Tag: voters and voting

Barnes seeks to rebut crime attacks headed into final Senate debate with Johnson in Wisconsin | CNN Politics

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Mandela Barnes, the Democrat taking on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin’s Senate race, on Thursday faces what could be his last clear shot at rebutting the avalanche of GOP attacks on crime and police funding that have taken a months-long toll on his campaign.

Barnes and Johnson are set to meet for their second and final debate Thursday night – hours after the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds a hearing that is expected to function as its closing argument ahead of the November midterm elections.

Barnes is highlighting Johnson’s actions on that day, seeking to cast him as an unreliable and hypocritical messenger on what it means to support police officers. Johnson, who played a role in trying to push “fake electors” for then-President Donald Trump before the start of the congressional certification of the 2020 electoral votes, has repeatedly downplayed the attack on the Capitol, saying it was not an “armed insurrection,” including as recently as earlier this month.

Johnson and Republican outside spending groups have hammered Barnes, the Wisconsin lieutenant governor, throughout the fall in television advertisements, at events and in their first debate on crime – echoing a theme the GOP has made a core component of its closing message in Senate races across the map. Those attacks have coincided with Johnson rebounding from a summer slump in the polls less than four weeks from Election Day.

During a campaign event Tuesday in Milwaukee where the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police and the West Allis Professional Police Association endorsed the two-term Republican senator, Johnson said that Barnes has shown “far greater sympathy for the criminal or criminals versus law enforcement or the victims.” He pointed to Barnes’ history of statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding.

“The dispiriting nature of attempting to cut or use the code words of ‘reallocate,’ ‘over bloated budgets,’ – my opponent says that it pains him to see a fully funded police budget. I mean, that type of rhetoric,” Johnson said, “Those types of policies are very dispiriting for police.”

Barnes, who says he does not support defunding the police, is attempting to shift the debate over crime away from his previous comments by targeting Johnson’s actions around the attack on the Capitol after President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Ahead of Thursday’s debate, Barnes plans to hold a virtual news conference with retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served on the National Security Council and emerged as a star witness against Trump during the his first impeachment. Barnes’ campaign said the event would serve to “hold Ron Johnson accountable for his attempt to send a fake slate of electors to the Vice President.”

Johnson’s role in trying to put forward the slate of electors who had not been certified by any state legislature was uncovered in June by the House select committee investigating the events around the insurrection. “I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office,” Johnson told CNN at the time.

In his first debate with Barnes, Johnson said he did not know what he was being asked to hand Pence.

“I had no idea when I got a call from the lawyers for the president of the United States to deliver something to the vice president, did I have a staffer who could help out with that – I had no idea what it was,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t even involved. I had no knowledge of an alternate state of electors.”

His comment was part of perhaps the most memorable clash in their first debate last week. Barnes said that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.”

“One officer was stabbed with a metal stake. Another crushed between a revolving door. Another hit in the head with a fire extinguisher,” Barnes said. “Let’s talk about the 140 officers that he left behind because of an insurrection that he supported.”

Johnson said of the insurrection that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned it and condemned it strongly.”

Barnes consistently led polls of the Senate race over the summer. But that edge has evaporated, more recent polls show – a change that has coincided with Republicans spending millions on TV ads focused on crime.

A Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin released Wednesday showed movement among likely voters toward Johnson. The Republican led Barnes by 6 percentage points, 52% to 46%, among likely voters, the poll found. That’s a jump in Johnson’s favor from the neck-and-neck race the same poll found, with Johnson at 49% to Barnes’ 48%, in September.

The poll’s results among likely voters are significantly more favorable to the GOP than are its results among all registered voters, suggesting substantial uncertainty hinging on Democrats’ ability to turn out less motivated supporters. By contrast, in Marquette’s latest results among all registered voters, Barnes and Johnson are tied at 47% in the Senate race.

Other recent polls of the race have found likely voters deadlocked. In a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Johnson took 50% to Barnes’ 49% among likely voters.

The Marquette poll found that inflation is a top issue in Wisconsin, with 68% of registered voters saying they are very concerned about it. Smaller majorities are also very concerned about public schools (60%), gun violence (60%), abortion policy (56%), crime (56%) and an “accurate vote count” (52%).

But it’s crime that Republican strategists say has been central to Johnson’s rebound in the race.

The attacks have taken place against the backdrop of rising violent crime figures, including a 70% increase in Wisconsin’s homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, according to the state’s Department of Justice. Republicans have also highlighted those convicted of violent crimes who have been paroled by the Wisconsin Parole Commission, an independent agency whose chairperson is appointed by the governor.

“They don’t have an answer,” Brian Schimming, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin, said of Barnes’ campaign. “With Mandela Barnes, it’s not just one thing. It’s not anecdotal. There are three, four, five issues there that are not playing with an electorate that’s pretty concerned about crime right now, and not just if they’re in Milwaukee.”

In the month of September, 61% of the nearly $9 million that Johnson and GOP groups spent on TV ads in the Wisconsin Senate race was behind ads focused on crime, according to data from the firm AdImpact.

That share has dropped to 30% so far in October, but nine of the 14 ads that Republican groups have aired so far have been focused on crime.

It has forced Democrats to respond. Barnes and Democratic groups have focused 40% of their TV ad spending so far in October on crime, with ads rebutting the GOP groups.

The Republican attacks have focused on Barnes’ efforts as a state lawmaker to end cash bail, as well as a 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin – weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in neighboring Minnesota – in which Barnes suggested that funding should be redirected from police budgets to other social services.

“We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” he said then. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”

He did, however, also stress in that same interview that he did not want police budgets completely done away with, saying, “The more money we invest in opportunity for people, the less money we have to spend on prisons.”

One Johnson campaign ad shows video of Barnes saying that “reducing prison population is now sexy.” A narrator in the ad highlights Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration’s efforts to reduce the state’s prison population and says: “That’s not sexy. It’s terrifying. And as a mother, I don’t want Mandela Barnes anywhere near the Senate, from defunding our police to releasing predators.”

Another Johnson spot features the sheriffs of Ozaukee and Waukesha counties, both huge sources of Republican votes in the Milwaukee suburbs.

“Barnes wants to defund our police,” Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson says in the ad.

“Mandela Barnes’ policies are a threat to your family,” Ozaukee County Sheriff Jim Johnson says.

Barnes’ campaign has responded with ads of its own, including one in which Barnes says of GOP ads claiming he supports defunding the police, “That’s a lie.”

“Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police,” a retired Racine Police Department sergeant says in another Barnes spot. “He’s very supportive of law enforcement and I know his objective is to make every community in the state of Wisconsin better.”

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October 13, 2022
Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

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CNN
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In Douglasville, Georgia – just west of Atlanta – a new buzzer-entry system secures the doors of the Douglas County election office. And elections director Milton Kidd said he now varies the times and the routes he uses to travel to work – all to evade the attention of election conspiracy theorists who have targeted the office.

In Madison, Wisconsin, where a top election official faced death threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, officials have redesigned the city clerk’s office, adding cameras, locking doors and covering the windows with white paper, said city attorney Michael Haas. In addition, a new city ordinance establishes a fine of up to $1,000 for disorderly conduct directed at election officials.

In Colorado, meanwhile, a new state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.

With Election Day less than a month away – and early voting already happening in some states – the officials charged with administering the midterms are racing to boost security for their staff, polling places and voters, as baseless conspiracy theories about fraud continue to swirl around the 2020 election and the one now underway.

As CNN recently reported, the concerns about threats and harassment are so great that federal officials are now offering de-escalation training to local and state officials to help avert violence at the polls.

“We certainly are in territory that we have not navigated in the past,” said Tina Barton, a former election official in Michigan who sits on the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. It’s a bipartisan group of election experts and law enforcement officials, working to prevent threats against voters and election officials.

“I’m sad about the fact that it took a scenario like this for us to have to look at all of these things and say, ‘How do we keep ourselves safe?’” she added of the threats that started after the 2020 election. “But we’re seeing unprecedented threats and harassment.”

Barton said election officials are deploying a bevy of tactics to secure the elections – from installing cameras and lighting at drop boxes to adding GPS and other tracking devices to ballot bags to monitor their movement on Election Day.

Election officials in North Carolina last week issued what they described as their “most comprehensive” guidance to local elections officials for maintaining order at polling places this fall. It reinforces that it’s a crime to interfere with voter or election workers. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has also developed a guide for local law enforcement to help officers identify and respond to voter intimidation.

In Leon County, Florida, Earley said his staff has received active-shooter training as part of their preparations in recent election cycles. But he said it has taken on “more significance since January 6,” referring to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

The extra steps to secure the building and protect the staff, Earley said, have sprung from worries about “people buying into myths and disinformation and feeling it’s their patriotic duty to take action.”

“In today’s world, that action, unfortunately, oftentimes comes with firearms,” he added.

In Oregon, meanwhile, the secretary of state’s office is urging local election officials to install signs outside ballot boxes that spell out voters’ rights and warn that voter intimidation violates the law – following social media references to activists targeting the boxes, said Ben Morris, a spokesman for the office.

The state mails a ballot to every voter, which Oregonians return either by mail or by depositing into drop boxes. About 200 drop boxes are used around the state.

In neighboring Washington state, officials in the Seattle area found and removed some 11 signs that had been posted by an “election integrity” activist and that warned that drop boxes were “under surveillance” ahead of the August 2 primary. King County officials called the signs an example of voter intimidation.

(Amber Krabach, the activist who erected the signs, has sued King County and state officials in federal court, arguing that removing the signs violated her First Amendment right to free speech.)

King County election officials are not aware of any security issues with their 76 ballot drop boxes right now, said Kendall Hodson, the county election office’s chief of staff, but “given what happened in the primary, we are keeping our eyes peeled for any unusual behavior.”

Back in Douglas County, Georgia – a community of roughly 145,000 people that backed President Joe Biden in 2020 – Kidd said he’s dismayed and discouraged by what he and his staff have endured.

Activists have trailed workers and photographed their license plates. In the 2020 election, people claiming election fraud dug through the trash at one polling location, found destroyed sample ballots and accused officials of throwing out votes, he said.

And this year, he’s had several companies refuse to rent the trucks to the county that it needs to transport equipment to precincts.

“In this climate, any business that’s associated with elections becomes a target,” he said. (Kidd has secured the trucks but said he doesn’t want to name the supplier for fear of further trouble.)

Kidd, who has worked in the county’s election system for seven years, said he’s lost much of his once-stable workforce of temporary poll workers as a result of all the harassment and stress.

“We’re able do things at the precinct” to protect workers, he said. “But we’re not able to go home with you. We’re not able to be with you in the grocery store.”

“The level of depression, the level of anxiety that is now present in election administration is ridiculous,” he added. “And I don’t know, personally myself, how much longer I am going to do this.”

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October 10, 2022
Trump’s visit to small Nevada town highlights importance of rural voters to state Republicans | CNN Politics

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CNN
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When former President Donald Trump touched down in Minden, Nevada, on Saturday to campaign for a slate of Republican candidates, he landed in a town of just under 3,500 people – about 0.1% of the state’s population.

It’s a tiny stop for the former President, who rode stronger-than-expected turnout in rural stretches of the country like Minden to the White House in 2016. But it highlights just how important rural counties are to Nevada Republicans such as Senate nominee Adam Laxalt and gubernatorial hopeful Joe Lombardo in the critical midterm elections.

“We believe that rural Nevada is the key to turning our state back,” Laxalt said during a stop late last year in Winnemucca, a mining town of under 8,000 people in northern Humboldt County.

Nevada, which Trump lost twice, represents one of the biggest tests for Democratic power in the 2022 midterms. The party holds all but one statewide office in Nevada, and Democratic presidential nominees have carried the state in every election since 2008, buoyed by the strength of the late Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid’s so-called Reid Machine. But those Democratic margins have been declining and after closures around the coronavirus pandemic dramatically affected Nevada’s tourism-centric economy, Republicans see a strong chance to make gains in the state, hanging their hopes on Lombardo’s bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and Laxalt’s challenge to Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

A CNN poll released on Thursday found no clear leader in either race: Laxalt and Lombardo had the support of 48% of likely voters compared with 46% for Cortez Masto and Sisolak.

The same poll was littered with warning signs for Democrats. Forty-four percent of registered Nevada voters said the country would be better off if Republicans are in control of Congress, compared with 35% who said it wouldn’t be. More Republican voters in Nevada said they were extremely motivated to vote – 62% versus 52% for Democrats. And 41% of voters said the economy was the most important issue in the midterms, something Republicans have used to hammer Democrats.

Nevada has been home to one of the most dramatic and politically important urban-rural divides in recent years. And that split could prove even more pivotal in November, given the tightness of the Senate and gubernatorial contests.

Rural voters make up a tiny fraction of Nevada’s electorate, with the state’s major urban centers – Clark County, home to Las Vegas, and Washoe County, home to Reno – making up nearly 90% of Nevada’s population of some 3.1 million. According to a study by Iowa State University, Nevada’s rural population fell from nearly 20% of the state in 1970 to less than 6% in 2010.

The urbanization of Nevada has long allowed Democratic candidates in the state to run on one strategy: Run up the vote total around Las Vegas, win narrowly or at least stay competitive in the Reno area and lose big in rural Nevada. Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to the Senate, followed this strategy in 2016 when she lost every Nevada county, except Clark, but still won a first term by over 2 points.

In recent years, that strategy paid even greater dividends as Washoe County, the second largest in the state, has tilted toward Democrats. Democratic presidential candidates have carried Washoe County in the last four presidential elections, while Sisolak and the state’s junior senator, Jacky Rosen, both won the county in 2018.

That has put more pressure on Nevada Republicans to not only close the gap in Clark and Washoe counties but to also boost as much turnout as possible in rural areas.

Whether that “rural first” strategy can even lead to wins any more is an open question, according to David Damore, a political science professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“It’s a huge part of the Republican playbook, but every year it is smaller and smaller,” he said of GOP attempts to turn out rural voters. “It’s all about cutting the margin in Clark. What has happened is, even though Trump did that last time, Washoe is becoming more liberal. … It is a little bit of a whack-a-mole game for Republicans.”

Laxalt knows the pressure he faces firsthand. When he successfully ran for state attorney general in 2014, he became the only statewide candidate in recent decades to lose both Clark and Washoe counties but win the election when he narrowly defeated Democrat Ross Miller.

Laxalt did what a statewide Republican candidate needed do in Nevada in that race: He kept the margins down in Clark and Washoe – losing the former by less than 6 points and the latter by 1 point – and posted strong margins across the rest of the state.

Laxalt also knows it’s not a perfect strategy. Nevada’s increased urbanization has put a strain on that rural-focused strategy as evidenced by Laxalt’s 4-point loss to Sisolak in 2018. In that race, Laxalt once again lost both Clark and Washoe, but this time by wider margins, including losing the Las Vegas area by nearly 14 points.

Laxalt, on multiple tours through rural Nevada during his Senate campaign, has stressed the area’s importance to his success. At the same time, he’s had to walk a fine line between raising false claims about the validity of the 2020 election, including Republican concerns about vote-counting in Clark County, and the need to boost rural turnout. Laxalt has done so by raising baseless questions about Clark County elections while stressing to rural voters that their votes matter.

“In the end of the day, rural Nevada can provide 75,000-vote cushions, so rural Nevada still matters,” he told an audience in Fallon in late 2021. “Rural Nevada is discouraged. They think Vegas is all that matters. Not true. The vote block out of rural Nevada still makes a huge difference.”

Brian Freimuth, a spokesman for Laxalt, said in a statement that the Republican’s effort “is the most well-traveled campaign in the state” and has “hosted events in every rural county, dozens of rural meet & greets, a cattle drive, and events with ranchers and farmers.”

“Rural Nevadans know that Adam’s record on water rights, the second amendment, sage grouse, and fighting federal overreach make him the best candidate in this race,” said Freimuth.

Cortez Masto, arguably the most vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbent in the country, has focused much of her campaign on tying Laxalt to Trump. Laxalt, who was a co-chair of Trump’s 2020 campaign in Nevada, was central to filing election lawsuits seeking to overturn the presidential result in the state, which Biden won by 2 points. Those lawsuits did not change the election result.

Cortez Masto has also looked to cut into Laxalt’s advantage in rural areas.

A former state attorney general herself, she embarked on a rural tour of Nevada in August, campaigning in communities such as Ely, Elko, Winnemucca and Fallon – all with populations of less than 20,000 people.

“When I became your US senator, it was just as important to me to get out and talk to Nevadans, because here’s the deal: To me, it is about all of us succeeding and that rising tide lifting all of us,” she said in Ely. “At the end of the day, your party affiliation, your background is about making sure your families are successful, your businesses are successful, we’re all in this together.”

Cortez Masto has been endorsed by several rural Republican leaders, such as former Winnemucca Mayor Di An Putnam and Ely Mayor Nathan Robertson, who said in a statement that the incumbent will “continue working hard in the Senate to champion issues important to all rural Nevadans.”

In response to a question from CNN about Trump rallying with Laxalt in rural Nevada, Cortez Masto spokesman Josh Marcus-Blank said, “No one did more to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump than Adam Laxalt, and he is once again being rewarded.”

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October 9, 2022
Election denier Kari Lake has a real shot of winning a swing state governorship | CNN Politics

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CNN
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One of the big questions heading into the 2022 cycle had been how Republican candidates would or not reflect the GOP base when it came to views of the 2020 election. Poll after poll has shown that a clear majority of Republicans falsely believe that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a lot of Republicans running for office believe this as well. But could any of of those candidates end up running states where elections tend to be close? For the most part, the answer is no. Most election deniers running for governor have only a small chance of winning or are from states former President Donald Trump easily won.

There is one big exception: GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake of Arizona. In the second-closest state of the 2020 presidential election, Lake is neck and neck with Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs.

Three polls out this past week, which were all well within the margin of error, illustrate the point well. A CBS News/YouGov poll had Lake and Hobbs tied at 49%. Fox’s poll put Hobbs at 44% to Lake’s 43%. Marist College had Lake at 46% and Hobbs at 45%.

These polls are representative of the average of all polling that has the candidates running basically even.

Lake is running considerably stronger than Blake Masters, the the state’s GOP nominee for US Senate. Masters trails his Democratic opponent, Sen. Mark Kelly, by more than 5 points in in the average of all polling.

You might be thinking that Masters is somehow more extreme than Lake. That’s not clear at all, at least when it comes to the 2020 election.

On that issue, Lake – like Masters – is an election denier. Indeed, that’s what makes Lake so unique. There are other Republicans who are in a position to win the governorship of close 2020 states this year, and nearly all of them have either tried to have it both ways on the most recent presidential election (i.e. raising doubts about the legitimacy, but not saying it was stolen) or have accepted the 2020 results.

The other full-out election deniers running for governor in 2020 swing states this year are Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. Both trail their Democratic opponents – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, respectively – by double digits in the average of polls. Mastriano is now running well behind the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, despite Oz stumbling out of the gate after the primary. (Oz, who was endorsed by Trump in the primary, said he would have voted to certify the 2020 election result.)

In fact, 2020 election denial has been a hallmark of losing gubernatorial campaigns in swing or blue states. Blue-state Republicans Dan Cox in Maryland and Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts are getting blown out by their opponents in the polls, even though the current and departing governors of their respective states are Republicans.

You might be tempted to think that Lake has a chance because voters in the Grand Canyon State believe the 2020 election was stolen. That does not appear to be the case. An August Fox poll found that only 28% of voters were not at all confident that votes in the 2020 election were cast legitimately and counted fairly.

Additionally, the Marist poll showed that a mere 6% of voters are not at all confident that the 2022 election in Arizona will not be run fairly and accurately. Another 23% are not very confident; the vast majority (71%) are confident it will be.

So what is Lake’s secret? Part of it may be that her past as a television anchor is paying off. She seems to be doing a good enough job reaching voters in the middle of the electorate.

Lake needs merely to stay competitive with independents to win Arizona. Unlike many other battleground states, a plurality of Arizona voters are Republican. This means Democratic candidates usually need some mixture of winning more Republican voters than Republican candidates winning Democratic voters and winning independents by a wide margin. Put another way, Lake can win even if she loses independents and retains less of her base than Hobbs.

In the Marist poll, for example, Kelly holds a 17-point lead with independents. Hobbs is up just 2 points among them.

But Lake’s standing may have more to do with the fact that 2020 election denialism isn’t as much of an important factor to voters as we might think when it comes to voting in elections for state office. While just 18% of voters said in the CBS News poll that they wanted elected officials in Arizona to say Biden didn’t win in 2020, another 41% said it didn’t matter. This means the majority of Arizona voters (59%) don’t seem to mind or actually like it when someone running for office denies the reality of the 2020 election.

A further look at the numbers indicates that the GOP could easily win the secretary of state races in Arizona (Mark Finchem) and in next-door Nevada (Joe Marchant). The Republicans running for both those posts have denied the results of the 2020 election as they aim to become the chief election officers in their given states.

It’s also the case that Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson voted against certifying the 2020 election and is a slight favorite to win another term against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Likewise, Nevada’s Adam Laxalt has raised questions about the 2020 election and played a leading role in post-election legal efforts to reverse Biden’s victory in the state. He’s in a tight race with Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

Neither of those GOP Senate candidates are vying to lead a swing state, though. And the name recognition for the aforementioned secretary of state candidates is significantly lower than it is for Lake.

Lake is quite competitive as an election denier, despite being well known and running for a real position of power when it comes to elections. If she and Finchem win, the two officials in charge of election certification in Arizona will be on the record denying the reality of the 2020 election.

That could be quite a big deal in two years’ time, if another close presidential election – like 2020’s between Biden and Trump – is on the line and Arizona is once again in the mix.

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October 6, 2022
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2022 | CNN Politics

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The race for the Senate is in the eye of the beholder less than six weeks from Election Day, with ads about abortion, crime and inflation dominating the airwaves in key states as campaigns test the theory of the 2022 election.

The cycle started out as a referendum on President Joe Biden – an easy target for Republicans, who need a net gain of just one seat to flip the evenly divided chamber. Then the US Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe v. Wade gave Democrats the opportunity to paint a contrast as Republicans struggled to explain their support for an abortion ruling that the majority of the country opposes. Former President Donald Trump’s omnipresence in the headlines gave Democrats another foil.

But the optimism some Democrats felt toward the end of the summer, on the heels of Biden’s legislative wins and the galvanizing high court decision, has been tempered slightly by the much anticipated tightening of some key races as political advertising ramps up on TV and voters tune in after Labor Day.

Republicans, who have midterm history on their side as the party out of the White House, have hammered Biden and Democrats for supporting policies they argue exacerbate inflation. Biden’s approval rating stands at 41% with 54% disapproving in the latest CNN Poll of Polls, which tracks the average of recent surveys. And with some prices inching back up after a brief hiatus, the economy and inflation – which Americans across the country identify as their top concern in multiple polls – are likely to play a crucial role in deciding voters’ preferences.

But there’s been a steady increase in ads about crime too as the GOP returns to a familiar criticism, depicting Democrats as weak on public safety. Cops have been ubiquitous in TV ads this cycle – candidates from both sides of the aisle have found law enforcement officers to testify on camera to their pro-police credentials. Democratic ads also feature women talking about the threat of a national abortion ban should the Senate fall into GOP hands, while Republicans have spent comparatively less trying to portray Democrats as the extremists on the topic.

While the issue sets have fluctuated, the Senate map hasn’t changed. Republicans’ top pickup opportunities have always been Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire – all states that Biden carried in 2020. In two of those states, however, the GOP has significant problems, although the states themselves keep the races competitive. Arizona nominee Blake Masters is now without the support of the party’s major super PAC, which thinks its money can be better spent elsewhere, including in New Hampshire, where retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is far from the nominee the national GOP had wanted. But this is the time of year when poor fundraising can really become evident since TV ad rates favor candidates and a super PAC gets much less bang for its buck.

The race for Senate control may come down to three states: Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, all of which are rated as “Toss-up” races by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. As Republicans look to flip the Senate, which Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called a “50-50 proposition,” they’re trying to pick up the first two and hold on to the latter.

Senate Democrats’ path to holding their majority lies with defending their incumbents. Picking off a GOP-held seat like Pennsylvania – still the most likely to flip in CNN’s ranking – would help mitigate any losses. Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is vying for a third term, looks like Democrats’ next best pickup opportunity, but that race drops in the rankings this month as Republican attacks take a toll on the Democratic nominee in the polls.

These rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. It will be updated one more time before Election Day.

Incumbent: Republican Pat Toomey (retiring)

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The most consistent thing about CNN’s rankings, dating back to 2021, has been Pennsylvania’s spot in first place. But the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey has tightened since the primaries in May, when Republican Mehmet Oz emerged badly bruised from a nasty intraparty contest. In a CNN Poll of Polls average of recent surveys in the state, Democrat John Fetterman, the state lieutenant governor, had the support of 50% of likely voters to Oz’s 45%. (The Poll of Polls is an average of the four most recent nonpartisan surveys of likely voters that meet CNN’s standards.) Fetterman is still overperforming Biden, who narrowly carried Pennsylvania in 2020. Fetterman’s favorability ratings are also consistently higher than Oz’s.

One potential trouble spot for the Democrat: More voters in a late September Franklin and Marshall College Poll viewed Oz has having policies that would improve voters’ economic circumstances, with the economy and inflation remaining the top concern for voters across a range of surveys. But nearly five months after the primary, the celebrity surgeon still seems to have residual issues with his base. A higher percentage of Democrats were backing Fetterman than Republicans were backing Oz in a recent Fox News survey, for example, with much of that attributable to lower support from GOP women than men. Fetterman supporters were also much more enthusiastic about their candidate than Oz supporters.

Republicans have been hammering Fetterman on crime, specifically his tenure on the state Board of Pardons: An ad from the Senate Leadership Fund features a Bucks County sheriff saying, “Protect your family. Don’t vote Fetterman.” But the lieutenant governor is also using sheriffs on camera to defend his record. And with suburban voters being a crucial demographic, Democratic advertising is also leaning into abortion, like this Senate Majority PAC ad that features a female doctor as narrator and plays Oz’s comments from during the primary about abortion being “murder.” Oz’s campaign has said that he supports exceptions for “the life of the mother, rape and incest” and that “he’d want to make sure that the federal government is not involved in interfering with the state’s decisions on the topic.”

Incumbent: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto

CNN

Republicans have four main pickup opportunities – and right now, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat looks like one of their best shots. Biden carried Nevada by a slightly larger margin than two of those other GOP-targeted states, but the Silver State’s large transient population adds a degree of uncertainty to this contest.

Republicans have tried to tie the first-term senator to Washington spending and inflation, which may be particularly resonant in a place where average gas prices are now back up to over $5 a gallon. Democrats are zeroing in on abortion rights and raising the threat that a GOP-controlled Senate could pass a national abortion ban. Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt – the rare GOP nominee to have united McConnell and Trump early on – called the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling a “joke” before the Supreme Court overturned the decision in June. Democrats have been all too happy to use that comment against him, but Laxalt has tried to get around those attacks by saying he does not support a national ban and pointing out that the right to an abortion is settled law in Nevada.

Incumbent: Democrat Raphael Warnock

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The closer we get to Election Day, the more we need to talk about the Georgia Senate race going over the wire. If neither candidate receives a majority of the vote in November, the contest will go to a December runoff. There was no clear leader in a recent Marist poll that had Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, and Republican challenger Herschel Walker both under 50% among those who say they definitely plan to vote.

Warnock’s edge from earlier this cycle has narrowed, which bumps this seat up one spot on the rankings. The good news for Warnock is that he’s still overperforming Biden’s approval numbers in a state that the President flipped in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. And so far, he seems to be keeping the Senate race closer than the gubernatorial contest, for which several polls have shown GOP Gov. Brian Kemp ahead. Warnock’s trying to project a bipartisan image that he thinks will help him hold on in what had until recently been a reliably red state. Standing waist-deep in peanuts in one recent ad, he touts his work with Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville to “eliminate the regulations,” never mentioning his own party. But Republicans have continued to try to tie the senator to his party – specifically for voting for measures in Washington that they claim have exacerbated inflation.

Democrats are hoping that enough Georgians won’t see voting for Walker as an option – even if they do back Kemp. Democrats have amped up their attacks on domestic violence allegations against the former football star and unflattering headlines about his business record. And all eyes will be on the mid-October debate to see how Walker, who has a history of making controversial and illogical comments, handles himself onstage against the more polished incumbent.

Incumbent: Republican Ron Johnson

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Sen. Ron Johnson is the only Republican running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020 – in fact, he broke his own term limits pledge to run a third time, saying he believed America was “in peril.” And although Johnson has had low approval numbers for much of the cycle, Democrats have underestimated him before. This contest moves down one spot on the ranking as Johnson’s race against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has tightened, putting the senator in a better position.

Barnes skated through the August primary after his biggest opponents dropped out of the race, but as the nominee, he’s faced an onslaught of attacks, especially on crime, using against him his past words about ending cash bail and redirecting some funding from police budgets to social services. Barnes has attempted to answer those attacks in his ads, like this one featuring a retired police sergeant who says he knows “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police.”

A Marquette University Law School poll from early September showed no clear leader, with Johnson at 49% and Barnes at 48% among likely voters, which is a tightening from the 7-point edge Barnes enjoyed in the same poll’s August survey. Notably, independents were breaking slightly for Johnson after significantly favoring Barnes in the August survey. The effect of the GOP’s anti-Barnes advertising can likely be seen in the increasing percentage of registered voters in a late September Fox News survey who view the Democrat as “too extreme,” putting him on parity with Johnson on that question. Johnson supporters are also much more enthusiastic about their candidate.

Incumbent: Democrat Mark Kelly

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Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term after winning a 2020 special election, is still one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents in a state that has only recently grown competitive on the federal level. But Republican nominee Blake Masters is nowhere close to rivaling Kelly in fundraising, and major GOP outside firepower is now gone. After canceling its September TV reservations in Arizona to redirect money to Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund has cut its October spending too.

Other conservative groups are spending for Masters but still have work to do to hurt Kelly, a well-funded incumbent with a strong personal brand. Kelly led Masters 51% to 41% among registered voters in a September Marist poll, although that gap narrowed among those who said they definitely plan to vote. A Fox survey from a little later in the month similarly showed Kelly with a 5-point edge among those certain to vote, just within the margin of error.

Masters has attempted to moderate his abortion position since winning his August primary, buoyed by a Trump endorsement, but Kelly has continued to attack him on the issue. And a recent court decision allowing the enforcement of a 1901 state ban on nearly all abortions has given Democrats extra fodder to paint Republicans as a threat to women’s reproductive rights.

Incumbent: Republican Richard Burr (retiring)

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North Carolina slides up one spot on the rankings, trading places with New Hampshire. The open-seat race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr hasn’t generated as much national buzz as other states given that Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.

But it has remained a tight contest with Democrat Cheri Beasley, who is bidding to become the state’s first Black senator, facing off against GOP Rep. Ted Budd, for whom Trump recently campaigned. Beasley lost reelection as state Supreme Court chief justice by only about 400 votes in 2020 when Trump narrowly carried the Tar Heel state. But Democrats hope that she’ll be able to boost turnout among rural Black voters who might not otherwise vote during a midterm election and that more moderate Republicans and independents will see Budd as too extreme. One of Beasley’s recent spots features a series of mostly White, gray-haired retired judges in suits endorsing her as “someone different” while attacking Budd as being a typical politician out for himself.

Budd is leaning into current inflation woes, specifically going after Biden in some ads that feature half-empty shopping carts, without even mentioning Beasley. Senate Leadership Fund is doing the work of trying to tie the Democrat to Washington – one recent spot almost makes her look like the incumbent in the race, superimposing her photo over an image of the US Capitol and displaying her face next to Biden’s. Both SLF and Budd are also targeting Beasley over her support for Democrats’ recently enacted health care, tax and climate bill. “Liberal politician Cheri Beasley is coming for you – and your wallet,” the narrator from one SLF ad intones, before later adding, “Beasley’s gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents.” (The new law increases funding for the IRS, including for audits. But Democrats and the Trump-appointed IRS commissioner have said the intention is to go after wealthy tax cheats, not the middle class.)

Incumbent: Democrat Maggie Hassan

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A lot has been made of GOP candidate quality this cycle. But there are few states where the difference between the nominee Republicans have and the one they’d hoped to have has altered these rankings quite as much as New Hampshire.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who lost a 2020 GOP bid for the state’s other Senate seat, won last month’s Republican primary to take on first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. The problem for him, though, is that he doesn’t have much money to wage that fight. Bolduc had raised a total of $579,000 through August 24 compared with Hassan’s $31.4 million. Senate Leadership Fund is on air in New Hampshire to boost the GOP nominee – attacking Hassan for voting with Biden and her support of her party’s health care, tax and climate package. But because super PACs get much less favorable TV advertising rates than candidates, those millions won’t go anywhere near as far as Hassan’s dollars will.

A year ago, Republicans were still optimistic that Gov. Chris Sununu would run for Senate, giving them a popular abortion rights-supporting nominee in a state that’s trended blue in recent federal elections. Bolduc told WMUR after his primary win that he’d vote against a national abortion ban. But ads from Hassan and Senate Majority PAC have seized on his suggestion in the same interview that the senator should “get over” the abortion issue. Republicans recognize that abortion is a salient factor in a state Biden carried by 7 points, but they also argue that the election – as Bolduc said to WMUR – will be about the economy and that Hassan is an unpopular and out-of-touch incumbent.

Hassan led Bolduc 49% to 41% among likely voters in a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. The incumbent has consolidated Democratic support, but only 83% of Republicans said they were with Bolduc, the survey found. Still, some of those Republicans, like those who said they were undecided, could come home to the GOP nominee as the general election gets closer, which means Bolduc has room to grow. He’ll need more than just Republicans to break his way, however, which is one reason he quickly pivoted on the key issue of whether the 2020 election was stolen days after he won the primary.

Incumbent: Republican Rob Portman (retiring)

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Ohio – a state that twice voted for Trump by 8 points – isn’t supposed to be on this list at No. 8, above Florida, which backed the former President by much narrower margins. But it’s at No. 8 for the second month in a row. Republican nominee J.D. Vance’s poor fundraising has forced Senate Leadership Fund to redirect millions from other races to Ohio to shore him up and attack Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee who had the airwaves to himself all summer. The 10-term congressman has been working to distance himself from his party in most of his ads, frequently mentioning that he “voted with Trump on trade” and criticizing the “defund the police” movement. Vance is finally on the air, trying to poke some holes in Ryan’s image.

But polling still shows a tight race with no clear leader. Ryan had an edge with independents in a recent Siena College/Spectrum News poll, which also showed that Vance – Trump’s pick for the nomination – has more work to do to consolidate GOP support after an ugly May primary. Assuming he makes up that support and late undecided voters break his way, Vance will likely hold the advantage in the end given the Buckeye State’s solidifying red lean.

Incumbent: Republican Marco Rubio

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Democrats face an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Marco Rubio in an increasingly red-trending state, which Trump carried by about 3 points in 2020 – nearly tripling his margin from four years earlier.

Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who easily won the party’s nomination in August, is a strong candidate who has even outraised the GOP incumbent, but not by enough to seriously jeopardize his advantage. She’s leaning into her background as the former Orlando police chief – it features prominently in her advertising, in which she repeatedly rejects the idea of defunding the police. Still, Rubio has tried to tie her to the “radical left” in Washington to undercut her own law enforcement background.

Incumbent: Democrat Michael Bennet

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Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is no stranger to tough races. In 2016, he only won reelection by 6 points against an underfunded GOP challenger whom the national party had abandoned. Given GOP fundraising challenges in some of their top races, the party hasn’t had the resources to seriously invest in the Centennial State this year.

But in his bid for a third full term, Bennet is up against a stronger challenger in businessman Joe O’Dea, who told CNN he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. His wife and daughter star in his ads as he tries to cut a more moderate profile and vows not to vote the party line in Washington.

Bennet, however, is attacking O’Dea for voting for a failed 2020 state ballot measure to ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy and arguing that whatever O’Dea says about supporting abortion rights, he’d give McConnell “the majority he needs” to pass a national abortion ban.

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October 4, 2022
Federal judge rules against Abrams-founded voting rights group in Georgia | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A federal judge ruled against a voting rights group founded by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams Friday in a challenge to the state’s voting laws.

US District Judge Steve Jones ruled against “Fair Fight Action” on claims over Georgia’s “exact match” voter registration policy, absentee ballot cancellation practices and registration inaccuracies.

“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the VRA (Voting Rights Act). As the Eleventh Circuit notes, federal courts are not “the arbiter[s] of disputes’ which arise in elections; it [is] not the federal court’s role to ‘oversee the administrative details of a local election,’” Jones wrote in the ruling.

Fair Fight filed the lawsuit just after the 2018 gubernatorial election and the case went to trial earlier this year. Fair Fight says this was the longest voting rights trial on the Eleventh Circuit.

“Despite the numerous and significant pro-voter developments that have already resulted from this case, we are nonetheless disappointed by the Court’s decision. In this moment of frustration, we also are here to remind the nation: Litigation is only one tool to fight against voter suppression,” Fair Fight Action Executive Director Cianti Stewart-Reid said in a statement.

“The Court’s ruling today is no doubt a significant loss for the voting rights community in Georgia and across the country. However, it does not undermine the tireless work that Fair Fight Action and our allies continue to undertake to support Georgia voters and mitigate the obstacles they face to make their voices heard at the ballot box.”

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who is running for reelection, accused Abrams of trying to make money off the suit and cast doubt on the electoral process. Kemp defeated Abrams in the 2018 governor’s race.

“Stacey Abrams and her organization lost in court – on all counts. From day one, Abrams has used this lawsuit to line her pockets, sow distrust in our democratic institutions, and build her own celebrity,” Kemp said in a statement.

“Judge Jones’ ruling exposes this legal effort for what it really is: a tool wielded by a politician hoping to wrongfully weaponize the legal system to further her own political goals. In Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat – and I’m going to continue working to keep it that way.”

Abrams said she will work to expand the right to vote if elected governor.

“As governor, I will expand the right to vote. I will defend minority voters, not bemoan their increased power or grow ‘frustrated’ by their success. This case demonstrates that the 2022 election will be a referendum on how our state treats its most marginalized voices,” Abrams said in a tweet.

The ruling follows President Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won the state by fewer than 12,000 votes out of some 5 million cast.

It also comes as Georgia prepares to vote in one of the marquee battles for the US Senate. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is running against former NFL star, Herschel Walker, a Republican, the outcome of which could determine which party controls the chamber next year.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called the ruling a win for elections officials, saying the state’s elections have always been “safe, secure, and accessible.”

“Stolen election and voter suppression claims by Stacey Abrams were nothing but poll-tested rhetoric not supported by facts and evidence,” Raffensperger said in a statement.

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October 3, 2022
Brazilians vote in contentious election plagued by violence and fear | CNN

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São Paulo, Brazil
CNN
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Polls opened in Brazil on Sunday in a presidential election marred by an unprecedented climate of tension and violence.

While there are nearly a dozen candidates on the ballot, the race has been dominated by two frontrunners and polar opposites: right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leader of the Workers’ Party.

Both have been seen on the campaign trail flanked by security and police, even wearing bulletproof vests at times. Bolsonaro wore his as he kicked off his re-election bid last month in the city of Juiz de Fora, where he was stabbed in the stomach during his 2018 presidential campaign. Da Silva, who is commonly referred to as Lula, was seen also wearing a vest during an event in Rio de Janeiro, the same city where a homemade stink bomb was launched into a large crowd of his supporters back in July.

After voting alongside his wife Rosangela da Silva at a Sao Paulo school on Sunday, Lula told reporters: “We don’t want more discord, we want a country that lives in peace. This is the most important election. I am really happy.”

He also referenced the 2018 elections, where he had been unable to run – or vote – because of a corruption conviction, which was overturned last year.

“Four years ago I couldn’t vote because I had been the victim of a lie in this country. And four years later, I’m here, voting with the recognition of my total freedom and with the possibility of being president of the republic of this country again, to try to make this country return to normality,” Lula said.

Bolsonaro, who voted at a military facility in Rio de Janeiro told reporters that he had traveled to “practically every state in Brazil” over the 45 days of campaigning.

“The expectation is of victory today,” he said, later adding: “Clean elections, no problem at all.”

Voting began at 8 a.m. in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET). More than 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.

In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting between the two frontrunners will take place on October 30.

Voters are also electing new state governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states and the federal district.

Bolsonaro, 67, is running for re-election under the conservative Liberal Party. He has campaigned to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$ 600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.

Often referred to as the “Trump of the Tropics,” Bolsonaro, who is supported by important evangelical leaders, is a highly polarizing figure. His government is known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists are warning that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.

Bolsonaro has also been widely criticized for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 686,000 people in Brazil have died from the virus.

Lula, 76, who was president for two consecutive terms, from 2003 to 2011, has focused his campaign on getting Bolsonaro out of office and has highlighted his past achievements throughout his campaign.

He left office with a 90% approval rating in 2011, and is largely credited for lifting millions of Brazilians from extreme poverty through the “Bolsa Familia” welfare program.

His campaign has promised a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.

Lula, however, is also no stranger to controversy. He was convicted for corruption and money laundering in 2017, on charges stemming from the wide-ranging “Operation Car Wash” investigation into the state-run oil company Petrobras. But after serving less than two years, a Supreme Court Justice annulled Lula’s conviction in March 2021, clearing the way for him to run for president for a sixth time.

Vote counting begins right after ballots, which are mostly electronic, close on Sunday.

Electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced Sunday evening. In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished.

Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates publicly accept the result.

Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”

On Saturday, he repeated claims that he will win in the first round of presidential elections “with a margin higher than 60%,” despite being 14 points behind in the most recent poll that day.

When asked on Sunday if he will accept the results of the election, Bolsonaro said, “If they are clean elections, no problem, may the best win.”

Both Bolsonaro and his conservative Liberal Party have claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.

There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.

The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”

Critics have warned that such talk could lead to outbreaks of violence or even refusal to accept the election result among some Brazilians – pointing to the January 6, 2021, riot incited by Trump after he lost the vote.

There have already been several reports of political discourse turning violent from supporters across the political spectrum.

Last weekend, police registered two fatal incidents in states on opposite ends of the country. In the northeastern state of Ceara, a man was stabbed to death in a bar after identifying himself as a Lula supporter, according to police. And authorities in southern Santa Catarina state say a man wearing a Bolsonaro T-shirt was also fatally stabbed during a violent discussion with a man whom witnesses identified as a Workers’ Party supporter.

Police say they are investigating both incidents, and that arrests have been made.

And in July, a member of Lula’s Worker’s Party, who was celebrating his 50th birthday with a politically-themed party was shot dead.

Just one day before, two explosives were thrown into a crowd at a Lula rally.

According to a Datafolha poll conducted in August, more than 67% of voters in Brazil are afraid of being “physically attacked” due to their political affiliations. And the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has issued a ban on firearms within 100 meters (330 feet) of any polling station on election day.

The fear factor among voters could lead to a number of abstentions on Sunday, however, recent polling shows that there are fewer undecided Brazilians this year than in previous elections.

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October 2, 2022
Tudor Dixon seeks a culture war in campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer | CNN Politics

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Tudor Dixon, the Republican taking on Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November’s midterm election, is turning to tactics that have worked for other Republican winners in competitive governor’s races as she seeks to turn the race into a cultural battle over education, transgender athletes and more.

But her clash with a well-funded Democratic incumbent governor – one taking place in a state where a referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution has emerged as a dominant issue – is showcasing the limits of those efforts at cultural appeals to the moderate, suburban voters who could decide the race’s outcome.

National Republicans have largely abandoned Dixon in the race’s closing weeks, leaving her outspent and floundering in one of the nation’s most important swing states.

Dixon sought to change the race’s trajectory on Saturday when former President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally in Warren with Dixon and other GOP candidates, including Matthew DePerno, who is challenging Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Kristina Karamo, who is taking on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Dixon, DePerno and Karamo have all parroted Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Trump called Whitmer “one of the most radical, most sinister governors in America,” criticizing her support for abortion rights and Michigan’s pandemic-related lockdowns.

The former President, echoing Dixon’s focus on cultural issues and education, called Dixon “a national leader in the battle to protect our children by getting race and gender ideology out of the classroom.”

Trump’s attack on Whitmer as “sinister” is the latest in a series of rhetorical escalations by the former President. On Friday, he said on his social media website Truth Social that the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, had a “death wish” after Congress approved stopgap funding to avert a government shutdown.

Dixon, meanwhile, spoke twice Saturday – once before Trump, and again when Trump invited her on stage. As she lambasted Whitmer, the crowd repeated a familiar Trump rally chant, this time directed at Whitmer rather than 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “Lock her up.”

“We’re not going to let our kids be radicalized. We’re not going to let our kids be sexualized. We’re not going to let our law enforcement be demonized. We’re not going to tell our businesses they can’t expand,” Dixon said.

Dixon, a conservative commentator and first-time candidate, emerged from a crowded primary after receiving the financial support of former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos’ family. The Michigan GOP megadonors funded a super PAC bolstering Dixon’s campaign. And Trump waded into the race in the closing days of the primary with a Dixon endorsement that came after a handwritten letter from DeVos urged him to back Dixon, as reported by The New York Times.

“The Dixon campaign is seeking to get its name ID up and MAGA base fully engaged to close the polling gap and that is what they hope to gain from a Trump rally in Macomb County,” said John Sellek, a Republican public relations adviser and head of Harbor Strategic Public Affairs in Lansing.

However, she has struggled to raise money and gain traction since her August primary victory.

Democrats on Saturday said Dixon’s comments at the Trump rally were an effort to distract from issues on which her positions are unpopular – particularly abortion rights.

“Tonight, Michiganders saw a schoolyard bully on stage – not a leader,” Michigan Democratic Party chairwoman Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Tudor Dixon hurled insults and rattled off a litany of grievances because she knows that her dangerous agenda to ban abortion and throw nurses in jail, dismantle public education, and slash funding for law enforcement is out-of-step.

“Michigan families deserve a real leader who will work with anyone to get things done, and Tudor Dixon has shown time and again she will continue to divide and pit people against each other if it means she and Betsy DeVos gain political power,” Barnes said.

Whitmer’s campaign and her supporters have dwarfed Dixon in television advertising spending – and Dixon’s campaign is currently off the air in Michigan, underscoring the reality that major Republican donors have shifted their focus to other races they view as more winnable.

Since the primary on August 2, Democrats have spent about $17.6 million on ads in the governor’s race, while Republicans have spent just $1.1 million, according to data from the firm AdImpact. And over the next month through election day, Democrats have $23.4 million booked while GOP has just $4.3 million booked.

Early voting is already underway in Michigan. And in the governor’s race, Whitmer is widely viewed as the favorite by nonpartisan analysts. The race is rated as one that “tilts Democratic” by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. The Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics director Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate it as “likely Democratic.”

“The battle has been fought on the Democrats’ terms with millions and millions of dollars, and there’s been essentially no effort to fight back,” Michigan-based Republican strategist John Yob said on the Michigan Information & Research Service Inc.’s “MIRS Monday” podcast this week. “On the Republican side, we’ve never faced this before. And, you know, it doesn’t look very good in terms of a way out unless some serious money gets on TV pretty quickly.”

The most dominant issue in the governor’s race has been abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Michigan’s Republican-led legislature has refused to change a 1931 law that would prohibit abortion in nearly all instances. Whitmer and other pro-abortion rights groups sued to block that law. And a Democratic-backed referendum that would amend Michigan’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights is on November’s ballot in the state.

Dixon, who opposes abortion except when necessary to protect the life of the mother, has struggled to redirect the race’s focus.

“You can vote for Gretchen Whitmer’s position without having to vote for Gretchen Whitmer again,” she told reporters last week, explaining that voters could support the referendum but oppose the incumbent governor.

In an effort to shift the contest’s focus, Dixon’s campaign has borrowed tactics from Republican governors who have won in battleground states in recent years.

For months, she has focused on parental control of schools’ curriculum, as well as school choice. It’s a message built on that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose 2021 victory was an early harbinger of a potentially favorable political landscape for the GOP in this year’s midterm elections.

“That’s why Gov. Youngkin’s message resonated,” Dixon said in an August interview on Fox News alongside Youngkin, who was campaigning in Michigan.

“He said, ‘I’m listening to you. I want parents involved. And I’m going to bring you back into the schools,’” Dixon said. “That’s what people want to hear right now.”

In her latest move to redefine the race, Dixon this week proposed two policies aimed at the LGBTQ community and schools.

In Lansing on Tuesday, Dixon proposed a policy modeled after the controversial measure Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

“This act will require school districts to ensure that their schools do not provide classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K through three, or in any manner that has not age- or developmentally appropriate,” Dixon told reporters, blasting what she called “radical sex and gender instruction.”

Florida’s HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education bill, passed earlier this year effectively bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for young students. LGBTQ advocates say the measure has led to further stigmatization of gay, lesbian and transgender children, causing more bullying and suicides within an already marginalized community.

Then, on Wednesday in Grand Rapids, she unveiled her proposal for a “Women’s Sports Fairness Act,” which would ban transgender girls from competing in sports with the gender they identify with.

“As a mother of four girls, nothing infuriates me more than the prospect of my daughters losing their friends and their teammates, losing opportunities in sports or otherwise, because some radically progressive politicians decided one day that they should have to compete against biological men,” she said. “Gretchen Whitmer has embraced the trans-supremacist ideology, which dictates that individuals who are born as men can be allowed to compete against our daughters.”

Whitmer’s campaign has largely ignored Dixon’s proposals, and did not respond to a request for comment on them. Instead, Whitmer has in recent days emphasized her economic message and her support for abortion rights.

Whitmer is leaning into policies enacted by Democrats in Washington in recent months, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in August.

Whitmer in September signed an executive directive capping insulin costs at $35 per month and out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare recipients.

And last week, Whitmer announced that student loan borrowers will not be taxed on the debt relief that Biden had ordered.

What has dominated media coverage of the race in recent days, though, are a series of jokes Dixon has made about the 2020 kidnapping plot against Whitmer.

A federal jury in August convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in 2020. They were also convicted of one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after prosecutors detailed their plans to blow up a bridge to prevent police from responding to the kidnapping of the governor. The men now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

“The sad thing is that Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head, and ask if you’re ready to talk,” Dixon said at an event last week in Troy alongside Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump White House aide. “For someone so worried about being kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom.”

After her comment drew backlash, Dixon joked again about the kidnapping plot at a second event Friday, this time with Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former President.

She told a crowd that, at a stop with President Joe Biden at the Detroit Auto Show last week, Whitmer looked like she’d “rather be kidnapped by the FBI.”

“Yeah, the media is like, ‘Oh my gosh, she did it again,’” Dixon said, anticipating the reaction to her second reference of the day to the 2020 kidnapping plot.

As she told the crowd that her earlier remarks about the plot to kidnap Whitmer had been characterized as a joke, Dixon said: “I’m like, ‘No, that wasn’t a joke.’ If you were afraid of that, you should know what it is to have your life ripped away from you.”

Whitmer’s campaign and Democratic groups condemned Dixon’s remarks Friday.

“Threats of violence and dangerous rhetoric undermine our democracy and discourage good people on both sides of the aisle at every level from entering public service,” Whitmer campaign spokesperson Maeve Coyle said in a statement.

“Governor Whitmer has faced serious threats to her safety and her life, and she is grateful to the law enforcement and prosecutors for their tireless work,” Coyle said. “Threats of violence – whether to Governor Whitmer or to candidates and elected officials on the other side of the aisle – are no laughing matter, and the fact that Tudor Dixon thinks it’s a joke shows that she is absolutely unfit to serve in public office.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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October 1, 2022
Government shutdown averted as Biden signs funding bill | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The House of Representatives voted on Friday to approve a stopgap bill to fund the government through December 16, averting a shutdown just hours ahead of a midnight deadline when funding was set to expire.

President Joe Biden signed the bill Friday afternoon. The Senate passed the measure on a bipartisan basis on Thursday.

Lawmakers had expressed confidence there wouldn’t be a shutdown, but it is typical of Congress in recent years to run right up against funding deadlines.

In part, that’s because the opposing parties find it easier to reach last-minute deals to stave off a shutdown under tight time pressure.

This time around, neither party wanted to be blamed for a shutdown – especially so close to the consequential November midterm elections where control of Congress is at stake and as Democrats and Republicans are both trying to make their case to voters that they should be in the majority. Lawmakers up for reelection are also eager to finish up work on Capitol Hill so they can return to their home states to campaign.

In addition to money to keep government agencies afloat, the short-term funding measure provides around $12 billion for Ukraine as it continues to counter Russia’s invasion of the country, and requires the Pentagon to report on how US dollars have been spent there. The aid to Ukraine is a bipartisan priority.

The continuing resolution also extends an expiring FDA user fee program for five years.

The $12 billion in additional funding for Ukraine provides money for the US to continue sending weapons to replenish US stocks that have been sent to the country over the past seven months during the ongoing conflict.

In order to continue providing Ukraine with weapons to counter Russia’s offensive, the bill allocates an additional $3 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This pot of money allows the US to procure and purchase weapons from industry and send them to the country, instead of drawing directly from US stockpiles of weapons.

The bill also authorizes an additional $3.7 billion in presidential drawdown authority funding, which allows the US to send weapons directly from US stockpiles, and $1.5 billion is included to “replenish US stocks of equipment” provided to Ukraine, a fact sheet from Senate Democrats about the bill states.

The bill designates $4.5 billion for the “economic support fund” to provide “support to maintain the operation of Ukraine’s national government,” the fact sheet states.

The US has provided Ukraine with significant economic and military support since Russia’s invasion of the country began in February, committing more than $16.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, since the Russian invasion began in February, a Department of Defense release stated on Wednesday.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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October 1, 2022
Bolsonaro or Lula? As Brazil prepares to vote, here’s what to know | CNN

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CNN
—

Brazil’s hotly contested presidential election is less than 24 hours away, and for many Brazilians, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Two household names – former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and current leader Jair Bolsonaro – are battling to become the country’s next president. Depending on who ultimately wins, Latin America’s largest economy will likely either continue on Bolsonaro’s conservative, pro-business path, or else take a left turn under Lula.

In recent weeks, both candidates have ramped up efforts to woo voters. But this is an arduous task in a country where 85% of voters say they have already made up their minds, according to a Datafolha poll released Thursday.

For Lula, more votes could mean victory in the first round of voting, with no need for a runoff. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro needs to catch up, after slipping 14 points behind his rival in the same survey.

Brazilians will vote for their next president on Sunday, October 2, in the first round of the elections. On the same date, governors, senators, federal and state deputies for the country’s 26 states plus the federal district will also be chosen.

Voting is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. local time in Brasilia (7 a.m. ET) and concludes at 5 p.m. local (4 p.m. ET).

In the Brazilian electoral system, a winning candidate must gain more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate crosses that threshold, a second round of voting will be organized, in which the options will be narrowed down to the two frontrunners from the first round.

In Brazil, opinion polls always estimate candidates’ potential performance in the first round (competing against with all other candidates) and in the second round (with just two top candidates).

Over 156 million Brazilians are eligible to vote.

Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the candidates to watch. Though other candidates are also in the race, they’re polling with one-digit percentages and are unlikely to pose much competition.

Lula, 76, was Brazil’s President for two terms – from 2003 to 2006 and 2007 to 2011. A household name, he first came into the political scene in the 1970s as a leader of worker strikes which defied the military regime.

In 1980, he was one of the founders of the Workers’ Party (PT), which went on to become Brazil’s main left-wing political force. Lula’s presidential terms were marked by programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequality in the country but also rocked by revelations of a corruption scheme involving the payment of congressional representatives to support government proposals. Due to lack of evidence of his involvement, Lula himself was never included in the investigation of this scheme.

Lula’s campaign for the presidency now promises a new tax regime that will allow for higher public spending. He has vowed to end hunger in the country, which has returned during the Bolsonaro government. Lula also promises to work to reduce carbon emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.

Bolsonaro is a former army captain who was a federal deputy for 27 years before running for President in 2018. A marginal figure in politics during much of this time, he emerged in the mid-2010s as a leading figure of a more radically right-wing movement, which perceived the PT as its main enemy.

As a President, Bolsonaro has pursued a conservative agenda, supported by important evangelical leaders. His government also became known for its support for ruthless exploitation of land in the Amazon, leading to record deforestation figures. Environmentalists have warned that the future of the rainforest could be at stake in this election.

In his program, Bolsonaro promises to increase mining, privatize public companies and generate more sustainable energy to bring down energy prices. He has vowed to continue paying a R$600 (roughly US$110) monthly benefit known as Auxilio Brasil.

Vote counting begins right after ballots (mostly electronic) close on Sunday.

Brazil’s electoral authorities say they expect final results from the first round to be officially announced that evening, on October 2. They will be published on the electoral court’s website.

In the last few elections, results were officially declared two to three hours after voting finished. If the leading candidate does not manage to muster more than half of all valid votes, a second round will take place on October 30.

Observers will be watching closely to see if all candidates accept the vote result publicly. Bolsonaro, who has been accused of firing up supporters with violent rhetoric, has sought to sow doubts about the result and said that the results should be considered suspicious if he doesn’t gain “at least 60%.”

Both he and his conservative Liberal Party claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud – an entirely unfounded allegation that has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump.

There have been no proven instances of voter fraud in the electronic ballot in Brazil.

The Supreme Electoral Court has also rejected claims of flaws in the system, as “false and untruthful, with no base in reality.”

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October 1, 2022
Here is the CNN polling director’s advice for reading polls | CNN Politics

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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

Anyone who spends time following American politics is bound to encounter reports about polling.

Done right, it can be valuable to figure out what’s motivating voters and which candidates are resonating. Done wrong, it’s misleading and counterproductive.

That’s why for this newsletter I end up talking a lot to Jennifer Agiesta, CNN’s director of polling and election analytics, about which surveys meet CNN’s standards and how I can use them correctly.

With the 2024 election just around the corner, it seemed like a good time to ask for her tips on what to look out for and avoid as the industry adapts to the changing ways Americans live and communicate. Our conversation, conducted by email, is below.

WOLF: My impression is that polling seemed to miss the rise of Donald Trump in 2016 and then missed the power of Democrats at the national level in 2022. What’s the truth?

AGIESTA: In both 2022 and 2016, I would say that polling – when you lump it all together – had a mixed track record. Methodologically sound polling – assessed separately from the whole slew of polls out there – did better.

In 2022 especially, many polls actually had an excellent year: National generic ballot polling on the House of Representatives from high-quality pollsters found a close race with a slight Republican edge, which is exactly what happened, and in state polls, those that were methodologically sound had a great track record in competitive races.

Our CNN state polls in five key Senate battlegrounds, for example, had an average error of less than a point when comparing our candidate estimates to the final vote tally, and across five contested gubernatorial races we had an average error of less than a point and a half.

But there were quite a few partisan-tinged polls that tilted some of the poll averages and perhaps skewed the story of what the “polls” were showing.

In 2016, you probably remember the big takeaway that the national polls were actually quite accurate and the bigger issues happened in state polling.

Some of that was because more methodologically sound work was happening at the national level, and many state polls were not adjusting (“weighting” is the survey research term for this type of adjustment) polls for the education level of their respondents.

Those with more formal education are more likely to take polls, and with an electorate newly divided by education in the Trump era, those polls that didn’t adjust for it tended to overrepresent those with college degrees who were less likely to back Donald Trump.

You add to that evidence of late shifts in the race and extremely close contests and a good amount of that polling in key states did not paint an accurate picture (the polling industry’s assessment of the 2016 issues is here). Most state polling now does adjust for education.

WOLF: How, generally, does CNN conduct its polling?

AGIESTA: CNN has recently made changes to the way we conduct our polling to be more in line with the way people communicate today, using several different methodologies depending on the type of work we’re doing.

A few times a year, we conduct surveys with 1,500 to 2,000 respondents who are sampled from a list of residential addresses in the United States. We initially contact those respondents through a mailing, which invites them to take the survey either online or by phone, depending on their preference and at their convenience, and then we follow up with an additional reminder mailing and some phone outreach to people in the sample who are members of groups that tend to be a bit harder to reach.

These polls stay in the field for almost a month. This process allows us to get higher response rates and to obtain a methodologically sound estimate of some baseline political measures for which there aren’t independent, national benchmarks such as partisanship and ideology.

We also conduct polling that samples from a panel of people who have signed up to take surveys, but who were initially recruited using scientific sampling methods, which helps to protect against some of the biases that can be present in panels where anyone can sign up.

Our panel-based polls can be conducted online, by phone or by text message depending on how quickly we’re trying to field and how complicated the subject matter is.

WOLF: What are the signs you look for in a good poll and what are some of the polling red flags?

AGIESTA: It can be really hard for people who aren’t well-versed in survey methodology to tell the difference between polls that are worth their attention and those that are not.

Pollsters are using many different methodologies to collect data, and there isn’t one right way to do a good poll.

But there are a few key indicators to look for, with the first being transparency. If you can’t find information about the basics of a poll – who paid for it, what questions were asked (the full wording, not just the short description someone put in a graphic), how surveys were collected, how many people were surveyed, etc. – then chances are it’s not a very good poll.

Most reputable pollsters will gladly share that kind of information, and it’s a pretty standard practice within the industry to do so.

Second, consider the source, much as you would with any other piece of information.

Gallup and Pew, for example, are known for their methodological expertise and long histories of independent, thoughtful research. Chances are pretty good that most anything they release is going to be based in solid science.

Likewise, most academic survey centers and many pollsters from independent media are taking the right steps to be methodologically sound.

But a pollster with no track record and fuzzy details on methodology, I’d probably pass.

I would also say to take campaign polling with a grain of salt. Campaigns generally only release polls when it serves their interest, so I’d be wary of those numbers.

In the same vein, market research that’s publicly released that seems to prove the need for a specific product or service – a mattress company releasing a poll that says Americans aren’t getting great sleep, for example – maybe don’t take that one too seriously either.

WOLF: The coming primary season offers its own set of challenges because there are polls focused on specific early contest states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Do you have any advice regarding these early contest polls in particular?

AGIESTA: Polling primary electorates is notoriously difficult. It’s more difficult to identify likely voters, because they tend to be fairly low turnout contests, the rules on who can and can’t participate are different from state to state, and the quality of voter lists that pollsters may use for sampling varies by state.

On top of that, as the election gets closer, the field of candidates and the contours of the race may change just before a contest happens – remember how the Democratic field shrank dramatically in the two days between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday in 2020 as an example.

So when you’re looking at primary polling, it is very important to remember that polls are snapshots in time and not necessarily great predictors of future events.

WOLF: Most of what general consumers like me want to see from a poll is which candidate is ahead. But I’ve heard you caution against focusing on the horse-race aspect of polling. Why?

AGIESTA: There are several reasons for that caution.

First is that polling of any kind has an error margin due to sampling. Even the most accurate poll has the possibility of some noise built into it because any sample will not be a perfect measure of the larger pool it’s drawn from.

Because of that, any race that’s closer than something like a 5-point margin will mostly just look like a close race in polls.

The value of polling in that situation is twofold: What it can tell you about why a race is close or what advantages each candidate has, and once you have multiple polls with similar methodologies, you can start to get a sense of how a race is trending.

Polling is great for measuring which issues are more important to voters, how enthusiastic different segments of the electorate are, and what people think about the candidates in terms of their personal traits or job performance. Those measures can tell you a lot about the state of a race that you can’t get solely from a horse-race measure.

WOLF: What is the best way to track who is ahead or behind in an election?

AGIESTA: When you’re looking at trends over time, there are a few tactics that can help to make sense of disparate data.

The best option is following the trend line within a single poll. If a pollster maintains the same methodology, the way a race moves or doesn’t in that poll’s trend line can tell you a lot about how it’s shaping up.

That is sometimes hard to find though, as not every pollster conducts multiple surveys of the same race.

Another good way to measure change over time is to lean on an average of polls, though, as we learned in 2022, those averages can vary pretty widely depending on how they’re handling things like multiple polls from the same pollster or whether they are including polls with a partisan lean.

WOLF: I don’t have a landline and I don’t answer my phone for strange numbers. What makes us think polling is reaching a wide enough range of people?

AGIESTA: Many polls these days are conducted using methods other than phone.

Looking over the 13 different pollsters who released surveys that meet CNN’s standards for reporting in May or June on Joe Biden’s approval rating, only six conducted their surveys entirely by phone. And those phone pollsters are calling far more cellphones than landlines.

The most important thing for any poll, regardless of how it’s conducted, is that it reaches people who are representative of those who are not answering the poll, and so far, it appears that right mix is achievable through multiple possible methodologies.

WOLF: Are there specific groups of people that pollsters acknowledge they have trouble reaching? What is being done to fix it?

AGIESTA: There are several demographic groups that pollsters know are frequently harder to reach than others – younger people, those with less formal education, Black and Hispanic Americans are among the most notable – and the prevailing theory of why 2020 election polling went awry is that some Republicans were less likely to participate in surveys than others.

Pollsters have several techniques to combat this.

Some pollsters who draw on online panels where they know the demographic and political traits of people who might participate in advance will account for this in their sampling plans.

Phone pollsters can do something similar when they use a sample drawn from a voter list that has some of that information connected to a voter’s contact information.

And if a pollster really wants to dig deep on a hard-to-reach group, they can conduct an oversample to intentionally reach a larger number of people from that group to improve the statistical power of their estimates within that group.

WOLF: What is the next big challenge facing pollsters?

AGIESTA: Well, the next election is always a good contender for the next big challenge for pollsters!

But I think the big challenge looming over all of that is making sure that we’re finding the right ways to reach people and keep them engaged in research. The industry’s leaders are thinking through the right ways to use tools such as text messaging, social media and AI while still producing representative, replicable work.

Elections are the attention-grabbing part of survey research, but pollsters measure attitudes and behaviors around so many parts of everyday life that our understanding of society would really suffer if survey methods fail to keep up with the way people communicate. I’m excited to see it continue to evolve.

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April 12, 2021
Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

Former top national security officials have testified to a federal grand jury that they repeatedly told former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, CNN has learned.

Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security secretary, and his former deputy Ken Cuccinelli were asked about discussions inside the administration around DHS seizing voting machines when they appeared before the grand jury earlier this year, according to three people familiar with the proceedings. Cuccinelli testified that he “made clear at all times” that DHS did not have the authority to take such a step, one of the sources said.

Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, in a closed-door interview with federal prosecutors earlier this year, also recounted conversations about seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, including during a heated Oval Office meeting that Trump participated in, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Details about the secret grand jury testimony and O’Brien’s interview, neither of which have been previously reported, illustrate how special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutors are looking at the various ways Trump tried to overturn his electoral loss despite some of his top officials advising him against the ideas.

Now some of those same officials, including Wolf, Cuccinelli and O’Brien, as well as others who have so far refused to testify, may have to return to the grand jury in Washington, DC, to provide additional testimony after a series of pivotal court rulings that were revealed in recent weeks rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

Cuccinelli was spotted going back into the grand jury on Tuesday, April 4.

Without that privilege shield, former officials must answer questions about their interactions and conversations with the former president, including what he was told about the lack of evidence for election fraud and the legal remedies he could pursue.

That line of questioning goes to the heart of Smith’s challenge in any criminal case he might bring – to prove that Trump and his allies pursued their efforts despite knowing their fraud claims were false or their gambits weren’t lawful. To bring any potential criminal charges, prosecutors would have to overcome Trump’s public claim that he believed then and now that fraud really did cost him the election.

“There’s lots of ways you can show that. But certainly one of them is if they were told by people who knew what they were talking about, that that there was no basis to take the actions,” said Adav Noti, an election law attorney who previously served in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, and at the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office.

“I would not want to be a defense lawyer trying to argue, ‘Well, yes, my client was told that, but he never really believed it,’” Noti said.

Inside the Trump White House after the 2020 election, the push to seize voting machines eventually led to executive orders being drafted in mid-December of that year, directing the military and DHS to carry out the task despite Wolf and Cuccinelli telling Trump and his allies their agency did not have the authority to do so.

Those orders, which cited debunked claims about voting system irregularities in Michigan and Georgia, were presented to Trump by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-lawyer Sidney Powell during a now-infamous Oval Office meeting on December 18.

Smith’s team has asked witnesses about that meeting in front of the grand jury and during closed-door interviews, multiple sources told CNN. Among them was O’Brien, who told the January 6 House select committee that he was patched into the December 18 meeting by phone after it had already devolved into a screaming match between Flynn, Powell and White House lawyers, according to a transcript of O’Brien’s deposition that was released by the panel.

O’Brien told the committee that at some point someone asked him if there was evidence of election fraud or foreign interference in the voting machines. “And I said, ‘No, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it,” O’Brien said he responded. “I was told we didn’t have any evidence of any voter machine fraud in the 2020 election.”

When asked about that meeting by federal prosecutors working for Smith, O’Brien reiterated that he made clear there was no evidence of foreign interference affecting voting machines, according to the source familiar with the matter.

O’Brien met with prosecutors earlier this year after receiving a subpoena from Smith’s team and is among the Trump officials who could be called back to discuss conversations with Trump under the judge’s recent decision on executive privilege.

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who personally told allies of the former president that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud that would justify taking extreme steps like seizing voting machines, must also testify, the judge decided.

A spokesperson for Ratcliffe did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Wolf declined to comment.

Cuccinelli acknowledged to the January 6 committee last year that, after the election, he was asked several times by Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani, and on at least one occasion by Trump himself, if DHS had authority to seize voting machines. Wolf told the committee he was repeatedly asked the same question by then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Giuliani, who was subpoenaed by the Justice Department before Smith took over the investigation, previously acknowledged to the January 6 committee that he participated in that December 18 Oval Office meeting and other conversations about having DHS and the military seize voting machines.

Giuliani told congressional investigators that he and his team “tried many different ways to see if we could get the machines seized,” including options involving DHS, according to the transcript of his committee interview. Giuliani also acknowledged taking part in conversations – even before the Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting – where the idea of using the military to seize voting machines was raised.

“I can remember the issue of the military coming up much earlier and constantly saying, ‘Will you forget about it, please? Just shut up. You want to go to jail? Just shut up. We’re not using the military,’” he added.

Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, told CNN that Giuliani has not received a subpoena from Smith. Costello said that in early November, Giuliani was subpoenaed by the DC US Attorney seeking documents and testimony. Costello says he told the Justice Department Giuliani couldn’t comply with the given deadlines because they were in the middle of disciplinary proceedings at the time. That was the last time Giuliani heard from DOJ, says Costello.

“I haven’t heard a word since November 2022,” Costello told CNN on March 30.

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April 12, 2021
Texas Republicans pass bills targeting elections administration in Houston-area county | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

Texas Republicans have approved a pair of bills targeting the elections process in Harris County, the state’s largest and home to Houston, with voting rights activists accusing the GOP of plotting a “power grab” in an increasingly Democratic county.

The measures, which passed the Republican-controlled state House and Senate, now head to the desk of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.

On Sunday, lawmakers passed legislation known as SB 1933 that would authorize the office of the Texas secretary of state – an Abbott appointee – to “order administrative oversight” of a county elections office if, for instance, a complaint is filed or there’s cause to believe there’s a recurring pattern of problems involving election administration or voter registration. The measure would affect any county that has a population of more than 4 million people – Harris County is the only county in the state that meets that criterion.

Last week, the state House passed a measure along party lines that would eliminate the position of elections administrator in a county with a population of more than 3.5 million people – which, again, would only apply to Harris County. Under that bill, known as SB 1750, the elections administrator’s duties would be transferred to the county tax assessor-collector and county clerk. The Harris County elections administrator, a position created in 2020, is appointed by the county’s election commission, which is Democratic-controlled. The county’s tax assessor-collector and clerk are both Democrats. The measure had passed the state Senate earlier this month. If signed, the law would go into effect on September 1.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, said last week that the county would sue the state over the two bills, which he called “clearly unconstitutional.”

“(Our) state’s constitution bars lawmakers from passing laws that target one specific city or county, putting their personal vendettas over what’s best for Texans,” Menefee said in a statement.

While Republicans have long had a stronghold on Texas, Harris County has leaned more Democratic in recent years. President Joe Biden won the county by double digits in 2020. And Democrat Beto O’Rourke won the county in November’s governor’s race, while losing statewide by double digits to Abbott.

Harris County experienced election problems last year that caused the county’s former elections administrator, Isabel Longoria, to resign amid a mail-in ballot counting discrepancy during the March primary. The problems included damaged ballots that delayed the reporting of results and a vote discrepancy that left thousands of ballots out of the unofficial primary results. The county also experienced issues during the general election, paper ballot shortages, machine malfunctions and delays in opening polling places.

“Voters should have confidence in their elections, and when they see Harris County Elections Administrators botch election after election in 2022 that confidence is shaken,” Houston-area state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who authored both bills, said last month.

Bettencourt has defended his legislation, saying in a statement that SB 1933 would “ensure the failures, or the fiasco of the general election never occurs again with the Texas Secretary of State oversight of the election process, if necessary.”

But James Slattery, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal advocacy group, said the bills would “open the door for the Governor and his allies to manipulate elections in the nation’s third largest county for their own partisan gain.”

“It is the latest power grab by state officials in a Session dominated by efforts to centralize power and gut the right of local communities to govern themselves,” he said in a statement.

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April 12, 2021
Fact check: After getting target letter in 2020 election probe, Trump tells another election lie | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

On Tuesday morning, former President Donald Trump announced he had received a target letter, an indication he could soon be indicted, in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation into Trump’s lie-filled effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

On Tuesday night, Trump went out of his way to tell another election lie.

At a town hall event in Iowa, Fox host Sean Hannity gently suggested that Trump, now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, should embrace early voting, mail-in voting and legal “ballot harvesting,” which is known less pejoratively as ballot collection.

Hear what Trump advisers are telling him to do in order to avoid jail time

Trump said he would do so, but he refused to offer an unequivocal endorsement. Instead, he added the kind of false claim he deployed in 2020.

“I do,” he said of supporting the methods Hannity mentioned, “but I also have to say something else, ‘cause the one thing a lot of people, including you, don’t talk about: they also create phony ballots, and that’s a real problem. That’s my opinion. They create a lot of phony ballots.”

Trump didn’t say who “they” were, but his claim is pure fiction.

There was a tiny smattering of voter fraud in the 2020 election that was not even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state. While a minuscule number of people – some of them Trump supporters – voted illegally by doing such things as sending in a ballot for a deceased relative, voting twice or voting while prohibited because of a felony record, there was no sign that anyone created “a lot of phony ballots” in this election or any other recent federal election.

David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, called Trump’s claim “100% false.” Becker said in a message to CNN on Wednesday: “All ballots have a variety of security measures that make it nearly impossible for anyone to simply print them up and have them counted.”

Hear what ex-prosecutor thinks will happen next to Trump

“Even if someone attempting fraud could produce an exact duplicate of a type of the hundreds of thousands of different ballot types in any national election, which is very unlikely, the ballot would still need to be returned by a registered voter who hadn’t otherwise voted, and the signature and/or driver’s license number would have to match what is on file,” Becker said

“I talk to election officials all the time, all over the country, Rs and Ds, and in my 25 years working in this space I don’t recall hearing of any effort to create phony ballots in ANY election. It would be about the dumbest crime one could commit – zero chance it works and close to 100% chance you get caught and go to prison.”

Trump previously delivered wild conspiratorial claims about unnamed people having supposedly “dumped” phony Biden votes into the 2020 totals in the middle of the night. Those stories, too, were wholly imaginary. Biden’s position improved late on Election Night in some states simply because ballots from legal mail-in voters and legal urban voters, both of which tended to favor Democrats, were counted as normal.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a CNN request on Tuesday night to explain what Trump was talking about this time.

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April 12, 2021
How strong is Trump? He’s beating Republican rivals in their home states | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

Do you know who is polling third in the 2024 Republican race for president? That may feel like an odd question given that the two leading candidates, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are the only ones averaging over 5% nationally.

The answer, though, is former Vice President Mike Pence and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, both tied at just 4%.

More worrisome for Haley, who is taking part in a CNN town hall Sunday evening, and other candidates polling outside the top two is the seeming nationalization of the GOP primary process this year. We’re seeing that reflected in state polling, including in the early voting and declared candidates’ home states: All largely show a significant advantage for Trump.

Presidential primaries, unlike general elections, don’t occur on the same day. They’re sequential, with outsize importance given to the states that vote first. This is why you see Republican candidates flocking to Iowa (for its caucuses) and New Hampshire (for the first-in-the-nation primary).

In recent years, national polling leaders at this point in the primary season who would go on to lose their party nominations did so in part because they lost the Iowa caucuses. That happened to the two candidates with the largest national leads: Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Clinton, each in 2008.

Both were clearly in trouble in Iowa at this point in the cycle. In fact, neither led their side’s contests in Des Moines Register polling from May 2007.

This year, we’re not seeing such a disconnect between national and early-state polling – at least not yet. The top two candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire surveys released to the public have been Trump and DeSantis. A University of New Hampshire poll taken in mid-April, for example, had Trump at 42% and DeSantis at 22%. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is expected to announce his 2024 plans this week, was in third place at 12%.

Let’s focus closer on that Sununu datapoint. A few years ago, I noted that one of the better ways to predict whether a candidate trailing in national and early-state polls could surprise people is by examining how they were doing in their home states.

At this point in the 2016 cycle, Sen. Bernie Sanders was already leading in the Vermont Democratic primary, despite Hillary Clinton’s sizable national edge. On the other hand, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s lack of any polling strength in his home state made me dismiss him as a contender.

Home-state polling is a crucial early indicator of a candidate’s strength. Voters there know these candidates best. If you can’t break out where the voters already know you, how can you break out in states where voters are just getting to know you?

Sununu doesn’t need to worry about name recognition in the Granite State. The same is true for Haley in South Carolina, where she used to be governor. South Carolina also happens to be the third state on the 2024 GOP nominating calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire.

The most recent poll from South Carolina that meets CNN’s standards for publication put Trump well out in front. The Winthrop University survey, completed in early April, had Trump at 41%, DeSantis at 20% and Haley at 18%. Her fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott, came in at 7%. More recent data hints at Haley dropping a little and Scott climbing up in the weeks since, though Trump is still way ahead.

It’s quite possible Trump keeps his lead and knocks Haley out of the race with a victory in the South Carolina primary. Remember, he did something similar in 2016, when he ended Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential bid by beating him in Florida.

Of course, you can spot where Trump is vulnerable, if you look hard enough.

For example, in Florida, DeSantis and Trump have been trading leads in polling this year.

And you can make the case that these early-state polls overall suggest that Trump is a bit weaker than the national numbers might indicate. On average, he’s polling in the low-to-mid-40s in the early states versus in the mid-50s nationally. In other words, a majority of voters in the early states are going for someone other than Trump, which isn’t true at the national level.

Can you imagine how devastating losing in New Hampshire or South Carolina – or both – would be for Trump? It would puncture a large hole in the idea that his nomination is inevitable.

For the moment, though, that scenario seems like a fantasy. Trump may be showing some weakness in the early-voting states but not close to the same degree as national front-runners who lost in years past.

Trump can be beat. It’s just going to be really tough.

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April 12, 2021
Voting rights advocates in the South emboldened by Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

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CNN
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With a sense of relief that the conservative Supreme Court did not use a major Alabama redistricting case to further gut the Voting Rights Act, civil rights advocates and election attorneys are preparing for a new flood of redistricting litigation lawsuits challenging political maps – especially in the South – they say discriminate against minorities.

In the 5-4 case decided Thursday, Alabama must now draw a second majority-Black US congressional district after Republicans were sued by African American voters over a redistricting plan for the 27% percent Black state that made White voters the majority in six of the seven districts.

The six White majority districts are represented by Republicans; the Black majority district is represented by a Democrat.

“I don’t think it’s going to stop Republicans from drawing racist maps,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause, told CNN. “But I think that this empowers those of us pushing back and fighting that.”

The majority opinion – written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by the court’s three liberals and, in most parts, by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – effectively maintained the status quo around how courts should approach Voting Rights Act lawsuits that allege a legislative map discriminates by race.

By letting old precedent around the Voting Rights Act to stand in the case, called Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court has likely emboldened voting rights advocates to bring cases they previously thought would have been doomed.

Several election law attorneys and voting rights advocates have suggested to CNN they believe the decision could have a ripple effect across the South, in states like Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas where cases claiming Section 2 violations are already working through the courts.

According to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights media platform that tracks election litigation, there are 31 active federal cases involving Voting Rights Act redistricting claims similar to those in the Alabama case.

“I suspect that there are a number of states with lawyers who were considering filing a lawsuit similar to the Milligan lawsuit, but they held off because the prospects of how everyone thought Milligan would go were so dim. But now, you’re going to have a whole range of suits filed,” said Alabama voting rights attorney J.S. “Chris” Christie, who filed one of the two lawsuits that were before the justices in the Milligan case.

“Some of those will win, and some of them won’t. All redistricting suits are not the same,” Christie said, noting that Kavanaugh did not join an important part of Roberts’ opinion, depriving that section of a majority.

Still, he said, “Lawyers who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged and are going to pursue those cases aggressively, knowing that the Voting Rights Act precedents are there.”

The ruling was a shock. The right-leaning high court, sometimes in decisions penned by Roberts himself, had been on a spree of landmark rulings over the last several years that had whittled down the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And in the flurry of emergency litigation last year ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court repeatedly put on hold lower court rulings – including in the Alabama case – that would have ordered the redrawing of political maps ahead of last year’s elections, helping Republicans to narrowly reclaim the US House.

That meant that, at least in Alabama, the election was carried out under a redistricting plan that the Supreme Court has now affirmed to be likely unlawful.

“The fact remains that the Supreme Court previously allowed the same map that they just determined unconstitutionally, and systemically diluted Black votes be used in the 2022 election,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement.

In Alabama, lower courts said early last year that the state’s congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Black voting power. The courts ordered it redrawn in a way that was expected to produce a second majority-Black district, which would have shifted the partisan makeup of the state’s congressional delegation from 6-1 to 5-2.

But, in February 2022, the Supreme Court put those decisions on hold until the justices could hear and decide the case themselves.

At the heart of the dispute in the Alabama case was the way that, under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, race was used to determine if a map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting procedures “not equally open to participation by members” of a protected class, like racial minorities. Alabama was putting forward an argument for a supposedly “race-blind” approach to VRA redistricting compliance, that if endorsed, would have defanged the provision.

Already, the Supreme Court led by Roberts had gutted a separate provision of the VRA that required certain jurisdictions (including Alabama and other states in the South) with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies to get federal approval for the maps that they drew.

The Supreme Court’s emergency move last year to allow the Republican-drawn Alabama map to stay in place had cascading effects in lawsuits across the country.

Some cases, like a challenge brought to Alabama’s state legislative redistricting plan, were put on hold.

In a Georgia case that concerned both the congressional and state legislative redistricting plans, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in at least some of the districts they were challenging, but he declined to grant the preliminary injunction, in part citing the Supreme Court’s emergency order.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also froze a lower court order in a legal challenge brought against Louisiana’s congressional map that made similar arguments as the Milligan case, as Louisiana legislators had drawn just one majority-Black district of the six districts in the 33% percent Black state.

The justices paused the case, where a federal judge was preparing to redraw the Louisiana map if the Republican lawmakers refused to do so, and said they were taking up the lawsuit but putting it on hold until the Milligan case was decided.

Now the challengers’ lawyers in that case are anticipating that the Supreme Court will send it back to lower courts, where they were poised to prevail under the approach to VRA redistricting cases that the justices have now left undisturbed.

Cases in Texas, Mississippi and elsewhere that inched ahead while the Milligan case was pending will go to trial without the threat that the challengers would need to prove their case under a drastically different Section 2 standard.

“If anything, we no longer need to make adjustments that we had potentially been preparing for because the state of the law remains unchanged,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Sarah Chen, whose group is involved in several challenges to Texas maps, including a lawsuit over Galveston County’s redistricting plan.

“The Supreme Court did not endorse the radical changes proposed by Alabama in their arguments, the same changes that are also endorsed by opposing counsel in this Galveston redistricting matter,” Chen added.

While challenges to statewide maps are what get the most national attention, the ruling’s effect on how the VRA is applied to local races like county commission elections and school board seats “is really going to impact voters’ everyday lives,” according to Christie, the Alabama voting rights attorney, who said that Thursday’s opinion will be “huge” in a newly filed challenge to a county commission map in the state.

“Attorneys who file these types of lawsuits are going to be encouraged to pursue these cases knowing that the VRA precedent is there,” he said.

Even before they get into a courtroom, voting rights advocates see the Milligan ruling as valuable for discouraging state and local map drawers from diminishing the political power of communities of color, as it squelched expectations that the Supreme Court was about to make VRA challenges more difficult to bring.

“I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court opinion but it remains the commitment of the Secretary of State’s Office to comply with all applicable election laws,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the Alabama case, said in a statement after the ruling.

In North Carolina, voting rights advocates had been reeling from a major defeat with the state Supreme Court recently ruling that North Carolina courts couldn’t police partisan gerrymandering. (Litigation over the state’s congressional plan is also before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that does not concern the Voting Rights Act). They are finding a silver lining in that, thanks to Thursday’s ruling, the GOP legislators will be redrawing North Carolina’s political maps knowing Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters remain in force.

“We would hope that they would really take this decision to heart that they would make a genuine good faith effort to comply with Section 2,” said Hilary Harris Klein, the senior counsel for voting rights with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Thursday’s ruling, said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “puts state legislatures and local redistricting bodies on notice that the Voting Rights Act is here to stay and if they deny communities of color the representation they deserve, that they will face lawsuits.”

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April 12, 2021
How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The Republican response to Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment offers a clear test of the famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.

The choice by Republican leaders, and even almost all of his 2024 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to unreservedly defend Trump after he was indicted earlier this year by the Manhattan district attorney helped the former president to widen his lead in primary polls. The roar of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump’s grip on the party after frustration over his role in the GOP’s disappointing 2022 midterm elections had loosened it.

But since last week’s disclosure that Trump faces another criminal indictment – this one federal, over his handling of highly classified documents – the party leadership and 2024 field has almost entirely replicated that deferential approach.

Repeating the pattern from other moments of maximum threat to Trump, the GOP response has been marked by a pronounced communications imbalance. From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump’s supporters have loudly supported his claims that he is being persecuted by the left.

Simultaneously, with only a few conspicuous exceptions like second-tier presidential contenders Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the most Trump’s critics in the party have been willing to do is remain silent and not validate his vitriolic charges. Apart from those two former governors, just a short list of prominent Republicans – including former Trump administration senior officials William Barr and John Bolton, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune – have pushed back at all against Trump’s claim that he is being hunted by “lunatic,” “deranged” and “Marxist” prosecutors, or publicly expressed misgivings about the underlying behavior detailed in the federal indictment against him.

Christie reveals the exact moment he broke with Trump

By refusing to confront Trump or his enraged defenders more directly, the Republicans who want the party to move beyond him in 2024 may be stitching their own straitjacket. The nearly indivisible GOP defense of Trump has once again created a situation in which a controversy that is weakening Trump with the broader electorate is strengthening his position inside the GOP coalition.

Perhaps not surprisingly, multiple public polls show that most voters outside the Republican base are worried Trump jeopardized national security and dubious that anyone convicted of a serious crime should serve again as president. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this spring, roughly three-fourths of independents, people of color, and voters under 45, as well as four-fifths of college-educated Whites, said they did not want Trump to be president again if he’s convicted of any crime. (The poll was conducted after Trump’s indictment in Manhattan but before the recent federal charges.)

In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted partially after last week’s indictment, a solid 57% majority of Americans – including around three-fifths of college-educated Whites and voters under 30 and nearly that many independents – said he should not serve as president if he’s convicted specifically in the classified documents case. More than two-thirds of Americans overall said his handling of classified documents had created a national security risk.

Yet those same surveys also show that the vast majority of Republican voters say they do not believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying – even if he’s convicted – and accept his claim that he’s the victim of unfair treatment. (In the Marist survey, more than three-fifths of Republicans said they would welcome a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of a crime.) That, too, may be unsurprising given the paucity of conservative elected officials or media figures that those voters trust telling them otherwise.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)

“If you stay in the party it’s either you have to be supporting Trump or face the consequences,” says Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York University. “You could be even running against him, but you have to adhere to the party line: the weaponization by the deep state. That’s the sad and dangerous part among many dangers we face. Even those people are stuck within this narrative world and this party line and their targets are the same as Trump’s.”

Trump’s latest round of legal jeopardy leaves the Republicans who are hesitant about him – either because they consider him unfit to serve as president or simply because they believe he is too damaged to win a general election – in the same position as his critics since 2015: hoping that his supporters will somehow move away from him, but unwilling to do almost anything overt to encourage them.

“They keep indulging the fantasy. … They don’t ever have to do anything and a deus ex machina is going to do this by itself,” says long-time conservative strategist Bill Kristol, who has emerged as one of Trump’s most dogged GOP critics.

Some Republicans say it’s possible this time will be different and the sheer weight of legal proceedings mounting against Trump – which could include further charges over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election from special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis – could cause what some call “indictment fatigue” among GOP voters.

“I think there’s a schizophrenia that exists in this,” says Dave Wilson, a prominent social conservative and Republican activist in South Carolina. “You have people who say that no government should be used to weaponize against any one of us, much less a [former] president. At the same they are beleaguered about the same headlines again and again and again about indictments.”

Likewise, Craig Robinson, former political director for the Iowa Republican Party, agrees that given the prospect of cascading court appearances through the election year, “Donald Trump is asking a lot of the Republican voter to endure.”

But many other Trump critics inside the GOP fear that the chorus of support for him from party leaders and his 2024 rivals has set in motion a dynamic where denying him the nomination now could appear to some GOP voters as “rewarding” the Democrats, or the “deep state,” or President Joe Biden, or whoever they believe is persecuting him. “He will win the nomination with the message that they have weaponized the justice system against Republicans, against conservatives,” predicts former New Hampshire GOP chairperson Jennifer Horn, now a staunch Trump critic.

Trump has quickly made clear that he will stress that argument against any and all criminal claims converging against him. When he appeared for the first time after this latest indictment, at the Georgia GOP convention on Saturday, he argued that the “deep state” was targeting him because it recognized that he was the only 2024 candidate strong enough to stand up to it on behalf of Republican voters. “Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we, we, are the only ones who are going to be able to stop them,” he declared. At another point Trump insisted, “These criminals cannot be rewarded” – presumably by frightening Republican voters away from nominating him.

Such arguments from Trump show how his 2024 rivals, by mostly endorsing his claims, have voluntarily reduced themselves to the chorus in his drama. So long as the dominant story in red America is the claim that Democrats are unfairly targeting Trump, it may be difficult for the other candidates even to sustain attention in the Republican race.

“They’ve made themselves just sub-characters in the plot,” says Horn. “Every time they do this they make him the hero. So they are out there asking people to vote for them for president, even though they are saying Donald Trump is the real hero in this scenario. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Robinson largely agrees. Trump’s multiple indictments, he says, “might be a good opportunity for” for the former president’s 2024 rivals because some voters, even if they consider the allegations unfair, will “also think ‘I don’t want the next 12-18 months to be’” dominated by those controversies. Yet, Robinson believes, by echoing Trump’s claims of unfair treatment, the other candidates are encouraging Republican voters to accept his framing of the race. “If you believe the whole thing is corrupt and needs to be torn down and rebuilt, isn’t he the best one to do that?” says Robinson, adding that among many GOP voters, “There’s this sense that he’s the only one who can fight that fight.”

Kristol points out that other Republicans with a plausible chance of winning the nomination could distance themselves from Trump without fully endorsing the charges against him. “They can’t sound like me, they can’t sound like Asa Hutchison,” Kristol acknowledges. But he adds, other Republican candidates could respond to this indictment (and any potential subsequent ones) by expressing faith in the legal system to find the truth and saying something like: “‘I think Donald Trump did a good job, but this is bad, and when you can combine this with the ’22 results, we need a different nominee.” It’s an ominous measure of the party’s transformation into Trump’s personal vehicle, Kristol says, that they feel they “can’t even do that and instead want to attack Biden.”

It remains possible that Trump’s rivals or other GOP leaders could make a more explicit case against him as the race proceeds, or more possible indictments land. Comments on Monday from Thune and presidential contender Nikki Haley – who criticized Trump’s handling of the documents after initially attacking the indictment – suggest a window may be cracking open for greater GOP dissent. But the hesitation inside the party about fully confronting Trump remains palpable. At his campaign announcement last week, for instance, former Vice President Mike Pence said more explicitly than ever before that Trump’s behavior on January 6, 2021, rendered him unfit to serve as president again. But Pence immediately undercut that message by declaring in a CNN town hall later that day that he would “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” which very well could be Trump, even though Pence said he doubted it would be. What started as a challenge to him instead became another measure of Trump’s dominance – a shift underscored when Pence joined the chorus condemning the federal indictment.

Because Ben-Ghiat sees the GOP taking on more of the characteristics of other “authoritarian parties” in thrall to strongman leaders, she’s skeptical the legal challenges converging around Trump will undermine his hold on the party. But, she says, the experience of other countries shows that imposing legal consequences for the misdeeds of authoritarian-minded leaders is nonetheless critical to fortifying democracy.

There may be no proof of wrongdoing that can move large numbers of voters in Trump’s coalition, she says, but for everyone else in society, “it is very important to show that the rule of law can hold, that our institutions can do things, that democracy can work.”

Ben-Ghiat likens the multiple legal proceedings around Trump to the “truth commissions” established in countries such as South Africa and Chile that cataloged and documented the misdeeds of autocratic governments. “In the short run,” she says, the threat to US democracy “may get worse before it gets better” as Trump, echoed by most of the GOP leadership and conservative media, portrays any accountability for him as a conspiracy against his followers.

“But in the long run,” she says, establishing the evidence of any misconduct or criminal behavior through indictments, testimony and trials “that everyone can read is very, very important.” For anyone concerned about upholding the rule of law, Ben-Ghiat says, the choice by so many Republican leaders to preemptively dismiss any allegation against Trump “is just more proof of how important these procedures are.”

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April 12, 2021
US Supreme Court faces ‘outright defiance’ from Alabama | CNN Politics

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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
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It was a legitimate surprise when the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court ordered Alabama’s conservative-dominated state government last month to redraw its congressional map and include either a second majority-Black congressional district or something quite close to it.

It may be equally surprising that Alabama appears to have said no.

Instead of simply complying with the Supreme Court’s order in the Allen v. Milligan case, Alabama’s legislature redrew the congressional map to lower the Black voting-age population in the existing Democratic seat held by Rep. Terri Sewell from about 55% to just over 50% and then increased a second district’s Black population percentage to about 40%.

The new map approved by Alabama’s legislature and governor will go before federal courts for review in August, so this story is far from over.

And it will combine with fights over congressional maps in other states, especially New York, in such a way that control of the House could very much be at stake.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, seemed to defend the legislature’s insolence in the face of the federal courts’ orders when it approved the new map Friday.

“The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.

CNN’s Dianne Gallagher noted in her report that the old congressional map was invalidated by a three-judge federal district court panel that included two judges nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump.

They concluded the plan by which Alabamians selected their congressional delegation in 2022 likely violated the Voting Rights Act because Black voters have “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”

Before the 2022 midterm election, the US Supreme Court had tabled action on Alabama’s map, which helped Republicans win the barely there four-seat House majority they currently hold.

Gallagher and CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote last month that the Allen v. Milligan decision could have consequences for other states and reignite a series of lawsuits in multiple states.

“Outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s order,” is how Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, described the new map to CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.

“In this moment, it is up to our federal courts to protect Black voters and also to protect their own authority here,” she later added.

The background here is that Alabama’s population is about 27% Black, but the Black population in the state is focused on a number of counties that are overwhelmingly African American – an area known as the state’s Black Belt, although it is named for the area’s fertile soil. The interest of giving the voters of the Black Belt, many of whom are Black, representation in Congress, is all over the Supreme Court’s decision.

Coincidentally, earlier this year, President Joe Biden named Alabama’s Black Belt, site of many key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, as a National Heritage Area.

To Nelson, the math suggests that since Black Alabamians represent about a quarter of the state’s population, they should get representation from more than one of the seven lawmakers representing Alabama in Congress.

But the issue is larger than simple math since Alabama, both historically and currently, is marked by polarized voting conditions.

“This is a mandate by civil rights laws to make sure that there’s fairness in our systems, that Black voters and other voters who have been historically discriminated against have an opportunity to have representatives who will speak to their interests and give voice to their concerns,” she said.

Alabama had asked the Supreme Court to essentially nullify Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, something many court watchers thought the conservative majority was primed to execute.

But Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined liberals on the court to throw out the Alabama map.

The Supreme Court also rejected out of hand the idea that the Gulf Coast area represents a community of interest on par with the Black Belt. The new map, according to the state attorney general’s office, still tries to keep the Gulf Coast community together in a single district.

In a statement, the attorney general’s office argued the new map is fair and complies with the principles of the Voting Rights Act and seeks to unite the Black Belt counties.

The other political story here is that, like most congressional districts nationwide, not one of the districts in which Alabamians voted in the 2022 midterm elections was even relatively competitive. The only winning candidate who got less than two-thirds of the vote was the Democrat, Sewell. And she still got more than 63% of the heavily Democratic district.

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April 12, 2021
The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why. | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Rarely have the tectonic plates of American politics collided as visibly and explosively as they did earlier this month in Tennessee.

The procession of predominantly middle-aged or older White Republicans who rose almost two weeks ago in the Tennessee House of Representatives to castigate, and then expel, two young Black Democrats crystallized the overlapping generational and racial confrontation that underpins the competition between the political parties.

The Republican vote to expel those Black Democratic representatives, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, encapsulated in a single moment the struggle for control over America’s direction between the nation’s increasingly diverse younger generations and its mostly White older cohorts. While kids of color now comprise just over half of all Americans younger than 18, Whites still constitute about three-fourths of the nation’s seniors, according to Census data analyzed by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Metro.

That stark division – what Frey terms “the cultural generation gap” and I’ve called the competition between “the brown and the gray” – has become a central fault line in the nation’s politics. Particularly in the Donald Trump era, the Republican coalition has grown increasingly reliant on older Whites, while younger people of color are evolving into a critical component of the Democratic voting base.

The priorities and values of these two giant cohorts often clash most explosively in red states across the South and Southwest, like Tennessee, where Republicans now control state government. In those states, Republicans are moving aggressively to lock into law the policy preferences of their older, predominantly White and largely non-urban and Christian electoral coalition. That agenda often collides directly with the views of younger generations on issues including abortion, LGBTQ rights, limits on classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation, book bans, and gun control.

Across the red states, the conditions are coalescing for years of escalating conflict between these divergent generations. From one direction, the Republicans controlling these states are applying increasingly hardball tactics to advance their policy agenda and entrench their electoral advantage. That strategy includes severe gerrymanders that dilute the influence of urban areas where younger voters often congregate, laws that create obstacles to registering and voting, and extreme legislative maneuvers such as the vote to expel Pearson and Jones. What Republicans in Tennessee and other red states “are trying to do is minimize the voices – minimize the sound, minimize the protest, and continue to oppress folks who do not agree,” says Antonio Arellano, vice president for communications at NextGen America, a group that organizes young people for liberal causes.

From the other direction, the youngest Millennials and first representatives of Generation Z moving into elected office are throwing themselves more forcefully against these GOP fortifications – just as Jones and Pearson have done. These young, elected officials have been shaped by the past decade of heightened public protests, many of them led by young people, particularly around gun safety, climate change, and racial equity. And more of them are bringing that ethos of direct action into the political arena – as Jones and Pearson did by leading a gun control protest on the floor of the Tennessee legislature. “This generation of politicians have been socialized through the crucible of Black Lives Matter and the [Donald] Trump era and political polarization,” says Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who studies race and politics. “So it’s not surprising that they are usually going to be confrontational.”

In the red states, this rising wave of urgency and militancy among younger progressives is crashing headlong into the fortifications Republicans are erecting to solidify their control. Even with the ardor evident from Jones, Pearson and their supporters in Tennessee, most observers agree it will be very difficult any time soon for “the brown” to loosen the grip of “the gray” over political power in almost any of the red states. “In the short term there isn’t a risk” to the GOP’s hold on the red states, said Gillespie, “which is why you see these legislators flexing their power in the way they are.” And that could be a recipe for more tension in those places as the diverse younger generations constitute a growing share of the workforce and tax base, yet find their preferences systematically denied in the decisions of their state governments.

Like many analysts, Melissa Deckman, chief executive officer of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, predicts that “what we saw in Tennessee was the first salvo” of escalating conflict as older white conservatives, especially in the red states, resist the demands for greater influence from the emerging younger generations. “An overwhelmingly White conservative legislature taking this remarkable and drastic step of expelling the two young African-Americans,” she says, “is a taste of what we are going to see in the future driven by those demographic changes.”

Those demographic changes are rooted in the generational transition rumbling through American life. Though the tipping point has drawn little attention, Frey has calculated that a majority of the nation’s population has now been born after 1980. And those younger generations are kaleidoscopically more diverse than their older counterparts.

The change is most visible on race. Because the US essentially shut off immigration between 1924 and 1965, nearly three-fourths of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are White, as are more than three-fourths of the remaining seniors from the older generations before them, according to Frey’s figures. By contrast, Frey has calculated, people of color comprise well over two-fifths of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), just under half of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and slightly more than half the youngest generation born since 2012. That youngest generation (sometimes called Generation Alpha) will be the first in American history in which racial “minorities” constitute the majority.

The transition extends to other dimensions of personal identity. The Public Religion Research Institute has calculated that while just 17% of Americans aged 65 or older and 20% of those aged 50-64 do not identify with any organized religion, the share of those “seculars” rises to 32% among those aged 30-49 and 38% among adults 18-29. In turn, while White Christians constitute about half of all adults aged 50-64 and three-fifths of seniors, they comprise only about one-third of those aged 30-49 and only one-fourth of the youngest adults.

Gender identity and sexual orientation follow the same tracks. Gallup has found that while less than 3% of baby boomers and only 4% of Generation X (born 1965-1980) identify as LGBTQ, that figure jumps to nearly 11% among Millennials and fully 21% among Generation Z. In all these ways, says Deckman, who is writing a book on Gen Z, “you have a younger group of Americans who are more diverse, less religious, care passionately about the rights of marginalized groups, and are watching rights taken away that they thought would always be there.”

Though the pace and intensity varies, these changes are affecting all corners of the country. Even in states where the GOP has consistently controlled most state offices such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, the share of adults younger than 45 who are unaffiliated with any religion now equals or exceeds the share who are White Christians, according to detailed results PRRI provided to CNN. By contrast, in those states’ over-45 population, White Christians are at least twice, and often three times, as large a share of the population as seculars.

Frey has found that in every state the youth population 18 and younger is now more racially diverse than the senior population 65 and older. From 2010 to 2020, in fact, every state except Utah and North Dakota (as well as Washington, DC) saw a decline in their total population of White kids younger than 18. Kids of color now comprise a majority of the youth population in 14 states and at least 40% in another dozen, Frey has found.

States on that list include many of the places where Republicans have been most forcefully imposing a staunchly conservative social agenda. Kids of color already represent about half or more of the youth population in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona and about two-fifths or more in several others, including Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. In many of those states the share of seniors who are White is at least 20 percentage points higher than the share of young people.

A similarly large “cultural generation gap” is also evident in many blue states, including Nevada, California, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota. The difference is that in states where Democrats are in control, the diverse younger generations are, however imperfectly, included in the political coalition setting state policy. Political analysts in both parties – from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson to Democratic strategist Terrance Woodbury – point out that Democrats have their own problems with younger voters, who have never been enthusiastic about President Joe Biden, and are expressing disappointment that the party hasn’t made more progress on issues they care about. But in blue states the direction of policy on most key social issues, such as abortion, gun control and LGBTQ rights, aligns with the dominant views among younger generations. And in most blue states, Democrats have prioritized increasing youth turnout and, in many cases, reformed state election laws to ease registration and voting.

But in the red states, younger voters, especially younger voters of color, are largely excluded from the ruling Republican coalitions, which revolve preponderantly around Whites, especially those who are older, Christian, non-college and non-urban. In 2022, for instance, 80% of younger non-white voters (aged 45 or less) voted against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, 65% voted against GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, and 55% opposed Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, according to exit poll results provided by Edison Research. Yet all three men won decisive reelections, in large part because each carried about seven-in-ten or more of Whites older than 45.

In some ways, the generational tug of war between the brown and the gray symbolized by the Tennessee expulsions represents the classic collision between an irresistible force and an immovable object. In this case, the irresistible force is the growth in the electorate of the diverse younger generations. In 2020, for the first time, Millennials and Generation Z constituted as large a share of eligible voters nationwide as did the Baby Boom and its elders – though those older generations, because they turned out at much higher rates, still represented a larger percentage of actual voters. In 2024, Frey has projected, Millennials and Gen Z will comprise a significantly larger share of eligible voters than the boomers and their elders – enough that they will likely equal them as a share of actual voters. Already in several states, kids of color comprise a majority of those who turn 18 each year and become eligible to vote; Frey projects that will be true for the nation overall by 2024.

The immovable object is the GOP control over the red states. That’s partly because of the changes in electoral rules Republicans have imposed that create obstacles to registration or voting, but also because of their dominance among older Whites and their inroads into culturally conservative Latino voters in some of these states, particularly Texas and Florida.

Another challenge for Democrats is that youth turnout is often lowest in red states. Though youth turnout also lagged in some blue states including New York and Rhode Island, in an analysis released earlier this month the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University found that red states comprised all nine states where the smallest share of eligible adults aged 18-29 cast a ballot; Tennessee ranked the lowest of the states for which CIRCLE has data. Red states also have erected many of the most overt obstacles to youth participation. Eight Republican-controlled states, including Tennessee, Texas and recently Idaho, have sent a clearly discouraging signal to young voters by declaring that student IDs cannot be used as identification under state voter ID laws. A Texas Republican state legislator this year has proposed banning polling places on college campuses.

Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director, says that in both blue and red states, laws and social customs act in reinforcing ways to either promote or discourage youth voting. “The infrastructure and the state laws” in states that encourage youth voting like Michigan, Oregon and Colorado “create a stronger culture of engagement,” she said. “Because more people are voting, it is more of a norm, people are talking about it more, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” In states with pronounced barriers to voting, she notes, an opposite cycle of disengagement can take hold.

The unlikelihood of overcoming the GOP’s red state electoral defenses in the near term will probably encourage more younger progressives to emphasize public protests, like the raucous rally for gun control that began the Tennessee confrontation, predicts Nse Ufot, who formerly led the New Georgia Project launched by Stacey Abrams.

“The young people in Tennessee … went to their legislators and said enough, and they had accountable, accessible leaders who heard what their demands were and took it to their colleagues and their colleagues didn’t like it,” says Ufot, who has now founded the New South Super PAC, designed to elect progressive candidates in the 11 states of the old confederacy.

Ufot uses a striking analogy to express her expectation of how this struggle will unfold in the coming years across the red states. Her mother, she explained, ran a shelter for battered women, and even as a young girl, she came to recognize “that the most dangerous time for victims of abuse is when they are preparing to leave, when they have made up their minds that they are done and they are making their exits. That when we see their abusers escalate to crazy tactics.”

Ufot sees the Tennessee expulsions, like the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Trump’s broader effort to overturn the 2020 result, as evidence that those “who are afraid of what a diverse, reflective, democracy looks like” will likewise turn to more extreme responses as the challenge to their position grows more acute. But she also sees the movement that erupted around Pearson and Jones as a preview of how younger generations may resist that offensive. “Instead of responding with resignation like people who have come before them, [the two expelled representatives] have chosen to do something about it,” she said. “And that’s what happens when you are forged in the fire of protest and are accountable to the people [you represent].”

As the Republicans now running the red states race to the right, and younger generations lean harder on direct protest, more forging fires across this contested terrain appear inevitable.

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April 12, 2021
Plaintiffs in high-profile redistricting case urge judges to toss out Alabama’s controversial congressional map | CNN Politics

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Civil rights groups representing plaintiffs in a high-profile congressional redistricting case are urging a federal court in Alabama to reject a controversial new map crafted by the Republican-dominated legislature, saying it perpetuates a violation of the nation’s landmark voting rights law.

In a late-night court filing Friday, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and multiple attorneys asked a three-judge panel to direct an official to devise a new map that complies with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The plaintiffs in the case said legislators who drew and approved the maps didn’t comply with a court mandate to create a second congressional district where Black voters have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.

Instead, they argued, lawmakers were “focused on pleasing national leaders whose objective is to maintain the Republican Party’s slim majority in the US House.”

State officials, who have defended the map as fair, have until August 4 to respond to the new filings.

The dispute has drawn national attention after critics accused Alabama legislators of openly defying the US Supreme Court and its directive to give Black voters more political power in the state.

And the outcome of the legal battle in Alabama – along with court skirmishes in several other states over congressional redistricting – could help determine whether Republicans retain their slim majority in the House after next year’s elections.

In this case, the Republican supermajority in the Alabama legislature approved a new map on July 21, weeks after the US Supreme Court said that an existing map – with just one majority-Black congressional district out of seven in a state where Black residents make up 27% of the population – likely violated the decades-old federal voting law by diluting the voting power of Black residents. The high court, by a 5-4 majority, affirmed a lower court decision that had ordered the state to redraw the congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

But the map approved this month and signed into law by Alabama’s GOP Gov. Kay Ivey instead boosted the share of Black voters in the majority-White 2nd Congressional District from roughly 30% to nearly 40%. It also reduced the Black voting-age population in the state’s only majority-Black district to around 50% from about 55%.

Voting rights experts say the state has a history of racially polarized voting, making it harder for candidates favored by Black voters to win in a district where Black residents account for less than 50% of the voting-age population.

“The new CD2 … does not provide Black voters a realistic opportunity to election their preferred candidate in any but the most extreme situations,” the plaintiffs argued in the new filings.

In Alabama, most Black voters have supported Democrats. If the federal judges approve a map with a second majority-Black district, that could result in two Democrats representing the state in the House.

House Republicans hold just a narrow edge on Democrats, and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Alabama case has given Democrats fresh optimism that their side will prevail in legal fights aimed at increasing the share of Black voters in congressional districts in Louisiana, Georgia and several other states.

In a sign of the high political stakes, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has weighed in on the debate and told reporters that he spoke to Alabama lawmakers as they met for the special session to redraw the map to comply with the court order.

The Justice Department filed a so-called “statement of interest” on Friday but did not side with any party in the dispute. The agency outlined factors the judges should consider in its analysis and called on the court to impose its own map if it determines that the one drawn by lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act.

A court hearing on objections to the legislature’s map is set for August 14.

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April 12, 2021