Election 2024 live updates: Harris visits the southern border; Trump meets with Ukraine's Zelenskyy

During his town hall in Michigan, Trump briefly addressed Harris' trip to the southern border today, saying that she "always complains and doesn’t do anything."

The former president also brought up a report about migrants with alleged criminal histories, saying, "what a day for the border."

Harris' trip to the border was the second one during the Biden administration. The first visit to the border was in 2021.

Trump criticized United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain during his town hall tonight in Warren, Michigan, where several people who have asked questions have talked about their connections to the auto industry.

Fain is a staunch critic of Trump, and the former president has gone after the union leader in other campaign appearances.

"He sold you out," Trump said of Fain after the audience booed the mention of Fain's name.

The UAW has endorsed Harris for president, and Fain has called Trump a "scab."

With ballots finalized in the battleground state of Michigan, Trump surrogate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged Michiganders not to vote for him during a Trump campaign event in Walker today.

“The Democratic Party sued me to keep me off the state, here in Michigan, off the ballot. And the day that I announced for Donald Trump, they pivoted and sued me to keep me on the ballot,” Kennedy said. “So far, they’ve won that lawsuit."

“I don’t want you to vote for me. I want you to vote for Donald J. Trump,” said Kennedy, who dropped his independent presidential bid in August and endorsed Trump.

Speaking at an event in Michigan, Trump suggested the assassination attempts against him might have been caused by foreign opposition to his tariff proposals.

Trump made the remark while touting his plan to impose tariffs on foreign auto manufacturers.

Harris has arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, where she is walking along the border wall and speaking to Border Patrol agents.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name will remain on the ballot in Wisconsin, the state's Supreme Court ruled today, upholding a lower court's decision to deny the former independent presidential candidate's request to scrub his name.

The decision comes after hundreds of thousands of mail ballots were already sent out in the state, and some had already been returned, too.

Kennedy has been trying to get his name off the ballot in key battleground states in an effort to not siphon votes away from Trump, who Kennedy endorsed after dropping out of the race in August.

The Harris campaign announced that it is launching another "Weekend of Action" in the hopes of reaching more than 1 million voters.

"We’ve spent over a year building a massive battleground advantage over the Trump operation. With just 39 days left, we are pushing our edge on the ground to underscore the stakes of this election to the voters who will decide this election," said the campaign's battleground states director, Dan Kanninen, in a statement.

Weekend mobilization efforts include more than 25,000 volunteer shifts and 4,000 events in battleground states, the campaign said.

Trump admitted again today that he lost the 2020 presidential election despite claiming over the last four years that it was rigged and stolen by Democrats.

At his rally in Walker, Michigan, Trump said that his aides told him if he secured the same number of votes as in 2016, he couldn't lose.

"We got many millions of votes more than that," he said. "Nobody's ever gotten more votes, sitting president, and they beat us by a whisker. It's the only thing they're good at — they're good at cheating and elections."

Mexican musician Alejandro Fernandez on Thursday posted a stern disavowal of the use of his father’s image in a seemingly fake “Latinos for Trump” ad. 

The musician, whose father is the late Mexican legend Vicente Fernandez, said in an Instagram post to his 4.8 million followers that the ad was "totally fake" and would never have been supported by his father. 

“My father was not only one of the best representatives of Mexican music and culture, but he was also a fervent defender of the dignity and rights of our citizens around the world,” Fernandez wrote in Spanish. He continued by denouncing Trump’s past comments about Mexicans and migrants. 

The Trump campaign rebranded its Hispanic outreach effort from “Latinos for Trump” to “Latino Americans for Trump” in June. The campaign confirmed to NBC News that it is not affiliated with the video.

Trump falsely said in remarks in Walker, Michigan this afternoon that he wasn't responsible for the collapse in the Senate of the bipartisan border bill earlier this year.

The former president said that Harris went to the border today and said she made up "some lies," including that Trump stopped the border bill in Congress.

"Let me tell you, number one, I didn't stop it," Trump said. "The senators stopped it. But that's the worst bill ever drawn. It's a waste of paper."

Trump was largely blamed, however, for the Senate's failure to get the legislation passed after he pressured Republicans to oppose it. The bill, negotiated by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., was blocked by GOP senators in May.

WALKER, Mich. — Mother and daughter Stacy Waldron and Nancy Thompson, who are both Trump supporters, told NBC News ahead of the former president's remarks here that they agree with is comment yesterday that migrants are “infecting our country." 

“I agree, at least the illegal ones that are coming over here and committing crimes, they shouldn’t be here,” said Waldron.

“They are, in a way,” Thompson said in agreement, adding, “You don’t know what diseases they have when they come through there." 

When asked what they thought about Trump meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this morning, Waldron said, “I don’t even think he should be here, because we keep giving him all of our money, and we have people that need it here. Why are we fighting someone else’s war? It doesn’t make sense to me." 

 “Why do we have to keep giving them more and more and more?” Thompsons said. “And our guys are sleeping on the streets. The United States needs their money."

Ohio Sen. JD Vance is set to participate in a town hall in Pennsylvania on Saturday with evangelical religious leader Lance Wallnau, who said after this month’s presidential debate that Vice President Kamala Harris used “witchcraft.”

Wallnau, a Texas-based celebrity evangelist, is a self-described prophet. Two decades ago, he coined and popularized the Seven Mountains Mandate — an increasingly popular belief on the American right that says conservative Christians are called to occupy positions of power in seven key spheres of society, including business, education, media and government.

Since 2016, Wallnau and his allies have presented Trump as a flawed but anointed leader — like the biblical figure King Cyrus — who has been chosen by God to restore Christian power in America. After denying Trump’s 2020 election defeat and telling followers that God had a plan to keep him in office, Wallnau joined pro-Trump protestors in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to pray for divine intervention to stop Congress from certifying the electoral count as rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Read the full story here.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against the city of Austin today over a grant designed to help residents travel out of state for abortions.

Paxton contends the $400,000 in taxpayer funds the city appropriated for the reproductive health grant for the 2024-2025 fiscal year is "unlawful."

“No city in Texas has the authority to spend taxpayer money in this manner," Paxton said in a statement, adding “The Texas Constitution prohibits governmental entities from doing so.”

The suit says it is "a crime to aid or abet a violation of the state's abortion laws." "As such, the 'logistical support' of out-of-state abortions serves to support and encourage acts that are unlawful in Texas and is a transparent attempt to undermine and subvert Texas law and public policy," the filing says. 

CBS has announced the rules and format of Tuesday's vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz.

The 9 p.m. ET debate will be moderated by Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, and will last 90 minutes with two four minute breaks, the network said. There will be no audience, and no props or pre-written notes are allowed. The candidates will have a pen and paper to take notes during the debate, and they cannot confer with campaign staffers during the breaks.

Candidates will get two minutes to respond to each question, and then the other candidate will have two minutes to respond. They can then have up to one minute each for further rebuttals, the network said. There will be no opening statements, but each candidate will have two minutes for closing statements.

LINCOLNVILLE, Maine — Former President Donald Trump calls himself a “tariff man” and says the taxes on imported goods “are the greatest thing ever invented,” so it’s no surprise Vice President Kamala Harris has attacked the centerpiece of the GOP nominee’s economic agenda as bad policy.

What’s more surprising, however, is that one House Democratic just introduced a bill to codify Trump’s 10% across-the-board tariffs, revealing how the long-dormant trade policy splits both parties.

Tariffs can trace their roots to ancient Athens and other historical civilizations and were the main source of revenue for the federal government until 1914, when the income tax supplanted them. But they largely fell out of favor during the late 20th century as the U.S. led a global free trade revolution.

Knocking down trade barriers slashed the cost of consumer goods and grew many economies around the world. But critics say unfettered free trade also decimated American manufacturing and the well-paid, often unionized, jobs that came with it since domestic factories were unable to compete with the lower costs of making things abroad.

“Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial,” Trump said said this week.

Read the full story here.

Three Iranian nationals have been indicted for hacking into the campaign of former President Donald Trump, stealing emails and then sharing them with news media, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Washington on Friday.

The three Iranians, identified as members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hacked into the campaign of an unidentified presidential candidate in May and stole documents from it.

U.S. officials have privately said that Trump’s campaign was the victim of the attack.

The hackers then sent “unsolicited emails” that included the stolen material from Trump’s campaign to people associated with his Democratic political rival.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams stepped into a Manhattan courtroom and into the history books on Friday when he was arraigned on federal corruption and bribery charges that could force him out of office.

“I am not guilty, your honor,” Adams told Federal Magistrate Judge Katherine Parker, during a brief court appearance in Manhattan.

Adams surrendered to federal authorities a day after he was hit with a 57-page federal indictment accusing him of taking $100,000 worth of free plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nationals and at least one government official in a nearly decade-long corruption scheme.

A 64-year-old former New York City police captain, Adams is charged with five criminal counts that include bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national. He was expected to plead not guilty.

The president is in Scranton in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today, but not to campaign.

Biden is attending the funeral of his childhood best friend, Thomas Bell. He issued a statement last week after Bell's death praising the father of four, a longtime insurance agent and former National Guardsman.

"From swinging on branches to running by the river, Tommy was the friend with the special heart, who would always lighten your heart. Over the next 70 years, he was the best friend at weddings, funerals, campaign rallies, and so many memories. You could always count on Tommy, and I hope he knew he could always count of me," Biden said.

The White House said Biden was also briefed on Tropical Storm Helen in the morning, and has approved emergency declaration requests from five of the affected states.

In a tweet today, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., called on New York Mayor Eric Adams to step down. Adams was indicted on charges of bribery and fraud earlier this week.

"While the criminal charges outlined in the indictment by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York are very serious, Mayor Adams deserves the right to due process and to be treated as presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, there are questions on whether the Mayor can continue to effectively lead our City as Mayor at this time," Nadler said in his tweet.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has also called on the mayor to step down. Other New York Democrats, like Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Gov. Kathy Hochul have not yet done so.

Meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy for the first time in five years, former President Donald Trump complained about his 2019 impeachment and said if re-elected he would work to end the Russia-Ukraine war with a deal “that’s good for both sides.”

“We’re going to work very much with both parties to try and get this settled and get it worked out,” Trump said, standing next to Zelenskyy while speaking to a small group of reporters ahead of their closed-door meeting. “It has to end. At some point, it has to end. He’s gone through hell. His country has gone through hell.”

Read the full story here.

In a new statement out today, the Trump campaign blasted Harris ahead of her visit to the border, saying, "Kamala has been at the forefront of the effort to dismantle American sovereignty and open up our border. Kamala's agenda is an affront to our rule of law."

In the press release, Trump's campaign highlighted several high-profile immigration cases that occurred while Harris was senator and later, vice president.

The cases include the slaying of college student Laken Riley in Georgia and a House Judiciary Committee report that alleged federal law enforcement released dangerous migrants into the U.S. under the Biden administration.

The press release also pointed to Harris' evolving positions on the border, linking to news coverage of her support in 2019 for decriminalizing border crossings and recent reports from CNN about Harris' past criticism of a border wall, among other things.

In a statement from the White House, Biden celebrated the August personal consumption expenditure numbers released today, which show inflation slowing.

"The economy, incomes, savings, and consumer spending are all stronger than previously estimated," Biden said in the statement.

The president also committed himself and the vice president to do "more work ... to lower costs and create opportunities for Americans."

Biden blasted Republicans in Congress, saying that while his administration wants to "build millions of new homes, continue to lower the price of prescription drugs and health care, and cut taxes for families, small businesses, and industries of the future ... Congressional Republicans would take the opposite approach — raising costs for middle-class families by nearly $4,000 per year while giving more tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations."

With immigration a top issue in the presidential campaign, Harris will visit the southern border for the first time in three years. NBC News’ Julia Ainsley traveled to a remote section of the border wall, which has become a symbol of the immigration issue.

Similar to what it did in North Carolina earlier this week, the Democratic National Committee is launching billboards in Michigan targeting Trump who has two campaign events in the battleground state today.

The billboards blame Trump for the closure of automobile plants in the state and the loss of jobs. Trump is holding campaign events today in Walker and Warren.

In a statement, DNC spokesperson Stephanie Justice said that Trump broke his promises to Michigan's families.

"On his watch, a Warren car plant closed and the auto industry bled thousands of jobs," she said. "This is the truth: Trump said that he could have let auto companies ‘go bankrupt’ in 2008 and he continues to antagonize union workers."

Harris is set to visit the southern border for the first time as the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, Trump is holding a high-stakes meeting with the president of Ukraine in New York after a week of trading barbs. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for TODAY.

Two in 3 voters say the country is on the “wrong track” as voters weigh whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would be better able to change that less than two months from Election Day. 

The latest NBC News national poll finds 65% of registered voters surveyed this month say the country is on the wrong track, while 28% say it’s on the right track. 

The figure is one of the “warning signs” for Democrats ahead of November, said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll along with GOP pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. 

Read the full story here.

The war for the first battleground electoral vote may have been decided this week before a single ballot was cast. The weapons of choice: private polls. The likely winner: Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a wild election season that has featured Democrats substituting Harris for President Joe Biden at the top of their ticket — and Republican Donald Trump surviving two assassination attempts while trying to become the first former president in modern history to avenge a loss — the story of Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District is one of the most compelling subplots.

Party operatives and political analysts are fascinated with the district because it is highly competitive turf in one of just two states — Maine is the other — that award an elector to the candidate who wins the most votes in each congressional district. With recent presidential elections turning on tens of thousands of votes spread across a few states, there are scenarios in which Nebraska’s 2nd District could determine who wins the Electoral College and the presidency.

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — With a forecast high temperature near triple digits in late September, Vice President Kamala Harris is set Friday to dive into one of the most heated issues of the presidential campaign: immigration. 

Harris is scheduled to make her first trip to the southern U.S. border in more than three years. It will be her first visit since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and she took over at the top of the ticket.

“We do have a broken immigration system,” Harris said Wednesday in an interview with MSNBC. “And it needs to be fixed.”

If she wins in November, Harris may face a hostile, Republican-controlled Senate in no mood to confirm the senior Cabinet officials she would need to run her administration.

Anticipating that scenario, Harris’ team is exploring whether to keep in place some of the Biden administration officials who’ve already been confirmed by the Senate and wouldn’t need to face the gantlet again, four people familiar with her transition planning said.

Read the full story here.

Harris will push for tougher border security in a speech today at the southern border, a senior campaign official said.

In her remarks, Harris will repeat a frequent attack by highlighting Trump's role in squashing a bipartisan border bill this year, the official said.

"The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games," Harris will say, according to the official. The official said Harris will also call combating the flow of fentanyl "a top priority" if she is elected.

Polling indicates voters believe Trump would handle border and migration issues better than Harris. Today's border visit will be Harris' first as the Democratic presidential nominee and her second as vice president.