Ed Pilkington

Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.

Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.

He also aims to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors.

“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in the campaign platform for his bid to become the 47th US president, Agenda47.

Trump provoked uproar earlier this week when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within” – on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.

Mayors and prosecutors in several US cities are collaborating over strategies to minimize the fallout. Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, a city of over 220,000, said he was aware how difficult it would be to resist Trump given the enormous powers at a president’s disposal.

“It’s very difficult to autocrat-proof your city,” he said. “But you have to have backstops, and mayors are working in coalition to ensure they can be a backstop against these divisive policies.”

You can read more of Ed Pilkington’s news feature here:

US president Joe Biden announced on Thursday further student debt relief for public servants – amounting to about $4.5bn – with just over two weeks to go until the presidential election, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The action affects about 60,000 borrowers across the country, said the White House, touting Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris’s efforts to improve loan forgiveness since taking office.

AFP reports that the announcement comes as US households feel the weight of higher costs of living since the Covid-19 pandemic, with voters citing the economy as a crucial concern in polls.

Biden said in a statement that with the latest move, more than one million people have had their debt cancelled under Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The promise of the programme – supporting teachers, nurses and others – involved student debt forgiveness after 10 years of public service and 10 years of payments.

“But for too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments, and only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness,” Biden said. “I will never stop working to make higher education affordable,” he added.

Biden has embarked on efforts to cancel student debt for millions of Americans, after a student loan payment freeze instituted by Donald Trump during the coronavirus pandemic.

Americans hold $1.6tn in student loans, and some end up repaying them over decades as they start jobs and families.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday stood by debunked claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating pets, telling Latino voters during a town hall he was “just saying what was reported”, according to Reuters.

Trump in recent weeks has amplified a false claim that has gone viral that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing residents’ pets or taking wildlife from parks for food.

There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and officials in Ohio – including Republicans – have repeatedly said the story is untrue.

At a town hall hosted by Spanish-language television network Univision, an undecided Mexican-born Latino Republican voter from Arizona, a battleground state, asked Trump in Spanish whether he truly believed that immigrants were eating pets.

“I was just saying what was reported … And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be. All I do is report,” Trump replied during the event held in Miami. “I was there, I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look.”

According to Reuters, Trump added that “newspapers” had also reported on the claim, without naming any or providing any details.

Trump, who has not yet traveled to Springfield, has previously said he would conduct mass deportations of Haitian immigrants from the Ohio city, even though the majority of them are in the US legally.

The city has faced bomb threats since Trump began repeating the false accusations about Haitians.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday described 6 January 2021, when thousands of his supporters attacked the Capitol in Washington DC in a bid to stop formal certification of Trump’s election defeat, as a “day of love”.

During a town hall with a Latino audience, hosted by Spanish-language television network Univision yesterday, Trump was told by a participant that he wanted to give the former US president a chance to “win back his vote” given his concerns over the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, reports Reuters.

Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in Washington DC that day causing millions of dollars in damage. Four people died on the day of the attack, and one Capitol police officer who fought against the rioters died the next day.

At the town hall in Miami, Trump gave a lengthy response in which he described 6 January 2021 as a “day of love” and said former administration officials who had turned against him were angry about having been fired.

“I hope someday maybe we’ll get your vote,” Trump said as he wrapped up. “Sounds like maybe I won’t, but that’s OK too.”

Trump also stood by debunked claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating pets, telling Latino voters during a town hall he was “just saying what was reported.”

Trump in recent weeks has amplified a false claim that has gone viral that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing residents’ pets or taking wildlife from parks for food.

There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and officials in Ohio – including Republicans – have repeatedly said the story is untrue.

More on this story in a moment, but first, here are the latest updates:

• Surrounded by more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials, Kamala Harris urged GOP voters on Wednesday to put “country first” and abandon Donald Trump. Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term, she said. “America must heed this warning”.

• In her interview on Fox News, Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill. Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

• In the Fox interview, Harris singled out Iran when asked which foreign country she considers to be America’s greatest adversary. Baier questioned whether the Biden-Harris administration was “acting like Iran is the number one threat”.

• Trump’s running mate, JD Vance answered “no” when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, at a Pennsylvania rally. “What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’” the reporter asked, eliciting boos from the crowd. Vance said, “No. I think there were serious problems in 2020”.

• Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about “the enemy from within” made over the weekend. Before an all-female audience in Cumming, Georgia, Trump mocked Kamala Harris and her allies as “sick”, “evil” and “a party of soundbites”. He said, “They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” Trump told the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. “They’re the threat to democracy.”

• In Trump’s Univision town hall he was asked to name three virtues possessed by Harris, which he did, before again attacking her. He said that “she seems to have an ability to survive”, that “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships” and that “she seems to have a nice way about her”. “I mean, I like the way some of her statements, some of her – the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country,” he said.

• A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”. Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order on Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated included three that had garnered a lot of attention – one that required that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

• Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

• Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.

• The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and tried to discourage young people from voting in the November election. The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”