Supreme Court rejects appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from swing state ballots The highest court rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, a third-party presidential candidate that has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kennedy wanted to have himself remove from the ballots in these key swing states, arguing that keeping him on would violate his first amendment rights. But with early voting already under way, Wisconsin and Michigan said that removing him from the ballot now would be impossible. It is unclear how Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will affect the election, and whether it will rob votes from Trump. The Stakes: if Trump wins the election, Nato can expect more turbulence ahead Politeness and convention dictate that European leaders try to sound noncommittal when asked whether a Donald Trump presidency would hurt Nato. But despite the rhetoric about “Trump-proofing”, Nato cohesion will be at risk from a hostile or isolationist Republican president, who has previously threatened to leave the alliance if European defence spending did not increase. “The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter. “Take the new Nato command centre to coordinate assistance for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is inside a US army barracks, relying on US logistics and software.” US defence spending will hit a record $968bn in 2024 (the proportion the US spends in Europe is not disclosed). The budgets of the 30 European allies plus Canada amount to $506bn, 34% of the overall total. It is true that 23 out of 32 members expect to spend more than 2% of GDP on defence this year, but in 2014, when the target was set, non-US defence spending in Nato was 24%. Lower than now but not dramatically so. There are more than 100,000 US personnel stationed in Europe, more than the British army, a figure increased by more than 20,000 by Joe Biden in June 2022 in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. US troops have long been based in Germany, but a 3,000-strong brigade was moved by Biden into Romania, a forward corps command post is based in Poland, and US troops contribute to defending the Baltic states, while fighter and bomber squadrons are based in the UK and five naval destroyers in Spain. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, was recently asked whether Nato was ready for Trump. “Elections will have a result whatever,” he began, before acknowledging that much of Europe had been slow to increase defence budgets, missing the warning of Russia’s capture of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and only reacting substantively in 2022 after Russia’s full invasion. “What we did was push the snooze button and turn around,” Pistorius said. In Wisconsin’s case, Kennedy had asked the supreme court to remove him from the ballot by covering his name with stickers, which officials said would be a herculean task. The state’s law prohibits the removal of a nominee’s name from the ballot, stating that “any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination”, with the only exception being in the case of that candidate’s death. Similarly, in Michigan, officials said that Kennedy’s request would be impossible to fulfill, requiring counties reprint and distribute new ballots, which would cause delays. Kennedy’s arguments to have his named removed from swing state ballots run contrary to his assertions in a New York case, where he fought to remain on the ballot after he was disqualified for listing a friend’s address as his residence. Supreme Court rejects appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr from swing state ballots The highest court rejected an emergency appeal to remove Robert F Kennedy Jr, a third-party presidential candidate that has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, from the ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kennedy wanted to have himself remove from the ballots in these key swing states, arguing that keeping him on would violate his first amendment rights. But with early voting already under way, Wisconsin and Michigan said that removing him from the ballot now would be impossible. It is unclear how Kennedy’s presence on the ballot will affect the election, and whether it will rob votes from Trump. At the business roundtable in Pennsylvania, a woman from Puerto Rico who worked as a Medicare provider asked Trump about his plans for the health program. The campaign’s emphasis on the questioner’s Puerto Rican heritage was, no doubt, a way to manage the fallout from a comedian’s racist comments about the island during Trump’s rally this weekend. She told the former president that Puerto Ricans stand behind him. “I think no president said more for Puerto Rico than I have,” Trump responded, noting that the administration had approved aid for the island after Hurricane Maria. (It’s worth noting that his administration “unnecessarily” delayed $20bn in aid to Puerto Rico due to bureaucratic obstacles, according to an internal review) The roundtable is being hosted by Building America’s Future, an Elon Musk-funded Super Pac that has been putting out misleading campaign ads about Harris. At a business roundtable in Pennsylvania, where he was billed to discuss issues impacting senior citizens, Donald Trump is repeating a stump speech about migrants at the US border. He told the crowd of supporters that he doesn’t believe polls showing that the economy and inflation are the top issues for voters. “I think this is the biggest senior issue,” Trump said about migration. “They’re destroying our country, they’re ruining our country,” he said of migrants. As his campaign seeks to manage the fallout from this Madison Square rally, where a comedian’s racist joke about Puerto Rico has unleashed angry backlash, Trump has not scaled back any of the anger, vitriol or racist rhetoric that has been at the core of his message to voters. In his rambling comments, Trump also touched on transgender rights, lying that Democrats “want transgender operations for almost everybody in the world”. Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media. The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik. A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet. The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees. The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers. The famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said on Tuesday he disagreed with the paper’s decision, adding that the outlet was “an institution reporting about Donald Trump and what he’s done and supported by the editorial page”. Bezos framed the decision as an effort to support journalists and journalism, noting that in “surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress”. But in this election year, he noted, the press had fallen below Congress, according to a Gallup poll. “We have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote. In her remarks this evening, Kamala Harris is also expected to say that returning Trump to power will bring “more chaos” and “more division”. “I offer a different path,” she will say, in a speech dedicated to the still-undecided slice of US voters. “And I ask for your vote.” Harris will pledge to “seek common ground and commonsense solutions”. “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table,” Harris is expected to say. The Democrat has built a broad coalition that includes conservative anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman and her father, the former vice-president Dick Cheney. “I pledge to be a President for all Americans,” Harris will say, “to always put country above party and above self.” Harris to warn Trump is "unstable" and "out for unchecked power" in Tuesday speech Kamala Harris will warn that Donald Trump is “unstable”, “obsessed with revenge” “consumed with grievance” and “out for unchecked power” during her speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday night, according to excerpts of her remarks released by the campaign. “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” she will say. “But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are.” Harris is attempting to cast herself as a unifying figure who will work for “all Americans” as president, regardless of who they voted for in the November election, drawing a sharp contrast with Trump who has threatened a campaign of retribution against his political enemies. It’s a similar approach Biden took in the waning days of the 2020 election, but healing the tribalism and polarization proved elusive. Harris suggests that her election would “turn the page” on the Trump era entirely, though there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that Trump would accept his defeat and retreat from the national stage. At his press conference, Steve Bannon also flirted with the idea that Democrats would try to steal the 2024 election from Trump. He also continued to deny the results of the 2020 election, though there is no credible evidence of misconduct that undermines the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. “Were going to have a reprise of 2020 where they’re going to do everything humanly possible to nullify” Trump’s victory and “delegitimize his second term”. “The working-class people in this country that support Donald John Trump are not going to let that happen.” “The 2020 election was stolen,” Bannon said later. During a question-and-answer session, some sort of apparent interloper – it was unclear whether this was a comedian or performance artist or someone else entirely – asked Bannon: “When’s the next insurrection, and can we storm the Burger King after this?” This person appears to have been escorted out of the press conference. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, about 12 hours after his release from prison, Steve Bannon railed against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, attorney general Merrick Garland and Harris, again claiming that he was a “political prisoner”. “The system is broken,” he said, claiming the justice department was “weaponized” to punish Trump supporters and gut his popular podcast, in an effort to thwart Maga’s influence. Bannon also claimed that he met a lot of “working class minorities” behind bars, saying he listened to, and learned from, them. They disliked Harris, he claimed, referring to the former prosecutor as the “queen of mass incarcerations”. Doubling down on his War Room statements this morning, where Bannon insisted that prison had empowered him, he also said: “Nancy Pelosi, suck on that.” Bannon also thanked the prison for giving him the opportunity to teach civics to about 100 students, noting that he had Puerto Rican and Dominican students. Bannon discussed his encounters with people of color at several points today, in an apparent effort to deflect anti-Latino commentary from Trump supporters. Nearly 3.2 million voters have cast ballots in the 2024 general election in North Carolina as of Tuesday at noon. The North Carolina state board of elections made the announcement on Tuesday, adding that 3.2 million voters represents a turnout of 40.7% of registered voters in the state. Just over 3m of the votes were cast in-person, and about 170,000 were cast via mail in ballot. Through the end of the day on Monday, more than 2.9 million voters had cast ballots in person during the first 12 days of the early voting period, which the elections officials said was an increase of 11.9% compared with 2020. Interestingly, turnout in the 25 western North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene continue to outpace statewide turnout, the election board added. JLo to rally with Harris in Las Vegas Jennifer Lopez will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Harris campaign has announced. Lopez will speak on the importance of voting, what’s at stake for the country with this election, and why she is endorsing Harris and Tim Walz, the Harris campaign said. Mexican pop band Maná, will also perform at that rally. Bad Bunny posts apparent response to racist Puerto Rico joke at Trump rally Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist, Bad Bunny, posted a video on his Instagram on Tuesday in celebration of Puerto Rican culture. The post comes in response to the insulting remarks made at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday against the island, where a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”. Bad Bunny’s eight-minute long video, posted to his more than 45 million followers on Tuesday, is captioned “garbage” and highlights Puerto Rican culture, history and people over inspirational music. On Sunday, Bad Bunny, whose official name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, signalled his support for Kamala Harris, sharing a video of the vice-president on his Instagram just moments after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made the remarks about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally. Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice, said the speakers at Trump’s rally on Sunday makes clear that his nativist movement will never see “Latinos or immigrants are real Americans.” Cárdenas pointed to comments made by Stephen Miller, an influential immigration adviser to Trump. Speaking at the same Sunday rally, Cardenas pointed to Miller’s declaration: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” “These words reveal their thinking. In their eyes we are not real Americans, and as far as Trump and his team are concerned, we will never be,” she said. “It foreshadows the sort of administration they would run.” Puerto Ricans are heavily concentrated in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia but they have a presence in all 50 states Hispanic leaders and Activists said on a call on Tuesday responding to the racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Trump’s rally on Sunday. Alex Gomez, executive director of LUCHA based in Arizona, said there were approximately 64,000 Puerto Ricans living in the state, which was decided by 10,000 votes in 2020. “Trump is showing us who he is,” Gomez said. “This is our warning signal of the types of policies and what he and the people that follow him believe and so our communities are not going to stand for that.” She said her organization has a goal of knocking on 500,000 doors before election day, next Tuesday. “We will make sure that our communities know what he has said,” she said. A racist remark about Puerto Rico made at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday was the “October surprise for the Latino community”, said Gustavo Torres, head of CASA in Action, a Latino and immigrant organization. Torres said his organization would work to inform Latino voters every day for the next week until election day. Trump, he said, “humiliate[s] and … underestimate[s] the Puerto Rican Community and the Latino community.” Polls suggest Trump has made notable inroads with Latino voters, particularly men and young people, despite his persistent attacks on immigrant communities and his pledge of mass deportations. The Hispanic leaders and activists on Tuesday’s call predicted a backlash that could cost Trump not only his support among Latinos but possibly the election. “We are going to see what is going to happen on November 5,” Torres told reporters on Tuesday. “Until he apologises and directly disavows those comments, it will leave a stain of racism and bigotry on him and his campaign for the Latino community,” said Janet Murguia, President, UnidosUS Action Fund. “If he understands the importance of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania and Georgia in particular, it would be in his interest to at least make that effort.” Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper endorses Kamala Harris for president Puerto Rico’s Largest Newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President as of Tuesday morning. “On Sunday, continuing a pattern of contempt and misinformation that Donald Trump has maintained for years against the eight million of us American citizens who are Puerto Ricans, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted us during a Republican Party event by referring to Puerto Rico as ‘an island of garbage in the ocean’” the statement from the newspaper reads. It continues, “Is that what Trump and the Republican Party think about Puerto Ricans? Politics is not a joke and hiding behind a comedian is cowardly.” The newspaper said that Trump “has for years maintained a discourse of contempt and misinformation against the island” pointing out the time Trump, as president, threw paper towels into a crowd after Hurricane Maria, “while we suffered without electricity for months.” Later in the lengthy piece, the newspaper asks readers, “Is this the great America we want?”. “On Sunday, as insults rained down on Puerto Rico, the Democratic candidate offered a message of hope, promising to maintain the interagency group dedicated exclusively to strengthening and creating new opportunities” the piece states. In its conclusion, the newspaper writes: “today we urge all those who love our beautiful island, the land of the sea and the sun, not to lend their vote to Donald Trump. To all Puerto Ricans who can vote in this upcoming United States election and represent those of us who cannot: Vote for Kamala Harris.” Former Michigan GOP Chair Rusty Hills has spoken out against Trump in a new opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press published on Tuesday. In the article, titled ‘Trump’s no Gerald Ford. He’s not even George W Bush’ Hills outlines the ways in which Trump is different from former Republican candidates for president. Hills pointed to Trump’s character, rhetoric, offensive insults toward political opponents, praise of Russia, and language regarding immigrants, among other differences he sees between Trump and former GOP candidates. He then asks the readers: Why would any Republican in Michigan who voted for Gerald Ford – or Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush or George W Bush, Sens. John McCain or Mitt Romney – ever cast a ballot for someone like Donald Trump? Hills, who teaches at the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, then writes: The answer is clear – they shouldn’t. New polling shows Harris and Trump deadlocked in Arizona and Nevada New polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by one percentage point in Arizona, and Trump leading Harris in Nevada by the same margin. In the polls, published by CNN and conducted by SSRS polling between 21 October and 26 October, Harris received 48% support in Arizona among likely voters, while Trump received 47%. In Nevada, Trump received 48% support among likely voters, and Harris received 47%. It is important to point out that these numbers are within the margins of error for these polls.