Harris and Cheney pitch Republican voters – as it happened

Chain Bridge Bancorp, a lender popular among Republicans since its inception, priced its US initial public offering at $22 per share on Thursday to raise $40.7m, Reuters reports.

The bank sold 1.85m shares in the IPO, which valued it at about $141m. It had initially aimed for a sale of 1.85 million shares priced between $24 and $26 each.

Chain Bridge has worked with the campaign of every Republican Party presidential nominee since John McCain in 2008.

The bank, with just one branch and 84 employees, has beaten bigger financial rivals to become a must-have partner for political work.

Its fortunes are closely tied to the Republican Party. It warned in its paperwork that “any event that negatively impacts the Republican Party could lead to significant deposit outflows.”

Still, the bank’s strong credit quality might appeal to investors. While worries about bad loans have battered many industry players, Chain Bridge has had no non-performing loans in the last 12 years.

Walz has responded to Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement:

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The 5 November election between Harris and Republican Trump is expected to be tight, especially in battleground states like Michigan, home to a large Muslim American population. The US continues to back Israel as it targets Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Though Emgage has endorsed Harris, other Muslim groups have urged supporters not to back her in the election, especially after Democrats rejected requests for a Palestinian speaker at the party convention in August.

Harris has offered no substantive policy differences on Israel from Biden, who stepped aside as presidential candidate in July.

Trump has said he would reinstate a “travel ban” he imposed as president restricting the entry into the United States of people from a list of largely Muslim-dominant countries. Biden rolled back the ban shortly after taking office in 2021.

“The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is staggering and devastating,” Walz said. Harris is working to ensure “the suffering in Gaza ends now, and the Palestinian people realize the right to dignity, freedom and self determination.”

The Israeli military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and limiting of aid have caused a humanitarian crisis, displacing nearly all of its 2 million people and causing children to die from starvation.

Here is more from Tim Walz’s event with Muslim voters earlier:

Walz promised Muslim Americans an equal role in their administration should they win the election, as Democrats scramble to win back Muslim backing that has eroded over US support for Israel.

Vice-president Harris and Walz, the governor of Minnesota, are trying to woo Muslim voters furious over President Joe Biden’s administration’s staunch backing of Israel during its year-old war in Gaza against Hamas.

Harris has pledged continued support for Israel while emphasizing her push for a ceasefire, words Walz echoed on Thursday, while promising a role for Muslims.

“Vice-president Harris and I are committed that this White House … will continue to condemn in all forms anti-Islam, anti-Arab sentiments being led by Donald Trump, but more importantly, a commitment that Muslims will be engaged in this administration and serve side by side,” Walz said during an online meeting organised by Emgage Action, a Muslim American advocacy group that recently endorsed Harris.

According to the filing, Trump’s day on 6 January started at 1am, with a tweet pressuring Pence to obstruct the certification of the results. Seven hours later, at 8.17am, Trump tweeted about it again. Shortly before his speech at the Ellipse, Trump called Pence and again pressured him to “induce him to act unlawfully in the upcoming session”, where Pence would be certifying the election results. Pence refused.

At this point, according to the filing, Trump “decided to re-insert into his campaign speech at the Ellipse remarks targeting Pence for his refusal to misuse his role in the certification”.

Trump gave his speech, and at 1pm, the certification process began at the Capitol.

Trump, meanwhile, “settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. He spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the dining room television played Fox News’ contemporaneous coverage of events at the Capitol.”

It was from the dining room that Trump watched a crowd of his supporters march towards the Capitol. He had been there less than an hour when, at “approximately 2.24pm, Fox News reported that a police officer may have been injured and that ‘protestors … have made their way inside the Capitol.’

“At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, writing, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’”

The filing reads: “The content of the 2.24pm tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”

A minute later, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location.

As it seeks to make the case that Trump was acting in a private capacity, the filing looks back to election day for Trump’s use of private advisers: “As election day turned to November 4, the contest was too close to project a winner, and in discussions about what the defendant should say publicly regarding the election, senior advisors suggested that the defendant should show restraint while counting continued. Two private advisors, however, advocated a different course: [name redacted] and [name redacted] suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 2.20am, the defendant gave televised remarks to a crowd of his campaign supporters in which he falsely claimed, without evidence or specificity, that there had been fraud in the election and that he had won.”

On 4 January, the filing says, a White House counsel was excluded from a meeting during which Trump sought to pressure Pence to help overturn the election result. Only a private attorney was present, the filing says: “It is hard to imagine stronger evidence” than this that Trump’s conduct was private.

In a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors argue that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution over the January 6 riots because he acted in a private capacity, and took advice from private advisers.

The indictment seeks to make this case – that Trump acted in his private capacity, rather than his official one – because of a US supreme court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.

It also reveals further details about Trump’s alleged mood and actions (or lack of action) on the day, building on evidence that was provided in earlier briefs.

In response to the new filing, the Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. On Truth Social, Trump, writing in all-caps, called it “complete and total election interference.”

Let’s look at some key points made in the filing:

The filing alleges that Trump’s plan that day was “fundamentally a private one”, and therefore not related to his duties as president but instead as a candidate for office.

It reads: “The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.

“He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

Michael Sainato

More from what singer Bruce Springsteen said in his endorsement of Harris:

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are committed to a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity.

“And they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top.

“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”

Springsteen joined other famous faces, including Taylor Swift, who have endorsed the Democratic nominees.

“Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime,” Springsteen continued.

“We are shortly coming upon one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history.

“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does then at this moment.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. The common values, the shared stories that make us a great and united nation are waiting to be rediscovered and retold once again.

“Now that will take time, hard work, intelligence, faith, and women and men with the national good guiding their hearts.

“America is the most powerful nation on earth, not just because of her overwhelming military strength or economic power, but because of what she stands for, what she means, what she believes in.

“Freedom, social justice, equal opportunity, the right to be and love who you want. These are the things that make America great.”

‘Our hearts are broken’: Walz addresses Muslim voters during virtual event

Melissa Hellmann

Harris and Cheney blast Trump over election lies as they make pitch to Republican voters in Wisconsin

Bruce Springsteen endorses Harris

Walz added, “The Vice President’s working every day to ensure [an end to the war]. To make sure Israel secure, the hostages are home, the suffering in Gaza ends now, and the Palestinian people realize the right to dignity, freedom and self determination.”