MILWAUKEE, Nov 1: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris hold dueling campaign rallies Friday in Wisconsin's largest city Milwaukee, as both candidates make frantic last-ditch appeals to wavering voters with Election Day just around the corner.
Republican Trump will return to the venue where he was crowned his party's presidential nominee over the summer, his ear bandaged in bright white gauze after he was wounded in an attempted assassination just days earlier, while Democrat Harris will lean on the star power of rapper Cardi B to outshine her rival.
Their race back to the so-called Blue Wall states came after the pair spent Thursday in the US West, with three appearances each.
The highlight for Harris had been a star-studded rally in Las Vegas where she was introduced by pop maven Jennifer Lopez, while Trump spent a comfortable evening basking in mutual affection with right-wing provocateur Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona.
With Tuesday's vote looming, the candidates appear set for a photo finish, despite fierce efforts by the rival campaigns to move the dial and dominate the news cycle in a week so far defined by bitter disputes and gaffes on both sides over issues including race, gender and reproductive rights.
Wisconsin, one of the key battleground states that will swing the November 5 election, was decided by less than one percentage point in 2016 and 2020, and the race for its 10 electoral college votes is just as tight this time around.
Harris -- who has fought to maintain her image as a "joyful warrior" even as Trump hurls insults against her and other Democrats -- was seeking to harness the power of musicians such as GloRilla, the Isley Brothers and Flo Milli at a "When We Vote We Win" rally and concert in Milwaukee.
Grammy award-winning rapper Cardi B was due to speak at the event, Harris's campaign said.
Trump was returning to the Fiserv Forum, the venue that hosted perhaps the high-water mark of his campaign, the Republican National Convention.
The convention came as the tycoon was riding high in the polls after two major events -- the assassination attempt and a debate with then-candidate Joe Biden which proved disastrous for the Democrat -- but before Biden dropped out of the race and handed the baton to Harris.
Lifted by a surge of enthusiasm, Harris quickly ate away at Trump's lead -- but the polls have remained mostly deadlocked ever since.
With fears growing that Trump could refuse to accept the result if he loses the election, many Americans were bracing for violence and unrest in the days after November 5.
Washington's police chief Pamela Smith told a press briefing this week that no "credible threats" had been identified against the capital, which saw a deadly riot by Trump supporters seeking to overturn Biden's election win on January 6, 2021.
Smith said that officials were remaining "vigilant." Police would support peaceful protests, she said, but "we will not tolerate any violence of any kind."
"We will not tolerate any riots, we will not tolerate the destruction of property, we will not tolerate any unlawful behavior," she said.
Some 63.5 million people have cast their ballots early, more than 40 percent of the 2020 total vote.
Meanwhile, this year's nail-biter of a White House race between the former president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has seen a deluge of lawsuits from both parties even before Election Day.
Democrats claim Republicans are setting the stage for Trump to contest the results if he loses and declare victory anyway -- as he did four years ago.
"Trump uses litigation to create a grievance structure that will allow him to claim he is a victim when he loses fair and square," Marc Elias, a top Democratic Party election lawyer, said on X.
Republicans say they are bringing the suits in the name of "election integrity" with Trump alleging that the only way Harris can win on Tuesday is if Democrats "cheat."
"I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election," he said in a Truth Social post.
The 78-year-old Trump has never conceded the election he lost to Joe Biden and a defeat this time could pave the way for the former president to be put on trial on federal and state charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 results.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), which is co-chaired by Trump's daughter-in-law Lara, has filed more than 130 cases, mostly focused on the seven swing states that could decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. —AFP
