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      Kamala Harris questions Trump’s stamina: ‘Is he fit to do the job?’

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      Kamala Harris used a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Friday to seize on reports that Donald Trump had been canceling media interviews to question whether he has the stamina for a second presidency if voters choose him over her in November’s election.“If he can’t handle the rigors of the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?” the Democratic vice-president, 59, told rallygoers about the 78-year-old Trump.She said: “Trump is unfit for office.”Harris and her Republican opponent were in Michigan as the weekend began while trying to shore up support in a battleground state that could decide their 5 November race. Polling suggests Michigan as well as its fellow “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remained in play for both candidates as the campaign’s waning days arrived.“This is the place that is going to decide the election, right here,” Democratic congresswoman Hillary Scholten told Friday’s audience as she opened the event.Among the crowd, some Harris supporters struck a hopeful tone. “It’s about time for a woman to lead,” said Jenifer Lake, who took her daughter Adeline Butts to the rally for a chance to “see history in the making”.Butts, who will be old enough to vote for the first time this election, described herself mostly concerned about the cost of living, tuition and housing affordability. And her fellow attender Bill Bray, who came to the rally from Adrian, Michigan, said he believed Harris would better promote economic opportunity for those situated like him than Trump would.Bray grew up “in a poor neighborhood” but said he is doing well thanks to benefits from his prior military service as well as his long career at Ford Motor Company. He said he wants other people to have a chance at that same trajectory.“Trump doesn’t understand equality,” said Bray, a veteran of the Vietnam war who also accused the former president of dodging the military draft that would have sent him to the same conflict.Bray also said he supports stronger federal gun control after seeing “what guns to do to people” and has no faith in Trump – who is widely supported by the firearms industry – taking that issue seriously.Other attenders said abortion access was at the top of their mind. Harris has campaigned on preserving abortion access while three of Trump’s appointees to the US supreme court helped eliminate federal abortion rights in 2022.“It’d be nice to have control of my body back, and then I’ll think about listening to the other side,” Kim Osborn said.Lauren Rockel said she would like to see Harris fight to reinstate the Roe v Wade protections that Trump’s supreme court appointees helped strip away.“There are people dying” as a result of abortion restrictions that have since gone into effect in many states, Rockel said. “It’s awful.”To them, Harris said it was “time to turn the page” on Trump.The Democratic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, spoke before Harris took the stage. Four other Democratic state governors joined her.Her presence and that of the other governors “shows how important you are, Michigan,” Whitmer said. She told the crowd that they would be the ones to “take our country forward” if they helped send Harris to the White House.Michigan’s Democratic US senator Debbie Stabenow also spoke before Harris, alluding to how it got “scarier and scarier” the more she thought about the proposed policies of Trump’s supporters. The former president has sought to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation, whose Project 2025 plan calls for the mass firings of civil servants and exalts the idea outlawing abortion altogether during a second Trump presidency.But he has struggled to effectively do that, with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, having written the foreword for a book by the Heritage Foundation’s president. And, echoing Stabenow, many attenders said they were fearful and terrified of what a return to the Oval Office for Trump may produce.The Democratic nominee’s message resonated with Richard Bandstra, who described himself as a “former Republican”. Bandstra said he came to the rally to hear a message of hope – and, as he saw it, to fight for what he called the most important issue of the race: preserving American democracy. More

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      ‘I’m all about the straight talk’: Kamala Harris trades barbershop campaign stops for a blitz of Black media

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      Five years ago, with an eye toward South Carolina’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Kamala Harris dropped by a barbershop in the state capital for a roundtable with a group of Black men led by 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell, of Me So Horny fame. Pitted against some skeptical voters, Harris won the room over with her personal stories and willingness to let her hair down some. “I’m all about straight talk, and there’s no better place to do that than in the barbershop,” she said. In that 20-minute discussion, which largely focused on entrepreneurship, Harris introduced many of the points that form the core of the Opportunity Agenda for Black Men unveiled this week.The Black barbershop ranks among the most enduring tropes in American politics – the go-to place for office-seekers looking to win the Black male vote without getting into specifics. Democrats in particular have used the setting as their official co-sign, submitting to naturalistic photo-ops in hydraulic chairs with the fellas when they aren’t directly addressing Black church congregations or glad-handing at fish fries. Even Donald Trump has leveraged the barbershop trope for his own ends, dropping by a Maga-friendly location in the Bronx on Thursday for a private meet-and-greet.A product of segregation, the Black barbershop is as much a symbol of Black entrepreneurship as it is a safe space for Black men to socialize and strategize – at no point more so than during the civil rights movement. Harris could have easily gone back to the barbershop for this presidential campaign. Instead, she built from that foundation while huddling with Black male leaders away from the cameras and doing interviews with Charlamagne tha God, two former NBA players and other Black media tastemakers who cultivate a barbershop vibe with audiences.View image in fullscreenPopular narratives of Harris are at pains to characterize her as unpopular with Black men. Some polling data has detected a slight rightward drift among young Black men. But that’s only part of the picture, the pollster Henry Fernandez argues. His firm, the African American Research Collaborative, has tracked voter attitudes over the past decade and found that young Black men, more so than young women, are more willing to consider a Republican candidate initially than older Black voters but eventually come home to the Democrats – which sets them apart from other young voters in other racial and cultural groups, who start out more open to considering progressives.“It reflects the fact that Black men are making a choice,” says Fernandez before raising three polls he took in the run-up to the 2020 election. “In July, Black men were at 43% support for Joe Biden. In September, it was 78%. In November, it was 86%. Black men’s support for Democratic candidates doesn’t start out at 100%. It consolidates.”Which is to say: Harris still enjoys widespread backing from Black voters in the aggregate. But her campaign has made a mission of addressing dubious Black male voters regardless. This week, while thanking Harris volunteers at a campaign field office in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama openly wondered whether Black male voters might be holding out on supporting Harris because they “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president”.Harris, though, isn’t deterred. Through her dogged outreach to Black male voters, she has underscored the value of their vote while demonstrating how the idea of the Black barbershop as a catch-all forum has evolved. “First of all, my barber comes to me,” says Roland Martin, the former CNN contributor turned Black digital media maven. “The reason why I’m saying this is because Democrats are still trying to figure out where Black men are congregating.”Obama has done more than any candidate to stress the importance of the Black barbershop, including campaign stops in 2008 and 2012 – by which point Coming to America, Barbershop and other films had entrenched the Black barbershop in the mainstream imagination. Before the 2020 election, Obama appeared on The Shop, LeBron James’s barbershop-inspired TV showcase for freeform conversations with luminaries from disparate arenas, to make a last-ditch pitch for Joe Biden.For Obama, the barbershop was a platform to relate the broad strokes of his cultural identity to Black men who remained wary – his obsession with sports, his pride in his Black family; at a 2012 barbershop stop in South Carolina, he traded the dozens with waiting customers before grabbing a quick shape-up.Harris, though, is more intentional about using the barbershop trope to relate her personal biography. In an April interview with BuzzFeed, she shared her “hair story”. an allusion that hints at the fraught politics of Black hair care. At the barber shop in South Carolina in 2019, she made sure to let the brothers know she grew up celebrating Kwanzaa, a weeklong winter celebration of African American culture that was invented by a Black male PhD.

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      As much as this stretch-run media tour might look like a last-minute plan for Harris, it’s worth remembering: a) she’s only been in the race for two months; and b) chopping it up with Black men is not a new look for her. Those who have only just tuned in might not fully appreciate that Harris is a Howard University-educated member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority – bona fides that have kept her connected to a cultural network that includes leadership-minded Black men, a number of whom have signed on to organizing efforts like the Win With Black Men Pac. “She’s been meeting with Black men for years,” says Martin, a graduate of a historically Black college who is prominently active in the Pac. “I was part of a dinner that she did with a group of Black men in November of last year. She was at the 100 Black Men conference in Atlanta earlier this year. At the Howard-Hampton football game in DC at the beginning of the year. Folks just had no idea because the vice-president is not covered like the president. The issue is the national media.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven as Harris met with mainstream media outlets over the past two weeks, she was careful to signal to the Black men who might also be paying attention. On 60 Minutes, she sat down with Bill Whitaker, the program’s lone Black correspondent. On Howard Stern, she came out as an F1 fan who cheers for Lewis Hamilton, the series’ only Black driver. On Fox News she pushed back against the host Bret Baier’s attempts to cast her as incompetent and in over her head – and, of course, was labeled an “angry Black woman” by Trump supporters for standing her ground. “Went to @FoxNews with 787 million reasons not to, and looked presidential, held her own and portrayed poise,” wrote Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative turned Harris surrogate.View image in fullscreenElsewhere, Harris took the extra step of appearing on digital platforms with robust Black male followings. On All the Smoke, a sports podcast hosted by the NBA retirees Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, she stated a desire to promote on-ramps for Black men into the cannabis industry while coming out in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. On Monday, Harris appeared on Martin’s daily digital show and stressed the importance of creating more Black homeowners and uplifting Black-owned businesses. Both ideas are central tenets of her opportunity agenda – her plan to give Black men more economic opportunities through forgivable business loans, decriminalizing marijuana and protecting cryptocurrency investments.In a Tuesday digital town hall with Charlamagne tha God, co-host of The Breakfast Club, Harris reinterpreted Obama’s rebuke of Black male voters as a call to arms. (“What is happening here is we are all working on reminding everyone of what is at stake,” Harris said.) She popped up again later that night at the Hip Hop awards on BET – the same network that sounded the alarm on Project 2025 at another awards show back in July. On Tuesday’s show, Harris was interviewed by the rapper Fat Joe – who met with the Democratic nominee and the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, a rumored VP pick, in March to discuss marijuana reform. “When the vice-president calls me,” Joe said at the White House summit, “I drop everything.”For the past six weeks, the actor Wendell Pierce, a prominent Harris surrogate, has hosted talks at Black barbershops in key districts around the country with special guests and film screenings to drum up voter enthusiasm. This week, he pushed back against Obama’s rebuke, urging Democrats to “stop scapegoating Black men” in an X post. In a Thursday CNN appearance, the Wire star revealed that Obama had called him in response to his post – and he further explained to the former president that Black men just wanted to be heard and taken seriously.With each appearance she makes, Harris proves that there is no such thing as a Black male monolith, or field offices where those brothers can be reliably reached any more. By meeting Black men where they are and taking in their straight talk, she doesn’t just make clear that she isn’t pandering for a photo op; she shows that she’s willing to go farther than any presidential candidate in history to earn the Black male vote. More

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      A Democratic ex-mayor is running for Senate in one of the most Republican US states. Does he have a chance?

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      The man in the blue shirt leveled his gaze at Glenn Elliott, who had just walked into his yard in the quiet, conservative town of Moundsville and introduced himself as a candidate to represent West Virginia in the US Senate.“It would take a lot to make me like any politician right now,” the man replied.It wasn’t an unfamiliar sentiment for Elliott, a former city mayor running as a Democrat to represent a state that has become one of the most Republican places in the country in recent years. Voter disenchantment is inevitable in West Virginia, which ranks at or near the bottom in most quality of life measures, from childhood poverty rates to overdose deaths. But Elliott has his ways of keeping the conversation going.“Well, I’m running against Jim Justice,” he replied. The man’s interest was piqued, and when he agreed to accept a flyer from Elliott, the tall, silver-haired 52-year-old exclaimed, “So, you’re saying there’s a chance!”View image in fullscreenJustice is the state’s Republican governor, who, because of West Virginia’s strongly conservative tilt, is viewed as a shoo-in for the seat being vacated by Joe Manchin, a one-time Democrat who is leaving the Senate after acting as a thorn in the side of Joe Biden during the first two years of his presidency.Democrats are scrambling to maintain their 51-seat majority in Congress’s upper chamber, a task made harder by Manchin’s decision last year not to run again, and by the fact that their best pathway to another two years in the majority requires the re-election of Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, and Montana’s Jon Tester, two senators representing red states.Recent polls have shown the latter coming up short against his Republican challenger, and the party is now hoping for perhaps even more unlikely victories by candidates in Florida and Texas. Should those efforts fail and Republicans take the Senate as Trump returns to the White House, they could confirm his rightwing picks for supreme court, cabinet and powerful federal regulatory agencies. Even if Harris wins, a Republican-controlled Senate could block her choices for the same positions.West Virginia was for decades a Democratic stronghold, but after giving Trump two of his biggest victories of any state in 2016 and 2020, the party’s leaders have essentially written off its Senate seat. The party’s decline was confirmed earlier this year, when Manchin switched his registration to independent, meaning there are no longer any Democrats in statewide office.Elliott is on a mission to change that, and prove Justice wrong. He argues that Justice, whose businesses are enveloped in a legal storm of lawsuits and unpaid bills, is not as popular as he appears, and is pressing on with his campaign despite little support from national Democratic power brokers.There are few polls of the race in West Virginia, but those that exist show Elliott, who Manchin has endorsed, badly trailing. Justice was up 62% to Elliott’s 28% in an August survey by MetroNews West Virginia, and another poll, commissioned by the Democrat’s campaign that same month, showed him doing only slightly better, with Justice’s lead at 58%.“I’ve never thought it was a high probability race, but I’ve always known there’s a chance,” Elliott said during an interview in his storefront campaign headquarters in downtown Wheeling, the city in West Virginia’s northern panhandle he led from 2016 until June. “Perhaps I’m naive, but I do believe that West Virginia voters can see the contrast in me and Governor Justice just in the way we’ve run this campaign.”Elliott may be on to something, though there are no indications it amounts to enough to win the race. In an interview with the Guardian, the man with the blue shirt, who did not want to give his name but said he was a registered independent and Donald Trump supporter, made clear he loathed politicians – Justice included.“Jim Justice is for those who are against us,” he said. Holding Elliott’s flyer, he said he would think about voting for him.View image in fullscreenTrump’s strength in West Virginia has political forecasters predicting no surprises in November. GOP candidates are expected to sweep the governor’s mansion and federal offices up for grabs, and party fundraisers and campaign organizations have sent little money to Elliott or any other candidate.“I think it absolutely was an error,” said Shawn Fluharty, a West Virginia house delegate who has managed to hang on to his seat representing Wheeling for the past 10 years, even as the state has grown more Republican.“I think that Jim Justice is not as well liked as he was probably two years ago when they started polling that race. And I believe there was an opportunity. If Glenn had the full backing of the DNC, this race would be a hell of a lot closer than what the polls currently show.”A businessman with interests in coal and agriculture, Justice was a Democrat as recently as 2017 then changed parties to become a reliable Trump ally, signing an abortion ban and a law banning transgender athletes from participating in public school female sports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut West Virginians have also grown used to hearing stories of his companies being sued or not paying their bills. Last year, the justice department sued the governor, alleging his family companies owed more than $7.5m in unpaid penalties, and this year, a helicopter owned by one of his businesses was auctioned off to satisfy a judgment that resulted from a lawsuit involving a Russian mining firm.“I knew that there’s some vulnerability there, and frankly, thought that I could outwork him and work hard to overcome what would be a pretty built-in advantage for him as the incumbent governor with an R next to his name,” said Elliott.Polls of the Senate race found solid majorities of voters did not know much about Elliott, who has put issues such as healthcare, abortion rights and support for organized labor at the center of his campaign. In an effort to change that, he has visited every county in the state since winning his primary in May, knowing full well that to win, he would need to convince West Virginians who were sure to vote for Trump to also vote for him.“The former president definitely has the attention of a lot of voters who feel like they’re being ignored,” he said. “I’m not running against him, I’m running against Jim Justice.”

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      On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, he followed the highway that curves south along the Ohio river from Wheeling to go door knocking in Moundsville, arriving at the door of 86-year-old retired coalminer Bob Parsons. When Parsons learned that Elliott was a Democrat, he asked the former mayor to name one good thing Biden and Harris had done.Elliott mentioned that the president’s policies had helped pay for new sewage infrastructure in Wheeling. “They definitely missed opportunities and they screwed up the border,” he added.Though Parsons was a devout Trump supporter – he kept a sticker reading “It’s not my fault, I voted for Trump” on the back of his pickup truck’s camper shell – he also split his ticket between the parties, and was not impressed with Justice.“I just don’t see Jim going to DC much,” he said.Further down the street, Elliott encountered Melody Vucelick, a Democrat whose faith in the party was waning. Biden had disappointed her with his handling of immigration, and Vucelick said she was “totally against” Harris.“I really want Trump to get in there to close that border,” the 71-year-old retiree said in an interview. “Small towns like this, I feel for my own safety, being alone.”But in this one instance, Elliott need not worry. Vucelick said she still planned to support Democrats for every other spot on the ballot, and he will have her vote. More

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      Kamala Harris urged to flesh out climate plan amid warnings about Trump

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      As the US south-east struggles to rebuild after two deadly and climate-fueled hurricanes, some environmental advocates are demanding Kamala Harris flesh out a strong climate plan.Since Hurricanes Helene and Milton ravaged parts of the country, the vice-president has slammed Donald Trump’s climate record by airing a new campaign ad showing the oft-criticized moment the former president redrew a hurricane’s path with a marker, and taking aim at Trump’s spread of climate misinformation and history of withholding disaster aid.Harris has also raised the alarm about Trump’s plans to slash environmental regulations. Yet she has not said much about her plans to deal with the climate crisis, instead pledging not to ban gas-powered cars in a Michigan speech and touting “record energy production” from the oil and gas industries during her vice-presidency on her website.The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, said that Harris had failed to build upon the strongest moments during her TV debate with Trump when she referenced the mounting costs of climate-driven disasters and their toll upon Americans’ ability to get home insurance.Since then, he said, the campaign had been “understating the depth of the danger”.“The American public need to know there are storm clouds ahead,” said Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate budget committee. “We will have to see if Harris and Walz are elected how they will move forward on policy but at the moment most Americans are not well informed of how serious this is going to get.”The lack of a climate focus from the campaign has been “frustrating” but was probably a calculation that there is little political benefit to bringing up such a glaringly obvious divide with Trump, according to Paul Bledsoe, who was an adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House on climate.“That might be the right political decision,” he said.But others are skeptical that Harris’s climate approach will deliver electorally. Though polls show that voters place more importance on other issues, such as the economy and immigration, they also indicate that a strong majority of US voters would prefer to vote for a candidate who supports climate action. Many surveys indicate there is broad support for renewable energy even in fossil fuel-heavy areas.“Pundits say she can’t risk losing any potential voters in Pennsylvania,” said Edward Maibach, the director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. “Taking a strong pro-climate action stance would almost certainly not cost her votes in [Pennsylvania] because more than half of voters in the state want to see the president take more, not less, climate action.Many national climate policies – from job training for fossil fuel workers to full fossil fuel phaseout by 2050 – also enjoy majority support.“I’m not convinced it’s good electoral strategy, because climate is an issue where voters trust Democrats more than Republicans so it actually would be a good issue to lean into to highlight the difference,” said Michael Greenberg, founder of the controversial activist group Climate Defiance, which endorsed Harris last month after meeting with her top climate aide.A major hurdle for Harris’s campaign, polls show, is that undecided voters feel they don’t know what she stands for, said Collin Rees, campaign manager at advocacy group Oil Change US.“It’s actively electorally harming her to not be more detailed,” he said.If Harris wins the election, Bledsoe said, “she will need to level with the American people about how emissions reductions need to happen or these storms, heatwaves and floods will get far worse”.But Rees said her approach has left space open for Trump to convince voters that climate policies are harmful, and that he is skeptical that Harris would make such a shift if elected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I don’t know that there’s ever been an issue in history where somebody didn’t talk about it on the campaign trail … but then turned around and prioritized it after they were elected,” Rees said.Further irking advocates have been Harris’s attempts to appeal to conservatives. Last week, she pledged to create a bipartisan council of advisers if elected. The same day, she boasted her endorsements from former vice-president Dick Cheney and George W Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who helped craft a legal case justifying torture.“We’re talking about courting neocons who support endless war when the military is one of the largest triggers of the climate crisis,” said Rees. “She’s courting members of a party that we know is not serious on climate even though we are all around us seeing the climate emergency.”Other Harris allies are sanguine about the absence of climate from her campaigning, pointing to her record as a prosecutor in taking on big oil and their expectation that she will push for aggressive climate action if she claims the White House.“She needs to talk about what will win this election, there’s only so much time for subjects and people have a limited bandwidth,” said Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington and a prominent climate advocate. “I’m not critical of the way she’s run her campaign, they’ve made decisions on how to use limited communication time and I’m confident when she’s in the White House she’ll be an effective leader on clean energy.”But the issue is not only one of messaging, but also of substance, said Rees.“I don’t think climate has to be the only issue or the top issue, but right now she’s denigrating climate policy, boasting about oil and gas exports, playing to the right,” he said. “But the terrible disasters of Helene and Milton provide an opening to show how climate is very closely connected to people’s lives and economic struggles. I don’t think it’s too late.”The youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement, which also endorsed Harris, is also demanding she “change course”, noting Trump is gaining ground in swing states.“In 2020, Joe Biden won because he ran on bold climate action and economic justice, showing that you can both win swing voters and the Bernie Sanders base,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, the group’s communication director. “In the last 20 days, we’re giving everything we’ve got to contact millions of people and turn out young voters to elect Harris. What we’re asking is that the Harris campaign help us do that.” More

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      A third of Americans agree with Trump that immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of US

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      A new poll has revealed that more than one-third of Americans agree with Donald Trump’s warning that undocumented immigrants in the US are “poisoning the blood” of America.A significant 34% of the respondents to the poll, conducted by the Brookings Institution and Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), agreed with the statement previously made on the election campaign trail by the former US president and Republican party nominee for the White House, Donald Trump.“One-third of Americans (34%) say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, including six in 10 Republicans (61%), 30% of independents, and only 13% of Democrats,” a summary of the annual poll stated, which surveyed more than 5,000 individuals from 16 August to 4 September.“This is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric, find this kind of support from one of our two major political parties,” said Robert Jones, president and founder of the PRRI, during a presentation of the poll’s findings. “That language is straight out of Mein Kampf. This kind of poisoning the blood, it’s Nazi rhetoric.”Trump told supporters during a rally in New Hampshire in December 2023 that immigrants coming into the US are “poisoning the blood of our country”.“They let – I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”He repeated the phrase in a social media post after the rally and had previously used it in a September 2023 interview.“Blood poisoning” was a term used by Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf manifesto. Trump’s comments incited a strong rebuke from the Biden campaign at the time.The former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie responded to Trump’s comments by stating: “He’s disgusting.”The television presenter Geraldo Rivera recently cited the comments made by Trump in an interview with NewsNation, explaining why he would not vote for the former president. “I don’t know how any Latino person of any self-esteem, any self-respect, would be in favor of the ranting, the poisoning the blood of the country.”The poll also found nearly one in four Trump supporters, 23%, believe if he loses the election that he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office. More

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      Judge slaps down Florida effort to ban abortion ad: ‘It’s the first amendment, stupid’

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      Florida’s health department can’t block a TV advertisement in support of a ballot measure that would protect abortion rights, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, after the department sent letters to local TV stations commanding them to stop airing the ad or risk criminal consequences.“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false’,” US district judge Mark E Walker wrote in his ruling. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”Florida is one of 10 states set to vote on abortion-related ballot measures in November. If enacted, Florida’s measure would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution and roll back the state’s six-week ban on the procedure, which took effect in May.Earlier this month, Florida’s health department sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations running an ad by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign behind the measure. In the ad, a woman named Caroline speaks about being diagnosed with cancer while pregnant.“The doctors knew if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline says in the ad. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.”The letters said the claim that women can’t get life-saving abortions in Florida was “categorically false”, since Florida’s ban permits abortions in medical emergencies. “The fact is these ads are unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida,” Jae Williams, the Florida department of health communications director, said in an email late on Thursday.However, doctors across the country have said abortion bans are worded so vaguely as to force them to deny people medically necessary abortions. A New York doctor recently said that she had treated a woman with an ectopic pregnancy – which is nonviable and potentially life-threatening if left untreated – who had been turned away from a Florida hospital.In response to the letters, Floridians Protecting Freedom sued the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and John Wilson, the former general counsel for the state health department. At least one TV station stopped airing the ad, the coalition’s lawsuit alleged.On Thursday, Walker granted a temporary restraining order blocking Ladapo from taking any further action against broadcasters or other media outlets that might air ads by Floridians Protecting Freedom.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Of course, the surgeon general of Florida has the right to advocate for his own position on a ballot measure,” Walker wrote. “But it would subvert the rule of law to permit the state to transform its own advocacy into the direct suppression of protected political speech.”Over the last several weeks, Florida’s government, run by Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, has sent law enforcement officials to investigate people who signed a petition to get the measure on the ballot, set up a webpage urging people not to vote for it, and issued a report suggesting the measure got on the ballot due to “a large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions”. Floridians Protecting Freedom has denied wrongdoing.Anti-abortion activists have since filed a lawsuit to remove the measure from the ballot or nullify votes cast for it. More

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      ‘The law is clear’: US states signal willingness to prosecute election crimes

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      Some US states are sending strong signals to county and local officials who might be tempted to intervene illegally in the 5 November election or refuse to certify results: fail to do your duty and risk criminal charges or hefty financial penalties.In at least five of the seven battleground states that could determine whether the next US president is Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, top election and law enforcement officials have investigated, indicted and even jailed officials who tried to interfere with the vote or delay certification of results, a necessary but largely ceremonial step.County officials have also been warned that failing to certify results on time could force their local governments to foot the bill for unnecessary audits or recounts.The increased oversight of local election officials is aimed at preventing unfounded claims of fraud from slowing the certification of election results, which in turn could interfere with Congress’s certification of the presidential election results in a highly charged partisan atmosphere.Four years after Trump tried to overturn his 2020 defeat, officials in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in solidly Democratic Colorado, said they have become far more adept at handling those who overstep their authority, even with Trump still repeating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that he will lose in November only through fraud.States that fail to certify results by certain deadlines could be left out of the state-by-state electoral college process that formally determines the winners of US presidential elections.“The law is clear and we won’t tolerate anyone not following it for any reason,” Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said in an interview. “There are times and places for challenging election results. The certification process is not one of them.”In this high-stakes election, the biggest of the swing states, Pennsylvania, has already overruled a county official, the Luzerne county manager, Romilda Crocamo, who tried to prevent the use in her district of drop boxes, where early voters can deposit their mail-in ballots.

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      The state attorney general, Michelle Henry, a former Republican appointed to her role last year by the state’s Democratic governor, said in an interview that her office would enforce election laws.“Should anyone not comply with the statutes, we will investigate that and there will be consequences … There’s both criminal and civil actions that could be taken to maintain the integrity of the process.”In Wisconsin, the criminal division of the state justice department is investigating Wausau’s mayor, Doug Diny, for removing a locked, empty drop box from outside city hall in September. Diny, a non-partisan conservative backed by Republicans, told reporters at the time that he did not feel the box was secure where the city clerk had placed it.The Wisconsin attorney general, Josh Kaul, a Democrat, also said his office would enforce election laws.“It’s our expectation that election officials will follow the law,” Kaul said in an interview. “But if we receive concerns that that won’t be the case, we’re prepared to act.”In Michigan’s Macomb county, where Republicans unsuccessfully sued to overturn the 2020 election results, three assistant clerks in the city of St Clair Shores face felony charges for allegedly allowing four residents to vote twice in the state’s 6 August congressional and state primary election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMichigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, filed charges punishable by up to five years in prison against all seven.“Despite common talking points by those who seek to instill doubt in our election process, double voting in Michigan is extremely rare,” Nessel said in a statement. “Nevertheless, the fact that four incidents occurred in a municipality of this size raised significant concerns.“Michigan election laws were tightened in the aftermath of the 2020 vote.Delta county canvass board members Bonnie Hakkola and LeeAnne Oman, both Republicans, voted against certification of a local recall election on 14 May, after seeing nearly identical voting margins in three different races.State authorities responded two days later, with a stern letter. The two individuals ultimately resigned. The results were certified.Meanwhile, two Republican officials from Arizona’s Cochise county face felony election interference charges, alleging they delayed the canvass of votes in the 2022 elections.And in Nevada, the secretary of state, attorney general and a district attorney intervened recently to swiftly resolve an impasse over a county’s certification of a primary election’s results.In Colorado, in one of the starkest examples, a Republican former Mesa county clerk, Tina Peters, was sentenced to nine years in prison this month, after being convicted of illegally tampering with voting machines in 2020. More

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      Two rulings restore calm to Georgia elections rules – for now

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      Two court rulings in Georgia over the last week have beaten back efforts by Republican activists to empower political challenges to November’s election results, though the expected legal fight over the election is far from concluded.Robert McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge, ruled on Tuesday that elections officials had a legal obligation to certify an election, leaving disputes over results and allegations of misconduct to investigation by local district attorneys’ offices. The ruling rejected the assertion of Trump-aligned attorneys working with Julie Adams, a Republican appointee to the Fulton election board, that board members could exercise their discretion in certification.A day later, another Fulton county superior court judge, Thomas Cox, issued a stern order after a short hearing, invalidating seven rules made by Georgia’s state election board this year. One of the invalidated rules required ballots to be hand-counted on election night. A second allowed elections officials to conduct a poorly defined “reasonable inquiry” into discrepancies before issuing a certification. And a third would have required elections officials to turn over volumes of documents to board members for review before certification.The rules, passed by a three-person bloc of Trump-aligned members on the five-person board, were “unsupported by Georgia’s Election Code and are in fact contrary to the Election Code”, according to the ruling, which added that the state election board lacked the authority to create rules that go beyond state law. The ruling sharply limits the power of the state election board to make further rules.The Georgia Republican party said it would appeal the ruling, while voting rights groups hailed the victory.“Striking down the state election board’s hand-count and other rules is a major win for voters, election integrity and democracy as a whole,” Nichola Hines, president of the League of Women Voters of Georgia, a plaintiff in the suit challenging the state election board, said in a statement. “These rules were introduced with bad intentions and aimed at causing chaos in Georgia’s secure elections process. The League remains committed to standing up for Georgia voters every step of the way.”

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      The state election board’s rule-making put it at odds with many county elections directors, voting rights advocates and the attorney general’s office, which advised the board that the rules it was considering would probably be found unconstitutional.Janelle King, one of the three board members Trump praised as being “pit bulls for honesty, transparency and victory” at an Atlanta rally earlier this year, defended the board’s actions in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on its Politically Georgia podcast on Thursday.“I feel like the benefit in all of this is that, I hope people see that has never been and isn’t a partisan issue,” she said. “A Republican brought this case against us,” she added, referring to Scot Turner, a retired Georgia state representative who was a plaintiff suing the board.With regard to the hand-counting of ballots, King said that the board’s rule-making was meant to ensure an accurate vote count.“This is not saying anything sinister is going on,” King said. “We keep talking about human error. If we know there’s going to be human error, then it’s important for us to create rules that are surrounded by laws that allow us to plug that hole. That’s what I thought I was doing and what I will continue to do.”Voting rights organizations disagree with her characterization of the board’s rule-making.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The 11th-hour rules adopted by the state election board only serve to cause disruption to the electoral process and confusion for voters,” Campaign Legal Center’s voting advocacy and partnerships director, Jonathan Diaz, said. “We are glad one state court has agreed that the hand-count rule cannot go into effect for the upcoming election and we encourage other courts to follow suit.”The board itself is under fire by Democratic lawmakers, who see its members as partisan in ways that may violate the law. A suit by the Georgia state senator Nabilah Islam-Parkes, former Fulton elections board chair Cathy Woolard and state senator-elect Randall Mangham sought to force Governor Brian Kemp to investigate the board for conflicts of interest and potentially remove some of its members.Judge Ural Glanville dismissed the suit earlier this month, ruling that the Democrats could not simply label their accusations “formal charges” and compel the governor to act.The three have appealed the ruling, Mangham said.“Look, these people clearly have conflicts of interest and ethical violations and are intentionally violating the law,” Mangham said. He referred to comments by one state board member, Rick Jeffares, who suggested his interest in becoming a regional Environmental Protection Agency director to a former Trump campaign aide. “This atmosphere is coming from a rogue elections board. Just a few rogue people. These people who are lining up for a job in the new administration … It’s like an umpire is lobbying for a job on the team and can then go and call a play fairly. And then you don’t want to investigate it?”The last-minute rule changes struck down by Georgia judges would never have happened under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the US supreme court, Mangham said. “The preclearance requirement would keep all of this from coming.” More