Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free

The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

Donald Trump was joined on stage by billionaire backer Elon Musk for a rally in the Pennsylvania town where he survived an assassination attempt, as the neck-and-neck US election campaign heads into its final month.

Musk, the Tesla founder who has donated to a super Pac associated with the Republican campaign, leapt on to the stage to urge voters to support Trump, repeating the candidate’s claim that the November vote was the “most important election of our lifetime”.

“The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire and we had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs, and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot: ‘Fight, fight, fight’,” said Musk, in his first appearance alongside the former president.

Musk claimed the Democrats were a threat to the American constitution, adding that if Trump did not win it would be the “last election”.

He said the Democrats wanted “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.”

In an hour and half-long speech, Trump said that his return to Butler, where a shot from a would-be assassin almost killed him, showed that the gunman “did not break our spirit”.

“I return to Butler in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache to deliver a simple message to the people of Pennsylvania and to the people of America — our movement to make America great again stands stronger, prouder, more united, more determined and nearer to victory than ever before,” said Trump.

But since his first appearance in Butler, vice-president Kamala Harris has replaced Biden and the polls have narrowed. Harris leads Trump in the popular vote and the races in the seven swing states are practically a dead heat, according to an FT analysis of FiveThirtyEight polling data. Pennsylvania is the closest of all races, with Harris leading Trump by just an average of 0.6 percentage points.

“Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and, who knows, maybe even tried to kill me,” Trump told the crowd. “But I’ve never stopped fighting for you, and I never will.”

Tens of thousands of supporters, many of whom had been present at the July event, in which a Trump supporter was killed and two others were injured, gathered in Butler from the morning of the rally. They chanted “Fight, fight, fight” — the words proclaimed on stage by Trump in the moments after the shooting.

In front of the firefighter’s uniform belonging to Corey Comperatore, the supporter who was killed that day, Trump deployed his typical rhetoric, making overblown claims about immigration and crime rates, promising to allow fracking, a key industry in Pennsylvania, and repeating false assertions that the 2020 election was stolen. Comperatore’s family, Trump’s running mate JD Vance, and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson also attended the rally.

Trump also deployed his newest attack line against Harris — that she had bungled the response to tropical storm Helene.

Helene was a “Katrina for them”, he said, adding that “they say it’s the worst job ever done in helping people through the ravages of a hurricane” and falsely claiming that the only help the administration was offering those affected was a $750 emergency payment.

The candidates have been criss-crossing the country as the election race reaches its apogee. On Saturday, Harris visited North Carolina for an update on recovery efforts for tropical storm Helene, which has devastated the south-east of the US, leaving at least 223 dead at the latest count.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Lebanese authorities said Israel’s bombardment had killed 50 health workers in the past three days as Israeli fighter jets continued to launch strikes across the Arab state.

The Israeli military said on Saturday its forces had struck a mosque in southern Lebanon adjacent to a hospital, which it said was being used by Hizbollah fighters as a command centre, while its forces battled the militant group’s fighters in the border region.

A Hizbollah-affiliated hospital in southern Lebanon, The Martyr Salah Ghandour, said it was hit by a strike shortly after the Israeli military issued orders that it be evacuated, according to a statement on Lebanon’s state news agency on Saturday. It said nine staff were injured in the attack on Friday in the town of Bint Jbeil.

A spokesperson from the Lebanese health ministry told the Financial Times on Saturday that 50 medics had been killed in the past 72 hours.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, said that the capacity of Lebanon’s health system was deteriorating and that the UN agency’s “medical supplies cannot be delivered due to the almost complete closure of Beirut’s airport”.

“WHO calls on urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon. Lives depend on it!” he said on X.

Israel has issued multiple evacuation orders in recent days, warning people in towns and villages across the south to move north. It has given similar orders during its war against Hamas in Gaza ahead of big offensives.

Iranian-backed Hizbollah said there were clashes with Israeli troops around the Lebanese border town of Odeisseh. The official Lebanese news agency reported shelling of Odeisseh and three other southern villages.

Israel has intensified its assault against Hizbollah over the past two weeks as it has shifted its focus from Gaza to the northern front. It has killed Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, launched air strikes across Lebanon and sent troops into Lebanon’s south for the first time in almost two decades.

The escalation has heightened fears about all-out war in the Middle East. The region is bracing for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to an Iranian missile barrage fired at Israel on Tuesday.

Tehran said the missile attack was in response to the assassination of Nasrallah and the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Israel struck the southern suburbs of Beirut on Saturday afternoon targeting the Borj al-Barajna Palestinian refugee camp with four missiles, according to the Lebanese state news agency. Hizbollah said Israel bombed a convention centre in the southern neighbourhood of Dahiyeh overnight. The group used the complex to host events.

Almost 2,000 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in the past year, according Lebanese authorities, after Hizbollah started firing missiles at Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza. The majority were killed in the past two weeks, Lebanon’s health minister said.

More than 1.2mn people have been displaced, triggering one of the worst crises for the country in decades.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Saturday, a day after visiting Beirut.

Israel “speaks no other language than war and coercion and continues its crimes in Beirut, southern Lebanon and Gaza on a daily basis,” Araghchi said. He added that he would continue discussions on ceasefire initiatives in Lebanon and Gaza with Syrian officials.

This week there have been indications that Israel has expanded its offensive to include Hizbollah’s civil infrastructure, while also targeting the group’s leaders.

The movement is Lebanon’s dominant political force and has a huge network of social programmes and business interests. On Thursday, Israel struck a Hizbollah-linked medical facility in the heart of Beirut, killing at least nine people, including health workers, as well as a building used by the group’s media relations team in the southern suburbs.

The strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern city of Tripoli killed Saeed Atallah Ali, a commander of its Qassam Brigades and his family in the early hours of Saturday, Hamas said. A second Hamas leader, Mohammed Hussein al-Louise, was killed in an air raid in the Bekaa Valley.

In northern Israel, air raid sirens sounded as Hizbollah launched rocket barrages. The Israel Defense Forces said the militant group shot 222 projectiles at Israel on Friday.

It said it had killed 250 Hizbollah fighters, including four battalion commanders, since the start of the ground offensive in Lebanon this week.

Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hizbollah in southern Lebanon as the fighting intensified.

Joe Biden has urged Israel to make a “proportional” response to Iran’s missile strikes, and to avoid targeting Iranian nuclear sites or oil infrastructure. But the president has also made it clear that the US supported Israel’s military riposte.

“The Israelis have every right to respond to the vicious attacks on them, not just on the Iranians but on everyone from Hizbollah to the Houthis,” Biden said.

Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran