HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s legislative Republicans would like to pass additional voter ID requirements, restrict abortion and make election changes to improve their odds of winning judicial races. Democrats want to bump up the state’s minimum wage and widen civil rights for LGBTQ people.
In the closely divided General Assembly, those proposals have gone nowhere.
Next month the state’s voters will determine whether to change that dynamic, filling all 203 House seats and half the 50-member Senate. Democrats go into the election with a one-seat House majority, while in the Senate, Republicans have 28 seats and therefore majority control.
Democrats would need to flip three Senate seats to get the chamber to a 25-25 deadlock, leaving Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis to break ties on procedural votes but not final passage of legislation. They hope to thread the needle by taking GOP seats in Harrisburg, Erie and the Pittsburgh area while returning all of their own incumbents.
This year, a few dozen legislative races across the country could determine party control in state capitols, affecting state laws on abortion, guns and transgender rights. Statehouse control is more politically important in the wake of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions weakening federal regulatory oversight, giving more power to states.
In state House elections, it’s typical that only a couple dozen races are close enough to be competitive — a handful in the Philadelphia suburbs along with others scattered around the state.
Democrats were aided by redrawn district lines when they flipped a net of 12 seats two years ago, retaking majority control after more than a decade in the legislative wilderness. A state House rule linking majority status to the results of elections rather than new vacancies has meant Democrats have maintained control of the chamber floor even as two members resigned this summer and gave Republicans a bare 101-100 margin. Those seats were filled Sept. 17 by Democrats who ran unopposed, and both are also unopposed in the General Election.
This fall, more than half of the House districts have only one candidate on the ballot.
Among the Republican targets in the House is Rep. Frank Burns, a Cambria County Democrat who has somehow stayed in office despite facing biennial GOP challenges in the very Republican Johnstown area. Another is Rep. Jim Haddock, a freshman Democrat who won a Lackawanna and Luzerne district by about 4 percentage points two years ago.
Democrats have hopes of unseating Rep. Craig Williams, R-Delaware, who made an unsuccessful bid for the GOP’s attorney general nomination this spring. Outside Pittsburgh, Rep. Valerie Gaydos is also seen as relatively vulnerable.
Rep. Nick Pisciottano, a Democrat, is giving up his Allegheny County district to run for state Senate. Rep. Jim Gregory lost the Republican primary to Scott Barger, who is unopposed in a Blair County district. Brian Rasel, a Republican, faces no other candidate to succeed Rep. George Dunbar, R-Westmoreland.
Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, is unopposed for reelection but he’s also running for auditor general, raising the possibility the two parties could be tied after the votes are counted.
What to know about the 2024 Election
The state Senate races widely seen as the most competitive are the reelection efforts of Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, and Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Allegheny. Dauphin County Sen. John DiSanto, a Republican, is not seeking another term after his district saw significant changes through redistricting. State Rep. Patty Kim, D-Dauphin, and Nick DiFrancesco, a Republican and the Dauphin County treasurer, are facing off to succeed DiSanto.
Democrats have to defend a Pittsburgh state Senate opening because of the retirement of Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat. Pisciottano is going up against Republican security company owner Jen Dintini for Brewster’s seat.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson sued CNN on Tuesday over its recent report that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign.
Robinson, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh with a Virginia-based attorney, has denied authoring the messages.
CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states, referencing the website.
Robinson, who would be the state’s first Black governor if elected, called the report a “high-tech lynching” on a candidate “who has been targeted from Day 1 by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed.”
CNN declined to comment Tuesday, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.
The CNN report, which first aired Sept. 19, said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
The network report said it matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name. CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information. CNN also said it compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.
Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the sitting attorney general, with a lead over Robinson. Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and over 57,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.
Robinson also in the same defamation lawsuit sued a Greensboro punk rock band singer who alleged in a music video and in an interview with a media outlet that Robinson, in the 1990s and early 2000s, frequented a porn shop the singer once worked at and purchased videos. Louis Love Money, the other named defendant, released the video and spoke with other media outlets before the CNN report.
Robinson denies the allegation in the lawsuit, which reads, “Lt. Gov. Robinson was not spending hours at the video store, five nights a week. He was not renting or previewing videos, and he did not purchase ‘bootleg’ or other videos from Defendant Money.”
Money said in a phone interview Tuesday that he stands by his statements and the music video’s content as truthful: “My story hasn’t changed.”
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $50 million in damages, says the effort against Robinson “appears to be a coordinated attack aimed at derailing his campaign for governor.” It provides no evidence that the network or Money schemed with outside groups to create what Robinson alleges are false statements.
Attorney Jesse Binnall, right, speaks at a news conference, with his client North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, left, in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker)
What to know about the 2024 Election
Robinson’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said that he expects to find more “bad actors,” and that entities, which he did not identify, have stonewalled his firm’s efforts to collect information.
“We will use every tool at our disposal now that a lawsuit has been filed, including the subpoena power, in order to continue pursuing the facts,” said Binnall, whose clients have included Trump and his campaign.
In North Carolina courts, a public official claiming defamation generally must show a defendant knew a statement was false or recklessly disregarded its untruthfulness.
Most of the top staff running Robinson’s campaign and his lieutenant governor’s office quit following the CNN report, and the Republican Governors Association, which had already spent millions of dollars in advertising backing Robinson, stopped supporting his bid. And Democrats from presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to downballot state candidates began running ads linking their opponents to Robinson.
Robinson’s campaign isn’t running TV commercials now. He said that “we’ve chosen to go in a different direction” and focus on in-person campaign stops.
Robinson already had a history of inflammatory comments about topics like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights that Stein and his allies have emphasized in opposing him on TV commercials and online.
Stein spokesperson Morgan Hopkins said Tuesday in a statement that “even before the CNN report, North Carolinians have known for a long time that Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be Governor.”
Hurricane Helene and its aftermath took the CNN report off the front pages. Robinson worked for several days with a central North Carolina sheriff collecting relief supplies and criticized Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper — barred by term limits from seeking reelection — for state government’s response in the initial stages of relief.
Trump endorsed Robinson before the March gubernatorial primary, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids” for his speaking ability. Robinson had been a frequent presence at Trump’s North Carolina campaign stops, but he hasn’t participated in such an event since the CNN report.
JUNEAU, Wis. (AP) — Donald Trump on Sunday visited Wisconsin for the fourth time in eight days as his campaign showers attention on a pivotal state where Republicans fret about his ability to match Democrats’ enthusiasm and turnout machine.
“They say that Wisconsin is probably the toughest of the swing states to win,” Trump said in his opening remarks at an airplane hangar in a rural Juneau where the overflow crowd spilled out on to the tarmac. “I don’t think so.”
Voters in Wisconsin are already casting absentee ballots and in-person early voting begins Oct. 22. Trump stood on stage for nearly two hours, touching the third rail of Wisconsin politics by overlapping with a Green Bay Packers game, drawing derision from Democrats. But that didn’t stop thousands of people from sticking with Trump as he urged supporters to begin to vote by mail and early, when the time comes, so they turn out “in record numbers.”
“If we win Wisconsin, we win the presidency,” Trump said.
Wisconsin is perennially tight in presidential elections but has gone for the Republicans just once in the past 40 years, when Trump won the state in 2016. A win in November could make it impossible for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to take the White House.
“In the political chatter class, they’re worried,” said Brandon Scholz, a retired Republican strategist and longtime political observer in Wisconsin who voted for Trump in 2020 but said he is not voting for Trump or Harris this year. “I think Republicans are right to be concerned.”
Trump won the state in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 23,000 votes and lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes.
On Tuesday, Trump made his first-ever visit to Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison, in an effort to turn out the Republican vote even in the state’s Democratic strongholds. Dane is Wisconsin’s second most-populous and fastest-growing county; Biden received more than 75% of the vote four years ago.
“To win statewide you’ve got to have a 72-county strategy,” former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said at that event.
Juneau is a a town of 2,000 about 50 miles north of Madison in Dodge County, which Trump won in 2020 with 65% of the vote.
Early arrivals filled the hangar, far exceeding the available seating. One large banner behind the bleachers inside said “Vote Early.”
“Make sure we turn out because guess what, I’ve been to Madison,” said U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who is from Juneau, at the event. “I’ve been to liberal Madison and they’re going to show up. We need to do the same thing because we are the firewall to keep this country independent and free.”
Jack Yuds, chairman of the county Republican Party, said support for Trump is stronger in this part of the state than it was in 2016 or 2020.
“I can’t keep signs in,” Yuds said. “They want everything he’s got. If it says Trump on it, you can sell it.”
Trump’s campaign and outside groups supporting his candidacy have outspent Harris and her allies on advertising in Wisconsin, $35 million to $31 million, from when she became a candidate on July 23 through Oct. 1, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.
Harris and outside groups supporting her candidacy had more advertising time reserved in Wisconsin from Oct. 1 through Nov. 5, more than $25 million compared with $20 million for Trump and his allies.
What to know about the 2024 Election
The Harris campaign has 50 offices across 43 counties with more than 250 staff members in Wisconsin, said her spokesperson Timothy White. The Trump campaign said it has 40 offices in the state and dozens of staffers.
Harris rallied supporters in Madison in September at an event that drew more than 10,000 people. On Thursday, she made an appeal to moderate and disgruntled conservatives by holding an event in Ripon, the birthplace of the Republican Party, along with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of Trump’s most prominent Republican antagonists.
Harris and Trump are focusing on Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the “blue wall” states that went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in the next election.
While Trump’s campaign is bullish on its chances in Pennsylvania as well as the Sunbelt states, Wisconsin is seen as more of a challenge.
“Wisconsin, tough state,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, who worked on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s winning reelection campaign in 2022.
“I mean, look, that’s going to be a very tight — very, very tight, all the way to the end. But where we are organizationally now, comparative to where we were organizationally four years ago, I mean, it’s completely different,” LaCivita said.
He also cited Michigan as more of a challenge. “But again, these are states that Biden won and carried and so they’re going to be brawls all the way until the end and we’re not ceding any of that ground.”
The candidates are about even in Wisconsin, based on a series of polls that have shown little movement since Biden dropped out in late July. Those same polls also show high enthusiasm among both parties.
Mark Graul, who ran then-President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in Wisconsin, said the number of campaign visits speaks to Wisconsin’s decisive election role.
The key for both sides, he said, is persuading infrequent voters to turn out.
“Much more important, in my opinion, than rallies,” Graul said.
Mark Seelman, from Watertown, said the energy and size of the crowd sends a message that Trump is strong in Wisconsin.
“Everybody’s into it,” he said during Trump’s speech. “It’s time for a change.”
___
Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Jill Colvin in Butler, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to step in and immediately decide issues related to mail-in ballots in the commonwealth with early voting already under way in the few weeks before the Nov. 5 election.
The commonwealth’s highest court on Saturday night rejected a request by voting rights and left-leaning groups to stop counties from throwing out mail-in ballots that lack a handwritten date or have an incorrect date on the return envelope, citing earlier rulings pointing to the risk of confusing voters so close to the election.
“This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election,” the unsigned order said.
Chief Justice Debra Todd dissented, saying voters, election officials and courts needed clarity on the issue before Election Day.
“We ought to resolve this important constitutional question now, before ballots may be improperly rejected and voters disenfranchised,” Todd wrote.
Justice P. Kevin Brobson, however, said in a concurring opinion that the groups waited more than a year after an earlier high court ruling to bring their challenge, and it was “an all-too-common practice of litigants who postpone seeking judicial relief on election-related matters until the election is underway that creates uncertainty.”
Many voters have not understood the legal requirement to sign and date their mail-in ballots, leaving tens of thousands of ballots without accurate dates since Pennsylvania dramatically expanded mail-in voting in a 2019 law.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs contend that multiple courts have found that a voter-written date is meaningless in determining whether the ballot arrived on time or whether the voter is eligible, so rejecting a ballot on that basis should be considered a violation of the state constitution. The parties won their case on the same claim in a statewide court earlier this year but it was thrown out by the state Supreme Court on a technicality before justices considered the merits.
Democrats, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, have sided with the plaintiffs, who include the Black Political Empowerment Project, POWER Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists United, New PA Project Education Fund Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.
Republicans say requiring the date is an election safeguard and accuse Democrats of trying to change election rules at the 11th hour.
The high court also rejected a challenge by Republican political organizations to county election officials letting voters remedy disqualifying mail-in ballot mistakes, which the GOP says state law doesn’t allow. The ruling noted that the petitioners came to the high court without first litigating the matter in the lower courts.
The court did agree on Saturday, however, to hear another GOP challenge to a lower court ruling requiring officials in one county to notify voters when their mail-in ballots are rejected, and allow them to vote provisionally on Election Day.
The Pennsylvania court, with five justices elected as Democrats and two as Republicans, is playing an increasingly important role in settling disputes in this election, much as it did in 2020’s presidential election.
Issues involving mail-in voting are hyper-partisan: Roughly three-fourths of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania tend to be cast by Democrats. Republicans and Democrats alike attribute the partisan gap to former President Donald Trump, who has baselessly claimed mail-in voting is rife with fraud.
Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to reach the century mark.
The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, will turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrating in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924.
Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life.
Booms most everywhere — but not Plains
FILE – The Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Ave. past the Treasury Building in Washington D.C. in 1925. (AP Photo, File)
Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. The global population has more than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to more than 8.1 billion. It already had more than doubled to 4.36 billion by the time he became president.
That boom has not reached Plains, where Carter has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. His wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, also was born in Plains.
Their town comprised fewer than 500 people in the 1920s and has about 700 today; much of the local economy revolves around its most famous residents.
When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It’s now 75.
TV, radio and presidential maps
NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map in the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC’s John Chancellor made Carter’s states red and Ford’s blue. Some other early versions of color electoral maps used yellow and blue because red was associated with Soviet and Chinese communism.
FILE – Former Presidents George Bush, left, and Jimmy Carter, right, stand with President Clinton during a kick-off rally for the President’s volunteer summit at Marcus Foster Stadium in Philadelphia, PA., April 27, 1997. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)
It wasn’t until the 1990s that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and red for GOP-won states. “Red state” and “blue state” did not become a permanent part of the American political lexicon until after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first presidential television appearance. Warren Harding became the first radio president two years before Carter’s birth.
Attention shoppers
There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, but you could order a build-it-yourself house from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom model went for $2,025, which was slightly less than the average worker’s annual income.
FILE – College student Chuck McManis watches President Jimmy Carter’s nationally televised energy speech from a service station in Los Angeles, as a gas station attendant fills up a customer’s car, July 15, 1979. (AP Photo/Mao, File)
Walmart didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. Ballpark prices: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of gas, 11 cents.
Inflation helped drive Carter from office, as it has dogged President Joe Biden. The average gallon in 1980, Carter’s last full year in office, was about $3.25 when adjusted for inflation. That’s just 3 cents more than AAA’s current national average.
From suffragettes to Kamala Harris
The 19th Amendment that extended voting rights to women — almost exclusively white women at the time — was ratified in 1920, four years before Carter’s birth. The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans passed in 1965 as Carter was preparing his first bid for Georgia governor.
Now, Carter is poised to cast a mail ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. Grandson Jason Carter said the former president is holding on in part because he is excited about the chance to see Harris make history.
FILE – Former President Jimmy Carter, right, and Atlanta Braves team owner Ted Turner, left, watch early play during Game 6 of the National League Championship Series in Atlanta, Oct. 14, 1998. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
Immigration, isolationism and ‘America First’
For all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around.
Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism — all elements of the right in the ongoing Donald Trump era. In 2024, Trump is promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, while tightening legal immigration. He has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Five months before Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The law created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission mostly to migrants from western Europe. Asians were banned entirely. Congress described its purpose plainly: “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan followed in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington promoting white supremacy.
Trump also has called for sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs intended to help U.S. manufacturers. After stock market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to help American farmers. The Great Depression followed anyway. In the 1930s, as Carter became politically aware, the political right that countered FDR was driven in part by a movement that opposed international engagement. Those conservatives’ slogan: “America First.”
FILE – Former President Jimmy Carter pulls notes out of his pocket before delivering remarks during a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Aug. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
America’s and Carter’s pastime
Carter is the Atlanta Braves’ most famous fan. Jason Carter says the former president still enjoys watching his favorite baseball team.
In the 1990s, when the Braves were annual features in the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were often spotted in the owner’s box with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then Turner’s wife. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter’s failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory four years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting in the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record.
When Carter was born, the Braves were still in Boston, their original city. Ruth had just completed his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 home runs to that point (still 430 short of his career total) and the original Yankee Stadium — “The House that Ruth Built” — had been open less than 18 months.
Booze, Billy and Billy Beer
Prohibition had been in effect for four years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted until he was 9. The Carters were never prodigious drinkers. They served only wine at state dinners and other White House functions, though it’s a common misconception that they did so because of their Baptist mores. It was more because Carter has always been frugal: He didn’t want taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn’s personal money) to cover more expensive hard liquor.
Carter’s younger brother Billy, who owned a Plains gas station and died in 1988, had different tastes. He marketed his own brand, Billy Beer, once Carter became president. News sources reported that Billy Carter snagged a $50,000 annual licensing fee from one brewer. That’s about $215,000 today. The president’s annual salary at the time was $200,000 — it’s now $400,000.
The debt: More Carter frugality
The Times Square debt clock didn’t debut until Carter was in his early 60s and out of the White House. But for anyone counting the $35 trillion debt, Carter doesn’t merit much mention. The man who would wash Ziploc bags to reuse them added less than $300 billion to the national debt, which stood below $1 trillion when he left office.
Other presidents
Carter has lived through 40% of U.S. history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and more than a third of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took office in 1789 — nine before Carter was president, his own and seven since.
When Carter took office, just two presidents, John Adams and Herbert Hoover, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush all reached at least 93.
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This story was first published on Sep. 28, 2024. It was updated on Oct. 1, 2024 to correct that only one other former president, John Adams, lived to be at least 90. Herbert Hoover died at 90 in 1964.
The second night of the Democratic National Convention was filled with excitement as a celebratory roll call marked Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination to be the party’s candidate for president. As speaker after speaker addressed the convention extolling her qualities to lead the country, they also spelled out differences with her opponents, former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, at times misrepresenting the Republicans’ stances.
Here’s a look at the facts.
Missing context on Vance and the child tax credit
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: “Senate Republicans pretend to care about middle-class families, but they voted no on expanding the child tax credit. And JD Vance didn’t even show up to vote.”
THE FACTS: Vance did indeed skip an August vote on a bill to expand the child tax credit and restore some tax breaks for businesses.
The bill failed to advance in the Senate as Republicans largely opposed the measure, arguing that they would be in position to get a better deal next year, The Associated Press reported at the time.
But there’s more to the story.
Vance has also said he would support expanding the child tax credit, currently at $2,000, to $5,000. He said the Senate vote was a “show vote,” when bills are designed to fail but allow parties to highlight issues before voters.
The cost of Trump’s economic plan
Schumer on Trump’s plan to create tariffs: “He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries. It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs. Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year.”
THE FACTS: Trump has proposed imposing a tariff of anywhere from 10% to 20% on all imports and up to 60% on imports from China.
It’s Day 3 of the DNC, and there are 75 days until Election Day. Here’s what to know:
Economists do expect it would raise prices on many goods. The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, estimates it would reduce average incomes in the top 60% of earners by 1.8%. And the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive advocacy group, has calculated that the higher tariffs would cost households an extra $3,900 a year.
However, Trump has said the tariff revenue could be used to cut other taxes, which would reduce the overall cost of the policy.
Trump’s changing views on the Affordable Care Act
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham: “Donald Trump and JD Vance want to dismantle our healthcare system, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and limit protections for preexisting conditions.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham speaking during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly promised to replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law with a plan of his own. For example, three years after a Congress fully controlled by Republicans failed to repeal “Obamacare” in 2017, Trump urged the Supreme Court to overturn it.
More recently, the Republican presidential nominee threatened to reopen the contentious fight.
“The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare,” he wrote in a November 2023 post on his Truth Social site. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives. We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”
But Trump backed off a potential repeal in April. He said in a video posted to Truth Social that he is “not running to replace the ACA” and that he intends to make it “much better, stronger and far less expensive.”
Another misrepresentation of Trump’s bleach comment
What to know about the 2024 Election
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, on Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic: “And Donald, well, Donald told us to inject bleach.”
THE FACTS: This claim was also made on the first day of the Democratic National Convention by Rep. Robert Garcia of California.
It’s an overstatement. Trump actually asked whether it would be impossible to inject disinfectant into the lungs.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute,” he said at an April 2020 press conference. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court let stand late Monday ballot language that will describe this fall’s Issue 1 as requiring gerrymandering, when the proposal is intended to do the opposite.
In a 4-3 ruling, the high court ordered two of eight disputed sections of the ballot description rewritten, while upholding the other six the issue’s backers had contested. The court’s three Democratic justices dissented. The ballot language was approved by the Republican-controlled Ohio Ballot Board.
Citizens Not Politicians, the group behind the Nov. 5 amendment, brought the lawsuit last month, asserting the language “may be the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive, and unconstitutional” the state has ever seen.
The bipartisan coalition’s proposal calls for replacing Ohio’s troubled political map-making system with a 15-member, citizen-led commission of Republicans, Democrats and independents. The proposal emerged after seven different versions of congressional and legislative maps created after the 2020 Census were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
In Monday’s opinion, the court’s majority noted that it can only invalidate language approved by the ballot board if it finds the wording would “mislead, deceive, or defraud the voters.” The majority found most of the language included in the approved summary and title didn’t do that, but merely described the extensive amendment in detail.
The two sections that justices said were mischaracterized involve when a lawsuit would be able to be filed challenging the new commission’s redistricting plan and the ability of the public to provide input on the map-making process.
In a statement, Citizens Not Politicians said they disagreed with much of the decision, but agreed with justices’ conclusions that portions of the language were “inaccurate,” “defective” and amounted to “argumentation” against Issue 1.
“The Ohio Supreme Court ruled seven times that politicians broke the law with unconstitutional gerrymanders, and the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today that politicians broke the law with lies about our Issue 1 amendment to end the gerrymandering they hold dear,” the campaign said.
The group added: “Politicians are lying and doing everything they can to confuse voters.”
Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy and Justices Patrick Fischer, Patrick DeWine and Joseph Deters joined the majority opinion, while Justices Michael Donnelly, Melody Stewart and Jennifer Brunner dissented.
Fischer wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he defended language voters will now see in November. The measure’s description will say that the commission created by Issue 1 is “required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties.” He said the language, proposed at the last minute by Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, is accurate because the panel will have to create maps that ensure certain political outcomes.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who chairs the ballot board, praised Monday’s ruling.
“This decision is a huge win for Ohio voters, who deserve an honest explanation of what they’re being asked to decide,” he said in a statement, adding that the approved description will help voters sort out what’s actually being proposed amid a barrage of expected television advertising.
LaRose has reconvened the ballot board for Wednesday morning to rewrite the two sections ruled unconstitutional, just as it had to do last year with portions of an amendment that enshrined access to abortion in Ohio’s state constitution. That issue passed easily, despite the ballot language dispute.
PHOENIX (AP) — A judge has rejected a bid by Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, to move his charges in Arizona’s fake elector case to federal court, marking the second time he has failed in trying to get his charges out of state court.
In a decision Monday, U.S. District Judge John Tuchi said Meadows missed a deadline for asking for his charges to be moved to federal court, didn’t offer a good reason for doing so and failed to show that the allegations against him related to his official duties as chief of staff to the president.
Meadows faces charges in Arizona and Georgia in what authorities allege was an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Trump’s favor. He had unsuccessfully tried to move charges in the Georgia case last year. It’s unknown whether Meadows will appeal the decision. The Associated Press left phone and email messages for two of Meadows’ attorneys.
While not a fake elector in Arizona, prosecutors said Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat. Meadows has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Georgia.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes.
The decision sends Meadows’ case back down to Maricopa County Superior Court.
In both Arizona and Georgia, Meadows argued his charges should be moved to federal court because his actions were taken when he was a federal official working as Trump’s chief of staff and that he has immunity under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law trumps state law.
Arizona prosecutors said Meadows’ electioneering efforts weren’t part of his official duties at the White House.
Meadows last year tried to get his Georgia charges moved but his request was rejected by a judge whose ruling was later affirmed by an appeals court. Meadows has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.
The Arizona indictment says Meadows confided to a White House staff member in early November 2020 that Trump had lost the election. Prosecutors say Meadows also had arranged meetings and calls with state officials to discuss the fake elector conspiracy.
Meadows’ attorneys said nothing their client is alleged to have done in Arizona was criminal. They said the indictment consists of allegations that he received messages from people trying to get ideas in front of Trump — or “seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the president’s campaign.”
In denying the former chief of staff’s request, Tuchi said Meadows wasn’t indicted for facilitating communications to and from the president or staying updated on what was going on in Trump’s campaign.
“Instead, the State has indicted Mr. Meadows for allegedly orchestrating and participating in an illegal electioneering scheme,” the judge wrote. “Few, if any, of the State’s factual allegations even resemble the secretarial duties that Mr. Meadows maintains are the subject of the indictment.”
In all, 18 Republicans were charged in late April in Arizona’s fake electors case. The defendants include 11 Republicans who had submitted a document falsely claiming Trump had won Arizona, another Trump aide and five lawyers connected to the former president.
The remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty to the forgery, fraud and conspiracy charges in Arizona.
Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator.
The 11 people who were nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state.
A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.
Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The golf course is not a threatened species in the Sunshine State — but the Florida scrub-jay is.
And advocates are warning that life for the small blue and gray birds and many other imperiled species could get much harder if Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration follows through on a proposal to build golf courses, pickleball courts and 350-room hotels at state parks from Miami to the Panhandle.
State parks “are the last strongholds for a lot of wildlife in rapidly urbanizing communities in Florida,” said Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida.
“They have an outsized importance — not just to wildlife but also as places where Floridians and visitors can continue to see what Florida was like,” she said. “It’s the best of Florida.”
DeSantis has enjoyed rock solid support from the Republicans who dominate state politics. It has been rare for DeSantis to get pushback on anything from GOP lawmakers, and he has a reputation for seeking vengeance when they do.
But it appears a political line in the sand is being drawn after DeSantis’ administration announced plans this week to carve out golf courses and pickleball courts in Florida’s beloved state parks.
Unlike the issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, race and guns that have divided voters, state parks apparently hold a place in the hearts of Floridians regardless of party. The state park system has received national recognition for years, and people are resistant to change the protected lands they enjoy.
The proposal announced by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to build new sports facilities, hotels and glamping sites at nine state parks across Florida has drawn a wave of opposition, not just from nature lovers and birdwatchers but also from members of DeSantis’ Cabinet, a Republican member of Congress and conservative state lawmakers. That includes outgoing Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
“Our vision (for state parks) did not contemplate the addition of golf courses and hotels, which in my view are not in-line with the peaceful and quiet enjoyment of nature,” Passidomo posted on X. “From what I know at this time, the proposal should not move forward in its current form.”
A spokesperson for DeSantis defended the plans — which are not final — and touted the administration’s investments in protecting and conserving the state’s natural resources.
“Teddy Roosevelt believed that public parks were for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and we agree with him,” press secretary Jeremy Redfern said. “But it’s high time we made public lands more accessible to the public.”
The Department of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
All of the parks slated for development are located near heavily visited tourist destinations, including Miami, Tampa, Panama City and St. Augustine.
Florida’s state park system is a bastion of wildness in a state where vast stretches of sugar sand beaches and mangrove forests have long given way to condos, motels and strip mall souvenir shops.
Advocates say places like Topsail Hill Preserve State Park near Destin are literal beacons on a hill — the preserve is known for its 25-foot high sand dunes that tower over a stretch of the Panhandle known for its spring break destinations and military installations.
Eric Draper, a former head of the Florida Park Service, said Topsail is one of the last undeveloped stretches of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In that part of the state, Draper said, “you can stand on the beach, you look right, you look left, and you just see a lot of condos and developments and houses. But this is one place that you can stand and look for three miles and not see any development.”
Under the new plans, Topsail would get up to four new pickleball courts, a disc golf course and a new hotel with a capacity of up to 350 rooms — a scale of development that Draper said is more in line with a conference center than a quiet beach retreat.
Another proposal is for a golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County on the state’s southeast coast north of West Palm Beach. Building the golf courses would entail removing a boardwalk and observation tower as well as relocating the residences and offices of park staff, as well as existing cabins for visitors.
A change.org petition targeting the would-be golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson had netted more than 60,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
It is not the first time a Republican administration has raised the idea of leveraging more revenue from state parks by providing golf, lodging and other attractions. But past ideas were quickly dropped after public opposition.
In 2015, then-Gov. Rick Scott’s administration floated plans to allow cattle farmers to graze their herds and loggers to harvest timber from park lands.
Legendary former professional golfer Jack Nicklaus has long lobbied state officials to underwrite his push to build golf courses in state parks, efforts that fizzled following public pushback.
Wraithmell, the head of Audubon Florida, said she hopes state officials will listen to the Floridians who plan to pack public meetings next week to weigh in on the proposals.
“Absolutely there is demand for more people to enjoy state parks,” she said. “The solution is not to try to cram as many people into a park as we can …. The solution is to create more state parks.”
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This story was first published on Aug. 22, 2024. It was updated on Aug. 23, 2024, to correct that there are nine state parks included in the proposal, not eight.
___ Associated Press reporter Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed to this story.
___
Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Before voters even begin casting ballots, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a sprawling legal fight over the 2024 election through a series of court disputes that could even run past Nov. 5 if results are close.
Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.
After Donald Trump made ” election integrity ” a key part of his party’s platform following his false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020, the Republican National Committee says it has more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls.
Democrats are countering with what they are calling “voter protection,” rushing to court to fight back against the GOP cases and building their own team with over 100 staffers, several hundred lawyers and what they say are thousands of volunteers.
Despite the flurry of litigation, the cases have tended to be fairly small-bore, with few likely impacts for most voters.
“When you have all this money to spend on litigation, you end up litigating less and less important stuff,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.
The stakes would increase dramatically should Trump lose and try to overturn the results. That’s what he attempted in 2020, but the court system rejected him across the board. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits trying to reverse President Joe Biden’s win.
Whether they could be successful this year depends on the results, experts said. A gap of about 10,000 votes — roughly the number that separated Biden and Trump in Arizona and Georgia in 2020 — is almost impossible to reverse through litigation. A closer one of a few hundred votes, like the 547-vote margin that separated George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida in 2000, is much more likely to hinge on court rulings about which ballots are legitimate.
“If he loses, he’s going to claim that he won. That goes without saying,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said of Trump. “If it looks like what we had last time … I expect we’ll see the same kind of thing.”
“The only way they can beat us is to cheat,” Trump said at a Las Vegas rally in June.
To be clear, there was no widespread fraud in 2020 or any election since then. Reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump disputed his loss reaffirmed that Biden won. And Trump’s attorney general said there was no evidence that fraud tipped the election.
Trump installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which then named attorney Christina Bobb as the head of its election integrity division. Bobb is a former reporter for the conservative One America News Network who has been indicted by Arizona’s attorney general for being part of an effort to promote a slate of Trump electors in the state, even though Biden won it.
Echoing Trump, the RNC said it’s trying to counter Democratic mischief.
What to know about the 2024 Election
“President Trump’s election integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process and securing the election,” RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk said in a statement. “While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November.”
This time around, Democrats say they’re prepared for whatever Republicans might do.
“For four years, Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have been scheming to sow distrust in our elections and undermine our democracy so they can cry foul when they lose,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “But also for four years, Democrats have been preparing for this moment, and we are ready for anything.”
The highest-profile litigation so far has been in Georgia, over new rules from a Republican-appointed majority on the State Board of Elections, which has echoed Trump’s conspiracy theories. The rules could allow members of local election boards to try to refuse to certify results, a gambit Trump supporters have tried, unsuccessfully, to reverse losses in 2020 and 2022.
A Trump-aligned group sued to have courts declare that election board members have that power while Democrats sued to overturn the new rules. GOP Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has questioned the wisdom of the board changing procedures so close to the election. Legal experts say the state board’s rules conflict with longstanding state law that certification is not optional.
Whether local boards delay or refuse to certify the results from the upcoming election has been a growing concern, especially after a handful of local officials took that step during this year’s primaries. But experts say the fears of a certification crisis are overblown, in large part because most state laws are clear that state or local boards must certify the official results brought to them by election offices. The courtroom remains the most important venue for candidates who want to challenge results.
“Trying to deny certification is a really poorly thought out theory,” Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, said on a Thursday call with reporters. “It has never worked.”
The litigation to date has often been about relatively esoteric matters, but some cases could have implications after November if Trump loses. The RNC has filed lawsuits in Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina alleging the states need to remove inactive or ineligible voters from their rolls. Late last month, Republicans sued North Carolina over a favorite issue — the risk of noncitizens voting, which is rare. They contend the state wasn’t doing enough to safeguard against it.
So far none of the claims have succeeded. But if Trump loses in those states by a narrow margin, that sort of pre-election litigation could pave the way for him to claim in court that the vote was invalid.
The other area that could have ramifications in November and beyond is whether mail ballots arriving after Election Day can be counted. Nineteen states allow that as long as the ballots are sent before polls close. The RNC sued to overturn this provision in Nevada and Mississippi, but both cases were dismissed by judges.
The RNC appealed those cases, and the first is scheduled to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this month. It’s the sort of issue that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Some Trump allies in 2020 hoped the court would declare him the winner, but the late-arriving mail ballot litigation at the time showed the limits of that tactic.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state had to count mail ballots that arrived up to four days after Election Day. Republicans then appealed that ruling to the nation’s highest court, and late-arriving mail was counted separately in November 2020 while everyone waited for the Supreme Court to weigh in.
In the end, the Supreme Court didn’t take up the case. Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, so the 10,000 late-arriving mail ballots wouldn’t have even made a difference.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned voters in the battleground state of North Carolina that they could lose jobs if Republicans weaken a signature Biden administration law that encourages investments in manufacturing and clean energy.
Yellen said that Republican-dominated states like North Carolina are greatly benefiting from tax incentives under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and that eliminating them would be a “historic mistake,” in a Thursday speech a community college in Raleigh.
North Carolina has emerged as a key battleground this election cycle between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, where Trump ultimately won North Carolina in the 2020 presidential election.
Yellen said Treasury data shows that 90,000 North Carolina households claimed more than $100 million in residential clean energy credits and $60 million in energy efficiency credits.
“Rolling them back could raise costs for working families at a moment when it’s imperative that we continue to take action to lower prices,” Yellen said. “It could jeopardize the significant investments in manufacturing we’re seeing here and across the country, along with the jobs that come with them, many of which don’t require a college degree. And it could give a leg-up to China and other countries that are also investing to compete in these critical industries.”
“As we see clearly here in North Carolina, this would be a historic mistake,” she said.
Some Republicans have called on their leaders to reconsider repealing IRA energy tax incentives.
“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the letter reads. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on social media site X that the lawmakers who signed the letter want to “preserve so-called ‘green’ handouts to Democrats’ corporate cronies.”
“The GOP must ignore K-Street lobbyists and refuse to fund the climate corporate cronies destroying our country,” he said.
The Republican case against the Inflation Reduction Act hinges on the argument that the spending is wasteful and benefits China.
IRS data released in August states that 3.4 million American families have claimed $8.4 billion in residential clean energy and home energy efficiency tax credits in 2023 — mostly towards solar panels and battery storage.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Election officials in Memphis decided Tuesday to leave three gun control questions off the November ballot after top Republican state leaders threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars in state funding.
On Monday, Tennessee’s election coordinator, Mark Goins, sent a letter to the Shelby County Election Commission warning that the gun control measures violated several of Tennessee’s laws, making them void and ineligible to be placed on the ballot. The letter was sent hours after House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Senate Speaker Randy McNally issued their state funding ultimatum.
Goins added that “unequivocable declarations by the General Assembly” left “no authority” for Memphis officials to propose such amendments to the city’s charter. Goins also raised concerns that the city had not properly followed the public notice procedures required to put a referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot.
In a statement, the Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips said the state elections coordinator guides the commission in running elections, “and we will follow his direction.”
“If the City of Memphis decides to challenge this interpretation, we will respect the final decision made by the courts,” Phillips said.
Earlier this year, the Memphis City Council approved a proposal to ask voters if they wanted to tweak the city charter to require permits to carry a handgun, ban the possession of AR-15 style rifles and implement a so-called red flag ordinance, which allows law enforcement officials to remove firearms from those found to be an imminent danger to themselves or others.
The council had acknowledged at times that they were potentially risking the ire of the Republican-dominant Legislature since the measures likely conflict with Tennessee’s lax gun laws.
Regardless, council members representing the large Black-majority, left-leaning city said they were willing to take the risk.
“If the General Assembly wants to punish us and punish our citizens for asking for their help, we will deal with that accordingly, but that would be absolutely heartbreaking,” Councilman Chase Carlisle said during a council meeting in 2023.
In 2021, Republican lawmakers and GOP Gov. Bill Lee signed off on permitless carry for handguns. In May of this year, they banned local cities and counties from implementing their own red flag laws. Meanwhile, many inside that same Republican supermajority have rebuffed calls to place limits on firearms, an effort that has only increased after a gunman shot and killed three adults and three 9-year-olds in a Nashville private school last year.
The continued push to put the gun control questions before Memphis voters prompted not only the state’s top Republican lawmakers to threaten to withhold funding, but also led Secretary of State Tre Hargett to warn that his office would not approve Memphis’ ballot if it included the gun initiatives.
Last year, Memphis received nearly $78 million from the state’s sales tax revenue. The city currently operates an $858 million budget.
“Guns pose a different risk for residents of Memphis than they do for some other municipalities, but we understand that we need to work with our state to determine a set of tools to restore peace in our community,” said Mayor Paul Young in a statement responding to the Legislature’s ultimatum. “What happens next is up to the voters and the legislative branches.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
McNally praised the election commission’s decision, saying that he appreciated the panel “recognizing the county cannot make state law.”
Members inside Tennessee’s white-majority Legislature have long criticized Memphis leaders, especially for how they have managed the city’s crime rates, and expressed doubt over how Black leaders were handling the issue. In 2023, the city saw a record-breaking 398 homicides, while burglaries jumped to more than 14,000.
The rate of reported crime in Memphis for the first half of 2024 remained below the first half of 2023 in almost all major categories, however, including the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, according to preliminary figures from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Trust only further broke down this year when Republican lawmakers and the governor signed off on legislation designed to undo police traffic stop reforms set in place after officers fatally beat Tyre Nichols last year.
State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who represents a Memphis district and was one of two Black Democratic state lawmakers who were briefly expelled from the Legislature for protesting the lack of action after the Nashville school shootings, said the election commission’s decision was “dangerous for democracy” and he hoped the city council would take legal action.
“I am furious and disappointed that the Shelby County Election Commission felt that it needed to yield to the tyrannical and authoritarian actions of the Republican leadership of this state,” Pearson said. “They are abusing their positions and authority to intentionally circumvent the will of the people in our city.”
“His fundamental weakness has coursed through my party like an illness, sapping our strength, softening our spine, whipping us into a fever that has untethered us from our values,” he said.
Kinzinger, who represented Illinois in Congress from 2011 to 2023, directed his speech not to the Democrats in Chicago’s United Center Thursday night, but to members of his own party.
“I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret,” he said. “The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just as much as we do. And they are as eager to defend American values at home and abroad as we conservatives have ever been.”
“I’ve learned something about my party, too. Something I couldn’t ignore,” he continued. “The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance. From the principles that gave it purpose, to a man whose only purpose is himself.”
Kinzinger, who in his speech said he “still hold[s] onto the label” of Republican, was a Trump critic before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In the wake of the violent insurrection, Kinzinger was one of only ten Republicans to vote to impeach Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial.
Kinzinger also voted to create, and then sat on, the select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot. He and former Rep. Liz Cheney were the only Republicans on the committee.
U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) speaks next to chairman U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) during the fifth of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 23, 2022.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
“Our democracy was frayed by the events of January 6th, as Donald Trump’s deceit and dishonor led to a siege on the United States Capitol,” he said. “How can a party claim to be patriotic if it idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election?”
Kinzinger, who in June endorsed Democrat Joe Biden before the president dropped his bid for reelection, was not the first Republican to speak at this year’s Democratic convention.
Several former Trump voters and staffers spoke at the DNC this week, endorsing Harris in an effort to convince their fellow Republicans to vote against their party and its leader.
“Democracy knows no party,” Kinzinger said. “It is a living, breathing ideal that defines us as a nation. It is the bedrock that separates us from tyranny — and when that foundation is fractured, we must all stand united to strengthen it.”
“If you think those principles are worth defending, I urge you: Make the right choice. Vote for our bedrock values. Vote for Kamala Harris.”
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Donald Trump ally who faces felony charges of trying to illegally access and tamper with voting machines is seeking the Republican nomination for the highest court in Michigan, an epicenter of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
In June, attorney Matthew DePerno announced his intent to run for the state Supreme Court, almost one year after he was charged and arraigned.
Delegates will vote on nominees Saturday, Aug. 24, at the Michigan GOP party convention for two state Supreme Court seats in a battleground state where the court has the potential final say in Michigan election matters.
Michigan Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan — meaning candidates appear on the ballot without party labels — but candidates are nominated at party conventions. Democratic-backed justices currently hold a 4-3 majority. Republican nominees would have to win both seats to take back majority control while Democrats stand to gain a 5-2 favorability.
DePerno was named as a “prime instigator” in the voting machine tampering case. Five vote tabulators were illegally taken from three Michigan counties and brought to a hotel room, according to documents released in 2022 by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. Investigators found the tabulators were broken into and “tests” were performed on the equipment.
He was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy. A state judge has ruled it is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to take a machine without a court order or permission directly from the secretary of state’s office.
DePerno has denied wrongdoing. He’s not due back in court until Nov. 21 after the general election and no trial date has been set. He also faces a separate complaint from the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, threatening his law license, over accused attorney misconduct when he represented a former state lawmaker.
DePerno in a phone interview said both the felony charges and the attorney misconduct allegations are politically motivated.
Michigan is just one of at least three states where prosecutors say people breached election systems while embracing and spreading Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
DePerno is seeking nomination to run for a partial-term seat currently held by Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after a Democratic-backed justice announced she was resigning by the end of 2022 with six years left on her term.
Bolden is seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat she was appointed to in January 2023. She is the first Black woman to sit on the state’s highest bench and would be the first elected if successful in November.
Republican-backed conservative Justice David Viviano announced in March that he would not seek reelection, opening another seat.
The Democratic Party is holding its convention the same day as the GOP, Aug. 24.
What to know about the 2024 Election
Campaign finance reports showed an astounding gap between candidates seeking Democratic and Republican nominations and a serious lack of fundraising on DePerno’s part.
Bolden, seeking the Democratic party’s backing, has raised more than $1.1 million as of Aug. 8th, while DePerno has only raised $136, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.
DePerno has focused on shoring up delegate support, not fundraising and expressed confidence that he can out-fundraise Bolden if nominated for the general election, citing his own name recognition, he said.
“I don’t think the other candidates in my race can raise any money in the general election,” he said.
DePerno’s Republican competitors at the party convention include Detroit attorney Alexandria Taylor and Circuit Court Judge Patrick O’Grady. Both have outraised DePerno so far by thousands of dollars according to campaign filings.
State Court of Appeals Judge Mark Boonstra and state Rep. Andrew Fink are competing for the Republican nomination for Viviano’s seat. Boonstra was endorsed by Trump in May. On the Democratic side, University of Michigan Law School professor Kimberly Ann Thomas is seeking nomination for the opening.
Michigan’s Democratic Party executive committee has endorsed Bolden and Thomas and they face no nominating challengers.
Thomas reported raising over $826,603 as of Aug. 8 in recent campaign filings, hundreds of thousands more than Fink and Boonstra.
State Supreme Court races have taken on new meaning in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, shifting abortion policy to the states. Millions of dollars were spent in hotly contested races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2023. Supreme Court races in Ohio and Montana are expected to be heated because of potential rulings on abortion.
“Michigan is one of only two state Supreme Courts in the country that could flip to a conservative majority this cycle — putting abortion access, unions and workers, and our very democracy at risk,” Lavora Barnes, the Michigan Democratic Party chair, said in a statement.
Republicans in the state have framed the race as a fight to stop government overreach while Democrats say it’s a fight to preserve reproductive rights. Abortion rights were added to the state constitution by voters in 2022, months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“We continue to respect the laws that are in place in Michigan here,” Republican party executive director Tyson Shepard said. “We’re tired from the fearmongering from the left.”
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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — The Republican primary for Florida’s 1st Congressional district is like a rematch between Rep. Matt Gaetz and the man he toppled, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
No, McCarthy isn’t on the ballot. But a political committee he controls has spent about $3 million attacking Gaetz with claims he paid a minor for sex and used illicit drugs, while also promoting Gaetz’ opponent, former Navy pilot Aaron Dimmock.
It might not be money well spent this election cycle — Gaetz has easily fought off primary opponents since his election to Congress from one of Florida’s most conservative districts. But Gaetz, ahead of Tuesday’s primary, is getting a taste of what he’ll face if he runs for governor in two years when Gov. Ron DeSantis has to leave office after two terms.
“Kevin McCarthy explicitly said that the reason he’s spending millions to trash me here was to impair some future run for governor. I’ve said many times, I’m not making any plans to run for governor. I like the job I have,” Gaetz said recently after a campaign stop in Pensacola.
The race has become particularly brutal, with McCarthy’s PAC running ads saying that “witnesses” say he had sex with a 17-year-old escort during a trip to the Bahamas with a donor and other supporters. “Our daughters are never safe with the real Matt Gaetz,” an announcer says as the ad closes.
Gaetz led a group of eight far-right members of Congress to oust McCarthy last year, plunging the House into weeks of chaos as it sought to replace the fallen speaker. Gaetz isn’t the only one of the eight targeted by McCarthy, who gave up his California seat after losing the speaker’s chair. South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace also survived a primary against a McCarthy-backed opponent.
McCarthy has said Gaetz led the effort to oust him because McCarthy refused to squash the ethics investigation.
“Matt Gaetz wanted to leverage me to stop an ethics complaint that started four years prior. Illegal. I’m not going to do it,” McCarthy recently said on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Gaetz and his supporters paint Dimmock as a McCarthy-picked carpetbagger who moved from Missouri just to challenge Gaetz. But Dimmock says he’s never met McCarthy and never spoken to him about the race. And while he did recently move from Missouri and still works remotely as a state employee, he said he simply returned to an area where he first had ties 28 years ago when he attended Navy flight school.
“My mom, my brother both live here. My aunt and uncle live here. Three of our four children were born here,” Dimmock said.
The reason he decided to challenge Gaetz, he said, is because no other Republican stepped forward and he knew the primary was the only chance to defeat the congressman. The winner will face Democrat Gay Valimont in November, but the conservative district tends to vote overwhelmingly Republican in general elections.
“I thought a person of character and integrity needed to enter the race. No local or state current office holder was willing to do that,” Dimmock said. “There’s no way in the world this human being that has demonstrated repeated behaviors over time was going to get a free pass.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
While Gaetz has his loyal followers, Dimmock says other Republicans are embarrassed by his behavior and the ethics allegations. Gaetz has made a national name for himself by inflaming liberals with partisan rhetoric and for unwavering support for former President Donald Trump.
Dimmock acknowledges defeating Gaetz will be a challenge in a district where his family is politically powerful. Gaetz’ father is former Senate President Don Gaetz and they younger Gaetz was an influential state representative previously.
But, he said, voters appreciate his presence in the race.
“They say, ‘Thank you so very much for running and giving us an alternative. He’s been an embarrassment so much that we absolutely need someone else in there. How can we help your campaign,” Dimmock said. “Now how many? Who knows. But we’ll see.”
Gaetz doesn’t seemed worried.
“I’ve faced an unprecedented barrage of negative advertising funded by Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz said. “I’ll be outspent more than three-to-one, but I’m going to win it better than two-to-one because the folks in Washington and California and Missouri don’t quite understand the connection I have with the people of northwest Florida,” Gaetz said.
Much like Trump, the congressman’s loyal followers don’t care about the allegations made against him.
“Dimmock is funded by McCarthy and it’s just dirty politics. Gaetz is just talking about the issues,” said Jill Torkelson, 61, sporting a Make America Great Again hat at his Pensacola campaign event. “There’s definitely a blood feud there. I just don’t trust McCarthy as far as I can throw him.”
SEATTLE (AP) — One of the last remaining U.S. House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump and a candidate endorsed by the former president have advanced in Tuesday’s primary to the general election in Washington state’s 4th Congressional District.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse is seeking a sixth term in the conservative Washington district that runs from the Canadian border to the Columbia River. He will face Republican Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran and former NASCAR driver, in November.
This was a rematch for the pair from 2022, when Sessler earned a distant fourth in the primary. This time, Sessler said things have gone his way. He was endorsed by the Washington State Republican Party and nabbed Trump’s backing early on, which he called a “game changer.” He said he communicates regularly with Trump’s team, referencing a text he said he received from the GOP presidential candidate this year saying, “The country is counting on you.”
“In ninety days, this district is going to vote overwhelmingly for President Trump,” Sessler said in a statement. “I will work hard to make sure we also elect a member of Congress who will be his greatest ally in our fight to enact a pro-Constitution, pro-MAGA agenda and heal our nation from the disaster of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Newhouse has mostly steered clear of the subject of Trump. The third-generation farmer has instead focused on agriculture and border security in a state with millions of acres of pastures, orchards and cereal grain lands where immigrant labor is extremely important.
In the lead-up to the primary, Newhouse’s opponents repeatedly touted his vote to impeach Trump as a huge liability. But political experts have cautioned that it’s difficult to say whether the endorsement will sway voters who already stuck with Newhouse two years ago.
Newhouse and U.S. Rep. David Valadao, of California, are the only Republican Congressional lawmakers left among the 10 who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Others retired or were defeated by Trump-endorsed primary challengers.
As of July 17, Newhouse, who was endorsed by the NRA and the National Right to Life, had raised $1.6 million – far more than the $409,000 raised by Sessler.
They prevailed over Tiffany Smiley, a former nurse who entered the race after losing to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray two years ago. She received a backing from Trump just three days before the primary, marking a unique, though not unprecedented, dual endorsement by the former president. But the backing for Smiley likely came too late to impact many voters in the vote-by-mail state.
Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters in each of the contests advance to the November election, regardless of party.
ATLANTA (AP) — Four years after the 2020 election, a newly GOP-aligned election board in Georgia is pushing to reinvestigate the state’s largest county for its handling of the vote.
Georgia’s State Election Board voted 3-2 Wednesday to ask state Attorney General Chris Carr to investigate the Fulton County government, seeking to reopen an inquiry closed in May.
The action shows the degree to which Republican outrage over the 2020 election continues to animate party activists and comes on the heels of a Saturday rally in Atlanta where former President Donald Trump attempted to relitigate unproven claims that he won Georgia, which President Joe Biden won that year by a narrow margin. He praised the State Election Board at the same rally.
Spokesperson Kara Murray said Carr, a Republican who has been opposed by Trump, hadn’t yet received the request.
“We take election integrity very seriously, and we will apply the constitution, the law and the facts as we have always done,” Murray said.
However, Murray said the attorney general’s office doesn’t investigate or seek criminal charges in cases referred by the board.
The resolution says that if Carr doesn’t act, the board will try to hire an outside lawyer to conduct an inquiry.
It’s unclear what could happen if an inquiry occurs. In a hotly disputed 2021 law, the board was given the power to take over election administration in individual counties. That provision was always aimed at heavily Democratic Fulton County in the aftermath of an election that an independent monitor said was characterized by sloppy practices and poor management but with no evidence of intentional wrongdoing.
A trio of Republican partisans aligned with Trump has cemented control of the five-member regulatory board, which has no direct role in determining election results but writes rules to ensure elections run smoothly and hears complaints about violations.
Some activists who have long wanted action against Fulton County argue that officials should face criminal charges. Those activists have also long pushed for access to the paper ballots from the 2020 election, which could enable a citizen review similar to one that roiled Arizona in 2021.
As part of the May resolution of the earlier inquiry, the board found that Fulton County improperly double-counted some votes. But those who brought the complaint say other issues are unresolved, such as missing electronic ballot scans.
“It seems to me that somebody is moving heaven and earth to not allow anyone to get to the paper ballots,” said Dr. Janice Johnston, a retired obstetrician appointed to the board by the state Republican Party. “I don’t know why. I’m just interested in the data and interested in the numbers.”
Wednesday’s decision is likely to be met with litigation. Fulton County’s election board sent a letter to the state board flatly saying the May resolution is final and the board is legally prohibited from reopening the charges.
“We will not engage in any further discussions, investigations or other action related to this case,” Fulton County board Chair Sherri Allen said in a statement. “To do so would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and time that is best spent preparing for the upcoming general election.”
The state board’s nonpartisan chair, John Fervier, tried to block the action, citing a letter from Carr’s office that he said also warned the move would be illegal. The Associated Press wasn’t immediately able to obtain a copy of the letter.
“We are putting this board in legal jeopardy by approving that motion,” Fervier said.
Johnston, who led a successful effort to overturn Fervier’s ruling blocking consideration of the move, said a lawyer for the state GOP had advised her that the board could legally go ahead. Janelle King, whose appointment tipped the balance of power on the board, said she is not afraid of a potential lawsuit.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re not scared to make moves because of the fear of that, because in some cases it’s just the right thing to do,” said King, a conservative political commentator
It’s at least the second recent time that state Republican Party officials or employees directly advised the board on a course of action. Party Chairman Josh McKoon recently sent two proposed rules and talking points to another GOP-aligned member of the board, former state Sen. Rick Jeffares.
Part of the deal made in May was that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the State Election Board and Fulton County would agree on a monitoring team. On Wednesday, though, the board refused to vote on the team proposed by Raffensperger and Fulton County. That’s in part because it included the former chief lawyer for Raffensperger’s office and the man who monitored Fulton’s 2020 election.
Raffensperger’s office declined to comment on the board’s actions. He was removed as a voting member of the board in 2021 and from his nonvoting capacity by lawmakers this year, largely driven by GOP anger at his defense of Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia.
At the Saturday rally, Trump said the three GOP-aligned board members “are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory” while criticizing Fervier and the Democrat on the panel. He in particular singled out Johnston, who was in the second row and stood to acknowledge Trump’s praise.
“My courage was contagious?” Trump said. “Well, your courage is contagious, too.”
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — St. Louis lawyer David Wasinger has won the Republican primary for Missouri lieutenant governor, defeating state Sen. Lincoln Hough by slim margins.
“Missourians want change,” Wasinger told KCUR public radio. “I’ll use the lieutenant governor’s office as a bully pulpit to expose the corruption and insider deals taking place in Jefferson City.”
Wasinger is favored to win the November general election against Democratic nominee state Rep. Richard Brown in the heavily GOP state where no Democrats currently serve in any statewide office.
Wasinger, a certified public accountant, previously campaigned for state auditor in 2018 but lost the Republican primary.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas attorney general and failed candidate for governor has found at least initial success in his political comeback attempt, winning Tuesday’s Republican primary for an open U.S. House seat.
Former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt prevailed in the primary in the 2nd District of eastern Kansas over Jeff Kahrs, a former top regional federal health official, and Shawn Tiffany, a rancher. Even though Kahrs worked in former President Donald Trump’s administration, Schmidt won Trump’s endorsement.
In the Democratic primary, former U.S. Rep. Nancy Boyda, who held the 2nd District seat in 2007 and 2008, defeated Matt Kleinmann, a public health advocate who was a member of the 2008 national champion University of Kansas men’s basketball team.
Boyda won the nomination even though she riled up some party activists by positioning herself toward the political center for what she saw as a more viable general election campaign in the Republican-leaning district. She lost her 2008 race for reelection.
Messages seeking comment were left with both Boyda and Kleinmann.
The district’s two-term GOP incumbent Jake LaTurner was not seeking reelection.
Boyda was the last Democrat to represent eastern Kansas in Congress, and the district became redder after the GOP-controlled Legislature redrew it two years ago. Schmidt, who is also a former state senator, raised the most money of any candidate, more than $616,000, including more than $119,000 since mid-July alone, according to campaign finance reports.
“America needs more effective, conservative voices in public service,” Schmidt said in a statement. “I will continue to prioritize securing our border, stopping inflation, and rolling back big government’s overregulation and over-taxation of our daily lives.”
Schmidt narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2022 to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, and even though he embraced conservative causes in his three terms as attorney general, he continued to face criticism from the right. Kahrs suggested in mailings that he was not tough enough on illegal immigration, for example.
Besides Trump, Schmidt had the backing of Americans for Prosperity. Part of the political network of billionaire Wichita businessman Charles Koch and his family, the group can mobilize scores of low-tax, small-government activists in Kansas.
“Kansas voters, once again, saw through the political attacks and made the right choice,” said Liz Patton, the group’s senior Kansas adviser said in a statement.
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Republican voters were also settling contested primaries in two other districts where incumbents are seeking reelection.
In the 1st District, which includes western Kansas, two-term U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann prevailed easily over Eric Bloom, a farmer and real estate investor. Mann’s Democratic opponent in November is Paul Buskirk, an academic counselor and adviser for student athletes at the University of Kansas. It’s considered a safe Republican seat.
In the Kansas City-area 3rd District, Dr. Prasanth Reddy, an oncology and internal medicine specialist, defeated small business owner Karen Crnkovich for the right to challenge three-term U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation. Davids made headlines with her 2018 election as a lesbian, Native American and former mixed martial arts fighter.
There also were contested primaries in some of the 40 state Senate and 125 state House districts, and for offices in Kansas’ 105 counties. Polls remained open across the state from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time.
Johnson County, the state’s most populous which includes the Kansas City area, had perhaps the most notable local race.
Sheriff Calvin Hayden, seeking a third term, lost the Republican primary to one of his former undersheriffs, Doug Bedford. Hayden received national attention for embracing election conspiracies and keeping an investigation of fraud allegations open at least two years without any criminal charges resulting. In November, Bedford will face Democrat Byron Roberson, a suburban city police chief.
In the 2nd Congressional District, many Republicans saw Schmidt as the leading candidate even before Trump’s “Complete and Total” social media endorsement, thanks to Schmidt’s name recognition.
The former president called Schmidt “An America First Patriot” and added, “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Still, Kahrs boasted that Trump chose him to be a regional director at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and was a district director and senior adviser for LaTurner. Kahrs’ campaign touted him as a “conservative warrior.”
“I’m the only tested conservative in this race,” Kahrs said during a candidate forum broadcast by Topeka-area public television’s KTWU, an event Schmidt skipped.
Tiffany ran as a political outsider, often donning a cowboy hat during public appearances. In a mid-July forum on WIBW-TV in Topeka, he said the “radical left” has attacked the American dream and that “politicians — career politicians — have done nothing to stand in the gap on our behalf.”
In the Democratic race, Boyda supported LGBTQ+ rights generally but said she opposes allowing transgender girls and women to play on female sports teams. She also called on President Joe Biden to end his race for reelection the day after his disastrous debate performance, well before other Democrats.
In a KTWU-TV forum last week, Boyda defended running a center-oriented, “general election” campaign from the start. She pointed to Democrats’ 10 losses in a row since her lone 2006 victory. Eight were by 14 percentage points or more.
“Quite honestly, a lot of the 2nd District is not going to trust a Democrat going to Washington, D.C.,” she said. “They want to make sure that you are moderate and that you are independent.”
But Boyda’s stance on transgender athletes drew immediate criticism, with Kansas Young Democrats calling it “disgraceful” on X.
“I believe that Democrats deserve to have a voice,” Kleinmann, Boyda’s opponent in the primary, said during last week’s forum. “Some of the bravest people I know in Kansas are Democrats in a very red district because they’re fighting for Kansas values, and that’s the values I want to defend in Congress.”
SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state’s longtime attorney general and a former sheriff known for his work hunting down the Green River Killer advanced Tuesday to November’s general election in the battle to become the next governor in a Democratic stronghold that hasn’t had an open race for the state’s top job in more than a decade.
In high profile congressional races, meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez advanced in the 3rd District and will face Donald Trump-endorsed Joe Kent, whom she defeated two years ago. And in the 8th District, Democratic U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier will go head-to-head against Republican Carmen Goers, a commercial banker.
A congressional race in the 4th District between U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of the last remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, and two conservative rivals endorsed by the GOP presidential nominee was too early to call.
Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters in each of the contests advance to the November election, regardless of party. Because Washington is a vote-by-mail state, with ballots due to be postmarked by Election Day, it often takes days to learn final results in close races.
Here’s a look at key Washington races:
Governor’s race
Bob Ferguson, a Democrat who has served as attorney general since 2013, went up against more than two dozen candidates in the primary. He will face former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, a Republican, in November. The race has featured weeks of intense sparring between the two rivals.
“Washington voters have sent a message that they are ready for a change,” Reichert said in a statement. “I am thankful to all who voted for me in this primary.”
In a state with a reputation as solid Democratic territory that hasn’t had a Republican governor in nearly 40 years, any conservative candidate faces an uphill battle. But the race is considered competitive.
3rd Congressional District
Gluesenkamp Perez made it through the primary in the 3rd District, advancing to what is expected to be one of the tightest general elections in the U.S. She’ll face off again against Kent, a Republican and former Green Beret who has called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden.
“Southwest Washington rejected the divisive, extreme politics of Joe Kent two years ago,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement. “We rejected them again tonight, we will reject them in November, and we will stop Joe Kent from using our seat in Congress to promote his online attention-seeking behavior and his angry, hateful, dangerous worldview.”
Two years ago, Gluesenkamp Perez came out of nowhere to win the congressional seat in a district that hadn’t been in Democratic hands for over a decade. She took over a seat held by a more moderate Republican who lost the primary in part because she voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Gluesenkamp Perez supports abortion access and policies to counter climate change, but also speaks openly about being a gun owner. Meanwhile, Kent says Gluesenkamp Perez only pretends to be a moderate.
During a livestream on the social platform X, Kent told enthusiastic supporters that Trump called him on election night.
What to know about the 2024 Election
“He wanted me to tell you guys thank you so much for all the hard work you did getting me here,” Kent said. “He appreciates you guys; I really appreciate all of you.”
8th Congressional District
Schrier and Goers advanced to the November general election in the 8th District race.
“The people of the Eighth District have seen how I have delivered for them and know I will continue to fight to bring down costs, ensure everyone feels safe in their community, and make Roe the law of the land,” Schrier said in a statement.
Goers is a commercial banker running to tamp down inflation and cut back on crime. Schrier, a pediatrician, has showcased the 14 bills she’s had signed into law by Trump and Biden.
“We need a change and I’m excited to work with you to bring that change to our district and state,” Goers said in a statement.
The district is a mix of wealthy Seattle exurbs populated by tech workers and central Washington farmland, and until 2019 had been held by the GOP.
4th Congressional District
Newhouse’s bid for a sixth term has meant going up against Trump-endorsed candidates Jerrod Sessler, a Navy veteran, and Tiffany Smiley, a former nurse who entered the race after losing to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray two years ago. The former president’s backing for Sessler came months ago, while his endorsement for Smiley happened three days before the primary, marking a unique, though not unprecedented, dual endorsement by the former president.
Newhouse is one of the last remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. His opponents believe that vote is a huge liability, but political experts caution it’s difficult to say whether the endorsements will sway voters who already stuck with Newhouse two years ago.
Newhouse is endorsed by the NRA and the National Right to Life, and he has mostly steered clear of the subject of Trump. He’s instead focused on agriculture and border security in a state with millions of acres of pastures, orchards and cereal grain lands where immigrant labor is extremely important.
