Harris and Trump battle for swing-state votes as Elon Musk files a lawsuit

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris appealed to Christian groups and union workers in battleground states, while Elon Musk faced backlash over his plans to give select registered voters $1 million as part of an election campaign to boost turnout for to motivate the Republican candidate.

President Joe Biden criticized Musk’s plan after early voting in Delaware, highlighting how both campaigns are encouraging supporters to go to the polls.

Trump rallied evangelical voters in Georgia while Harris highlighted her plans to boost manufacturing during a tour of Michigan as the two candidates campaigned furiously with just eight days until Election Day.

Trump sought to extend his lead among independent and male voters this weekend with a three-hour podcast appearance by Joe Rogan on Friday and a rally on Sunday evening in New York. But both events provided fodder for Harris heading into the final stretch of the weekend.

In New York, warm-up rallies for Trump included racist and crude comments about Black Americans, Puerto Ricans and Palestinians, undermining the Republican candidate’s efforts to make inroads with minority voters. On the Rogan podcast, Trump also disparaged the Biden administration’s signature legislation that offered subsidies to semiconductor makers opening factories in the US, saying he would have achieved the same goal through high tariffs.

Harris took advantage of both while in Michigan, where he criticized comments about Puerto Rico and visited a Hemlock Semiconductor LLC plant just a week after the company received a preliminary $325 million investment under the Chips and Science Act.

This is all happening during the campaign on Monday:

Biden casts his vote

Biden cast an early vote in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. Biden, at 81 the oldest US president in history, ended his own re-election bid this summer and endorsed Harris.

The president arrived at a polling place with U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is running for Senate to replace retiring Democrat Tom Carper. Biden greeted people waiting in line outside the polling station to cast their own votes, including helping to push a woman in a wheelchair.

Biden received a sticker after voting and answered questions from the press, saying he thought the Democrats would win. And he took the opportunity to attack Trump over his rally on Sunday and speakers’ comments.

‘It’s just embarrassing. It is beneath any president,” Biden added.

Biden also criticized the election sweepstakes organized by Musk and his super political action committee, America PAC.

“I think it’s completely inappropriate,” the president said.

America PAC is offering registered voters in swing states the chance to win $1 million if they sign an online petition pledging to support free speech and the right to bear arms.

The vice president has enlisted Democratic heavyweights like former President Barack Obama and celebrities like Beyoncé Knowles-Carter to join her on her journey. However, Biden has mainly performed solo since the two campaigned together on Labor Day in Pittsburgh.

Biden has a light campaign schedule in the final stretch with an event in Baltimore on Tuesday to highlight infrastructure investments and an event on Friday in Pennsylvania to tout his administration’s efforts to strengthen organized labor.

The president defended his plan, telling reporters he had to juggle the demands of his job with hitting the road, but said he would also visit his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for Harris.

Musk sued over giveaways

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is suing Musk and the billionaire investor’s super PAC over the offer to give registered voters in U.S. swing states a $1 million prize.

Krasner is asking a state judge to stop Musk from organizing an “unlawful lottery” that “entices Philadelphia citizens to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win.”

The lawsuit marks the first official legal challenge Musk, the world’s richest person, has faced over the program, which has drawn criticism from legal experts and the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ sent Musk’s PAC a letter warning that the program could violate federal law that prohibits paying individuals to vote or register to vote.

Asked about the lawsuit, an America PAC spokesperson pointed to a post on Musk’s social media platform X announcing a winner from Michigan and indicating that efforts would continue through Election Day.

Evangelical voice from the closet

Trump took part in a moderate discussion at the National Faith Summit in Powder Springs, Georgia, in another call to win over evangelical voters, a group that polls show is overwhelmingly favoring the former president.

The Republican was at times clumsy in his appeal to Christians, dodging a question about his own faith life, calling a religious congregation “an audience,” musing on whether “pastor” or “minister” is the preferred term and admitting that as child sometimes attended religious classes ‘couldn’t get out of there fast enough’.

“I shouldn’t scold anyone, but Christians are not known to be very solid voters,” Trump said.

Trump lamented that the US is “less based on religion now” – calling it the “glue” and “fabric” that holds the country together – while slamming Democrats for downplaying faith and repeating baseless claims about persecution of Catholics.

Harris recommends chip investments

The vice president visited a semiconductor factory in Michigan and used the trip to push back on Trump’s criticism of the Chips Act, which subsidizes domestic chip production.

Harris said the law made the U.S. more competitive with China and billed it as the kind of job-boosting investments Americans could expect under her administration.

“If we can find a way to create meaningful partnerships with the private sector, with industries, to do the kind of work that’s happening here, everyone wins,” Harris said.

The Democratic nominee referenced Trump’s comments on Rogan’s podcast Friday that the Chips Act had wasted billions and argued that tariffs would have been a better tool to bring manufacturing back to the US.

“He recently did a radio talk show and talked about how to get rid of the Chips Act. That means investing billions of dollars in exactly the kind of work that’s happening here,” Harris said.

She repeated her claims that Trump made it easy for China to obtain advanced chips while he was president.

“We have to win the competition for the 21st century. We will not let China beat us in the competition for the 21st century,” Harris said.

Union Award

In her second stop in Michigan, Harris toured an International Union of Painters and Allied Trades training center, where she met with workers — an effort to broaden reach among working-class voters.

Harris said she had worked with unions throughout her political career to help improve job opportunities and economic mobility, including “getting young men educated” and “out of the criminal justice system.”

“Apprenticeship programs have been my best partners,” she said.

Reassuring working-class voters concerned about the economy and jobs in Michigan and the other northern Blue Wall states that provide a crucial path to winning the White House will be critical to the electoral hopes of Harris.

The IUPAT has supported Harris for president, along with other major unions, but Trump has managed to penetrate the ranks of organized labor, touting his agenda of tariffs and tax cuts, which he says will boost domestic manufacturing.

Harris meets Trump over Puerto Rico

The vice president took advantage of comments from a speaker at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally who denigrated the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of trash.”

Harris said that as a U.S. senator she tried to help the people of Puerto Rico, noting that the island had no senators of its own in Washington. And she pointed to her own blueprint for advancing economic development on the island if elected, possibly including through public-private partnerships.

Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny endorsed Harris on Sunday in response to Trump’s rally, an endorsement the vice president said he was “very proud” of.

Emhoff also weighs in

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said the rhetoric at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden was “appalling” during a speech to Jewish supporters in Pittsburgh on Monday, noting the event took place on the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting at a synagogue in the city.

“It is appalling to hear these insults, especially in the final days of a presidential campaign, and even more painful to hear them on the anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre,” he said.

Emhoff, the first Jewish wife of a president or vice president, has repeatedly denounced Trump for using what he has described as anti-Semitic rhetoric during his campaign. Trump has said he expects to improve his standing with Jewish voters because of his support for Israel.

Virginia escalates battle over voter rolls

Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to continue purging its voter rolls in the final days of the presidential election, after lower courts blocked the state and the justices were drawn into the legal battle.

A federal judge ruled last week that the program violated a 90-day “quiet period” under federal law, handing victory to the Justice Department and private advocacy groups that had sued Virginia’s efforts. Last weekend, the state asked a federal appeals court to intervene, but a three-judge panel declined to immediately revive the program, agreeing with the district judge that it likely violated U.S. law.

In a filing Monday, attorneys for Virginia argued that the order blocking the program “will irreparably harm Virginia’s sovereignty, confuse its voters, overburden its election machinery and administrators, and is likely to result in non-citizens think they can vote.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)