Trump and Harris Host Dueling Rallies in the Milwaukee Area in a Final Push to Win Wisconsin

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump hosted rallies within 7 miles of each other Friday night in the Milwaukee area as part of a fevered final push for votes in swing-state Wisconsin's largest county.

Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in Wisconsin, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020. One reason for his defeat was a drop in support in those Milwaukee suburbs and an increase in Democratic votes in the city.

"Both candidates recognize that the road to the White House runs directly through Milwaukee County," said Hilario Deleon, chair of the county's Republican Party.

Air Force Two, the vice presidential aircraft, touched down at Milwaukee's airport about 40 minutes ahead of Trump's private plane, which he has dubbed Trump Force One. The planes parked near each other, but the candidates did not cross paths; Harris' motorcade was gone before Trump landed.

Both venues drew roughly the same number of people, based on crowd estimates provided by each campaign. Trump took the stage seven minutes before Harris.

The two rallies — Trump was in downtown Milwaukee and Harris in a suburb — may be the candidates' last appearances in Wisconsin before Election Day. Both sides say the race is once again razor tight for the state's 10 electoral votes. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a point, or fewer than 23,000 votes.

It was absentee votes from Milwaukee, which typically are reported early in the morning after Election Day, that tipped Wisconsin for President Joe Biden in 2020.

Democrats know they must turn out voters in Milwaukee, also home to the state's largest Black population, to counter Trump's support in the suburbs and rural areas. Harris is hoping to replicate, and exceed, turnout from 2020 in the city, which voted 79% for Biden that year.

Trump is trying to cut into the Democrats' margin. Deleon called it a "lose by less" mentality.

Before heading to Milwaukee, Harris campaigned in the southern Wisconsin city of Janesville, where she talked up her support for organized labor in a speech at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local.

"Nobody understands better than a union member that as Americans we all rise or fall together," Harris said. She promised to eliminate "unnecessary" degree requirements for federal jobs and push private sector employers to do the same.

She called Trump "an existential threat to America’s labor movement" and said the nation lost manufacturing jobs during his presidency.

Trump, whose base includes working-class voters, has made sporadic efforts to reach out to rank-and-file union members, who have traditionally been core to the Democratic coalition.

Harris later went after Trump on health care, telling hundreds who packed into a high school in Little Chute that the former president wants to undo the Affordable Care Act law and take the United States back to the days when insurers could deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

Rapper Cardi B was among the celebrities at Harris' third and final Wisconsin rally, in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis.

"Did you hear what Donny Trump said the other day?" Cardi B said onstage, referring to Trump saying he’ll protect women "whether they like it or not."

"Donny, don’t," she said. "Please."

At the same rally, Harris told the boisterous crowd that Trump is bad for the economy, their health care and women’s reproductive rights.

"We know who Donald Trump is," she said. "This is not someone who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, he is consumed with grievance and the man is out for unchecked power."

Across town, Trump railed against the economy under Biden. The US jobs report released Friday, showing that employers added just 12,000 jobs in October, suggests that the Biden-Harris administration is failing on the economy, he said.

"This is like a depression," Trump said of the numbers as he heaped insults on Harris.

Economists estimate that Hurricanes Helene and Milton, combined with strikes at Boeing and elsewhere, pushed down net job growth by tens of thousands of jobs in October.

Trump held his microphone by hand for most of the rally after the audience struggled to hear him. He complained about the weight of the mic, joking, "It's like I'm weightlifting," and went on to vent his frustration on the production team.

Trump supporters waiting in line for his Milwaukee rally said they were feeling optimistic about his chances of winning next week.

"I feel the Democrats can only win if they cheat," said Matt Kumorkiewicz, 55, a retired carpenter from nearby Oak Creek, echoing a common refrain from the former president.

He and several others in line were wearing yellow reflective safety vests in response to Biden’s comment seemingly calling Trump supporters "garbage."

Trump spent the afternoon in the Detroit area, where he stopped at a restaurant in Dearborn, the nation's largest Arab-majority city, to meet with supporters. Many in the community remain distrustful after his first act in office in 2017 was to sign an executive order effectively banning travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.

In Milwaukee, a lot of Democrats are "anxious and cautiously optimistic," said Angela Lang, founder and executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee.

"Especially given 2016 when there wasn't the same amount of energy, I think it’s clear Dems learned lessons about the importance of Milwaukee and Wisconsin as a whole," she said.

In another late outreach effort targeting Black voters, former President Bill Clinton campaigned with local faith leaders on Thursday night at a center for celebrating African American music and arts in Milwaukee.

Hillary Clinton did not campaign in Wisconsin in 2016 after her primary loss, a mistake that Harris is not repeating. The Friday stop is her ninth in the state as a presidential candidate. It is Trump's 10th stop in Wisconsin, not counting the Republican National Convention, which was held in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming said that Harris having to return to the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee shows she is on defense while Trump is on offense.

The Milwaukee Election Commission estimated on Thursday that it expects to receive more than 100,000 ballots by Election Day. But that lags early vote returns from the conservative suburbs.

Lang, the Milwaukee organizer, said it is a tradition for many voters her group contacts to cast their ballots on Election Day. And if they don't?

"Then we’re in a world of trouble," said Mandela Barnes, a former lieutenant governor and president of Power to the Polls, a group that’s been working to boost turnout.

Trump’s rally was staged in the same arena where the Republican convention took place three months ago. The Harris rally, held at the state fair park in West Allis, included performances by GloRilla, Flo Milli, MC Lyte and DJ Gemini Gilly.

NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.

The conflict is “entering a decisive phase,” Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions.”

Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session as security was tightened following Thursday's Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro.

In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech to his nation that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was retaliation for Kyiv’s use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Putin said Western air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov kept up Russia's bellicose tone on Friday, blaming “the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries” in supplying weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia.

"The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions in the event that our concerns were not taken into account have also been quite clearly outlined," he said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the European Union, echoed Moscow's talking points, suggesting the use of US-supplied weapons in Ukraine likely requires direct American involvement.

“These are rockets that are fired and then guided to a target via an electronic system, which requires the world’s most advanced technology and satellite communications capability,” Orban said on state radio. “There is a strong assumption ... that these missiles cannot be guided without the assistance of American personnel.”

Orban cautioned against underestimating Russia’s responses, emphasizing that the country’s recent modifications to its nuclear deployment doctrine should not be dismissed as a “bluff.” “It’s not a trick... there will be consequences,” he said.

Separately in Kyiv, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský called Thursday's missile strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe.”

At a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Lipavský also expressed his full support for delivering the necessary additional air defense systems to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks.”

He underlined that the Czech Republic will impose no limits on the use of its weapons and equipment given to Ukraine.

Three lawmakers from Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, confirmed that Friday's previously scheduled session was called off due to the ongoing threat of Russian missiles targeting government buildings in central Kyiv.

In addition, there also was a recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and nongovernmental organizations "in that perimeter, and local residents were warned of the increased threat,” said lawmaker Mykyta Poturaiev, who added this is not the first time such a threat has been received.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said.

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate said the Oreshnik missile, whose name in Russian means “hazelnut tree,” was fired from the Kapustin Yar 4th Missile Test Range in Russia’s Astrakhan region, and flew 15 minutes before striking Dnipro. The missile had six nonnuclear warheads each carrying six submunitions and reached a spoeed of Mach 11, it said.

Test launches of a similar missile were conducted in October 2023 and June 2024, the directorate said. The Pentagon confirmed the missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.

Thursday's attack struck the Pivdenmash plant that built ICBMs when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The military facility is located about 4 miles (6 1/2 kilometers) southwest of the center of Dnipro, a city of about 1 million that is Ukraine’s fourth-largest and a key hub for military supplies and humanitarian aid, and is home to one of the country’s largest hospitals for treating wounded soldiers from the front before their transfer to Kyiv or abroad.

The stricken area was cordoned off and out of public view. With no fatalities reported from the attack, Dnipro residents resorted to dark humor on social media, mostly focused on the missile’s name, Oreshnik.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck a residential district of Sumy overnight with Iranian-designed Shahed drones, killing two people and injuring 13, the regional administration said..

Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the drones were stuffed with shrapnel elements. “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” said Artiukh, according to Suspilne.

Trump and Harris Host Dueling Rallies in the Milwaukee Area in a Final Push to Win Wisconsin