Election 2024: Trump holds rally in North Carolina; Walz accepts VP debate date, while Vance hasn't committed yet

A new Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania out today finds that 58% of likely Democratic voters are more enthusiastic about Harris' candidacy because she picked Walz as her running mate.

By contrast, just 42% of Republican likely voters say Trump's selection of Vance as his running mate makes them more enthusiastic about voting for Trump.

The enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans over the vice presidential candidates is striking, as Vance was picked in large part to help Trump win Pennsylvania in November and Walz was picked over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who would have been expected to assist in Harris' efforts to win the state.

Trump today delivered what had been billed as remarks focusing on his plans for the economy, but he went on numerous tangents about Biden, Harris, Walz and windmills.

Trump spoke before an enthusiastic crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, as Trump allies and advisers have been urging him to focus on his policy differences with Harris and veer away from personal attacks. While Trump outlined several areas where the two diverge on policy, they were overshadowed by insults lobbed at top Democrats.

“For four years, she’s cackled while the economy burned,” Trump said of Harris. “That’s the laugh of a crazy person, I tell you. She’s crazy.”

Read the full story here.

Walz mocked the intelligence of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., at a fundraiser in Boston tonight.

“I feel like one of my roles in this now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville, to show that football coaches are not the dumbest people," said Walz, who was a high school football coach.

Walz also claimed that he doesn't name-call, saying, "This thing about describing the behavior of Donald Trump and his running mate as weird and out of touch with the rest of us, that was an observation, not name-calling. Nobody’s asking for the things they’re asking for.”

In an economic address Friday, Harris will call for imposing the first federal ban on corporate price gouging in the food and grocery industries.

The policy would set "clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries," the Harris campaign said in a statement.

If elected, Harris will also "direct her Administration to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices," her campaign said.

"These actions stand in stark contrast to Trump’s economic agenda, which would increase inflation and costs for middle-class families," the campaign said. 

An upgraded version of X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, can now generate images — of almost anything. And some users have noticed just how few guardrails this latest language model has, compared with its competitors.

The model, Grok-2, appears to carry few limitations on creating fake images of political figures. Since its rollout yesterday in beta, X users have shared Grok-generated images of everything from Trump locking lips with Elon Musk to Trump and Harris giving a thumbs up to the camera from a pilot’s cockpit as the two seemingly re-create 9/11.

Most of the images are high-quality but not quite photorealistic, and many of them are easily identified as having been computer-generated. Some, however, might pass for a real photo at first glance.

Read the full story here.

In a 2020 interview on "The Portal" podcast, Vance appeared to respond affirmatively when host Eric Weinstein made a claim about the role of women past child-bearing age in raising children.

Weinstein said of grandmothers helping to raise grandchildren, “That’s whole purpose of the postmenopausal —"

“Yes,” Vance responded.

“... female in theory,” Weinstein continued, finishing his thought.

NBC News’ Garrett Haake is on the campaign trail with Trump as he slams Harris for the nearly 20% rise in prices over the last four years. But Trump again veered into personal attacks, despite growing Republican appeals to focus on Harris’ record instead of unleashing insults.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who is up for re-election in November, told NBC News he hopes to be speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. Biden, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are confirmed as speakers at the convention.

Casey’s opponent, Dave McCormick, spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month. Their race will help determine the balance of power in the Senate.

With Harris and Walz now at the top of the ballot, McCormick told NBC News, the change after Biden's departure from the race “crystallized the choice,” saying, “This is a race between what I believe the strength and weakness but also a common-sense practical set of policies to get our country back on track versus a very liberal agenda. A very San Francisco liberal agenda.”

The Trump campaign is again accusing its opponent of hiding, trying to draw a contrast with Trump's remarks today.

"Team Trump Speaks to American People while Kamala Hides," read the subject line of a fundraising email the Trump campaign sent out this evening after he spoke in Asheville, North Carolina.

The Trump team frequently referred to Biden as "Hidin' Biden" and said he was holed up in his basement during the 2020 campaign, during which Biden often held virtual events amid the Covid pandemic.

Harris is set to deliver remarks Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, just two days after Trump's rally in the state.

A leading pro-cryptocurrency political group has dumped millions of dollars into high-profile Michigan and Arizona Senate races to back Democrats against Trump-endorsed candidates, angering top Republicans who viewed the industry as an ally, not an opponent.

Fairshake PAC and its affiliated super PAC are reserving millions in advertising spending to influence three Senate races this cycle and have announced commitments of about $3 million each to Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego, who is running in Arizona, and Elisa Slotkin, a candidate in Michigan, it said today.

The spending risks upending GOP efforts to secure seats in two key battleground states in the fight for control of the Senate and comes as top Republicans — amid a hostile regulatory environment — have leveraged their political capital to broker closer ties to the cryptocurrency industry.

Read the full story here.

Trump claimed at this afternoon's rally that the Biden administration had improperly taken credit for lower insulin costs.

"You know who did that? I did that. I did that. I did the insulin, and it kicked in," Trump said. "I got it done — $35 insulin — and now they take credit for it. It's terrible, terrible."

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by Biden in 2022, included a provision that lowered the out-of-pocket cost for people on Medicare to $35 a month and covered all insulin products. While the cap didn't apply to people with private insurance, insulin manufacturers voluntarily lowered the out-of-pocket cost to $35 a month for people with private insurance after the law took effect.

CBS News today proposed four dates for a VP debate in New York between Vance and Walz.

The network proposed Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.

Walz quickly responded on X by saying, "See you on October 1, JD."

Trump said at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, today that he plans to dramatically reduce energy and electricity prices if he is elected.

"Under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half, at least half," Trump said.

Rising natural gas prices have increased electricity costs, leading energy bills to balloon in many cities.

The U.S. is already producing more crude oil than any other country in history, according to a data analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Trump has also said he opposes spending on wind and solar power.

Authorities filed an arrest warrant today for Toby Shane Kessler over burglary charges in connection with a Trump campaign office in Ashburn, Virginia.

The alleged break-in took place Sunday night in a building that also houses the state's 10th District Republican Committee, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office.

The sheriff's office alleges that Kessler forced himself into the building via a back door and was identified by security video inside the campaign office. Police said it is still unclear whether anything was taken.

Speaking at his rally in Asheville, North Carolina, Trump again made the false claim that he “passed the largest tax cuts in history.”

In real dollars, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed into law was the fourth-largest tax cut, and as a percentage of gross domestic product, it was the 12th-largest, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

At his event earlier today in Michigan, Vance appeared to confuse Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack when taking questions from reporters.

Just after a reporter asked about the steps a Trump-Vance administration would take to lower food prices, an audience member shouted: "Fire Granholm!"

Vance chuckled, saying, "That's right," before adding, "Well, the first is, we’re going to fire — we’re going to fire the agriculture secretary, right? She’s not doing a very good job."

A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed an appeal today in his New York ballot access case after a judge blocked him from appearing on the ballot.

In a statement, Kennedy called the ruling an "assault on New York voters who signed in record numbers to place me on their ballot."

Kennedy's attorney, William F. Savino, said the appeal is "based on numerous arguments," including what he called the judge's refusal "to address the unconstitutionality of New York placing higher restrictions on candidate residency than allowed by the 12th amendment."

The judge's ruling this week said Kennedy misrepresented his residency as being New York-based. Kennedy resides in California with his wife, but in testimony he said they had always intended to move back to New York.

While Walz has been in the forefront since he became Harris' running mate, the Walz family dog, Scout, is making headlines in a new article from Vogue.

The new article, "Scout Walz Is Man's (And Maybe America's) Best Friend," details Scout's journey into the family after Walz made a promise to his son that they would get a dog if he won the 2018 election for governor of Minnesota.

Before Walz won, Scout had been an abandoned rescue dog who was left behind in Oklahoma. After the election, the family adopted him from Midwest Animal Rescue, a Minnesota nonprofit organization.

Detailing the dog's personality and habits, the article explores how Scout quickly became an integral part of the Walz family.

"He rescued us as much as we rescued him," the Walz family told Vogue.

After he voted early in the Florida primary, Trump addressed his false claim that members of the audience at a Harris rally were generated by artificial intelligence.

"I can’t say what was there, who was there. I can only tell you about ours," he told reporters. "We have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics."

Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday reposting a conspiracy theory that pointed to a photo of the rally and said Harris' team "A.I.'d" it. The Harris campaign has denied the photo was manipulated. Video from the event has matched the photo, and people at the rally have denied Trump's claim.

In his remarks at a campaign event in Michigan, Vance repeatedly mentioned people's lack of ability to eat "a nice meal" because of inflation.

Vance mentioned a woman he met on the campaign trail who used to make steak with her family every Friday, but "now she told me it’s gone: 'We just do hamburgers.'"

Vance added, "There’s nothing wrong with hamburger, but it’s not a steak."

He also blasted Harris for detailing her plans for her first day as president, saying, "Day one was four years ago, Kamala Harris, and because of your policies, too many children can’t afford a nice meal. Too many children have been killed by fentanyl. Too many grandparents are raising kids they didn’t plan for, and too many families can’t afford a special meal on a Friday night."

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said today that his panel is launching an investigation into reports related to Meta's AI assistant and a Google search function and the assassination attempt on Trump.

In separate letters, Comer requested documents and information from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In his letter to Google, Comer cited reports that said that when people searched Trump's assassination attempt on Google, the search function provided information only about assassination attempts on other presidents and leaders but omitted information about the Trump incident.

During a campaign stop in Byron Center, Michigan, Vance accused Harris of "[raising] the price of American energy."

"Michigan suffered. You suffered. Good American jobs suffered," Vance added, asking the crowd, "But you know who made a lot of money? Kamala Harris’ donors."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., and Vice Chair Marco Rubio, R-Fla., condemned efforts by foreign adversaries to influence the election in the wake of attempts to hack the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns.

“With less than 100 days to go before the election, it is clear that our foreign adversaries are intently interested in disrupting our democratic process,” Warner and Rubio said in a statement. “While we await additional information from the Intelligence Community and law enforcement on the extent of recent foreign efforts against presidential campaigns, indications from Microsoft that foreign cyber actors may have penetrated a presidential campaign’s infrastructure are grounds for serious concern.”

Warner and Rubio called for additional measures to protect election integrity in the face of foreign meddling.

“Protecting the integrity of our elections from foreign meddling requires constant attention,” they wrote. “This includes bolstering campaign cybersecurity, heightened vigilance from media outlets on the potential of spreading hacked or manipulated content from foreign intelligence services, and a commitment by both political parties to call out foreign election influence efforts.”

Trump is at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office this afternoon, casting an early vote in the state's primary election.

He did not take questions from press assembled outside when he arrived.

Vice President Kamala Harris has quickly turned around lagging support from Latinos for the Democratic ticket, though the backing is currently a few points short of the level Joe Biden achieved in 2020, a poll released Wednesday by Equis Research shows.

With 80 days to go in the election, Harris “is on track to hold off a GOP surge” in support from Latino voters, according to a memo on the poll. Equis Research is a Democratic polling firm that focuses on Latinos.

But a significant portion of registered Latino voters, many of them new voters, are still an unknown on whether they will vote or whom they will support. Where these voters eventually land could determine the outcome in some battleground states, the polling firm said in the memo.

“Out the gate, the vice president has quickly amassed the support of a wide swath of discontented Hispanic voters, and she still has running room,” it stated. “What those last Latino voters do could determine the overall result in hotly contested states."

Read the full story here.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ call to scrap taxes on tips adds to the bipartisan support for a proposal her rival, former President Donald Trump, floated two months earlier. But the fate of the policy idea could hinge on broader disagreements on base pay regardless of who wins the election.

Unlike Trump, Harris proposed pairing the elimination of federal taxes on tip income with a bump in the national minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009.

Many tip earners, however, are paid a much lower “subminimum” wage that requires employers to make up the difference whenever gratuities don’t add up to the federal pay floor. The U.S. subminimum, which a handful of states have replaced with across-the-board hourly minimums, has been $2.13 an hour since 1991.

“It’s heartening that everybody’s talking about it,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of the labor advocacy group One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. But “it means nothing until we raise these workers’ wages and end the subminimum wage for tipped workers,” she said.

Read the full story here.

The group most directly affected by restrictions on abortion — women of reproductive age — are broadly against them, new survey results have found. 

According to findings released today by KFF, a nonprofit health think tank, 74% of women in the U.S. ages 18 to 49 think abortion should be legal. Around 70% support a federal right to abortion — the position held by Harris in a presidential election in which abortion rights are expected to be a motivating factor for many voters.

Nearly half of Republican women of reproductive age said abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

Read the full story here.

Judge Juan Merchan has rejected for a third time Trump's demand that he step aside from the New York hush money case because of an alleged conflict of interest involving his daughter.

Trump made the new request earlier this month, contending Merchan should step aside before the former president is scheduled to be sentenced on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment. His attorneys contended the judge has a conflict because Harris used his daughter’s firm for digital fundraising during the 2020 presidential campaign, and she and her family could benefit from a Harris victory in November.

In a ruling yesterday, the judge called Trump's claims "stale and unsubstantiated."

"Defendant has provided nothing new for this Court to consider. Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts," Merchan wrote, adding he "now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear - innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create." 

In an interview with CNN this morning, Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler responded to criticism from Trump after Harris announced that she supports ending the taxing of tips.

Trump, who has previously said he wants to end taxes on tips, has said Harris stole his idea after she voiced her support for the proposal at a campaign event with the Culinary Workers Union.

"I would say that there’s only one candidate in this race that actually has a track record of standing up and working for working people, and that’s Kamala Harris," Tyler said.

Tyler added, "But she also understands what Donald Trump doesn’t understand, that that’s not enough. That’s why we have to increase the federal minimum wage."

Trump is scheduled to hold a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. ET, his campaign announced.

Instagram failed to remove 93% of abusive comments directed at female politicians out of 1,000 examples flagged to the app for most likely violating its rules, according to a report today from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The center said it collected the abusive comments this summer from the Instagram accounts of 10 female officeholders — five Republicans and five Democrats. It said it reported the comments through the app and then checked back a week later to find the vast majority of them still online. 

Many of the abusive replies Instagram left up were sexually degrading or included violent threats likely to be in violation of Instagram’s community guidelines, according to the center. Some comments included explicit language about rape, injury or death in connection with the female politicians, and Instagram left them up, the center said.

Read the full story here.

Royce White, a former college and professional basketball player, is set to face off against Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in November after winning the Republican Senate primary for her seat.

White had led some Black Lives Matter protests in his state in 2020 but later became more aligned with Trump’s MAGA base. He has gained attention for inflammatory comments about women, using homophobic slurs to attack the press and more.

White’s Senate bid is viewed as a long shot, with Klobuchar easily winning re-election in previous cycles. This year's race is not considered competitive, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Walz will do a campaign event in Omaha on Saturday, a source told NBC News.

Biden is expected to stop by a White House conference that's assembling 100 digital creators and industry professionals to discuss issues such as artificial intelligence, pay equity and mental health, a White House official said.

Some of the government officials taking part are Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden, the White House official said.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is scheduled to speak at campaign events today in Illinois.

He'll be speaking in Chicago and Glencoe.

More than 1,000 veterans and military family members signed an open letter in support of Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, saying they are “appalled” at Trump and Vance’s “politically motivated attacks” accusing him of lying about his decades of military service.

“JD Vance’s recent comments attacking Governor Walz’s service record are disrespectful and deeply disappointing, especially given Vance’s own service — which we are also profoundly grateful for,” the letter, obtained by USA TODAY, reads. “But given Donald Trump’s long record of expressing disdain for service members, veterans, and their families, it’s unsurprising that his running mate has stooped to such lows.”

The letter was circulated by the left-leaning veterans advocacy group VoteVets, USA Today reported.

Trump said in an interview with Univision that no one knows Harris' last name and again mispronounced her first name.

"We’re being attacked. It’s a new form of crime in the U.S.. It’s called migrant crime, and it’s caused because of Harris. Kamala," Trump said, mispronouncing her name.

"You know Harris? Nobody knows her last name. It’s Harris. No, everyone thinks of her as Kamala. So it’s Kamala Harris," Trump added.

This comes as Trump's allies have publicly and privately urged him to stay on message and avoid ad hominem attacks against his Democratic opponent.

This morning's slightly cool inflation reading practically sealed the case for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut in September, which is all-but-certain to draw Trump's ire.

The former president told Bloomberg weeks ago that a pre-election cut would be a boost to Democrats. Indeed, lower interest rates heading into the holiday shopping season could be a boost to consumer sentiment, especially as prices cool in several key categories, including groceries.

A Harris campaign official confirms that the vice president and her running mate will embark on a Pennsylvania bus tour Sunday, ahead of the Democratic National Convention kickoff next week. 

Harris and Walz will start in Pittsburgh, with more stops expected along the way. Their spouses, Doug Emhoff and Gwen Walz, will join as well, the official said. 

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is expected to deliver remarks Wednesday evening at the Democratic National Convention next week, a source familiar with the planning told NBC News.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is also expected to speak in the prime-time hours of the convention Tuesday night.

Buttigieg and Pritzker were among the group of running mate contenders the Harris campaign's vetting team had met with before she ultimately chose Walz to join her on the ticket.

Will Stancil, who is primarily known for his frequent social media posts on U.S. politics, lost the primary election in his district for the Minnesota state House of Representatives.

He was defeated by Katie Jones, who won 43% of the vote in the deep blue district that represents several neighborhoods in Minneapolis.

Stancil, an attorney and civil rights advocate, wrote in a post on X late last night, “Hey, you can always lose an election, that’s politics. Nothing ventured nothing gained”

The Harris-Walz campaign is denying Walz had a “personal relationship” with a cleric who has spread antisemitic content on Facebook, after a video surfaced of Walz praising the cleric.

The Washington Examiner obtained the video. The outlet says it’s from an event hosted by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota during Walz’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2018. In the clip, Walz praises Imam Asad Zaman, executive director of the organization hosting the event, as a “master teacher.”

“They don’t have a personal relationship and the Governor condemns Hamas’ terrorism and antisemitism of any kind,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson, tells NBC News.

Vance will speak this afternoon at a campaign rally in Byron Center, Michigan.

Later this week, he'll be in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Republicans should “quit whining” about Harris and turn their focus to policy and messaging.

“Republicans should not be surprised that we are now running against Kamala Harris. It was her all the time,” Haley told Fox News anchor Bret Baier yesterday. “There was no way Joe Biden, in the condition that we saw him, could take on the stresses of a presidential election. So that was something I believed in then. It’s why I constantly referred back to her, because I knew that Kamala Harris was the person that we had.”

“And the one thing Republicans have to stop doing: Quit whining about her,” she added. “We knew it was going to be her.” 

Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under the Trump administration, cited Trump’s skepticism over large crowds at Harris’ recent rallies and argued that his messaging should center around policies he would push for if elected.

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner was picked yesterday as the Democrats’ nominee to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died last month after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Turner, 69, will appear on the November ballot after securing the most support from local Democratic precinct chairs during a party meeting in Houston. Jackson Lee had already won the Democratic nomination for what would have been a 16th term before her death July 19, leaving party officials to select her replacement.

Turner left the mayor’s office in January after serving eight years, the most allowed by term limits. He was previously a longtime state lawmaker.

The House district in Houston is solidly Democratic. Turner will face Republican challenger Lana Centonze.

Greek organizations tend to be the domain of colleges, with students pledging and developing lifelong connections in fraternities and sororities. But Harris’ presidential campaign is thrusting Black Greek organizations into the political sphere. She is the first presidential nominee to come from a Divine Nine Greek organization, so she would be the first president from the Black Greek system if she is elected.

That means Harris has ready access to the Divine Nine’s more than 2 million members — including activists, community leaders, philanthropists and more — and what could be a powerful voting and mobilization bloc. 

Harris, 59, is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest Black Greek-letter sorority in the country and one of the Black sororities or fraternities that make up the “Divine Nine.” It’s a sisterhood that has rallied behind Harris since her ascent to the vice presidency, especially as the organizations encourage lifelong membership and community involvement beyond one’s college years. Last week, Kiahna W. Davis, a regional director of Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc., formed an AKA political action committee to support Harris.

Read the full story here.

Walz will speak at a pair of campaign receptions today.

He'll be in Denver before he heads to Boston.

Trump will travel to Asheville, North Carolina, to speak about the U.S. economy at a rally.

Trump has made the economy one of his top campaign issues, with a particular focus on inflation.