Harris plans 'freedom' rally, Trump courts men in final push before polls

The campaign for the US presidency enters its final week with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump locked in a stubbornly close race, making starkly different pitches to motivate supporters and win over the few remaining persuadable voters.

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Harris casts herself as standing in between Trump and a key trifecta that includes economic opportunity, reproductive rights, and Democracy itself. She pledges to lead the country with more vitality than either of the last two presidents, who were both born in the 1940s.

On Tuesday, Harris, 60, will lay out her closing argument at a major rally from the same site on the National Mall in Washington where Trump addressed supporters ahead of the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Trump, 78, gave his own summation during a massive rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York. His long-standing argument: Democrats have broken the country—especially the economy and immigration system—and he alone will fix it. The event included a warm-up comedian calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage" and Elon Musk, who Trump has promised a role in his administration, claiming he could slash nearly a third of the annual federal budget.

Despite both candidates' efforts and billions of dollars spent, they've been deadlocked for weeks in nearly all public polls conducted across the seven battleground states and as millions of early votes have already been cast.