Election 2024 live updates: Trump ex-staffer claims he praised Hitler’s generals; Harris to court undecided voters at CNN town hall

A new ad from the Harris-Walz campaign centered on reproductive freedom has been launched ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech in Houston, Texas on Friday, which will focus on the state’s draconian abortion laws.

Today, The Independent has published an investigative series and released a new documentary, The A-Word, which examines the state of abortion access and reproductive care in the US after the fall of Roe v Wade.

Read more about it here and watch the full documentary:

Vice President Kamala Harris has added remarks to her schedule today at 1 pm at Naval Observatory, her official residence in Washington, DC.

Neither the White House nor her campaign has said what she plans to speak about, though it is likely to be centered on comments about Donald Trump made by John Kelly, his longest-serving chief of staff, according to two people briefed on the plans who spoke with The New York Times.

Kelly told the paper in an interview that the former president praised Hitler multiple times and warned that the Republican nominee meets the definition of a fascist.

A MAGA youth pastor favored by the evangelist Jerry Falwell Jr has been charged with coercing minors to have sex with him and send him pornographic images.

Zachary Radcliff, 29, of Saline in Michigan, is accused of a string of offenses relating to sexually abusive activity going back as far as 2011, according to state police.

The alleged victims were aged between 12 and 17 at the time, Michigan State Police said.

A US District judge has upheld a decision to remove an election-denying, pro-Trump attorney from the Dominion defamation case.

Judge Carl Nichols denied the motion to reinstate attorney Stefanie Lambert that was filed after her removal from the case in August.

District Judge Moxila Upadhyaya booted attorney Stefanie Lambert from representing former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in the case after she publicly leaked the company’s internal emails.

Dominion Voting Systems sued Byrne for defamation after he repeatedly falsely accused the company of rigging the election against Donald Trump.

And here’s Alex Woodward’s report on Lambert’s initial removal.

Gustaf Kilander has the story of what Musk had to say as he was yet again publicly mocked for this Trump rally appearance.

In an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman made a foreign policy case for Donald Trump implying that dictators fear him because he might actually do what he says, such as “bomb Moscow”.

He also blamed the invasion of Georgia and Crimea by Russia on the Biden administration when they happened during the Bush and Obama presidencies, respectively, and dismissed John Kelly calling Trump a fascist as “one person stating a series of things”.

Ackman also didn’t seem to have faith in the judgment of the jury that found Trump liable for sexual assault.

Host Andrew Ross Sorkin then challenged Ackman over the former president’s spreading of disinformation and his own tweets…

For more than a decade, ‘Melinda’ has raised a child she never wanted — a child that was the product of rape.

“I love my child. But if I could go back in time and get an abortion, I would 100 percent of the time,” she told The Independent.

Melinda, whose name was changed at her request to protect her child, said her perspective often “trips people up,” but it doesn’t mean she hates her child — she just wishes she’d been able to get an abortion.

Election officials in Georgia have conducted an audit of voters in the state and found that there were just 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered people in the state.

Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger announced the findings today, which underline the notion that noncitizen voting is extremely rare, no matter what some in the Republican Party and Trump campaign maintain, attempting to sow doubt in results ahead of the election.

The 20 individuals were found to be noncitizens based on affidavits they signed to get out of jury duty, Raffesnperger said in a news conference this morning.

Those records were then compared with federal citizenship and voter registration databases. Their registrations were canceled and the matter was referred to law enforcement for further investigations and possible prosecution.

“There’s no proof that there is this overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls,” Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday. “Because, the reality is, if you’re a noncitizen and you’re a legal resident and you’re on a path to citizenship, if you try to register to vote, you will never get to be a citizen. It is very high risk, very low reward.”

A further 156 people’s citizenship state wasn’t immediately determined and will be subject to further scrutiny.

“Georgia is a model when it comes to preventing noncitizen voting,” Raffensperger said, adding, “We need to remain constantly vigilant.”

Danielle Campoamor writes that as a currently pregnant mother-of-two who has experienced both miscarriage and abortion, and who lives in a state with a near-total abortion ban: “I deserve more than this.”