Elon Musk to attend Trump rally in Pennsylvania months after July assassination attempt – live

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Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk are on their way to the rally in Butler.

Trump boarded his flight to Butler, from West Palm Beach, about half an hour ago.

Meanwhile, Musk has shared on X that he is on route to Pennsylvania.

As the Trump and Harris campaigns host events across the country today – now one month before the November 5 election – the Guardian US is averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring. We will update our averages once a week, or more if there is major news.

As Sam Levine writes today,

With her highest national polling average since July, Harris is now leading in five of seven key swing states. ly, the Guardian’s tracker shows Harris with 49.3% of the vote, compared with 46% for Trump. The election is a month away, and already an estimated 1.4 million Americans have voted as of midday on Friday.

The race is still extremely close. The simplest path to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win is still the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While Harris leads Trump in all three according to the Guardian’s analysis (Pennsylvania by 1.2 points, Michigan by 0.1 points and Wisconsin by 2.2 points), those advantages are quite slim.

Senator and vice presidential nominee JD Vance is attending a fundraising luncheon today in Gloucester, Massachusetts ahead of Trump’s rally in Butler, which Vance will attend.

According to the New York Times, which obtained a copy of the luncheon invitation, the event is being hosted by Michael and Renee Minogue. The couple run a Boston-based Christian foundation, which had $22m in assets in 2022.

Bernie Sanders is campaigning in Michigan for Kamala Harris this weekend. The Vermont independent senator is scheduled for four stops in the state today and tomorrow, including a rally in Warren this morning, where he spoke alongside the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain.

The events will focus on “strengthening the working class” and “rally[ing] against corporate greed”, Sanders says.

Harris herself visited Michigan yesterday, where she spoke at a rally in Detroit. During that speech, Harris made specific references to the state’s unions, including the UAW and the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and denounced Trump as a union buster.

Harris and Trump have been closely tied in Michigan, but Trump appears to have narrowly pulled ahead in the swing state, according to a recent statewide poll. Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin raised concerns about Harris’s polling at a recent campaign event, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

The Secret Service has beefed up security measures in Butler before Trump’s rally this evening.

Agents will be operating a counter-drone system and securing the building where shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks fired upon Trump in July, CNN reports. Trump will also be speaking from behind ballistic glass.

“You’re going to see a lot more enhancements,” one federal official told CNN.

The Secret Service is also more closely coordinating with local law enforcement, including the Pennsylvania state police.

Elon Musk to attend Trump rally in Butler today

Elon Musk will attend Trump’s rally in Butler this evening, the Trump campaign has confirmed in a list of guests who will be joining the former president.

“I will be there to support!” the tech billionaire replied to a post by Trump on Musk’s social media platform, X, saying he was returning to the Butler Farm Show grounds.

As rally-goers gathered in Butler this morning, Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, from the former Trump White House chief strategist, was being powered by a Cybertruck – Tesla’s recall-prone, tank-like, electric truck.

For more on the Trump-Musk relationship, Cybertrucks and Bannon’s War Room, see reporting from our Guardian colleagues:

Fema reports more than $110m distributed after Hurricane Helene

Before Kamala Harris’s scheduled visit to North Carolina today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reports more than $110m in federal assistance has been distributed to Hurricane Helene recovery efforts.

Harris will receive a briefing today from Fema administrator Deanne Criswell before surveying the damage in North Carolina. This week marks Harris’s first time visiting the scene of a humanitarian crisis as vice-president – a role typically filled by Joe Biden, who this weekend is instead traveling to Camp David.

Harris said this week that she wanted to “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary”.

For more on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, see reporting from Richard Luscombe and commentary from Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian:

With election day exactly one month away, Democrats are raising concerns about Kamala Harris’s relatively light campaign schedule, particularly as Trump draws crowds to rallies like today’s, Politico reports.

According to Politico, Harris has spent more than a third of the days since the Democratic national convention receiving briefings or conducting internal meetings. Of the remaining days, she’s spent just more than half holding rallies and other public-facing campaign events. The vice-president has spent about half of her days in Washington DC since the convention, rather than campaigning in swing states.

That news comes as the Washington Post reports that the Harris campaign is spending nearly three times as much as Trump, as the candidates remain closely tied.

As the Trump and Harris campaigns ramp up into high gear for a final month of campaigning before election day – including at high-profile rallies such as today’s in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service is at “a breaking point”, NBC News reports.

A dozen current and former Secret Service agents told NBC News that insufficient staffing and an increased workload have contributed to errors, such as those in Butler when a gunman opened fire at Trump on 13 July.

“There is a huge security risk because you already have agents that are burnt out, exhausted now having even less time to make a solid security plan and get all assets in order,” a current agent told NBC.

“I love my agency but they are setting themselves up for another incident,” said one former agent.

Both current and former officials told NBC they are concerned the agency will witness a mass exodus of personnel over the next 18 months.

For more context on recent Secret Service failures, see Robert Tait and Ed Helmore’s reporting in the Guardian:

Trump to speak in Butler, Pennsylvania, months after assassination attempt

Still hours before Trump is scheduled to speak in Butler, Pennsylvania, this evening, reporters on the ground at the rally are reporting a large and eager crowd.

The Trump campaign is touting the rally as a return to “the very same ground where [Trump] took a bullet for democracy less than three months ago”.

A Pennsylvania voter tell Fox News: “I think we’re on hallowed ground today.”

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are touring the country this weekend, while their proxies do the same. Perhaps most notable: Trump is scheduled today to return to Butler, Pennsylvania – where a shooter attempted to assassinate him less than three months ago. He’ll be joined by the family of Corey Comperatore, a rally-goer who was shot and killed at a July rally.

Meanwhile, the vice-president is traveling to North Carolina today, where Hurricane Helene has devastated much of the state, killing at least 200 people. Harris will receive a briefing on recovery efforts, and provide updates on federal actions to support the emergency response.

Here’s what else is happening:

The Trump campaign has announced a weekend-long tour of Georgia, which will make three stops in the state today, ending in Atlanta.

Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, will travel to Camp David, where they will remain over the weekend.