Trump’s people promise to “free America from bureaucracy”

Three days before the US presidential election, the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is kicking up a gear. The big events, the small stories, and all the updates you should know. Election calendar, special coverage.

6:58 – At a time when the impression that Donald Trump will be the next president of the USA is growing stronger, his people are dropping thick and thin hints about the changes they are planning.

House Speaker Mike Johnson promises “the most radical days” ever seen at the start of a new presidency. He assumes that the Republicans will control not only the White House, but also both houses of Congress, as most polls tend to show. The Republicans intend to “point a torch” at the supervisory authorities, and free America from the interference of the bureaucracy, whose “boots are on the necks of job creators”.

The most dramatic question Johnson was asked in the last day concerns the future of comprehensive medical insurance, which was installed in the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency. Thanks to him, 50 million Americans were added to the circle of insured people.

Johnson was heard saying yesterday, “There will be no Obamacare,” the derogatory name Republicans gave the law at the time. In the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats were defeated by widespread opposition to the health care law. Trump tried to repeal it at the beginning of his presidency, but failed; And Republicans have since cooled their public enthusiasm for repeal. The popularity of the law has increased greatly since then.

 

Wow. Mike Johnson was caught on a hot mic saying that he and Donald Trump will repeal the Affordable Care Act. Spread this everywhere. pic.twitter.com/8eumAjM7XG

– Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) October 30, 2024

Johnson’s casual announcement gives Democrats a last-minute opportunity to try and intimidate voters, especially those without private health insurance. Johnson himself denied after the fact that he said what he was heard to say.

A few hours later, Johnson was asked if, as part of the radical legislative initiatives, the Republicans also plan to cancel the CHIPS Act initiated by President Biden to encourage the production of chips and semiconductors on US soil. Johnson replied, “I guess we’ll cancel.”

Embarrassingly, next to him was a Republican congressman trying to get re-elected in a constituency in New York state, which the law is going to enrich through generous subsidies to chip manufacturers. The axis immediately rejected Johnson’s words, and a strange dialogue developed between them, during which Johnson tried to round off the edges. The two finally agreed that Trump and Johnson want to repeal the very law, but they only want to peel it from the shell of the subsidies that the law offers for the development of ‘green’ technology.

 

BREAKING: I asked @SpeakerJohnson if he’ll try to repeal the CHIPS Act if Trump wins and they have control of Congress.

“I expect that we probably will.”@RepWilliams responds: “I will remind him night and day how important the CHIPS Act is.” #NY22 @CitrusTVNews 📺 pic.twitter.com/tUGwZMNMJM

– Luke Radel (@lukeradel) November 1, 2024

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is tiny, and a loss of five seats (out of 435) would hand control of the House to the Democrats. If that happens, Trump’s legislative appetite will be considerably neutered.

22:32 – 65 million have already voted; The number of women is increasing

Although the election day is on November 5, more than a third of those with the right to vote have already voted. Tonight their number was 65 million (according to the NBC network).

They vote using sealed envelopes by mail, or at early polling stations scattered across the United States. Election laws differ from country to country. Some encouraged early voting, others tried to postpone it. But it is now possible in all 50 states and in the capital city of Washington.

Of course, there are no exit polls from early voting, but an unceasing attempt is made to analyze the numbers. For example, 54% of those who voted early are women. This is important, because the share of women in the population is 52%. If more women voted than their proportional share, and if this ratio is maintained until the end of the vote, it may be good for Kamala Harris. The reason: the gender gap.

A perennial interest in American politics is that many more women vote for the Democrats, and many more men vote for the Republicans. Apparently, if more women vote, more women will vote for Harris. Differences of one or two percent may well decide the balance in the critical states, where the margin of victory and loss may be several thousand votes.

But other calculations show a marked increase in the number of Republicans participating in early voting. In 2020, Trump made a special effort to dissuade his supporters from voting by mail after charging that the vote was prone to fraud. This time he encourages them to vote.

21:27 – “53% probability of Trump’s victory”

Decision Desk HQ, a company that specializes in political forecasting and publishes probabilities in presidential and congressional elections, today puts the chances of Trump’s victory at 53%, a slight decrease compared to yesterday.

 

According to our latest presidential forecast, Kamala Harris has a 47% chance of winning the election. pic.twitter.com/fkQJ7lMfrR

– Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) October 31, 2024

In five of six key states, she estimates that Trump has a better chance, between 51% and 65%. Harris only has a better chance by one.

 

Donald Trump is favored over Kamala Harris in 5 out of 6 tossup states. pic.twitter.com/rp9msNIJj4

– Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) October 31, 2024

According to this prediction, Trump will receive 275 electors, five more than the minimum necessary for victory. When he won in 2016 he received 304 electors. In 2020, Biden got 306. This time the race looks to be the closest it’s been in a quarter of a century.

In the critical congressional elections, the company gives a 70% probability of a Republican victory in the Senate. The Senate has been in the hands of the Democrats for four years. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans also have a tiny probability advantage, but the race is much closer. The Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives for two years.

If they take control of both the White House and both houses of Congress they will be given the ability to pass radical legislative changes.

Other prognosticators give Trump higher probability rates, and we will quote them below.

20:57 – The Russians are coming – and faking

American intelligence believes it has found evidence of attempted Russian interference during the presidential election: a video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted a considerable number of times in favor of Kamala Harris in two districts of the state of Georgia, in the southern United States.

The Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Rappensperger, himself a Republican, who is in charge of the integrity of the elections in the country, announced yesterday that the video is “clearly fake”, and probably the product of a Russian attempt to “sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election”.

 

We have discussed this with State and Federal authorities.

This is obviously fake, and likely it is a production of Russian troll farms.

As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine faith in our institutions – or each other. pic.twitter.com/u3ybHD4EYl

– GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) November 1, 2024

The AP news agency today brings confirmation from an intelligence source in Washington that the video was created by “Russian influencers”, and is part of “a more comprehensive Russian effort to raise unreasonable questions about the integrity of the elections, and to create a rift between Americans”.

Trump has always claimed that the election process in the US is tainted with fraud. He attributes his defeat in 2020 to fraud, although all courts have rejected the claim. His people are preparing the ground for an appeal against the results of the elections, if he loses them. Trump has also been rejecting for years the claim that Russian intelligence is trying to help him get elected.

20:22 – News that Trump has been waiting for: a slowdown in job creation

The latest economic news of the election: a marked drop in the number of new jobs in October. 100,000 were expected, only 12,000 were made. But the number is terribly less than it seems: the result of a distortion of the weather (the hurricanes in Florida) and the ongoing strike at Boeing.

 

Job creation in the U.S. stalled in October, with employers adding only 12,000 positions in a month that included a major strike and two destructive hurricanes. Unemployment remained steady at 4.1%. Here’s the latest report. https://t.co/5UXxLo3oq6 pic.twitter.com/X5ZRkXf7am

– The New York Times (@nytimes) November 1, 2024

The unemployment rate remains unchanged at 4.1%, low by any historical standard. The stock market was not impressed by the disappointing statistics. She expects continued interest rate cuts – and a Trump victory.

Whatever the numbers may be, the impression of a bad economic situation continues to cloud the mood of Americans, although a cursory look at the statistics puts the impression into question. 2.2 million jobs were added to the US economy in the last year, although the rate of growth has decreased in recent months. This slowdown brought the central bank to the decision to start lowering the interest rate, six weeks ago.

Trump, in any case, hastened to declare that the new report is a “catastrophe”, and it testifies to how much “Kamla Harris broke our economy”.

19:54 – Destination: Pennsylvania

The last minute polls tend to confirm that the most important battleground of the presidential elections is Pennsylvania, the seventh largest state in the USA, split between the East Coast and the Midwest.

If the election is indeed as close as the polls show, it is likely that it will be decided in three states in the Midwest: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. From the apparent division in the Electoral College, it can be concluded that the Democrats must win in all three. Last-minute polls in Wisconsin and Michigan show a statistical tie between the candidates; But polls in Pennsylvania show a Trump advantage.

 

Presidential election polls released in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin: See results https://t.co/TVqauoB8eb

– USA TODAY (@USATODAY) November 1, 2024

If these polls materialize, it seems that through Pennsylvania Trump will pass the 270 electors hurdle. This is the number of spells needed to win.

19:09- Muslim voters abandon Harris

The alienation of Muslim voters from the Democratic presidential candidate is taking on the dimensions of a disaster. A new public opinion poll by the ‘Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) shows that 42% of Muslims support Jill Stein’s candidacy for president.

Stein is the candidate of the Green Party, completely marginal, whose national support hovers around 1 percent, but she has emerged in recent weeks as a means of political protest between Arabs and Muslims, who want to punish Harris and the Democratic Party for their support of the “genocide in Gaza.”

The poll shows that Harris is only one percentage point behind Stein, but in previous years the Democrats have enjoyed overwhelming support. According to an estimate, in 2020 86% of them voted for Joe Biden.

 

Our latest and final poll of Muslim voter preferences reveals a virtual tie: 42% for Green Party’s @DrJillStein41% for VP @KamalaHarris. With only 5% not planning to vote and nearly no undecided voters, American Muslims are set to make a substantial impact on #ElectionDay,… pic.twitter.com/ciUnqu8NWg

– CAIR National (@CAIRNational) November 1, 2024

Their vote may have an impact on the election results in critical states where the margin of victory and loss will be tiny, especially in Michigan, where Muslims are 2.4% of the population, more than twice their relative share in the entire population of the USA. Both candidates, Harris and Trump, have plowed Michigan in recent weeks.