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      US presidential election updates: Harris appeals to Republicans on Fox as Trump doubles down on pet eating claims

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      Democratic presidential nominee and US vice-president Kamala Harris focused her campaign on Republican voters, with an appearance at a Pennsylvania rally with more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officialsLater, in a further appeal to right-leaning voters, Harris faced a tough interview on Fox news, with host Brett Baier pressing the vice-president on immigration, the economy and the Biden administration. “Let me be very clear,” she said, “my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”Donald Trump meanwhile spoke at a town hall hosted by Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language network, where he doubled down on baseless claims he has made about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.Kamala Harris news and updates:

      Surrounded by more than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials, Harris urged GOP voters on Wednesday to put “country first” and abandon Donald Trump. Trump is “unstable” and “unhinged” and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term, she said. “America must heed this warning”.

      In her interview on Fox News, Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill. Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

      In the Fox interview, Harris singled out Iran when asked which foreign country she considers to be America’s greatest adversary. Baier questioned whether the Biden-Harris administration was “acting like Iran is the number one threat”.

      Of Trump, Harris said, “People are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader and who spends full-time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances.” She added, “He’s not stable.”
      Donald Trump news and updates:

      Trump’s running mate, JD Vance answered “no” when asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, at a Pennsylvania rally. “What message do you think it sends to independent voters when you do not directly answer the question ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?’” the reporter asked, eliciting boos from the crowd. Vance said, “No. I think there were serious problems in 2020”.

      Trump doubled down on his controversial comments about “the enemy from within” made over the weekend. Before an all-female audience in Cumming, Georgia, Trump mocked Kamala Harris and her allies as “sick”, “evil” and “a party of soundbites”. He said, “They’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” Trump told the Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. “They’re the threat to democracy.”

      The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.

      In Trump’s Univision town hall he was asked to name three virtues possessed by Harris, which he did, before again attacking her. He said that “she seems to have an ability to survive”, that “she seems to have some pretty longtime friendships” and that “she seems to have a nice way about her”. “I mean, I like the way some of her statements, some of her – the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country,” he said.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”. Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order on Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated included three that had garnered a lot of attention – one that required that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.

      Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

      Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.

      The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and tried to discourage young people from voting in the November election. The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”
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      in Elections

      Georgia election rules passed by Trump-backed board are ‘illegal’, declares judge

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      A Georgia judge has declared that seven new election rules recently passed by the state election board are “illegal, unconstitutional and void”.Fulton county superior court judge Thomas Cox issued the order Wednesday after holding a hearing on challenges to the rules. The rules that Cox invalidated include three that had gotten a lot of attention – one that requires that the number of ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls and two that had to do with the certification of election results.Cox found that the rules are “unsupported by Georgia’s Election Code and are in fact contrary to the Election Code”. He also wrote that the state election board did not have authority to pass them. He ordered the board to immediately remove the rules and to inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.The Associated Press has reached out to the lawyers for the state election board, as well as the three Republican members who had supported the rules, seeking comment on the judge’s ruling. They could appeal but time is running short with less than three weeks to go until election day.The state election board, which is controlled by three Republicans endorsed by Donald Trump, has passed numerous rules in recent months mostly dealing with the processes that happen after ballots are cast. The former president narrowly lost Georgia to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election but claimed without proof that widespread fraud cost him victory in the state.Democratic party organizations, local election officials and a group headed by a former Republican state lawmaker have filed at least half a dozen lawsuits over the rules. Democrats, voting rights groups and some legal experts have raised concerns that some rules could be used by Trump allies to delay or avoid certification or to cast doubt on results if he loses next month’s presidential election to Kamala Harris.Cox’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Eternal Vigilance Action, which was founded and led by former state representative Scot Turner, a Republican. The organization had argued that the state election board overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.Reached by phone Wednesday evening, Turner said he was “thrilled with the victory”.“It was a complete and total victory for the constitution of the United States,” he said. “These rules were opposed by citizens that are Republican, as well as Democrats and independents. This is not about party. It’s about doing what’s constitutional and re-establishing separation of powers, and that’s something that every conservative in this country should be concerned with and support.”One new rule that the judge blocked requires that three separate poll workers count the number of election day ballots by hand to make sure the number of paper ballots matches the electronic tallies on scanners, check-in computers and voting machines.Georgia voters make selections on a touchscreen voting machine that prints out a piece of paper with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices as well as a QR code. That is the ballot that the voter puts into a scanner, which records the votes. The hand-count would be of the paper ballots – not the votes.Critics, including many county election officials, argued that a hand-count could slow the reporting of election results and put an extra burden on poll workers at the end of an already long day. They also said there isn’t enough time to adequately train poll workers.Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney on Tuesday had temporarily blocked the hand-count for the November election while he considers the legal merits. He said the hand-count may ultimately prove to be good policy, but it’s too close to the general election to implement it now.Cox wrote that the rule “is nowhere authorized” by Georgia laws, which “proscribe the duties of poll officers after the polls close. Hand-counting is not among them”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTwo other new rules that Cox invalidated were passed by the state election board in August and have to do with certification. One provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections”.Supporters argued those rules are necessary to ensure the accuracy of the vote totals before county election officials sign off on them. Critics said they could be used to delay or deny certification.The first certification rule is not part of Georgia law and “adds an additional and undefined step into the certification process”, Cox wrote, saying it is thus “inconsistent with and unsupported by” Georgia law, making it “void and unenforceable”. The second rule is “directly inconsistent” with Georgia law, “which provides the time, manner, and method in which election-related documents must be produced and maintained”, he wrote.The other rules Cox said are illegal and unconstitutional are ones that: require someone delivering an absentee ballot in person to provide a signature and photo ID; demand video surveillance and recording of ballot drop boxes after polls close during early voting; expand the mandatory designated areas where partisan poll watchers can stand at tabulation centers; and require daily public updates of the number of votes cast during early voting.At least half a dozen lawsuits had been filed challenging some or all of the new rules. The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia had filed two lawsuits and joined others. Election boards in some counties and individual election officials in other counties had also sued. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump stands by false claims about immigrants – as it happened

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      Bret Baier has asked Kamala Harris repeatedly about immigration.You supported allowing immigrants in the country illegally to apply for drivers licences and to apply for free healthcare, he says. Do you still support those things?The vice-president says it was five years ago that she said those things, and that what she supports is the law. Baier presses her and again, she says she and Tim Walz believe in supporting and enforcing the law.We’re wrapping up our live US politics coverage for the day, thanks for following along.Here is our news story on the Kamala Harris interview on Fox news:Kamala Harris said her presidency “would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” in a testy interview with the rightwing Fox News channel on Wednesday night as she criticized Donald Trump over his continuing threats against “the enemy within”.The 25-minute interview, conducted after Harris held a rally with more than 100 Republican officials in Pennsylvania, was the first time Harris had sat for a conversation with Fox News, which has been a consistent supporter of Trump.Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, is seen as a straight news counterbalance to the vitriol of Fox News’s evening shows, but still came with a laundry list of rightwing topics, including immigration, the rights of transgender people and Joe Biden’s performance, as Harris attempted to sell herself to the channel’s older, largely Republican, audience.The event featured pointed questions for Trump, about his wife Melania’s support for abortion rights, noted in her new memoir, and about the 6 January, 2021, Siege of the US Capitol by his supporters who breached the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.“Your own vice-president doesn’t want to support you now,” said Ramiro Gonzalez, of Tampa, Florida, a Republican who said he was no longer registered with the party but wanted to give Trump the chance to win him back. Gonzalez was referring to former vice-president Mike Pence, who has disavowed Trump in light of 6 January.Trump’s response: “Hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington. They didn’t come because of me. They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election. That’s why they came.”“That was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions,” Trump told Gonzalez.More now from Trump’s Univision town hall. During the event, hosted by Univision, America’s nation’s largest Spanish-language network, Trump defended his call for mass deportation of immigrants who are in the US illegally, even as he nodded to a need for immigrant labour, the Associated Press reports. “We want workers, and we want them to come in, but they have to come in legally, and they have to love our country,” the Republican presidential candidate said during the event, scheduled to air Wednesday evening. Trump was answering the question of Jorge Velásquez, a farm worker who said most people doing such jobs are undocumented and suggested, if they’re deported, food prices will increase.Trump then returned to his criticism of Harris for being a critical player in the Biden administration’s that presided over an influx of migrants with criminal backgrounds.Here is some analysis from the associated press of Trump and Harris’s recent media appearances:Both candidates have largely avoided traditional interviews during the campaign, preferring to sit before friendly hosts, often in nontraditional media settings. The two-day interview marathon was a noteworthy partial break from that strategy.Harris, whom the Trump campaign hammered for not doing interviews after replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, has ramped up the pace this month. The vice-president appeared on ABC’s “The View,” spoke with radio host Howard Stern and taped a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert, among other appearances. She also sat down with the newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” as is traditional for presidential candidates, while Trump canceled his appearance with the show.Harris’ appearance on Fox with anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday seemed designed to show her willingness to face any questioner, especially after Trump bailed on “60 Minutes.” The risks of that became apparent quickly as Baier challenged her immediately on immigration and often interrupted her afterward.In contrast, Trump, in his Chicago interview Tuesday, frequently spoke over Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and even insulted him as the audience cheered Trump on. Micklethwait challenged Trump’s support for tariffs and his plans to pay for his campaign promises.The former president also faced a friendly all-women audience in a Fox News town hall before participating in a town hall on the Spanish-language network Univision, where he faced pointed questions from Latino voters. Like Harris, Trump is trying to broaden his coalition to get the key votes he needs to win the neck-and-neck race. So, for him as well, every interview counts.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday stood by debunked claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating pets, telling Latino voters during a town hall he was “just saying what was reported.”Trump in recent weeks has amplified a false claim that has gone viral that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing residents’ pets or taking wildlife from parks for food. There have been no credible reports of Haitians eating pets, and officials in Ohio – including Republicans – have repeatedly said the story is untrue.At a town hall hosted by Univision, an undecided Latino Republican voter from Arizona, a battleground state, asked Trump whether he truly believed that immigrants were eating pets.“I was just saying what was reported. All I do is report,” Trump replied during the event held in Miami. “I was there, I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look.”Trump added that “newspapers” had also reported on the claim, without naming any or providing any details.Here is more of that exchange on Iran earlier.Baier asked Harris,“Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary?”She said, “Iran”.Baier said, “A number of experts thought you would say China…But you said Iran. If that’s the case, what do you say to critics who look at the actions of your administration and say you’re not acting like Iran is the number one threat?”Harris said, “Well, I will tell you most recently, whether it was in April or in October, and then several hours on each occasion that Iran posed a threat to Israel, I was there. Most recently in the Situation Room, in the most recent attack, working with the heads of our military in doing what America must always do to defend and to support Israel in its requirement to defend itself and to give American support to be able to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself against attack, including from Iran and Iran’s terrorist proxies in the region.”Here is Harris calling out Fox News’s Bret Baier for playing a clip of Trump that was “not what [Trump] has been saying about the enemy from within”:US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat down for an interview on Wednesday evening with Fox News host Bret Baier.The interview was combative, with Harris, towards the end, speaking over Baier as asked him to interview her “grounded in full assessment of the facts”, and called him out for playing clips that she said were not relevant to what they were discussing.

      Harris was asked about the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle a surge in illegal immigration at the southern border, and laid the blame on Republicans for failing to pass a border bill.

      Harris was asked to defend the administration’s early decision to reverse some of Republican rival Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, and to respond to a mother who testified in Congress about the loss of her child at the hands of an illegal immigrant. “I’m so sorry for her loss, but let’s talk about what is happening right now,” Harris said.

      Harris said Trump told Republicans to reject a bipartisan immigration bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” The interview was part of a direct appeal by Harris on Wednesday to Republican voters in this year’s US presidential election, as she highlighted Republican support for her campaign in a battleground county in Pennsylvania before appearing on conservative-leaning Fox News.

      Harris was asked in the Fox News interview about her recent comment that there was “not a thing” she would change about the actions of the Biden administration, responding: “let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” but she did not elaborate. Earlier, in Bucks County, outside of Philadelphia, Harris emphasised Trump’s attempt to overturn his election loss four years ago, when he lost the White House to current President Joe Biden.

      Harris said Trump’s actions violated the US Constitution and, if given the chance, he will violate it again. “He refused to accept the will of the people and the results of a free and fair election. He sent a mob, an armed mob, to the United States Capitol, where they violently assaulted police officers, law enforcement officials and threatened the life of his own vice president,” Harris said.

      “No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign,” Harris said.

      Harris was asked “Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary?” She said Iran. She has worked with the heads of the military to do what America must always do, which is to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself from attack, “including from Iran and Iran’s territist proxies in the region. And my commitment to that is unwaivering”. The screen showed a graphic listing “Iran oil revenue”.

      Harris talked over Baier, continuing her answer about the Middle East as he tried to press her. He stopped speaking. She said, “I would like that we have a conversation that is grounded in the facts”. “Yes ma’am,” he said.

      “Madam vice-president they’re wrapping me very hard here, I hope you got to say what you wanted about President Trump,” Baier said. Harris said she has a lot more to say about Trump. She invited people to visit her website. Baier interrupted her again, she talked over him, listing the policies that would be found on her website.
      Former Democrat congressman Harold Ford Junior, on Fox news, says that Harris should be proud of her performance tonight, and that it shows that there are benefits to coming on Fox.“Tonight was a sign and a signal to the country about why we need more debates between candidates,” he says.He says Harris “Has to be pleased with how she performed this evening”.Brit Hume, Fox political analyst, says Harris was strong in some ways, but avoided answering other questions, including how she will differ from Biden.He says partisans will be pleased with her performance, they’ll say “Yay, Kamala,” he says.“But if people have doubts about her I don’t think she cleared them up”.Fox news presenters have said, variously, that Harris was strong on some answers, thin on others, and that other answers “won’t pass the smell test” – that last comment from Fox news host Dana Perino.She was praised for coming on Fox and allowing herself to “think on her toes” in a tough interview, rather than the interviews until now, which a Fox host said had been soft.The screen shows a graphic listing “Iran oil revenue”.Harris is talking over Baier. He stops. She says, “I would like that we have a conversation that is grounded in the facts”.“Yes ma’am,” he says.“Madam vice-president they’re rapping me very hard here, I hope you got to say what you wanted about President Trump,” he says.Harris says she has a lot more to say about Trump. She invites people to visit her website. Baier interrupts her, she talks over him, listing the policies that would be found on her website.Harris is asked about the Middle East and the threat posed by Iran.She says she has worked with the heads of the military to do what America must always do, which is to allow Israel to have the resources to defend itself from attack, “including from Iran and Iran’s territist proxies in the region. And my commitment to that is unwaivering”. More

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      Kamala Harris pledges break from Biden presidency in testy Fox News interview

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      Kamala Harris said her presidency “would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” in a testy interview with the rightwing Fox News channel on Wednesday night as she criticized Donald Trump over his continuing threats against “the enemy within”.The 25-minute interview, conducted after Harris held a rally with more than 100 Republican officials in Pennsylvania, was the first time Harris had sat for a conversation with Fox News, which has been a consistent supporter of Trump.Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, is seen as a straight news counterbalance to the vitriol of Fox News’s evening shows, but still came with a laundry list of rightwing topics, including immigration, the rights of transgender people and Joe Biden’s performance, as Harris attempted to sell herself to the channel’s older, largely Republican, audience.Harris was asked if there was anything she “would do differently” from Joe Biden, as Baier played a clip of the vice-president, in a previous interview, saying there is “not a thing that comes to mind” that she would have changed. That response has become an attack point among Republicans as they seek to tie Harris to the unpopular Biden administration.“Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership,” Harris said.“For example, as someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington DC, I invite ideas: whether it be from the Republicans who are supporting me, who were just on stage with me minutes ago, and the business sector and others, who can contribute to the decisions that I make.”Baier pointed to polling which shows a majority of Americans believe the country is “on the wrong track”, and asked Harris why they were saying that when she has been vice-president since January 2021. Harris suggested the polls show a fatigue with Biden and Trump, given the latter has “been running for office” since 2016.Harris noted that several high-profile former members of the Trump administration now believe “that he is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader, who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances”.Baier asked why, given those criticisms, Trump has support of “half the country”. He added: “Are they stupid?”“I would never say that about the American people. And in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean, and belittle, and diminish the American people,” Harris said.“He’s the one who talks about an enemy within. An enemy within, talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”Trump had appeared on a Fox News town hall episode which aired earlier on Wednesday, where he doubled down on his comments about “the enemy from within”. He characterized this alleged internal enemy, which he has said should be “handled by” the military, as “the Pelosis” and his other political opponents.The former president had reacted furiously to the news that Baier would be interviewing Harris, posting on social media that the anchor was “often very soft to those on the ‘cocktail circuit’ left” and falsely claiming that Fox News “has grown so weak and soft on the Democrats”.But Baier, while being an alternative from the more radical nighttime hosts such as Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, largely stuck to rightwing issues.He played a Trump campaign ad, which he suggested was among the few political ads to “break through” this year. The ad quoted an interview with Harris in 2019, when she said she supported “surgical care” for trans prisoners.Trump has spent tens of millions on anti-transgender advertising, but Harris brushed off the issue, pointing out that “under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system”.“And I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing, you know, stones when you’re living in the glass house,” she said.Polls show Harris and Trump effectively tied in most swing states, as both campaigns seek to convince voters before 5 November. Harris’s appearance on Fox News came amid a raft of interviews over the past week. She was interviewed on CBS’s prestigious 60 Minutes news show, sat down with the crowd from The View talkshow, appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, and on Tuesday spoke with radio host Charlamagne tha God.Harris is also reportedly in negotiations to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast – the most popular podcast in the US, which has a large following among young men. Trump, who refused to take part in a second debate on CNN with Harris, has said he will appear on Rogan’s podcast.This was Harris’ first sit-down interview with Fox News, although her running mate, Tim Walz, has appeared on the network multiple times. Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, has been a regular presence on Fox News screens, with his calm responses to sometimes hostile questions frequently going viral and delighting Democrats. More

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      ‘Malicious’ texts sent to Wisconsin youths to discourage them from voting

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      The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and threatened to discourage young people from voting in the November election.The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.” The rules governing voter eligibility for college students are no different than for any other Wisconsin residents, who are required to have lived at their current address for at least 28 days before the election to vote there.Some Republican-controlled states have sought to clamp down on student voting, drafting legislation to restrict the use of student identification cards as a form of voter ID and close campus polling places. Most lawmakers justify the measures as a means of preventing voter fraud. Others have openly complained that voting is too easy for college students – who tend to favor Democratic party candidates.“They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed,” Trump’s former attorney Cleta Mitchell told donors at a retreat in April 2023. During the meeting Mitchell reportedly emphasized the importance of limiting campus voting.In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers proposed a bill in 2024 that would have required University of Wisconsin campuses to provide information to students on how to vote from their home state.Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said she hoped for “some accountability for trying to intimidate these voters” and that the apparent mass text was unusual.

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      “We have been planning as voting rights organizations, as national organizations, for many, many different scenarios of things that could disrupt our election,” said Cronmiller. “I think because we were as prepared as we were, is why we could respond so very quickly to this particular threat.”In their letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and the non-profit organization Free Speech for People claimed that the text message had “targeted young voters aged 18-25” and “reached many voters who are part of the University of Wisconsin system”. Now, the letter alleges, “many students and other young voters are fearful that they will face criminal prosecution if they register and exercise their right to vote – because of a malicious, inaccurate text sent by an anonymous party.”The groups asked the attorney general’s office to investigate and publicize the person or group behind the text messages. More

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      Project 2025 ex-director denounces Heritage president’s ‘violent rhetoric’

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      The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Donald Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.Paul Dans, who resigned as head of the project in July after it threatened to become an electoral liability for Trump, said it was damaged after Roberts made inflammatory comments in a podcast that were widely interpreted as a veiled threat against leftwingers if they resisted an envisioned conservative takeover.In an interview with the Washington Post, Dans also called on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, to withdraw a foreword he wrote for Roberts’s forthcoming book, which has been criticised for perceived violent undercurrents, partly due to its appeal to rightwingers to “load the muskets”.“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well,” Dans told the newspaper. “There’s no place for this sort of violent rhetoric and bellicose taunting, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has now been subject to not one but two assassination attempts.”Roberts made headlines in July when he told Dave Brat, a former Republican congressman who was presenting Steve Bannon’s podcast: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”The comments intensified scrutiny on Project 2025, a 922-page policy document detailing plans for – among other things – the mass firing of thousands of civil servants and a drastic curtailment of reproductive rights. The project had been run, in collaboration with other thinktanks, under the Heritage Foundation’s auspices and the ultimate authority of Roberts.Trump subsequently sought to disown the project – in public at least – as the Democrats seized on Roberts’s remarks to highlight its most radical provisions and depict it as a roadmap for a second Trump presidency. The Republican nominee falsely claimed that he did not know its architects, even though many of them – including Dans – had served under him when he was US president.Dans said he warned Roberts against media interviews and provocative language and squarely blamed his comments for damaging the project and those who had worked on it.“There’s really no place for this level of rhetoric, let alone from the head of an august thinktank,” Dans said. “And by doing that, he’s essentially besmirched the professional reputations of everyone involved in Project 2025.”

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      Roberts has been criticised for using similarly strident terms in promoting his book, Dawn’s Early Light, whose original September publication date has been postponed until after next month’s presidential election.Its original subtitle, Burning Down Washington To Save America, has been watered down and its cover illustration of a lit match has been removed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDans has also urged Vance – whose relationship with Roberts has undermined Trump’s efforts to dissociate himself from Project 2025 – to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation president by retracting the foreword he has written for his book.In it, Vance calls for a more aggressive conservative line of action, writing: “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’A foundation spokesman, Noah Weinrich, dismissed Dans’ criticism and said Roberts’s podcast comments had been referring to the threat of leftwing violence.“Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr Roberts’s comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” he told the Post.Vance, whose links to the thinktank long predate his support for Trump, has not commented.Dans previously blamed Trump campaign officials for the downgrading of Project 2025’s status in the Republican nominee’s priority list. He singled out the campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita for publicly denigrating the project in a September interview with the New York Times and said they had jeopardised Trump’s chances of beating Kamala Harris. More

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      US judge bars Alabama from purging thousands of voters before election

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      Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.The office of Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, Wes Allen, conceded in court filings this week that the list of non-citizens it had compiled was not accurate. At least 2,000 people of the more than 3,200 people were actually eligible to vote, the secretary of state’s chief of staff said in a sworn declaration. That means that almost two-thirds of the people on the list accused of being non-citizens were wrongly flagged. Civil rights groups and the Department of Justice had both sued Alabama, saying that the removals violated a federal law that prohibits systematically removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.“Alabama’s initial splashy announcement gave a total misimpression,” said Kate Huddleston, a lawyer at Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group that helped challenge the purge. “It’s clear now that 63% of those people on the list were wrongfully on the list and were had to take time out of their lives and had to deal with this problem.”Both the justice department and the groups challenging the program also said that the state was using unreliable methodology to flag non-citizens and that many eligible voters were being flagged for removal.Allen said in a statement he would abide by the court’s ruling.“I have a constitutional duty to ensure that only eligible American citizens are voting in our elections. State and federal laws are clear that only eligible American citizens can vote in our elections. Today’s order does not change that,” he said.The justice department also sued Virginia on Friday over a similar program that has also drawn scrutiny for being inaccurate.Both of the suits rely on a 1993 federal statute, the National Voter Registration Act, which creates a 90-day period ahead of any federal election in which states cannot systematically remove voters from their rolls. The buffer was designed to ensure that eligible voters would not be wrongly removed from the rolls at the last minute without any recourse.On 13 August, 84 days before the November election, Allen announced that the state had identified 3,251 people on the rolls who at some point in time had received a non-citizen number from the Department of Homeland Security. Even though he acknowledged some of those people may have become naturalized citizens, he instructed local election officials to require all of them to prove their citizenship to vote and referred them to the state attorney general for possible criminal investigation.Alabama and Virginia are both part of a handful of states that have loudly touted misleading efforts to remove suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls. Their announcement comes as Republicans nationwide have leaned into false claims about non-citizen voting to seed doubt about the outcome of the election.In addition to halting the removals, Manasco’s order also instructs Allen to oversee a mailing to flagged voters informing them that they can vote. The notice must also tell voters that they are not subject to criminal penalties for registering or voting.Manasco also ordered Allen to write to the attorney general and inform him that several of the voters sent for further investigation were wrongly included on the list and to identify those voters.“We know from talking with our plaintiffs and from talking with others in Alabama that this really created a chill for naturalized citizens who were intimidated and deterred from registering to vote and from voting,” Huddleston said. And it’s really important that all Americans have access to the ballot.” More