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    Trump Fumes Over Magazine Report at Rally With Slain Soldier’s Family

    Former President Donald J. Trump gave a fiery rebuttal on Friday to two damning quotations attributed to him by The Atlantic magazine, which accused him of disparaging fallen veterans and of making a racist remark about a murdered Mexican-American soldier.During a campaign stop in Texas, Mr. Trump vehemently denied being opposed to paying for the funeral of Specialist Vanessa Guillén, a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in 2020, when Mr. Trump was president, because of the cost. He was joined at the event in Austin, Texas, by some of Specialist Guillén’s relatives.An article published on Tuesday in The Atlantic magazine said Mr. Trump had expressed sticker shock when he asked an aide if his administration had received a bill for the funeral expenses for Specialist Guillén. While hosting her family at the White House in April 2020, Mr. Trump had offered to help cover any expenses not picked up by the military.“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” the article quoted Mr. Trump saying.On Friday, the former president said Specialist Guillén’s family had stepped forward to help vindicate him.“You know, I have these people saying all this bad stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “Then, all of a sudden, the family that they’re talking about comes out of nowhere and says, ‘President Trump was perfect. What he did was so great. He got us the money.’”A memorial for Specialist Vanessa Guillén in Houston, Texas, in 2020.Pool photo by Marie D. De JesusWe 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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    Republican Legal Challenges to Voting Rules Hit a Rough Patch

    The legal wars over election rules are raging even as voters around the country cast ballots. And several recent efforts by groups aligned with former President Donald J. Trump to challenge voting rules have been coming up short in federal and state courts.Judges in a number of political battlegrounds and other states have rejected legal challenges this month to voter rolls and procedures by Republicans and their allies.The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled that election officials cannot bar people with felony convictions from voting after their sentences are served.A Michigan state judge rejected a Republican attempt to prevent certain citizens living abroad, including military members, from being eligible to cast an absentee ballot in that swing state.And a federal judge in Arizona rejected a last-minute push by a conservative group to run citizenship checks on tens of thousands of voters.“They are hitting quite a losing streak,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who advises both Democratic and Republican election officials on rules and procedures and has been tracking election-related litigation.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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    G.O.P. Lawmaker Voices Support for Giving North Carolina’s Electors to Trump

    Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, appeared to voice support for a plan for North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature to award former President Donald J. Trump the swing state’s electoral votes, according to video of a conservative gathering on Thursday that was posted on social media.Mr. Harris, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, later walked back his comments in a statement on Friday, saying that the “theoretical conversation has been taken out of context” and that “every legal vote should be counted.”His comments, reported earlier on Friday by Politico, came in an exchange with Ivan Raiklin, a lawyer and a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted a plan in 2020 to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states.Mr. Harris appeared to use the hurricane-damaged region of western North Carolina as a rationale for the plan, falsely saying that the voters there had been “disenfranchised.” The North Carolina State Board of Elections approved several emergency measures this month to ensure that voters in the region who were reeling from the effects of Hurricane Helene could still cast ballots.Early in-person voting in the 13 most-affected counties has fared well so far, despite challenges presented by storm recovery efforts. Voters in those counties account for 8 percent of the state’s registered voters, and they have accounted for nearly the same percentage of accepted votes in the state so far. “It looks like things are improving,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told reporters on Friday that “it makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome,” according to Politico.“That is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina,” Mr. McHenry said of Mr. Harris. “Bless his heart.” More

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    Your Senate Election Guide as Democrats and Republicans Race for Control

    The chamber had seemed like Republicans’ to lose, but a few surprises are playing out.All year, control of the Senate has seemed like Republicans’ to lose. They are practically certain to pick up Senator Joe Manchin’s West Virginia Senate seat, and they need just one more of seven competitive seats held by Democrats or an independent to claim the majority.With Senator Jon Tester, a farmer and a third-term Democrat, trailing his Republican opponent in Montana, a state that’s gotten redder and redder, Republicans are closing in on their goal of wresting back the Democrats’ narrow majority. That would turbocharge Donald Trump’s ability to install his allies in political and judicial roles if he were to win the presidency, and it would stymie Vice President Kamala Harris’s agenda right out of the gate if she won.But this has been a year of political surprises — and there are several playing out across the Senate map right now.Democrats led many of those competitive races for much of the year, but some have tightened in recent weeks. Republican-held seats in Texas and Nebraska (yes, Nebraska) have become surprisingly competitive. And some candidates are subtly shifting their messages.To explain the state of play, I called my colleagues Carl Hulse and Annie Karni, our indomitable congressional correspondents who are covering the two toughest Senate re-election battles on the map, Montana and Ohio. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Jess Bidgood: Annie and Carl, welcome back to the newsletter! Where are you?Carl Hulse: I am in Montana, where I’ve been for a week, chasing around Tim Sheehy, the Republican running to unseat Jon Tester, and watching a gazillion ads on TV. It’s incessant. I feel for these people. They’ve been bombarded.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