With both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump traveling to Pennsylvania today, CNN reports that one-fifth of all advertising money that has been spent on the race since Harris became the nominee has targeted the state.

According to Guardian polling, Harris holds a narrow one-point lead in the state, while a recent New York Times report shows her four points ahead of her opponent there.

Tim Walz is campaigning today in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with senators Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin.

Joking about the support from across the political spectrum that Kamala Harris has received in recent weeks, Klobuchar told students at the University of Wisconsin: “We’re gonna see like a bus going through western Wisconsin with – I want you to picture this – Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney together holding a sign that says brat fall.”

If you were looking for a break from the election cycle this weekend, you may have taken a trip to the movies – only to find no such break to be had. The Apprentice, a two-hour biopic focused on Donald Trump’s early life, hit theaters on Friday. Here’s Victoria Bekiempis on the former president’s less-than-thrilled reaction:

Donald Trump railed against a just released biopic about his life in a social media screed early on Monday, calling it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” meant to thwart his presidential candidacy.

The Apprentice portrays how Trump created his real estate empire under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, a notoriously cutthroat attorney and power-broker in 1970s and 1980s New York City, Intelligencer notes. Trump is played by the Marvel actor Sebastian Stan and Cohn by the Succession star Jeremy Strong.

Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump is played by Maria Bakalova – whose breakout role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm landed her an Academy award nomination. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of The Apprentice indicating that portions were “fictionalized for dramatic purposes”, Intelligencer notes.

In his rant Trump described the film as “fake and classless”. Trump said he hoped it would “bomb” and alleged that it was “put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country, ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Democratic National Committee has announced that it will launch a “six-figure ad campaign” aimed at turning out Native American voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Montana and Alaska. It is the party’s third Native-focused campaign this year, and “the most the DNC has ever spent on a campaign targeting Native voters”, according to the committee.

In 2020, Native voters were crucial to swinging Arizona – a traditionally Republican state – for Joe Biden.

“Native American people will absolutely help decide the results of this election,” Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, said in a statement announcing the ads. If Kamala Harris wins the election, making Minnesota governor Tim Walz her vice-president, Flanagan would become the first Native American woman to serve as a state’s governor.

Democratic and Republican leaders have celebrated today’s holiday in markedly different ways. While the Trump campaign has tweeted “Happy Columbus Day” while saying “Radical left Marxist Kamala Harris thinks that this holiday celebrating the discovery of the Americas and the birth of western civilization is a bad thing,” the vice-president has yet to make any statement on the holiday.

A Gallup News poll released today found that Americans’ trust in the media is still at record lows, as has been the case since 2016. For the third year in a row, Gallup found that more adults have no trust at all in the media than trust it a great deal or fair amount. The news is particularly profound as election day approaches: Gallup found the media is the least trusted group among 10 civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process, such as state and local governments, the judiciary and Congress.

In the 1970s, Gallup first reported that trust in the media hovered around 70% – though that percentage began to fall in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as about 50% of Americans reported trusting the news. Only about a third of Americans said they trusted the media in 2016.

Trust in the media correlates with party affiliation and age, Gallup reports. Currently, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Meanwhile, older Americans trust the media at higher rates than their younger peers (only 31% of Democrats between the ages of 18 and 29, versus 74% of those 65 and older).

Ex-president Bill Clinton has been campaigning for Kamala Harris in Georgia this weekend. At a campaign stop today, he told voters: “You have to realize it is literally possible that the whole election could be decided here.”

According to our most recent polling, Donald Trump is currently leading Kamala Harris by one point in the Peach state. A recent poll from the New York Times shows the same. The state’s elections have been in the spotlight since 2020, when then Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger refused to change the election results in Trump’s favor.

For more on the state of the election, and election interference, in Georgia, consider:

Harris agrees to first-ever sit-down interview with Fox News

With election day nearing, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are closely tracking every potential vote in hotly contested swing states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona. But, according to the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, there’s an issue with the Trump campaign’s software that’s made it difficult for them to know whether their ground game operation is reaching target voters. Here’s Hugo:

The Trump campaign this cycle is targeting so-called low propensity Trump voters, who are often in rural areas, as part of their bet that hitting those people who don’t typically vote but would cast a ballot for Trump if they did, could make a difference in a close election.

But the Trump campaign and the Elon Musk-backed America Pac, which is now doing an outsized portion of the Trump ground game, use a management app called Campaign Sidekick that struggles in areas with slow internet and means canvassers have to use an offline version.

The Campaign Sidekick app effectively forces canvassers who have less than 40mbps of internet – sufficient to stream 4K video – to use “offline walkbooks” which have no geo-tracking feature and do not always upload after a route is completed, the people said.

As a result, the Trump campaign and America Pac then have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or whether they are cheating – for instance, by “speed-running” routes where they literally throw campaign materials at doors as they drive past.

For more, continue reading here:

Black lawmakers are calling for an investigation of Tom Barrett, a Republican running for Michigan’s vacant seat in the House of Representatives, after his campaign published an ad in a Black-owned newspaper incorrectly listing election day as 6 November.

The complaint, filed by the Michigan Legislative Black caucus, accuses Barrett of purposely attempting to mislead Black voters to suppress their vote: “At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing. And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”

Barrett’s campaign told the Washington Post the mistake was “nothing but a proofing error”, noting other mailers it has sent to Black voters with the correct date.

Barrett is currently running against Democrat Curtis Hertel to fill the seat left vacant by Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who is running for Senate. The outcome of the race could determine which party controls the House in the new year.

Gwen Walz, an educator and wife of the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, is sharing the couple’s fertility journey today in Women’s Health.

“It’s never easy to tell this story, and I think all of us who speak about our reproductive challenges wish we didn’t have to,” Gwen Walz told the magazine.

“Earlier this year, Tim and I were in his office at the Minnesota State Capitol, getting ready to do a press conference, when we heard the news that the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that embryos have personhood, which effectively halted IVF treatments in the state as clinics and hospitals tried to figure out what to do. We looked at each other, and we were both just right back there, all those years ago, when we were trying to start our own family and going through our own fertility treatments.”

Walz goes on to describe the couple’s experience trying intrauterine insemination (a fertility treatment that her husband incorrectly referred to as IVF earlier in the campaign) and the joy they felt when they learned they had conceived their daughter Hope, who today is 23. She concludes by speaking about her sadness that Hope will not have the same reproductive freedoms, and worry that that will worsen if Donald Trump is re-elected in November, before urging readers to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both returning to Pennsylvania today – a state they and their proxies have frequented over the past month. Last week, former president Barack Obama rallied voters in Pittsburgh to vote blue downballot, while also specifically calling on Black men to support the vice-president. Meanwhile, earlier on 5 October, Trump held one of his largest rallies in Butler, the site of his near-assassination in July.

Today, Harris will rally voters in Erie – in the state’s far north-west corner – while Trump speaks just outside Philadelphia.

Although the state’s leadership is largely Democratic – Pennsylvania has elected a Democratic governor three times in a row, and both of the state’s senators are also Democrats – the margin for victory in Pennsylvania is narrow. The state’s natural gas industry could sway the election in a state that holds 19 electoral votes – the most of any swing state.

Current Guardian polling shows Harris leading the state by a narrow one-point margin, while a recent New York Times poll shows the vice-president leading in the Keystone state by four points.

We’ll be following both campaigns’ appearances in Pennsylvania today and keep you apprised of any developments.

White House press aides scrap – Axios

Take a break for a moment from the endless campaign coverage and feverish polls speculation and enjoy an old fashioned gossipy report on in-house bickering at the White House.

The protagonists are Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security spokesperson John Kirby. Apparently, Axios gleefully reports, KJP has been “blocking” Kirby from appearances at the press podium.

“Having both of them at the podium was what Biden wanted, but Jean-Pierre thought that Kirby’s presence gave the impression she needed a chaperone, people familiar with her thinking told Axios.”

Full details here.

Truth Social stock rallies

CNN is reporting on a recent stock market rally in Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social. Truth Social has far more often been the subject of mockery and schadenfreude as its value has largely headed downwards since its stock market debut.

But CNN reports that recently it has soared.

“Up until very recently, Trump Media & Technology Group had been in meltdown mode. Its share price dropped to a record low of $12.15 on September 23, marking a stunning 82% crash from its high.

But the owner of Truth Social is enjoying a massive rebound, more than doubling its share price in less than three weeks. It spiked nearly 50% last week alone. It’s a remarkable turnaround, even for a notoriously-volatile stock that has been described as a meme stock on steroids.”

The reason? Market speculation that Trump could be heading back to the White House.

Voter registration worries for Harris in key swing states

The incredibly right races in the seven crucial battleground states have been a feature of the 2024 election almost from the start – and especially since Kamala Harris entered the race.

But Democratic jitters – already at peak intensity – are unlikely to be soothed by a Hill report showing worrying signs re – Democrat voter registration.

Key points: “Democrats’ voter registration advantage has dropped in three key battleground states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada – raising a red flag for Vice President Harris as experts cite a lack of enthusiasm for the Biden administration brand and the Democratic Party, generally, as problems.

In Arizona, another key battleground state, Republicans have seen their voter registration advantage increase substantially, which could make it tougher for Harris to carry a state that President Biden narrowly won in 2020.”

A full report here.

Good news for Democrats in Senate

Suffice to say, that in recent days the mood among many Democrats has turned a little sour as November’s election date gets ever closer. There is deep nervousness about the state of the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, especially as poll after poll shows the crucial swing states are on a knife-edge.

But Politico has a little cheer for Democrats with an internal memo from a Repuplican Super Pac showing the party’s chances of extending power in the Senate is looking grim.

“The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states, a pattern that could sharply limit their ability to build a sizable majority unless they can force a change in the final weeks of the election,” the memo says.

More details and a full report here.

Harris and Trump making regular appearances in key battleground state of Pennsylvania