and Bradley Whitford, as well as politicians including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is also participating in the initiative, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. “Let’s work together to make important calls to swing states and get out the vote!” he posted on social media.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters during a news conference at the state Capitol on Monday that the state’s election will be “fair and fast and accurate.”
Raffensperger acknowledged that the eyes of the nation will be on Georgia and six other battleground states and the coming days could bring “some extra drama from fringe activists.”
“They’re certainly dramatic, aren’t they?” he said. “Whatever they say or do, we know this to be true: Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
By the end of early in-person voting Friday, more than four million people had already cast ballots in Georgia, either in person or by mail. That’s more than half of the state’s active voters.
Trump announced that if elected, he would inform Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum on day one that she must stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S. or risk a 25% tariff on Mexican imports.
Mexico is the United States’ main trading partner.
“If they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I am going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump announced to supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Trump hasn’t met Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former Mexico City Mayor, but said he heard she was “a very nice woman.” He often speaks about how he threatened Mexico’s former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador similarly to adopt his “Remain in Mexico” policy, where migrants have to wait south of the U.S. border to apply for asylum. Biden ended that program.
That comes nine years after Trump criticized the one-time Fox News host as “nasty.”
Kelly’s scheduled appearance at Trump’s Monday evening rally scheduled for PPG Paints Arena marks a long way from the first debate of Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he criticized Kelly, a moderator for the event, as being harsh toward him, using sexist language.
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her – wherever,” Trump told then-CNN anchor Don Lemon after the August 2015 debate in Ohio.
Today, the conservative podcaster, famous for her pointed questioning of Trump in 2015, has said she’ll vote for Trump.
Kelly’s appearance with Trump comes as early voting suggests a gender gap that favors Democrat Kamala Harris and the work Trump needs to do to shrink it.
Asked how she was feeling as she boarded Air Force Two for a flight to Pennsylvania on Monday and one final day of campaigning before the election, Vice President Kamala Harris said “good” and flashed a thumbs-up.
Unions knocking on doors on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris are finding what they say is an effective line of attack against Republican Donald Trump — that he’ll defund Social Security.
The former U.S. president has said he would make Social Security income tax-free. That’s problematic because those revenues help to fund the program and the loss of that money means Social Security would be unable to pay out its full benefits in fiscal year 2031, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.
“That’s one of the big issues for our folks,” said Laura Dickerson, the United Auto Worker’s Region 1A director in Michigan. “People need to think about that they do not want to fully fund Social Security.”
The UAW has twice as many staff working on turnout compared to 2020 and 2016, enabling the union to directly contact all of its members and retirees and families of its members in support of Harris.
Donald Trump seemed to reference the video that nearly sank his 2016 campaign as he expressed amazement at how two giant mechanical arms caught Elon Musk’s reusable rocket — “like you grab your beautiful baby.”
“See, I’ve gotten much better. Years ago I would have said something else. But I’ve learned,” Trump said, prompting laughs from his crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I would have been a little bit more risqué.”
Trump’s 2016 campaign was nearly derailed by the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he was caught bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.
On Saturday, Trump made a similar remark, saying that in the old days, he would have said the movement of the rocket-catching arms was “like you grab your ... girlfriend.”
Trump has been expressing amazement at Musk’s engineering feat in which mechanical SpaceX arms caught a Starship rocket booster after it returned to Earth.
Musk has spent tens of millions of dollars helping to elect Trump.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller would not rule out the possibility that Trump once again might declare victory in the election before news outlets have determined the winner.
News organizations, including The Associated Press, will call the winner of the election when a candidate has won at least 270 Electoral College votes needed to be elected president.
Pressed by reporters Monday, Miller only said Trump “will declare victory when we’re confident we have 270 electoral votes that we need.”
In 2020, Trump falsely declared victory from the White House before the final result was known. Trump lost the 2020 election but has refused to accept it.
Supporters get ready before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Supporters get ready before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Supporters arrive before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Atrium Health Amphitheater, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Macon, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in East Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
