A suspected Iranian hacking group has successfully published intercepted Donald Trump campaign emails – having failed initially to sell them to the mainstream media. Mr Trump himself is set to appear on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast later.
Friday 25 October 2024 16:00, UK
In case you missed it, rock icon Bruce Springsteen last night warned Donald Trump wants to be an “American tyrant” as he backed Kamala Harris in the race to the White House.
Performing at a rally for the Democratic candidate, Springsteen used time between his numbers to argue Ms Harris will protect democracy and fight for women’s reproductive rights.
He said he wants a president who “reveres the constitution” and does not “threaten” freedom, taking aim at Mr Trump for not holding those values.
“He does not understand this country, its history or what it means to be American,” Springsteen said, adding Mr Trump is “running to be an American tyrant”.
Springsteen was followed on stage by former President Barack Obama, who said Mr Trump’s “goofy” behaviour “does not mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous”.
Read more here.
As we’ve already reported, Kamala Harris (and Beyonce!) will appear in Texas later this evening.
The state is currently Donald Trump’s to lose – but Ms Harris will look to focus on women’s reproductive rights in a bid to win over any undecided voters.
Democrats have looked to highlight personal stories to show the impact of abortion being almost entirely banned in 16 states.
Ahead of the Houston trip, her campaign released an ad featuring a Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion when her water broke at 16 weeks in 2022 and who then almost died of sepsis.
Ms Harris will also be joined tonight by:
Texas Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred is also expected to attend the rally, as Ms Harris looks to boost his bid to unseat sitting Republican senator Ted Cruz – with the pair currently locked up in the polls.
Some seven million women of reproductive age live in Texas, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, while an analysis by JAMA Pediatrics found that Texas had a larger increase in infant mortality than the rest of the US after enforcing the abortion ban.
Early reports indicate that Texas has also seen a significant increase in maternal deaths.
By Brandy Zadrozny, senior reporter at NBC News
The “big lie” of the 2024 election is being workshopped on Webex.
In tiny boxes, hundreds of people, most of them white, meet weekly in online video conferences to share specious evidence of a problem that doesn’t exist: a leftist plot to “get the illegals to become voters”, as Jeff Vega, a conservative Latino activist in Michigan, put it at a meeting in August.
The participants, who have reportedly included a Wisconsin state lawmaker, a former Trump administration official and a US congressman, bat around ideas for how to combat this supposed threat, from reviewing lists of noncitizens with driving licences to scanning the voter rolls for “ethnic” names.
They urge one another to go as far as they can within the bounds of the law.
These meetings are run by the Election Integrity Network, a coalition of conservatives “dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote”, and dozens of statewide partners. Reporters are prohibited, but recordings have leaked to media outlets including Sky’s US partner NBC News.
There is something ordinary about the videos, grids of activists gathering to check in, grouse, motivate and brainstorm. But the cause that undergirds them is disquieting, and it has activated tens of thousands of self-described patriots to “save the election”.
You can read the full piece here.
Newsrooms across the US are preparing to combat misinformation on election night.
For example The New York Times is assigning reporters to comb the web for the first sign of new conspiracies, while a NPR reporter will look for AI-generated mischief.
ABC News has tried “pre-bunks” to prepare its viewers.
“The biggest thing that I tend to worry about is the speed with which misinformation travels and the lack of control that a news organisation has over that,” said Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press.
“The only thing that we can do is make sure that we are filling the space with fact-based information that is as fast and as accurate as humanly possible, to try to ensure that as misinformation is traveling, fact-based reporting is as well,” she added.
The steps come in the wake of the rapid spread of misinformation after recent hurricanes in the US, which reminded the editors of the need for clear reporting.
US outlets are also treading carefully, after Donald Trump falsely claimed the election had been “stolen” from him in 2020.
News network PBS will working with the PolitiFact fact-check team on election night in its effort to combat misinformation.
And Sky News’s US partner NBC News has a “Vote Watch” team that will work to monitor misinformation efforts and has assigned 30 reporters to be “county captains” – who will keep watch in areas where the election is expected to be particularly tight.
A suspected Iranian hacking group has successfully published intercepted Donald Trump campaign emails – having failed initially to sell them to the mainstream media, according to the Reuters news agency.
In the past few weeks, the hackers began peddling the emails more widely after that initial failure, Reuters says – with one Democratic political operative posting a trove of material to the website of his political action committee – and to independent journalists, at least one of whom posted them on the writing platform Substack.
The latest material appears to show Trump campaign communications with external advisers and other allies, discussing a range of topics leading up to the 2024 election.
The hacking demonstrates Iran’s continued interest in meddling in the upcoming election, Reuters suggests – despite a September US Justice Department indictment accusing the leakers of working for Tehran and using a fake persona.
If found guilty, they face prison time and fines.
The indictment said the leakers were three Iranian hackers working with Iran’s Basij paramilitary force whose voluntary members help the regime to enforce its strict rules and to project influence.
It also alleged that the Iranian government-linked hacking group, known as Mint Sandstorm or APT42, compromised multiple Trump campaign staffers between May and June by stealing their passwords.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement that reports of the country’s involvement in hacking against the US election were “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible”, adding that it “categorically repudiates such accusations”.
Donald Trump has the opportunity to appeal to a crucial audience when he appears on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast later today.
Mr Rogan has an audience nearly 15 million people – with young men dominating that.
The youth vote is widely expected to be one of the most important in this razor-tight election, with US turnout numbers low among male 19-30 year-olds when compared with other countries.
Those who do turn out have leaned towards Democrats in recent elections – so Mr Trump has been making an effort to appear on young male-friendly podcasts like “This Week w/ Theo Vaughn” and “Full Send” – a show hosted by the pro-Trump Nelk Boys.
Critics of the podcast say Mr Rogan has helped spread misinformation because he is ill-equipped to respond to false statements made by some of his controversial right-wing guests – including figures like Alex Jones.
Kamala Harris’ team had been in touch with Mr Rogan’s program about a possible appearance, but scheduling did not line up,spokesperson Ian Sams said on MSNBC yesterday.
Welcome back to our live coverage – here’s where the key players are today.
Kamala Harris
The vice president is set to be joined by pop royalty Beyonce in Texas this evening.
The American singer is the latest star to take the stage in support of Ms Harris.
The rally in Beyonce’s hometown of Houston kicks off about 1.30am UK time.
Ms Harris has frequently walked out to Beyonce’s hit “Freedom” at rallies, and opened her campaign advertising to the song.
Donald Trump holds a comfortable lead in the Lone Star State – which has not voted Democrat since 1976, when the state chose Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford.
Anne Hathaway, Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Bryan Cranston and Samuel L Jackson are among other stars to have also publicly endorsed Harris for president.
This latest celebrity appearance follows Bruce Springsteen’s performance last night at a Harris rally in Georgia.
Donald Trump
The former president is also in Texas – in what could be a defining day in this race.
At 6.30pm UK time, he’ll address the media in the state on a big issue for residents there – “border security and migrant crime”.
He’ll then jet off for Michigan, where he’ll hold a rally in Traverse City at about 12.30am.
He’s also set for an appearance on the highly influential Joe Rogan Experience podcast, but more on that later.
JD Vance
Mr Trump’s running mate is speaking in North Carolina – one of the seven key swing states.
He’ll start speaking at 7.30pm UK time in Raeford.
Tim Walz
Ms Harris’s running mate will speak in Scranton, Pennsylvania – another swing state.
It’s touted as a special “Friday Night Lights Rally,” meant to highlight Mr Walz’s years as an American football coach in Nebraska and Minnesota.
That’s starts at 11.30pm UK time.
Barack Obama
The former president is keeping up his busy schedule in support of Ms Harris.
Mr Obama will speak at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We think that will start just after midnight here in the UK.
Elon Musk
Finally, eccentric billionaire Elon Musk will host a virtual town hall in support of Mr Trump’s election campaign at about 1am.
That’s all for our live coverage of the US election for the night, but we’ll be back with more updates and analysis later.
If you’re just checking in, here is a recap of the key developments today.
Polls continue to show the presidential race is neck-and-neck with less than two weeks until election day (see the latest polling and both candidates’ paths to victory here).
Donald Trump
The former president started the day with a big rally in Arizona. He gave his usual stump speech, but veered off script, as he tends to do, and said the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies have made the US “a garbage can for the world” (more here – and watch below).
In a later interview, he categorically denied a recent claim by his former chief of staff that he once said he wanted “the kind of generals that Hitler had”.
Separately, Mr Trump also said he will fire the federal prosecutor investigating whether he tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat if he is elected in November (more here).
Kamala Harris and Barack Obama
The vice president started the day with a televised statement in Pennsylvania, where she said it is “sad” that Mr Trump is “exhausted” and “not showing up” for debates (more here).
She then flew to Atlanta, Georgia, where her campaign held a rally with a line-up of megastars.
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen performed three of his hit songs, and in between numbers, he said Mr Trump wants to be an “American tyrant”, and “does not understand this country, its history, or what it means to be deeply American” (read and watch in full here).
Former president Barack Obama also gave a speech in which he gave Mr Trump some political advice: “In politics, a good rule of thumb is – don’t say you want to do anything like Hitler” (more here – and watch below).
Tomorrow will be yet another star-studded rally, with pop megastar Beyoncé set to perform at an event in support of the vice president (more here).
Tim Walz
The Democrat pick for vice president spoke at a couple of events in swing states today.
At one in North Carolina, he ripped into Elon Musk, calling him a “dipshit” who has been “prancing around on stage” supporting Trump (more here – and watch the moment below).
He also called Mr Trump “old as hell” amid reports the former president is “exhausted” (more here).
JD Vance
The GOP pick for vice president has been campaigning in the key battleground state of Michigan.
He also went on conservative news channel News Nation for a town hall event.
Donald Trump has pushed back against a claim by his former chief of staff and criticised the magazine that published it.
As we’ve been reporting, John Kelly told The Atlantic that the former president said: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
But asked about it in Las Vegas by CNN, Mr Trump categorically denied the comment – and hit out at The Atlantic.
He said: “No, I never said that. I would never say that.
“It’s a rag that he made up stories. He’s done it before. It’s a failing magazine. Right before the election, it’s just a failing magazine.”
Polls continue to show the presidential race is neck-and-neck with less than two weeks until election day.
The election will be decided in key swing states – but it’s almost impossible to predict what will happen on 5 November because the polls are so narrow.
Nonetheless, we have aggregated the polling in the swing states to give you some insight into who could emerge victorious on election night – and how.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free