APPLENEWS - STORY ADD
2024 election updates: Trump concludes MSG rally with anti-immigrant rhetoric
Trump was introduced to the stage by Melania in an unannounced appearance.
The race for the White House remained essentially a dead heat on Sunday -- with nine days to go until Election Day.
Former President Donald Trump delivered a speech Sunday afternoon at New York's Madison Square Garden. After making several stops in Philadelphia on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally there Sunday afternoon.
Key Headlines
- Trump campaign distances from comic who disparaged Puerto Rico at MSG rally
- Giuliani defends Trump’s rhetoric: ‘He’s a New Yorker’
- Comic at Trump’s MSG rally calls Puerto Rico 'a floating island of garbage'
- Harris introduces 'Opportunity Task Force' for Puerto Rico
- Walz likens Trump MSG rally to Nazi one there in 1939
Almost 42 million voters have cast a vote
Almost 42 million Americans have cast a vote through early voting methods, as of Sunday afternoon, according to data from the University of Florida's Election Lab.
The about 41.9 million recorded mail and early in-person votes were evenly split with about 21 million mail ballots returned nationally and about the same cast at in-person early voting polling sites across the country, the data showed.
Early voting options are now open to voters in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Many early voting periods will last until the weekend before Election Day.
The Washington Post won't endorse a presidential candidate
The Washington Post announced Friday it will not issue an endorsement in this year's election -- a first for the legacy newspaper in more than three decades.
"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," publisher William Lewis wrote in a note explaining the decision.
The Post follows the Los Angeles Times in not backing a candidate.
Both newspapers had endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020 against Trump.
McConnell, Johnson rebuke Harris for calling Trump 'fascist'
In a rare joint statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly condemned Harris calling Trump a "fascist" and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
The two Republican leaders say Harris' remarks have "only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus. Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over. The Vice President's words more closely resemble those of President Trump's second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility."
McConnell and Johnson say they have been briefed on the "ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump."
Harris quickly seized on John Kelly's comments to The New York Times this week that he believed Trump fit the description of a fascist. Kelly served as Trump's chief of staff and is a retired general.
Trump has claimed for months that Harris is a "fascist" or "communist" or "Marxist."
-ABC News' Lauren Peller
Virginia judge strikes down voter purge that impacted 1,600 people
A federal judge issued a partial ruling finding that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order to conduct a daily voter purge process violated the National Voting Rights Act of 1993.
A total of 1,600 voters removed from the rolls since August must be added back within the next five days.
The judge said the process left no room for individualized inquiry, which violated the act's requirement that "when in the 90-day provisional, it must be done on an individualized basis."
-ABC News' Beatrice Peterson
Trump zeroes in on 'blue wall' states
Trump will embark on a rigorous schedule making his final pitch to voters. The former president is focusing on the "blue wall" states this weekend and early next week, specifically targeting Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
After stops in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump will culminate his weekend campaigning with a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, in which the former president has coined as a "celebration of the whole thing" with his nine years of campaigning coming to close.
-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh, Lalee Ibssa and Soorin Kim