Springsteen and Obama rally for Harris will be at Temple; Walz campaigns in West Philly; Trump to visit Delco

The stars are out in Pennsylvania this week – and not just for Vice President Kamala Harris.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) will attend a fundraiser with actors Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kerry Washington on Saturday, according to an invitation obtained by The Inquirer.

The star-studded lineup comes as Casey’s race with former hedge fund CEO Republican Dave McCormick has narrowed in recent weeks.

Ahead of her rally in Houston later Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris said, "America deserves better" after former President Donald Trump described the United States as "the garbage can for the world."

"It's just another example of how he really belittles this country," Harris told reporters Friday afternoon. "The president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are, and invests in the best of who we are."

Speaking at a rally in Tempe, Ariz., Thursday, former President Donald Trump described the United States as "the garbage can for the world" and compared undocumented migrants to trash. He repeated the phrase Friday at a news conference in Austin, Texas.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt stopped in Philly Friday to join the Philadelphia City Commissioners in a tour of the city’s ballot counting facility in the northeast. 

The tour highlighted the city’s processes to count and secure ballots in Philadelphia next month. Officials highlighted the security of the process, including a locked area where ballots are stored once they are counted, and technology used to help election workers sort open and scan ballots. 

“Philadelphia should just be assured of this: voting is safe and secure and your vote is safe and secure and every eligible vote that’s cast will be counted,” said Commissioner Lisa Deeley, a Democrat. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attended a Democratic fundraiser in Fishtown early Friday afternoon.

Attendees included former Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker who kicked off the event stressing the importance of delivering the “swingiest of swing states.”

Parker emphasized the need to get out the vote and knock on more doors for Walz and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who remains in a tight race against Republican challenger Dave McCormick.

The Lancaster County District Attorney’s office is investigating up to 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter applications submitted to the county election’s office in two large drops submitted just before the state’s voter registration deadline earlier this week.

Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, said at a news conference Friday her office is investigating alleged criminal and election code violations, after the county elections office noticed “indicators of fraud,” such as duplicate handwriting, fake names, inaccurate addresses, or inconsistent signatures that did not match the ones already on file.

The applications were part of two large batches totaling more than 2,500 applications submitted on Oct. 18 and Oct. 21, the final day to register to vote in Pennsylvania before the Nov. 5 election, and have since been isolated by the county election’s board for further investigation.

First lady Jill Biden will campaign in Philadelphia Saturday, one of several major trips to the region by top surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Jill Biden will attend get-out-the-vote events in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Saturday. Time and location information wasn’t immediately available.

Her trip to Philly comes a day after Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, met with voters in West Philadelphia. And Harris herself is scheduled to campaign across the city Sunday.

Former president Donald Trump will be a "special guest" at a roundtable event hosted by conservative nonprofit, Building America's Future, in Drexel Hill Tuesday afternoon, according to a statement.

The event is part of the nonprofit's "America's Future Tour," and the Southeast Pennsylvania roundtable attendees will express their disapproval with the policies of President Joe Biden's administration for seniors on Medicare and living on a fixed income, according to the statement.

Building America's Future has raised and spent over $100 million over the past four years and were poised to spend more than $35 million to chip away at Democratic support from Vice President Kamala Harris in key groups, like younger men and Muslim Americans, and to get third-party candidates on ballots, The New York Times reported.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Virginia to restore more than 1,600 voter registrations that she said were illegally purged in the past two months to keep noncitizens from voting.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the Justice Department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.

Thomas Sanford, an attorney with the Virginia attorney general’s office, told the judge at the conclusion of Friday’s hearing that the state intends to appeal her ruling.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was met with warm smiles as he entered Booker's Restaurant and Bar in West Philadelphia Friday morning, exchanging words with attendees before taking a seat next to Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson and State Sen. Anthony H. Williams were among elected officials who joined Walz for the roundtable discussion focused on Vice President Kamala Harris’ nine-page policy agenda crafted to help Black men.

Walz kicked off the discussion by talking about how Harris would be a president for all, calling elections "a means to an end."

Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris have descended on Philadelphia, leaving their jobs in Washington D.C. and Hollywood to help get out the vote in critical Pennsylvania.

Some came from even farther.

Take Gregg Svingen, a Seattle native who lives in Belgium but landed in Philadelphia this week to knock on doors for Kamala Harris. He paid his own way here and is one of dozens of campaign volunteers who crammed into a Brewerytown office Thursday to hear U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, speak.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is slated to spend Friday morning talking to Black voters in West Philadelphia at Booker's Restaurant and Bar for a 45-minute roundtable discussion.

Community leaders were invited to hear the Democratic vice presidential nominee discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’ nine-page policy agenda crafted to help Black men.

The Opportunity Agenda for Black Men features initiatives around economic opportunity and health care, among other issues.

Democrats are losing their edge.

Since the last presidential election, Republicans have cut the Democratic voter registration advantage in Pennsylvania in half, from 685,818 in 2020 to 297,824 as of this week, which marked the voter registration deadline in the state. An Inquirer analysis of voter registration also shows a bump in unaffiliated voters here.

Five counties in the state, including Bucks County, flipped from a Democratic registration advantage to Republican from the last presidential election to this one and only three counties had a net gain of Democratic registrations in that four-year span. The shift is driven significantly by voters changing their party registration.

The Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama rally for Vice President Kamala Harris will be at the Liacouras Center, according to a source familiar with the event.

The rock legend and 44th president debuted a similarly formatted event with Harris in Georgia on Thursday.

The campaign has not said what time the hybrid concert-rally will start.

Vice President Kamala Harris is spending Sunday in Philadelphia, crisscrossing the city in a series of neighborhood events to turn out voters in the final stretch of the election, according to a senior campaign official.

The more intimate community events will fall just nine days before Election Day in a race that has remained a dead heat for months. Turnout in Philadelphia could be the determining factor in whether Harris can carry the critical state.

Harris’ full-day tour will focus on predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. She’ll attend services Sunday morning and deliver remarks at a Black church in West Philadelphia, the campaign official said. She’ll also visit a barbershop in West Philadelphia for a conversation with young Black men and community leaders.

More than 1.2 million Pennsylvania voters have already cast their ballots in the 2024 election, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. 

As of Thursday, 726,619 registered Democrats have voted by mail in Pennsylvania, compared to 360,527 Republicans. Another 120,917 voters were listed as other. 

Updated numbers are expected Friday morning. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Houston on Friday for a rally to highlight the state’s strict anti-abortion laws, and she’ll be joined by one of the most recognizable stars on the planet.

Music superstar Beyoncé will join Harris at the rally in the reliably red state, which will take place just 10 days before the election. Harris has been using Beyoncé's song “Freedom” throughout her campaign with the singer’s permission, including ahead of the vice president’s appearance at the Democratic National convention in Chicago in August.

Country music star Willie Nelson is also expected to appear at the rally, as is Beyoncé's mother, Tina Knowles, the Washington Post reported.

Former President Donald Trump will be in Texas on Friday, where he is scheduled to deliver remarks to reporters in Austin at 1:30 p.m. Philly time.

The former president’s main reason for being in Austin is to record an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast with comedian Joe Rogan.

Harris also reportedly met with Rogan’s podcast team, Reuters reported last week, but there has been no word if the vice president would also record an interview.

The Bucks County Board of Elections has asked state and federal law enforcement to investigate a fake video that circulated on social media Wednesday afternoon falsely suggesting county election workers were destroying ballots.

"This video is fake," members of the board said in a joint statement, slamming the fake video as a dangerous spread of misinformation.

The board said it reported the video to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, and the Pennsylvania Department of State.