Republicans Are Trying to Block Voters in a Crucial Swing State

If Republicans get their way in Pennsylvania, voters won’t be able to correct technical problems with their ballots.

The Republican National Committee and the Pennsylvania Republican Party filed a lawsuit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Wednesday against the state’s 67 county election boards and Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican. The lawsuit not only would stop ballot correction but would also prevent voters from being able to cast a provisional ballot if their mail ballot is rejected for technical reasons.

Republicans claim that state law bars election officials from telling voters about such issues and allowing their ballots to be fixed and counted. In many other states, such corrections are allowed, such as when a date or signature is missing on a ballot or envelope, or when signatures don’t match. A restriction on provisional ballots could hurt voters who run into problems after showing up at their polling place, such as their name not appearing on the registration rolls.

Schmidt’s office responded to the lawsuit, saying they support “allowing voters to rectify technical deficiencies so their vote is counted.”

“We will continue to fight for every eligible citizen’s right to vote and have their voice heard,” a spokesperson said.

Donald Trump has railed against mail-in balloting, attacking the U.S. Postal Service and claiming it’s ridden with fraud, in an attempt to undermine confidence in the voting option, which is more likely to be used by Democrats. Pennsylvania has been a particular target of the former president and convicted felon, as he has claimed without evidence that 20 percent of mail-in ballots in the state are fraudulent.

The USPS may be a major factor during the 2024 election, as service has worsened in many states in the past few years. Many battleground states such as Georgia still have lower than average delivery times, and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee, has been accused of deliberately hurting the postal service to pursue a privatization agenda.

Republicans’ plan to change how electoral votes are distributed in Nebraska could have far-reaching effects to hurt Kamala Harris’s chances at the presidency.

Nebraska splits its five Electoral College votes, granting two of them to the winner of the state’s popular vote, while the other three are given to the winner of the three congressional districts. In the past few months, Republicans in the state have pushed to return to a model where all the votes would be granted to the winner of the whole state.

Earlier this week, South Carolina senator and apparent errand boy for Donald Trump Lindsey Graham traveled to Nebraska to shore up support for this change among state lawmakers.

In ensuring that all of the state’s electoral votes go to one candidate, Republicans are essentially securing the presidential election in Nebraska for Trump, by siphoning away a spare point that Harris would earn from a district with a large metropolitan area.

If Nebraska changes its rules, it’s likely that Maine would seek to do so too, which has the potential to help Harris regain some ground lost in Nebraska.

Maine also splits its four electoral votes, with two appointed based on the winner of the popular vote within each congressional district and then two based on the winner of the state-wide popular vote.

Maine’s Democratic House Majority Leader Maureen Terry issued a statement in April indicating that if Nebraska were to change its Electoral College rules, she would “be compelled to act in order to restore fairness.”

In 2020, Maine delivered one electoral vote to Trump and the other three to Joe Biden. If Maine changed its Electoral College rules and votes similarly to how it did four years ago, all four Electoral College votes would be delivered to Harris, giving her back the one vote she may have lost in Nebraska.

However, there’s one major problem: It may be too late for Maine to change its rules, according to Politico.

In Maine, a bill becomes law 90 days after it’s passed. Only 46 days remain until polls open in November, and only 87 days until electoral votes will be cast.

A bill can be made into law immediately if it receives a two-thirds vote in each chamber. While the Democrats have majorities in both houses, they don’t have the kind of numbers to ensure supermajority support.

We’re 46 days away from November 5, and 87 days from December 16, when electoral votes are set to be cast.

If Nebraska is able to change but Maine is not, it’s possible that Harris will lose out on one electoral vote, which, according to one projection, means that she will need to do more than win the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to have a shot at 270—she’ll need to win at least one other swing state too.

While Harris is polling competitively in North Carolina and Georgia, Nebraska Republicans’ plot to change the state’s Electoral College rules makes these battleground states even more make-or-break for Harris’s campaign.

According to new court filings, Representative Matt Gaetz attended a sex party with a 17-year-old girl.

The court filings contain sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies that the party was held at the Florida home of lobbyist Chris Dorworth, who is also a friend of Gaetz, NOTUS reported Friday. The filings were part of a civil lawsuit brought by Dorworth in 2023. Dorworth ultimately dropped the lawsuit, but Dorworth’s attorneys filed the documents in federal court to try and recoup legal fees.

One of the witnesses said in a sworn affidavit that the teenager, who was a junior in high school at the time, was naked; people attending the party engaged in “sexual activities”; and partygoers consumed alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. Testimony from the witness and two other women, one of whom was Gaetz’s then girlfriend, all placed the congressman at the party. A digital forensic examiner also confirmed activity from Gaetz’s cell phone at Dorworth’s house.

This is the first time that “sworn testimony has been referenced in public court filings alleging that the congressman attended one of the long-rumored parties tied to an alleged underage sex scandal,” according to NOTUS. Previous details regarding Gaetz’s involvement, such as reported Venmo transactions of Gaetz allegedly paying his friend Joel Greenberg to arrange sex with young women, have not been made public. Greenberg was convicted of several charges, including fraud and sex trafficking, in 2021, and is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Gaetz is currently facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged activities, and a woman has already come forward alleging that he paid her for sex. A previous Justice Department investigation resulted in Gaetz escaping federal charges, although Greenberg was convicted after a plea deal.

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s latest campaign scandal may seriously scare Donald Trump, but not because of what Robinson allegedly did. It’s because the former president is already struggling to defend the Southern state from Kamala Harris.

In an exclusive interview with MeidasTouch, Democratic analyst Simon Rosenberg offered his read of the situation unfolding in the Tar Heel State.

“In 2022, the Republicans flooded the battleground states with polling that was three to four points more Republican than the independent polls, and they pushed the averages, you know, into making the election look much more Republican,” Rosenberg said, noting that these inflated numbers were at the “core of the false red wave.”

Rosenberg said that in the last week, the same pollsters had become focused on the Tar Heel State.

“In the last week, we’ve seen five polls drop in North Carolina,” Rosenberg said. “They’re clearly worried about North Carolina. Something’s happening there. Because the five independent polls that we’ve had in the last two weeks have Harris either tied or ahead in North Carolina, in every one of the polls. In the five Republican polls, Trump is ahead.”

TrendingPolitics and the Trafalgar Group, two Republican-funded polling groups, released polls this week that found Trump in the lead by two points in North Carolina. A survey by American Greatness, a conservative news organization, found that Trump had a three-point lead there.

Meanwhile, a Morning Consult poll found Harris up by two points in North Carolina, and an Emerson College poll found that Harris was polling even with Trump.

“If you read it backwards, it means they’re very worried about what’s happening there,” Rosenberg said, noting that North Carolina was one of the “bright spots” for Democrats.

All of this Republican scrambling is thrown into sharp relief by Thursday’s bombshell report revealing that Robinson, a Trump ally, had allegedly written on a pornography website’s message board about wanting to own slaves, peeping in women’s locker rooms, and enjoying transgender porn.

North Carolina is a particularly crucial battleground state in the upcoming election. If Harris is unable to win Pennsylvania, then she must secure both North Carolina and Georgia for a chance at 270 electoral college votes.

Last week, the Republican National Committee and North Carolina’s Republican Party sued the state’s Board of Elections to limit acceptable forms of voter identification. In North Carolina, in-person early voting begins October 17.

Donald Trump made antisemitic remarks at an event about combating antisemitism.

During an appearance Thursday at the Israeli American Council’s national conference, the theme of which is “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America,” Trump said that Jewish voters would be to blame if he didn’t win the presidential election.

“If I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40 percent that means 60 percent of the people are voting for the enemy,” Trump said, “Israel will cease to exist in two years.”

The former president repeated his threat and claimed that Jewish voters supporting Harris were responsible for putting their safety at risk.

“I will put it to you very simply, and gently. I really haven’t been treated right, but you haven’t been treated right, because you’ve been putting yourself in great danger,” said Trump.

The former president said that if he doesn’t win the election, “in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss. If I’m at 40 percent. Think of it. That means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

In addition to positioning Jewish voters as a scapegoat for a potential loss, the former president used some of his stage time to scold Jewish voters for not supporting him in the past.

“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “But I understood that. That was in 2016. And you know, one of those things, I thought I’d do much better. I happen to have a Jewish daughter, I have a Jewish son-in-law. I have three Jewish grandchildren. I thought I’d do much better.”

The Republican nominee also repeated his insanely offensive line that “any Jewish person who votes for [Harris] should have their head examined.”

Jewish voters’ skepticism of Trump is understandable, though, considering he associates with self-proclaimed “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson and known Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.

As an equal opportunity offender, Trump made some wildly Islamophobic and xenophobic remarks too. He repeated his well-worn racist quip calling Senator Chuck Schumer a Palestinian. “What the hell happened to him? I saw him the other day, he was dressed in one of their robes,” Trump joked. “No! That’ll be next.”

Trump also said that if elected, he planned to deport “foreign jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters,” and pledged not to take any refugees from “terror-infested” Gaza. The former president also promised to bring back his administration’s travel ban, which prevented people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

The presidential election is less than two months away, and just like in 2020, the postal system may play a pivotal role in determining the outcome.

An NBC News investigation published Thursday found that the slowest mail in the country is in battleground states, many of which have strict deadlines on when ballots can be counted. “It’s a disgrace,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told NBC, referencing recent mail delivery issues with the United States Postal Service. “They need to understand the importance [of election mail], and they need to make no more excuses.”

Georgia, a state that Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, has the worst mail delivery rate in the United States, with only 66 percent of local first-class letters since July being delivered within two days. Less than 40 percent of election mail was delivered on time last spring, according to NBC, with more than 3 percent of all mailed-in votes in the primary elections last year being rejected for arriving late. In 2020, only 0.23 percent of ballots were rejected for being late.

State and local officials from more than 20 states on Wednesday warned that mail delays could result in many votes failing to reach election offices in time to be counted, and urged swift action. In a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the officials said that mail sent to voters is being marked as undeliverable at above-normal rates. 

“State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS,” the letter states. “We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

In April, DeJoy promised senators to “fix” Georgia’s problems “within 60 days,” but Georgia’s mail performance is still poor five months later. On Monday, DeJoy claimed that the Postal Service was prepared for the coming election, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump Monday night from threatening to sue the USPS in an attempt to discredit mail-in voting. 

DeJoy has faced criticism and calls to step down since 2020, after he instituted so-called reforms that he claimed were meant to modernize the postal system but ended up slowing down mail delivery. Critics believe DeJoy is deliberately undermining the Postal Service to push a privatization agenda and have been urging Biden to fire him for years. (This would be difficult to do, but it is not, as some claim, impossible.) In any case, DeJoy’s  lack of action has led to mail remaining slower than ever and even getting worse.  

In August, Biden nominated former Representative Val Demings and business executive William Zollars to fill two vacant slots on the USPS Board of Governors, which would give the board a Democratic majority and the ability to fire DeJoy. But those appointments, along with the appointment of former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh in March, have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.  

The New Republic’s Alex Pareene argued in 2021 that Biden could break with norms and bypass the Board of Governors to fire DeJoy, but the president has not done so. Now the president’s lack of action could cause chaos in the coming presidential election.  

A Project 2025 adviser was exposed Thursday in a congressional hearing for defending slavery in Haiti. 

Mark Krikorian, an adviser for the right-wing manifesto, is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing organization described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group with a history of promoting eugenics. Representative Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, pointed out that in 2010, Kirkorian wrote an article for the conservative National Review magazine defending French colonization in the country. 

“I’ll ask you, Mr. Krikorian, and I know you’re a Project 2025 board member, your recent quote from a few years ago, where you said, quote, ‘Haiti is so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.’ Is that correct, did you say that?” Casar said to Krikorian.  

“I’m happy to talk about that all you want,” Krikorian replied. Casar responded by noting Haiti’s history as a French slave plantation until the slaves revolted in 1791, ultimately winning independence in 1804.

“The French colonized Haiti so that slaves would work on plantations. The end of colonization in Haiti was so that the people there would no longer be slaves. So what you’re saying, and I read your quote, and anybody watching this online should go read it—what you’re saying is it would have been good if they’d stayed colonized, which means it would’ve been good if they had stayed enslaved by the French,” Casar said.

Krikorian stumbled in his response, trying to explain that Haiti wasn’t better off for having gained independence earlier.  

“They had every right to throw the French out,” Krikorian said. “My point is, they would have been free 30 years later, they would have been in the same situation as—”

“You’re saying you wanted 30 more years of slavery in Haiti,” Casar said. 

The hearing from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability was ironically titled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” Krikorian was ostensibly called as a witness by Republicans to show Democratic failures on immigration. Instead, he was called out for his organization’s history of promoting white supremacists and Holocaust deniers.

Republicans have been criticized in the past several weeks for promoting a disproven, racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are capturing and eating pets, ducks, and geese. As Casar pointed out Thursday, those conspiracy theories have their roots in the writings of extremist right-wing ideologues, whose old racist beliefs are influencing Republican policy today.  

The Trump-endorsed candidate in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race could soon lose his spot on the ticket due to an in-house ouster.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is a Hitler-quoting, gay-bashing, conspiracy-touting antisemite, and has drawn immediate comparisons to Donald Trump for his bombastic orations and loyal GOP following, along with his own laundry list of controversies.

On Thursday, a bombshell CNN report revealed that Robinson had written on a pornography website’s message board about his desire to own slaves, his peeping in women’s locker rooms, and his enjoyment of transgender porn.

The comments were made long before Robinson entered electoral politics. CNN connected the account to Robinson via a “litany” of common biographical details and a shared email address. He also used his full name on his site account.

“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote in one comment on the site, Nude Africa. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

Robinson repeatedly denied any connection to the account, instead telling CNN in an interview that the story amounted to “salacious tabloid lies.”

The story was initially leaked to CNN, as well as local Raleigh news outlet WRAL, by Robinson’s opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, the Carolina Journal reported.

In light of the story, the Trump campaign reportedly told Robinson that he was no longer welcome to attend rallies for either candidate on the Republican presidential ticket, according to an anonymous source that spoke with the Journal. Robinson had been scheduled to appear at a rally for J.D. Vance on Wednesday but backed out after his office announced Robinson had fallen ill.

But despite growing pressure to back out—which included calls from local Republican strategists for Robinson to exit in order to save Trump’s chances in the battleground state—Robinson released a video statement ahead of the CNN report announcing his intention to stay in the critical race.

“Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story are not the words of Mark Robinson,” Robinson said. “You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before.”

That butts Robinson up against the deadline to withdraw from the race: Thursday evening. If he does exit, the North Carolina Republican Party Executive Committee would be required to choose a replacement candidate—less than 50 days before the election.

The scandal is an unusual test of mettle for the exceedingly controversial politico. Robinson has shared a host of his disturbing positions online, including posts in which he minimized the horrors of the Holocaust, claimed a “satanic marxist” had made the movie Black Panther to pull “shekels” out of Black audiences, likened women getting abortions to murderers, and derided gay people as “filth” and “maggots.” Robinson has also expressed archaic views about women’s role in society, telling a Charlotte-area church in 2022 that Christians are “called to be led by men.”

Robinson has also suggested that “schools wouldn’t be getting shot up” if Christian teachings were forced into the classroom, and told a congregation at Asbury Baptist Church that public schools had taken a “nosedive” since mandatory prayer had been excised from curriculums.

Elon Musk’s since-deleted “joke” suggesting that there should be more assassination attempts on the president and vice president’s lives has suddenly landed him in trouble with the feds.

Following a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life Sunday, Musk posted an alarming tweet questioning why the MAGA conservative had been targeted several times while there had been no such attempt to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote.

Musk deleted the tweet after it received widespread backlash, with X users torching him for “inciting violence,” but not before the Secret Service caught wind of the dangerously phrased message.

Secret Service documents related to Musk’s comments could not be accessed by Bloomberg’s FOIA Files newsletter, with the federal agency responding that the records about the post were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and withheld on the basis that “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, told Bloomberg that the agency “is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk.”

“As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees,” Herring added.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the records will translate into a full-throttle investigation, but it does highlight how seriously Musk’s offhand remarks are being taken by federal authorities that have thwarted two assassination plots in recent months.

By Monday, Musk had issued a couple of new tweets to explain away the atrocious comment. According to the tech billionaire, the violent invitation was just a bad retelling of a “hilarious” joke.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien isn’t happy that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the union for refusing to endorse Kamala Harris for president. On Thursday, in response to her comments, he made the spurious claim that the Teamsters in AOC’s district overwhelmingly support Donald Trump. 

Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash, O’Brien said, “[Ocasio-Cortez] should maybe get into her district, where it voted far-right Republican, and maybe find out what the problem is.” 

Bash asked the union president what he meant, to which O’Brien responded, “In our polling, New York, her district, voted overwhelmingly Republican to support former President Trump, so she may want to focus on her job instead of mine.” 

While that sound bite was highlighted by the Trump campaign on X (formerly Twitter), O’Brien’s statement was quickly disproven by the fact that Teamsters Local 202 in New York’s 14th District in the Bronx endorsed Ocasio-Cortez Thursday, which the congresswoman was happy to post on X herself. 

O’Brien’s decision to withhold a presidential endorsement has been met with disapproval from Teamsters local chapters across the country, with several in key battleground states subsequently endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket. After the Teamsters president spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, rank-and-file members spoke from the Democratic National Convention stage to voice their support for Harris. The union’s National Black Caucus also voted unanimously to endorse the vice president.  

O’Brien signaled a possible endorsement for Harris after he criticized Donald Trump last month, calling the convicted felon’s remarks to Elon Musk about firing workers for striking and organizing “economic terrorism.” In the end, the Teamsters president has been left embarrassed not only by organized labor’s traditional allies in the Democratic Party but also by his own members.