United News of Bangladesh

A U.S. Army soldier who was injured in May while working on the American-built pier to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza has died. Sgt. Quandarius Stanley, 23, was a motor transport operator and was critically injured when high winds and heavy seas damaged the pier, causing four Army vessels to become beached. Two other service members also were injured but later returned to duty. U.S. military officials have not provided details on how exactly Stanley was injured but have noted it was not in combat. He died last Thursday and had been assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade Expeditionary at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. “Sgt. Quandarius Stanley was an instrumental and well respected first-line leader in the 7th Transportation Brigade Expeditionary (TBX), especially during the mission to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. We will continue to provide support to his family during this difficult time," said Col. John “Eddie” Gray, brigade commander. "Our entire unit mourns alongside his family.” Capt. Shkeila Milford-Glover, spokesperson for the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, said Stanley had recently been retired and was receiving treatment in a long-term care medical center. The massive pier project was hampered by unexpected bad weather and security issues, as well as persistent safety issues involving Israeli forces that prompted aid agencies to halt distribution of the supplies out of fear of being injured and killed. The Defense Department formally pulled the pier from the Gaza shore on June 28 and declared an end in mid-July to the mission to bring aid into the territory besieged by the war between Israel and Hamas. All together, the military moved nearly 20 million pounds of aid onto the Gaza shore in what officials said was the “largest volume of humanitarian assistance” ever delivered into the Middle East. But aid agencies had difficulty moving the food brought ashore to areas further into Gaza where it was needed most because humanitarian convoys came under attack.

Election Day voting unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday with only scattered reports of delays from extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems. Most of the hiccups occurring by midday were “largely expected routine and planned-for events,” said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a press briefing. She said the agency was not currently tracking any national, significant incidents impacting election security. In swing-state Pennsylvania, early reports that Republican poll watchers were not allowed into some polling sites were soon resolved. A Pennsylvania state judge ordered polls to remain open for two extra hours in Cambria County, which voted 68% for former President Donald Trump in 2020. The county sought the extension after a software malfunction affected ballot-scanning machines, though county officials confirmed no one was turned away from the polls and said all ballots would be counted. A technical malfunction in Champaign County, Illinois, and challenges with e-pollbooks in Louisville, Kentucky, also delayed voting, but those issues were soon fixed and voting was back up and running. In Arizona's Maricopa County, one voting location was slightly delayed when a worker forgot to bring a key. In Missouri, flooding made one St. Louis area polling site hard to reach and knocked out power to another, requiring poll workers to turn to a generator to continue election operations. Still, in various states affected by rain, voters were enthusiastically huddling under umbrellas as they lined up to cast their ballots. “We’ll be like post office workers: in rain or snow or sleet,” voter Mary Roszkowski said after she cast her ballot in windy Racine, Wisconsin, wiping raindrops off her face. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said there were some reported bomb threats to polling places, but all were deemed non-credible and authorities were investigating. In Maine, at least three high schools that served as polling places were subjected to false reports of shooters, but the polls remained open as police confirmed the calls were hoaxes. “Voting continued uninterrupted. It’s a testament to the careful planning and communication between clerks and law enforcement,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told The Associated Press. Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner. As of Tuesday, AP tracking of advance voting nationwide showed more than 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That's driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats' longstanding advantage in the early vote. Early in-person and mail voting proceeded without major problems, besides some typical glitches expected in any election. That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads. That appeared to continue on Tuesday, with the North Carolina Board of Elections reporting no voting issues. Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible. The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day. Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive. One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot. This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.” Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump's lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden's win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year. Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements. On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted. Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same. Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass. While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states. On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast. Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections. “This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday dismissed his popular defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in a surprise announcement that came as the country is embroiled in wars on multiple fronts across the region. Netanyahu and Gallant have repeatedly been at odds over the war in Gaza. But Netanyahu had avoided firing his rival. Netanyahu cited “significant gaps” and a “crisis of trust” between the men in his Tuesday evening announcement. “In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and defense minister,” Netanyahu said. “Unfortunately, although in the first months of the campaign there was such trust and there was very fruitful work, during the last months this trust cracked between me and the defense minister.” In the early days of the war, Israel's leadership presented a unified front as it responded to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. But as the war dragged on and spread to Lebanon, key policy differences have emerged. While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant had taken a more pragmatic approach, saying that military force has created the necessary conditions for a diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group. Gallant, a former general who has gained public respect with a gruff, no-nonsense personality, said in a statement: “The security of the state of Israel always was, and will always remain, my life’s mission." Gallant has worn a simple, black buttoned shirt throughout the war in a sign of sorrow over the Oct. 7 attack and developed a strong relationship with his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. A previous attempt by Netanyahu to fire Gallant in March 2023 sparked widespread street protests against Netanyahu. He also flirted with the idea of dismissing Gallant over the summer but held off until Tuesday's announcement. Gallant will be replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister who was a junior officer in the military. Gideon Saar, a former Netanyahu rival who recently rejoined the government, will take the foreign affairs post. Netanyahu has a long history of neutralizing his rivals. In his statement, he claimed he had made “many attempts” to bridge the gaps with Gallant. “But they kept getting wider. They also came to the knowledge of the public in an unacceptable way, and worse than that, they came to the knowledge of the enemy - our enemies enjoyed it and derived a lot of benefit from it,” he said.

Donald Trump is refusing to say how he voted on Florida's abortion measure — and getting testy about it. The former president was asked twice after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday about a question that the state's voters are considering. If approved, it would prevent state lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability — which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks. If it’s rejected, the state’s restrictive six-week abortion law would stand. The first time he was asked, Trump avoided answering. He said instead of the issue that he did “a great job bringing it back to the states.” That was a reference to the former president having appointed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022. Pressed a second time, Trump snapped at a reporter, saying “you should stop talking about it.” Trump had previously indicated that he would back the measure — but then changed his mind and said he would vote against it. In August, Trump said he thought Florida’s ban was a mistake, saying on Fox News Channel, “I think six weeks, you need more time.” But then he said, “at the same time, the Democrats are radical” while repeating false claims he has frequently made about late-term abortions. In addition to Florida, voters in eight other states are deciding whether their state constitutions should guarantee a right to abortion, weighing ballot measures that are expected to spur turnout for a range of crucial races. Passing certain amendments in Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota likely would lead to undoing bans or restrictions that currently block varying levels of abortion access to more than 7 million women of childbearing age who live in those states.

Control of the White House and the narrowly divided Senate and House may hang in the balance on Nov. 5, but don’t expect election night to be all nail-biters and barn burners. Chances are some winners will be declared before a single vote has been tallied, just as the polls close in those states. So what gives? Although determining a winner before any votes have been counted may seem counterintuitive, race calls at poll closing time in uncontested or landslide races have been a routine part of election nights for decades, even though competitive, hotly contested races that can take hours, days or even weeks to decide tend to be the most memorable and attract the most attention. The Associated Press will consider multiple factors and analyze available data before determining whether a winner can be declared when polls close in a given state. But the AP will never declare the outcome in a competitive contest before enough votes are counted to make the winner clear. Uncontested races Many of the races called just as the polls close are uncontested elections where only one candidate appears on the ballot and is therefore the only possible winner of the race. Voters in some parts of the country live in multimember districts for offices such as state legislature, where more than one candidate is elected in a district. In those districts, an uncontested race is one where the number of candidates on the ballot is equal to or less than the number of seats available in that district. In the 2024 general election, the AP will declare winners in nearly 2,000 uncontested races, compared with about 4,500 contested races. Noncompetitive contests Sometimes it’s possible to declare winners at poll closing time in noncompetitive races with multiple candidates in areas where one political party has an established history of lopsided victories. In these cases, the AP will analyze multiple sources of available data, including the results of AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of both voters and nonvoters that determines who voted, how they voted and why, to confirm the outcome. The AP will not call a race when polls close if AP VoteCast’s results indicate a deviation from the state’s long-standing political trends and voting history. AP VoteCast results will be available for all 50 states, though only a small number will be considered as potential poll close calls. There is no AP VoteCast survey in the District of Columbia, so no contest there will be called when polls close even though the nation’s capital has a long history of overwhelming victories for Democratic candidates. For example, the AP’s poll close calls in the 2020 presidential election included Wyoming, a state that last voted for a Democrat in 1968 and that Donald Trump won over Joe Biden by 44 points; and Massachusetts, which last voted for a Republican in 1984 and that Biden won by 34 points over Trump. A handful of states and districts have multiple poll closing times because they are in more than one time zone. In these cases, the AP will not declare a winner before the final poll closing time in that state or district. Florida, Texas and some others begin to release vote results from most of the state shortly after polls close in the earlier time zone. Votes that are already counted from areas in the earlier time zones will also be considered in determining whether a winner can be declared at the moment when the last polls close. Other election data the AP takes into account include an area’s voting history from recent elections, voter registration statistics and pre-Election Day polling. When the above data points confirm the expected result in a state where either major party has a history of dominating elections, the AP may call the race as soon as voting ends.

In the United States, every four years, Americans cast their votes to elect the president on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This practice, which has become a defining feature of the democratic process in the country, can be traced back to decisions made over 175 years ago, deeply rooted in the agrarian society that dominated much of the nation at the time. The date was formalised by the US Congress in 1845 when an act was passed to establish a uniform election day for the presidential and vice-presidential races across all states. At that time, the majority of the population worked in agriculture, and the timing of the election was carefully chosen to accommodate the seasonal demands of farming life. November was deemed the most suitable month as it fell between the end of the autumn harvest and the beginning of winter, a period when farmers had fewer obligations in the fields. Besides, the cold and harsher winter conditions, which would make travel difficult, had not yet fully set in. Holding elections earlier in the year could have conflicted with planting or harvesting periods, critical times for the livelihoods of most American families. America reaches Election Day and a stark choice between Trump and Harris The choice of Tuesday as the election day was also a matter of practicality. Sunday was immediately ruled out as it was reserved for religious observance by Christian communities. Meanwhile, Wednesday was typically the day when farmers would head to market to sell their produce, making it inconvenient for rural voters to participate in elections. Tuesday, therefore, was seen as the best option for voters to travel to polling places without disrupting either their worship or commerce. This seemingly simple decision—choosing the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November—was influenced by the social and economic realities of 19th-century America, yet it remains the standard by which presidential elections are held to this day. The enduring tradition highlights how historical contexts continue to shape modern governance, even as the country has evolved far beyond its early agrarian roots.

A presidential campaign marked by upheaval and rancor approached its finale on Election Day as Americans decided whether to send Donald Trump back to the White House or elevate Kamala Harris to the Oval Office. Polls opened across the nation Tuesday morning as voters faced a stark choice between two candidates who have offered drastically different temperaments and visions for the world’s largest economy and dominant military power. Harris, the Democratic vice president, stands to be the first female president if elected. She has promised to work across the aisle to tackle economic worries and other issues without radically departing from the course set by President Joe Biden. Trump, the Republican former president, has vowed to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike, and stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. The two candidates spent the waning hours of the campaign overlapping in Pennsylvania, the biggest battleground state. They were trying to energize their bases as well as Americans still on the fence or debating whether to vote at all. "It’s important, it’s my civic duty and it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country which I supported for 22 years of my life,” said Ron Kessler, 54, an Air Force veteran from Pennsylvania who said he was voting for just the second time. Harris and Trump entered Election Day focused on seven battleground states, five of them carried by Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020: the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Arizona and Georgia. Nevada and North Carolina, which Democrats and Republicans respectively carried in the last two elections, also were closely contested. The closeness of the race and the number of states in play raised the likelihood that once again a victor might not be known on election night. There was one early harbinger from the New Hampshire hamlet of Dixville Notch, which by tradition votes after midnight on Election Day. Dixville Notch split between Trump and Harris, with three votes for each. In the 2020 presidential race it took four days to declare a winner. Regardless, Trump has baselessly claimed that if he lost, it would be due to fraud. Harris' campaign was preparing for him to try to declare victory before a winner is known on Tuesday night or to try to contest the result if she wins. Four years ago, Trump launched an effort to overturn the voters’ will that ended in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump planned to vote in his adopted home state of Florida on Tuesday, then spend the day at his Mar-a-Lago estate in advance of a party at a nearby convention center. Harris already voted by mail in her home state of California. She'll have a watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington. Each candidate would take the country into new terrain Harris, 60, would be the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as president. She also would be the first sitting vice president to win the White House in 32 years. A victory would cap a whirlwind campaign unlike any other in American history. Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket less than four months ago after Biden, facing massive pressure from his party after a disastrous debate performance, ended his reelection bid. Trump, 78, would be the oldest president ever elected. He would also be the first defeated president in 132 years to win another term in the White House, and the first person convicted of a felony to take over the Oval Office. Having left Washington abandoned by some allies after Jan. 6, Trump defeated younger rivals in the Republican primary and consolidated the support of longtime allies and harsh critics within his party. He survived one assassination attempt by millimeters at a July rally. Secret Service agents foiled a second attempt in September. A victory for Trump would affirm that enough voters put aside warnings from many of Trump's former aides or instead prioritized concerns about Biden and Harris' stewardship of the economy or the U.S.-Mexico border. It would all but ensure he avoids going to prison after being found guilty of his role in hiding hush-money payments to an adult film actress during his first run for president in 2016. His sentencing in that case could occur later this month. And upon taking office, Trump could end the federal investigation into his effort to overturn the 2020 election results. The election has huge stakes for America and the world The potential turbulence of a second Trump term has been magnified by his embrace of the Republican Party’s far right and his disregard for long-held democratic norms. Trump has used harsh rhetoric against Harris and other Democrats, calling them “demonic,” and has suggested military action against people he calls “enemies from within.” Harris, pointing to the warnings of Trump's former aides, has labeled him a “fascist” and blamed Trump for putting women's lives in danger by nominating three of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. In the closing hours of the campaign, she tried to strike a more positive tone and went the entire last day Monday without saying her Republican opponent's name. Heading into Election Day, federal, state and local officials expressed confidence in the integrity of the nation’s election systems. They nonetheless were braced to contend with what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign disinformation — particularly from Russia and Iran — as well as the possibility of physical violence or cyberattacks. Both sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after Election Day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence. The outcome of the race was being closely watched around the world, with the future of American support for Ukraine, U.S. fidelity to its global alliances and the nation’s commitment to stand up to autocrats hanging in the balance. Harris has vowed to continue backing Kyiv's defense against Russia's full-scale 2022 invasion. Trump has sharply criticized Ukraine, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and suggested he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies of the U.S. that Trump considers delinquent. Voters nationwide also were deciding thousands of other races that will decide everything from control of Congress to state ballot measures on abortion access. More than 82 million people voted early — shy of the record set during the 2020 pandemic, when Trump encouraged Republicans to stick to voting on Election Day. This time, he urged his voters to lock down their ballots in advance and they complied in droves.

Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner. The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls. As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote. Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early in-person and mail voting proceeded without any major problems.That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads. By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said. Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.” Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible. The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day. He has mischaracterized an investigation underway in Pennsylvania into roughly 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying one of the counties was “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is into registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved. In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend. Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive. One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot. This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.” Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year. Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements. On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted. Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same. Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass. While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states. On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast. Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections. “This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly delivered a fiery speech supporting Donald Trump during an event billed as his “closing message” on Monday night, a full-circle moment after the former president and the onetime Fox News star feuded bitterly during Trump's 2016 campaign. Invited to the stage in Pittsburgh, Kelly defended Trump against recent controversies, including his repeated pledge to be the “protector” of women, and pressed his case on border security and his opposition to transgender athletes participating in sports. “He got mocked by the left by saying he would be a protector of women,” Kelly said. “He will be a protector of women and it’s why I’m voting for him. He will close the border and he will keep the boys out of women’s sports where they don’t belong.” Trump stood to the side, grinning and beaming, as he listened to the commentator he once called “nasty.” Afterward, she posted a selfie with the former president on X that was captioned in part: "God bless him. Go vote for him!" Kelly was a popular Fox News host in 2016 when she questioned Trump during the first debate of the Republican primary about whether he had the temperament to be president. Trump largely dismissed Kelly’s question at the debate, but later he went directly after her, first overnight on Twitter and later in interviews. “She’s not very tough and not very sharp,” Trump told CNN in a phone interview. “I don’t respect her as a journalist.” Referring to Kelly’s questions during the debate, Trump said, “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” The comment was widely viewed as a sexist reference to menstruation. Trump later boycotted another debate on Fox because Kelly was one of the moderators. Kelly left Fox for NBC News. She was taken off the air following an uproar when she suggested it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween. She now hosts a SiriusXM satellite radio show that she has built into one of the highest-ranked on Chartable’s list of news podcasts. “All that nonsense between us,” Kelly said last year, “is under the bridge.” Kelly’s appearance with Trump comes as early voting suggests a gender gap that favors Democrat Kamala Harris. Kelly was critical of some of the speakers who delivered crude and racist comments at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last month. One suggested that Harris, who is vying to become the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be elected president, began her career as a prostitute. The speakers, Kelly said, “took what was an amazing celebration of Trump, exciting and well-attended and hugely enthusiastic, and gave themselves a big black eye.”

Donald Trump has spent nearly a decade bragging about his crowds. Lately, he’s been making the same boasts to swaths of empty seats. In his third presidential bid, Trump for the first time is facing an opponent who stages her own massive rallies, calling further attention to the fact that his crowds, however enthusiastic they are, sometimes have failed to fill large venues and often thinned out as he spoke. In North Carolina this weekend, the former president and Republican nominee spoke at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, where the lower level of the 22,000-seat arena remained unfilled, with the upper level blocked off altogether. “We've had the biggest rallies in history of any country. Every rally's full," he falsely claimed anyway. “You don't have any seats that are empty.” He began Monday, the eve of the election, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a late-arriving crowd came close to filling the venue but left a smattering of empty seats. In Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump took the stage in Santander Arena, where there were sections of empty seats in the 7,200-seat arena. The campaign hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking the view of several seating sections that remained unfilled. He then went to PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, where the upper level seating was again blocked off. The former president’s crowds still routinely number in the thousands and they roared regularly as he spoke. And his supporters this year remain engaged enough that his final event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was inside a packed arena even though it started after 12:15 a.m. Tuesday, nearly two hours late. Some rallygoers told a reporter they arrived at 7 a.m. the day before. But the occasional scenes of empty seats offered a notable contrast to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' biggest events this fall — and to the volume and vibe of Trump's crowds eight years ago when he sought and won the presidency for the first time. To be sure, crowd sizes aren't necessarily predictive of electoral outcomes. Still, Trump has been drawing smaller crowds in the closing stretch of the campaign than he did in previous races, especially his first campaign, when his mass events became a political phenomenon. Trump’s crowds this fall also have often thinned out as the former president’s long stump speeches extend into their second hour. People routinely leave while he's speaking, sometimes in droves, after waiting several hours for a spot. There are reasons why some might be fatigued. Trump has been returning again and again to the same battleground states, sometimes speaking in the same places and even the same venues. Trump’s smaller Greensboro crowd, for example, came eight days after he had campaigned in the same city. He also often runs late, starting three hours behind recently in Traverse City, Michigan, after taping an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. But whatever the explanation, the former reality television star and consummate showman clearly remains invested in the performative aspect of presidential politics and obviously concerned that Harris, unlike Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, can match and even exceed his signature campaign tactic. Harris, for example, recently filled the large coliseum in Greensboro. Democrats have embraced the dynamics as a way to get under Trump’s skin. Former President Barack Obama, the last national figure before Trump and Harris to make mass rallies a key part of his campaigns, noted Trump’s “weird obsession” with crowd size during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. Obama added mocking hand gestures about size that evoked Trump's own comments during his first campaign on hand sizes and his implication that they reflected his manhood. Harris invoked crowd sizes during her lone debate against Trump, one of many times that she knocked the former president off course during their 90-minute exchange. She urged people to attend Trump's rallies as a way of understanding his time had passed. Trump on Monday night in Pittsburgh directed barbs toward Beyoncé’s appearance at a recent Harris rally that drew more than 30,000 people. The megastar introduced Harris in Houston but did not perform. Harris has campaigned with a bevy of celebrities and pop stars in the campaign's final days, ending with a Philadelphia rally featuring Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga. The star of Trump's show, meanwhile, remains the former president. In recent days, he's shown a wistful side both about the rallies and the crowds coming to see him — however big they really are. “I have one left,” he said in Pittsburgh, wistfully looking ahead to his late-night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “And remember, the rallies are the most exciting thing. They’ll never be rallies like this. This is never going to happen again.” —— Barrow reported from Washington. Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Joey Cappelletti in Grand Rapids, Michigan contributed to this report.