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    Joe Rogan Endorses Trump, and Trump Calls Him ‘the Biggest There Is’

    Joe Rogan, the enormously popular podcast host who brought Donald J. Trump onto his show for a three-hour episode last month, endorsed the former president in a post on social media on Monday.Mr. Rogan, who also spoke at length with Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, and Elon Musk, a prominent Trump surrogate, on recent episodes of his podcast, said Mr. Musk made “what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” Mr. Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” wrote on Monday evening.Minutes later, Mr. Trump promoted Mr. Rogan’s endorsement from the campaign trail in Pittsburgh, falsely suggesting that Mr. Rogan had never before endorsed a political candidate. Mr. Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020.“He’s the biggest there is,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rogan, adding, “Somebody said the biggest beyond anybody in a long time.”Mr. Rogan’s conversations with Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance and Mr. Musk were overwhelmingly friendly, often full of praise for the former president. In his appearance, Mr. Trump courted Mr. Rogan’s audience, largely young and male, with talk of eliminating the federal income tax, mixed martial arts and speculation about life on Mars.Early in his interview with Mr. Vance, Mr. Rogan said American presidents “age radically” and “dramatically” once they take office.“Everyone but Trump,” Mr. Rogan quickly added. In his interview with Mr. Trump, he had noted that the former president’s meandering speaking style — which Mr. Trump calls “the weave” — appeared to be intensifying. “Your weave is getting wide,” Mr. Rogan had said. “You’re getting wide with this weave.”This year, Mr. Rogan had earned Mr. Trump’s ire by supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had been running for president as an independent and who at one point was poised to draw support from Mr. Trump. Mr. Rogan had said that Mr. Kennedy was “the only one that makes sense to me.” Facing criticism from Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Rogan clarified that he was not endorsing Mr. Kennedy, who ultimately dropped out and backed Mr. Trump.“It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, in August. More

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    What Time Do the Polls Close? A State-by-State Guide

    The first polls will close at 6 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and the last at 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday. In between, there will be a steady stream of closings every 30 to 60 minutes, with voting ending in the key presidential swing states between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern. Select your time zone to see poll closing times in your local area. Some polls closed All polls closed Polls closed earlier Look up poll closing times in your state: More

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    The Polls Are Close. The Results Might Not Be.

    These two things are true about the presidential race: The polls currently show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump effectively tied. And close polls do not necessarily mean there will be a close result.This may feel counterintuitive, but the fact is that we are just a very normal polling error away from either candidate landing a decisive victory, especially in the Electoral College.This is a point my colleague Nate Cohn has made regularly in his election race updates over the last few weeks. But it bears repeating, because a lopsided result when there is an expectation of only razor-thin margins could further fan distrust in the polls and in the electoral process itself.“You can have a close election in the popular vote and somebody could break 315 Electoral College votes, which will not look close,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “Or you could get a popular vote that is five points” apart, he added, “which is, by today’s standards, a landslide — a word no one has used this year.”Since 1998, election polls in presidential, House, Senate and governor’s races have diverged from the final vote tally by an average of six percentage points, according to an analysis from FiveThirtyEight. But in the 2022 midterm elections, that average error was 4.8 points, making it the most accurate polling cycle in the last quarter of a century. If polls were off this year, in either direction, by the same margin, the winning candidate would score a decisive victory.Based on where the polling averages stood on Monday, if the polls are underestimating Ms. Harris by 4.8 points in each of the seven swing states, she would win every one of them, and a total of 319 electoral votes, compared with only 219 for Mr. Trump. If those same polls underestimate Mr. Trump by the same margin, he would win all the battleground states, for a total of 312 electoral votes. More

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    The Stakes of the Election

    Presidential campaigns are often scripted spectacles. They can overshadow policy ideas. So editors of The Morning asked reporters at The Times — who dig through tax records, travel to the southern border and study the science of climate change — to explain what Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s positions on several important issues might mean for the country.Their reporting revealed two drastically different trajectories for America.ImmigrationHarris embraced a bipartisan immigration bill that would have funded the border wall, empowered the president to restrict border crossings and modestly expanded legal immigration. She also supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.Trump promises a tougher crackdown on immigration than he carried out in his first term. He says he will mount the “largest deportation effort in American history,” using the military and law enforcement to remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country.Read the full article.Presidential powerHarris hasn’t said anything to suggest she would expand presidential power, though she would likely use executive orders to push through some policies that fail to pass in Congress, as previous presidents have done.Trump, by contrast, wants to concentrate more power in the White House and advertises his authoritarian impulses. He has vowed to use the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries; to replace tens of thousands of civil servants with loyalists; and to deploy American troops on domestic soil to enforce the law.Read the full article.AbortionHarris has made abortion rights a central part of her candidacy. She has promised to sign a bill re-establishing Roe’s nationwide protection for abortion, and says she supports ending the Senate filibuster to pass that bill.Trump privately expressed his support for a national abortion ban earlier this year, but he later walked back that position and said last month that he would veto a federal ban. He now says he would leave abortion laws to the states.Read the full article.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Activists File ‘Bad-Faith’ Ballot Challenges, Pennsylvania Officials Say

    Right-wing activists and G.O.P. state lawmakers have questioned the eligibility of some 4,000 people who requested ballots.One by one, they testified under oath: a military spouse who moves every three years. A man just back from six months of traveling around the country. A graduate student temporarily away for school.All were eligible voters who had cast a mail ballot in Chester County, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, before Election Day. And they, along with more than 200 others, had their votes challenged by a single activist, who questioned whether they met residency requirements.Some 4,000 such ballot challenges were delivered to 14 election offices across the critical battleground state by Friday, the deadline. The challenges represent an escalation of a tactic that has been used increasingly since the 2020 election. While thousands of voter registrations have been contested since then, the Pennsylvania cases could toss out votes already cast — a move election officials say they have rarely seen on this large a scale.Many of the challenges were submitted by activists who have mobilized around Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods about rigged elections. Election officials warn that the challenges not only threaten to disenfranchise voters, but they also propel unnecessary skepticism about the integrity of the election.“These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected,” the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement, adding that they were made in “bad faith,” appeared coordinated and were meant to “undermine the confidence in the Nov. 5 election.”A leading activist in Pennsylvania disputed state officials’ characterization of the effort. Heather Honey, the activist, said the challenges “could not be in better faith.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ​Despite Trump’s Claim, No Ballots Have Been Found Fraudulent in Lancaster County

    Details about a continuing investigation revealed by a Republican county commissioner at an election board meeting on Monday undercut claims made by former President Donald J. Trump and others about widespread voter fraud in Lancaster County, Pa.The commissioner, Ray D’Agostino, said that 17 percent of voter registration forms that had been flagged as suspicious there had been found to be “fraudulent,” and that 26 percent of the suspicious forms were still being reviewed.The county would not give the total number of registration forms at issue.But the county was clear that there was no evidence of fraudulent ballots, a fact that stood in stark contrast to a claim made by Mr. Trump at a Sunday rally that “they found 2,600 ballots” — not voter registration forms — “all done by the same hand” in Lancaster County. Mr. Trump’s remarks at the rally, in Lititz, Pa., built on a series of claims that he made last week in speeches and on social media.The episode, which is still under investigation, is quickly becoming central to claims by Trump and his allies that Democrats are trying to steal 19 electoral votes in a crucial battleground state.“They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster,” Mr. Trump said a few days earlier, at a rally in Allentown, Pa.There have been no reports of fraudulent ballots in Lancaster County.A spokesman for the county said that the number of forms at issue was “as many as 2,500” but declined to be more specific.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Brian Bingham, a Veteran, Is Convicted of Assaulting Officer at Capitol Riot

    Brian Glenn Bingham, of New Jersey, hit an officer in the face as the police tried to clear rioters from the building on Jan. 6, 2021, a jury found.On Monday, the eve of this year’s presidential election, a New Jersey man was convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer as part of the mob of Donald J. Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.A jury in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., found the man, Brian Glenn Bingham, of Pennsville, N.J., guilty of the felony offenses of assaulting, resisting or impeding a police officer and civil disorder, and several misdemeanors, prosecutors said.As part of his defense, court records show, Mr. Bingham argued that his actions were colored by the fact that he had been nearby around the time that a Capitol Police lieutenant fatally shot a woman named Ashli Babbitt as she tried to vault through a window near the House Chamber at the Capitol.Mr. Bingham, a 36-year-old Army veteran, is scheduled to be sentenced in February. Kevin A. Tate, a federal public defender representing him, said Mr. Bingham was “disappointed by the verdict and intends to appeal.”Mr. Bingham is among more than 1,532 people who have been criminally charged in connection with the riot, and among more than 571 who have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department. He and other supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The investigation into the day’s events is continuing.Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election, was charged with three conspiracy counts arising from the riot. He has pleaded not guilty, and a federal judge will ultimately determine which parts of the indictment should survive under a landmark Supreme Court ruling from July that gives presidents immunity from prosecution for certain official acts while in office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More