The Latest: Harris and Trump focus on closing messages with rallies in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona

Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Tempe, Arizona, and later held one in Las Vegas on Thursday. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday night held a rally in the Atlanta suburbs with former President Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen, among others.

Follow the AP's Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here's the latest:

Thousands of supporters turn out for Trump rally in Vegas

Trump has arrived at another mega-rally organized by the conservative group Turning Point Action.

The ''United for Change'' event in Las Vegas has drawn thousands of supporters to the Thomas & Mack Center, where speakers are being introduced with thumping walk-out music and bright flashing lights.

The group, founded by conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk to engage young conservatives, has been working to help turn out voters on Trump's behalf.

It's his second day in a row headlining an event organized by the group. He spoke at their rally in Duluth, Georgia Wednesday night.

A split screen moment at the Trump and Harris rallies emphasizes message of each campaign

It was a split screen moment at the Trump and Harris rallies.

As a video played at the Harris event in the Atlanta area, featuring the story of Georgia's Amber Thurman, who died of septic shock after she couldn't get care following a medication abortion, Trump in Arizona was inviting applause for the family of Nicholas Quets, a U.S. Marine from Tucson who was killed in Mexico while driving to the beach in Puerto Penasco.

It was yet another reminder of the different issues animating their campaigns.

A vehicle with armed people drove up alongside Quets and gunmen opened fire, authorities in the Mexican state of Sonora told KPNX-TV in Phoenix.

''It was brutal,'' Trump said, asking Quets' relatives to stand. The crowd gave an extended applause. ''A beautiful guy, a beautiful family and we are so sorry for your loss,'' Trump added.

Puerto Penasco is a small town on the Sea of Cortez. Known as Rocky Point in English, it has the closest beach to Phoenix and Tucson and is so popular with tourists from north of the border that it's often known as ''Arizona's beach.''

Pennsylvania election officials denounce fake ballot video as ‘dangerous misinformation'

A video circulating online that allegedly shows Pennsylvania mail-in ballots filled in for former President Donald Trump being destroyed was denounced as ''fake'' Thursday late afternoon by the Bucks County Board of Elections.

''The envelope and materials depicted in this video are clearly not authentic materials belonging to or distributed by the Bucks County Board of Elections,'' reads a statement released by the board.

According to the statement, the video has been reported to law enforcement. Bob Harvie and Diane Ellis-Marseglia, chair and vice chair of the board, respectively, called the video ''dangerous misinformation'' in a joint statement.

The Bucks County district attorney's office said in an emailed statement Thursday evening that her office and the Yardley Borough Police Department investigated the video and ''concluded that this video was fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming election.''

The X user who popularized the inauthentic video has previously shared multiple narratives created by a Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516 or CopyCop, raising questions over whether it originated as part of a foreign influence campaign.

About 29 million early votes have been cast

About 29 million people have voted in the 2024 presidential election.

That's more than 1/6th of the number of people who cast ballots during the 2020 race. The record-high early turnout is because former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to vote early after avoiding it in the past two elections.

Notably, early voting data only tells you who showed up, not who they voted for. That's why we wait for polls to close and ballots to be counted to know who won the presidential race. Political types scour the data anyway.

In addition, More than 2 million Georgians have already cast ballots including most of the people attending Thursday's rally in Clarkston. Many attendees said they were trying to push their relatives and neighbors to the polls to vote for Harris, either through formal volunteer efforts or on their own.

''I decided to go volunteer because I couldn't keep my mouth shut,'' said Beverly Payne, who lives in Cumming, a Republican suburban stronghold north of Atlanta.

Payne said her most important persuasion targets were her parents. She's still working on her mother, but said she's swung one Georgia vote to Harris.

▶ You can also scour the early vote totals

Educators Jill Biden and Gwen Walz to campaign together next week

The first lady and Gwen Walz are heading to Michigan and Wisconsin on Monday to rally female voters, according to a Harris-Walz campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details not yet made public.

They'll attend a Women for Harris-Walz event in Bay City, Michigan, and focus on the issue of reproductive freedom. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has made abortion and reproductive rights a top campaign issue.

Walz, who is married to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice-presidential candidate, has shared her personal story of using fertility treatments to have children.

Biden and Walz will also encourage supporters to vote early during a stop in Traverse City, Michigan.

The pair will wrap the day at an Educators for Harris-Walz event in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Biden, whose husband is President Joe Biden, and Walz are both career educators who have continued to teach during their husbands' service in elected office.

Colorado officials say 12 mail-in ballots stolen and fraudulently filled in

At least 12 mailed ballots were stolen in a rural Colorado county and sent in with fraudulent votes, three of which slipped past county election officials and were counted in next month's general election, state officials said Thursday.

A fourth ballot that passed signature verification was caught as fraudulent because someone who hadn't voted received an electronic notification that their ballot had been accepted and contacted the clerk.

The fraudulent voting occurred in Mesa County, where former elections clerk Tina Peters was recently sentenced to prison for a data breach scheme spawned from false claims about voter machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake threatens to use data the government collects from asylum seekers to find and deport migrants

Lake took aim at the CBP One app, which has become one of the only ways to request asylum at the Southwest border since the Biden administration announced significant restrictions on asylum claims in June.

''That app works both ways,'' Lake said ahead of Trump's appearance in Arizona.''In January 2025, we're gonna control that app and we're gonna find the people who invaded our country and we're going to send them home,'' Lake said.

Lake's campaign, like Trump's, has centered on a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration.

Trump is expected to focus on immigration at his Arizona rally today

He'll tell those gathered that his ''message today is simple. Kamala's migrant invasion disqualifies her from the presidency,'' according to his prepared remarks.

Trump supporters await the former president in Tempe, Arizona

Seats are filling up at Arizona State University's hockey arena in Tempe, where Trump supporters are waiting to hear from the former president at his second rally in the state in as many weeks.

Trump will speak under a giant banner that says ''VOTE EARLY!'' It's part of his continued efforts to back-peddle from his strategy four years ago to push his supporters to vote in person on election day. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters use a ballot they receive in the mail, which take longer to process as election workers verify they're legitimate, part of the reason it often takes days to know who won close races here.

Volunteers passed out red, white and blue signs with the number 47, showing their support for the man they hope will replace Joe Biden, the 46th U.S. president.

Jerry Matthews, 21, said Trump's background as a businessman makes him a strong negotiator, and he believes Trump will bring an end to wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Matthews lives in Biloxi, Mississippi, and came to see Trump in person for the first time while visiting family in Arizona. He predicted Trump is headed for a comfortable victory.

''I think it's going to be a lot bigger than the polling predicts,'' Matthews said. ''A lot of the polling is major cities. Everyone I work with, regardless of skin color, they've all been leaning toward President Trump and/or just not voting in general. I've met very few Biden-Harris supporters.''

Trump repeatedly infantilized Harris during a friendly interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt

Asked at the outset of the Thursday interview how he believed Chinese leader Xi Jinping would ''handle'' Harris if she were to win in November, Trump quipped, ''Like a baby.''

''He'd take all the candy away very quickly,'' Trump said. ''She wouldn't have any idea what happened. It would be like a grand chess master playing a beginner.''

Trump later said he watched Harris' Wednesday night town hall on CNN. The former president graded Harris' performance poorly and said the vice president is ''like a child almost.''

Later, he added, ''She's an empty vessel. But she's beautifully pushed around by a very smart, very powerful, very liberal, viciously liberal but very, very smart, powerful party called the Democrats.''

The language continues a trend of personal — often condescending — attacks by Trump against Harris, ranging from the former president calling her ''lazy'' — a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms — to calling her a ''stupid person'' and asking whether she is ''on drugs.''

A Republican who's the longest currently serving state senator in Wisconsin says he's voting for Harris

State Sen. Rob Cowles says it marks the first time he'll ever vote for a Democrat for president.

Cowles, who represents the Green Bay area, said Thursday that Donald Trump ''is a totalitarian and very much a fascist.'' Cowles calls his decision to vote for Harris ''one of the most important things I've done.''

Cowles, 73, has been a member of the Legislature since 1983. He decided to retire this year rather than run in a district now more favorable to Democrats under new district boundary lines.

Bruce Springsteen to perform alongside Harris and Obama at a Georgia rally

The iconic artist, whose career spans over five decades, will perform at a Thursday rally in Georgia for Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign.

Springsteen will be joined at the event by Harris and former President Barack Obama, the campaign said, along with actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry and DJ Mix MasterDavid. This will be the first time Obama and Harris will headline an event together.

The event is the first in the campaign's ''When We Vote We Win'' concert series that aims to encourage Harris supporters to vote early in the 2024 election.

Harris, asked about the event Thursday, said she was ''very honored'' to have Obama's support and called Springsteen an ''American icon.''

Springsteen has long been a supporter of Democratic presidential campaigns. The artist backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, even backing the would-be president in the contentious 2008 Democratic primary. He backed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, performing at a Philadelphia rally on the eve of Election Day, and endorsed then-former Vice President Joe Biden in 2020. The New Jersey artist endorsed Harris earlier this month.

Democrats, led by Biden, won Georgia in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the southern state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Harris' campaign is hopeful she can keep the state blue in 2024, with polls showing a neck-and-neck contest with former President Donald Trump.

Some voters in areas that have seen rainy or humid weather report receiving return ballot envelopes that are already sealed shut

This is because moisture can dampen mail and cause an envelope to seal, elections officials said.

The issue has been reported in parts of North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene brought much rain and humidity, as well as Pennsylvania, Alabama and Oregon. Voters who've received sealed return envelopes should contact their county elections office to confirm what their next steps should be.

Harris says she's not seeing evidence of a gender gap in support for her campaign

A September poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that roughly 4 in 10 Americans think Harris' gender will hurt her chances of getting elected this fall.

But Harris says she sees support both from men and women. ''I'm not actually seeing that kind of disparity,'' she said.

Walz to campaign alongside James Taylor in North Carolina on Thursday

Gov. Tim Walz, Harris' running mate, will campaign in North Carolina on Thursday alongside musician James Taylor.

Taylor, a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates, will perform with his wife, Kim, and son, Henry, the Harris-Walz campaign announced.

The focus of the event, the campaign added, will be encouraging voters in the state to vote early, ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.

The Harris-Walz campaign has prioritized flipping North Carolina from red to blue in November. The state backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020, but President Joe Biden shrunk the margin to around 1% in the latter election and Democrats were hopeful Harris and Walz could turn the state blue. Polls show a tight race in the state.

Taylor has backed Democratic candidates for years, performing with them at events and helping raise money. He was scheduled to play at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this year but his set on the first night of the convention was scrapped when the program began running too long.

National Urban League President Marc Morial says he doesn't believe ‘the hype that Black men are moving to Donald Trump'

''I believe Black men are making a choice between whether to vote or to participate,'' said Morial, one of the speakers during the ''Wheels Of Justice'' GOTV tour organized by the Michigan National Action Network.

''I'm confident that overwhelming numbers of African-American men will not vote for a person who denigrated them, a person who has disparaged them,'' Morial, who's also a former New Orleans mayor, told The Associated Press on Thursday. ''Donald Trump has talked about Black men, the Exonerated Five, Black athletes, Black-led cities like dogs. When you do that, you don't earn my vote. You've earned my contempt and my opposition.''

The tour's first stop Thursday was at Trinity Baptist Church in Pontiac, north of Detroit. Other stops were planned in Flint, Ann Arbor and Detroit.

Other speakers include National Action Network President the Rev. Al Sharpton and two members of what was known as the Central Park Five.

In the 1980s, Trump purchased a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the five Black and Latino teenagers were accused of raping and beating a white woman jogger in New York City. The five said they confessed to the crimes under duress, later recanted, and pleaded not guilty. They were convicted after jury trials, but the convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime. The five men now are known as the Exonerated Five.

Georgia officials say they thwarted an attempt to crash a state election website

Georgia election officials acted quickly earlier this month to thwart an attempt to flood the state's absentee voter portal in an apparent attempt to crash the site, the secretary of state's office said.

The attack was limited to that part of the state's website, which voters use to request an absentee ballot. Users may have experienced a brief slowdown, but the site never crashed and no data was compromised, said Gabriel Sterling, a top official at the agency.

He said it wasn't clear where the attack originated. There has been no public indication that similar systems in any other state were subject to the same kind of attack.

The Georgia secretary of state's office alerted federal authorities about the attack. The FBI, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment Thursday.

▶ Read more about the attack on the election website

By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

Among the legacy news outlets that have come up empty in their efforts to interview Kamala Harris and Donald Trump during the general election campaign: NPR, The New York Times, PBS and The Washington Post.

Yet Harris chose to meet with Alex Cooper for her ''Call Her Daddy'' podcast and talk a little Bay Area basketball with the fellows on ''All the Smoke.'' Trump rejected ''60 Minutes,'' but has hung out with the bros on ''Bussin' With the Boys'' and ''Flagrant.''

During this truncated campaign, some of the traditional giants of journalism are being pushed aside. The growing popularity of podcasts and their ability to help candidates in a tight race target a specific sliver of the electorate is a big reason why.

There are certainly exceptions. Harris spoke to NBC News' Hallie Jackson on Tuesday and held a CNN town hall on Wednesday. But political columnist John Heilemann of Puck noticed what he called ''an ancient, dying beast railing against the diminishment of its status and stature in the new world.''

▶ Read more about the candidates and the media

Donald Trump says he would fire special counsel Jack Smith ‘within two seconds' of taking office if elected president

In an interview Thursday on ''The Hugh Hewitt Show,'' Trump was asked whether he'd first pardon himself or terminate Smith to remove the legal cloud hanging over him as he seeks to reclaim the presidency.

He responded that the decision was ''so easy'' and that ''I would fire him within two seconds.''

Trump can order the Justice Department to remove Smith though he would technically not be able to do it himself since Smith isn't a presidential appointee and was instead named to the post by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

When he was investigated by a special counsel as president, Trump urged his then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, to press the Justice Department for Robert Mueller's termination but McGahn refused and Mueller remained in his position.

Smith has brought two federal cases against Trump. One, accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed in July. The other, charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, has been delayed by a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity on former presidents.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler says she's noticed additional momentum over the past two weeks for Harris

And she expects to pull in more volunteers for outreach as the election nears.

Shuler said the unions have been keeping track of their conversations with members, saying that as of now, 64% of those they've spoken to will back Harris and 19% will back Republican Donald Trump. Those numbers leave some room for voters who might support the former president but declined to say so, as well as undecided voters who might ultimately support Harris.

In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 16% of voters came from union households, 56% of which backed President Joe Biden and 42% went for Trump.

President Biden will meet with labor leaders in Pittsburgh on Saturday to help shore up their critical support for Harris in Pennsylvania

Biden will meet with local leadership of the Laborers' International Union of North America, and he'll be joined by President Brent Booker.

Biden, who has said he's the most pro-union president in history, walked the picket line with the United Auto Workers and his administration worked most recently to prevent the dock workers strike. Biden has been calling local union workers in the critical battleground state to push for continued mobilization on behalf of his vice president, the Democratic nominee.

Beyoncé, whose ‘Freedom' is Harris' campaign anthem, is expected at the Democrat's Texas rally on Friday

Beyoncé is expected to appear Friday in her hometown of Houston at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Harris' presidential campaign has taken on Beyonce's 2016 track ''Freedom'' as its anthem, and the singer's planned appearance brings a high level of star power to what's become a key theme of the Democratic nominee's bid: freedom.

Harris headed to the reliably Republican state just 10 days before Election Day in an effort to refocus her campaign against former President Donald Trump on reproductive care.

The three people weren't authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.

▶ Read more about Beyoncé at Harris' rally

With two women running, the New Hampshire governor's race is both close and personal

One of the nation's most competitive gubernatorial races has also become intensely personal.

None of the nation's 12 female governors are up for reelection, but five women are running as major party gubernatorial nominees in four states. Two of them are in New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig are competing to succeed Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who's not seeking a fifth two-year term.

While voters and the candidates themselves say their gender is a nonissue in a state with a history of electing women to top offices, it has influenced their approaches to the topic of abortion and reproductive health care. Both candidates have produced television ads in which they describe having miscarriages after medical appointments during which no fetal heartbeats were detected.

▶ Read more about the New Hampshire governor's race

Trump claims he is ‘maybe more conservative than any human being that's ever lived'

The comment during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt came after Hewitt gave the Republican former president a chance to claim the moderate mantle in the closing days of the 2024 campaign, an opening Trump swiftly closed.

''You're not a particularly conservative. You're not as conservative as Ronald Reagan. And you've tried to make that point. You're kind of a moderate Republican, aren't you?'' Hewitt asked.

''I'm very, very conservative,'' Trump said. ''Maybe more conservative than any human being that's ever lived.''

One of the primary criticisms of Trump when he entered political life in 2015, especially from conservative Republicans, was that he wasn't a true conservative. Trump had been a registered Democrat during portions of his business career in New York and received considerable coverage at the outset of his successful 2016 campaign for being a moderate Republican, something his primary opponents like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio used against him.

Trump says he watched Harris' Wednesday night town hall on CNN

Speaking during a Thursday morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump called the vice president's performance ''an embarrassment.''

''I watched her charade story last night on CNN,'' Trump said during the friendly interview. ''It was an embarrassment that she was running for president, representing a major party.''

The town hall with CNN was meant to replace a second debate between Trump and Harris. After one debate with Harris, the former president declined to participate in another debate and did not accept CNN's invitation for a town hall.

Harris used the forum to lambast Trump before an audience of undecided voters in Pennsylvania. She agreed — twice — that Trump was a fascist, echoing the criticism of Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, and said if Trump is elected again, he would be ''a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.''

Trump returned to the town hall later in the interview, saying Harris was ''like a child almost.''

The RNC is rebuilding its legal operation after Trump allies' failed effort to undo the 2020 race

The last time Donald Trump ran for president, the lawyers most directly involved in his efforts to overturn the election wound up sanctioned, criminally prosecuted or even sued for millions of dollars.

This time around, Republican party leaders are working to present a more organized, skilled legal operation even as Trump continues to deny he lost the 2020 election and sows doubt about the integrity of the upcoming one.

''It has been very important to make sure that in every aspect, we are going to have a fully professional operation,'' RNC Chairman Michael Whatley told The Associated Press.

As Republicans and Democrats fight in court over election rules, the Trump team finds itself under a particularly intense microscope given the aftermath of the 2020 race when meritless legal efforts challenging the results were repeatedly rejected by judges appointed by presidents of both political parties.

▶ Read more about the Republican legal operation

Republican former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential bid

His endorsement on Thursday marks another cross-party backing for the Democratic presidential nominee, who's campaigned this week with Liz Cheney, the GOP former Wyoming congresswoman.

Both Upton and Cheney were among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Upton, who represented West Michigan and served in Congress for 36 years, said in a statement that Trump is ''unfit to serve as commander in chief again.'' Upton said he has already cast his ballot for Harris.

''Time and time again respected senior national Republicans have urged our former president to focus on governing rather than personal attacks, mistruths, and continued false 2020 election claims,'' said Upton. ''Instead of heeding that advice, we see unhinged behavior not acceptable in most forums almost daily.''