<The Georgia State Election Board passed a rule Monday giving local election officials additional power to investigate ballot counts before certifying the results, a move critics say could inject chaos into the 2024 election and delay the state’s official vote count.

The “Rule for Reconciliation Prior to Certification” will allow for a hand recount of votes to ensure “the total number of ballots cast” does not exceed “the total number of persons who voted,” according to the language of the rule.

County election officials will now be allowed to investigate any possible discrepancies.

The vote was carried 3 to 2 by the five-member board.

The proposal was submitted by Salleigh Grubbs, the chair of the Cobb County Republicans, who told CNN she believes her county’s 2020 presidential election results were inaccurate without any providing any direct evidence for her claims. She denies that the rule is about trying to delay certification of the 2024 results.

“[W]e have to have assurance, as Georgians, that what we see printed on our ballot is exactly how the balance and the only way to do that is by a handwritten affiliation on the precinct level,” Grubbs said in support of the rule, during the public comment portion of the hearing.

The rule would provide a guardrail to ensure that for each one person there will only be one vote, Grubbs said.

The rule change comes amid intense scrutiny of three Republican state election board members whom critics believe are making it easier to contest the election results if former President Donald Trump once again comes up short in Georgia.

The board’s sole Democratic appointee, Sarah Tindall Ghazal, and the board’s chairman, John Fervier, voted against the rule change. Tindall Ghazal was particularly vocal about her legal concerns.

“Nothing about this changes the absolute mandatory duty to certify at the county level, seven days, six days after the election, and nobody should, should have any mistake,” she said.

The voting rights group Fair Fight claims if the rule is applied by a potentially partisan county election official, then all of Georgia’s vote count may be thrown into chaos this November statewide, potentially creating a domino effect to certifying the 2024 election nationwide.

“Trump and the MAGA operation are using the Georgia State Election Board to give the appearance of legality to their illegal scheme to obstruct certification of Georgia’s 2024 election results. Georgians, we’ll have to turn out in huge numbers to ensure their expected claims of fraud ring hollow,” Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight CEO, told CNN in a statement.

Last week, during an interview with CNN-affiliate WSB, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, voiced concern with the actions of the state election board. He has previously called the board “a mess.”

“Now the State Election Board wants to take us back in time. I guess what they want is to see is elections take until 3 a.m. like in Detroit, Michigan. We don’t want to do that in Georgia. Not on my watch,” Raffensperger said.

“What are we doing here? Today is the first day counties are accepting absentee ballot [requests]. We can’t be making these changes at the last minute. This is exactly what undermines confidence in elections,” Tindall Ghazal said.

Meanwhile, those like Grubbs who are backing the rules changes ahead of November claim they are doing so to protect the integrity of the election.

“If there is a discrepancy found, that can be noted in certification,” Grubbs told CNN.  “There’s not intent to delay certification, she said.

Responding to those claims, Tindall Ghazal asked her own question in return.

“If it were about protecting election integrity, why weren’t these rules proposed a year ago or six months ago? Counties would have had time to prepare. It is already August, and we are talking about making rules changes,” she said. “There are legality issues here and timing issues.”

“A lot of the attacks I’m hearing is centered around the idea that this particular rule, or some of these rules that were being presented, are being presented based off of us chasing some ghosts that didn’t exist, or some conspiracy theory, some hypothetical,” GOP board member Janelle King said during Monday’s board meeting. “I just want to make sure I note that several times it’s been notated that there were issues that took place in the election cycles, particularly 2020.”....>

<....Last week, Georgia’s State Election Board also approved a new rule saying that counties will now have the opportunity for a “reasonable inquiry” to ensure tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate before local election officials certify the results.

Certification is the official confirmation of voting results. It is a mandatory part of the voting process as a final check to verify the results with the secretary of state’s office.

State AG says he can’t be ordered to do another 2020 election investigation Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, said the State Election Board cannot direct his office to reinvestigate the 2020 presidential election, according to an official opinion issued Monday.

“The authority to investigate potential violations of the election laws rests with the SEB and not with the Attorney General. This Office is not required to conduct an investigation on its own or with outside personnel at the direction of a client agency,” Carr wrote.

The opinion from the Republican attorney general is the most prominent legal pushback the board has faced since it asked for yet another investigation of 2020 and advanced a series of measures that could be used to contest the results of the 2024 presidential election.

In a 3-2 vote earlier this month, the Trump-backed members of the election board voted to ask Carr to launch an investigation into the 2020 recount. Republicans claim that roughly 3,000 ballots were double counted in the heavily Democratic county.

An investigation by the Secretary of State’s office determined the thousands of ballots were likely double-scanned but couldn’t determine if they were counted twice. If the ballots had been double-counted, it would not have impacted the final result.

The State Election Board already reprimanded Fulton County over the issue and ordered an independent election monitor.>

<The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state's registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.

Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from voting in person or by mail.

Although Congress made it easier for Americans to register to vote, those federal rules cannot override "the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections," they said in an emergency appeal filed Aug. 9.

The fast-track appeal may signal whether the conservative court is ready to intervene in partisan election disputes. The Arizona Republicans asked for a decision by Thursday because counties will soon begin to print ballots.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the appeal should be rejected.

"There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting. The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona's voters is undemocratic," he said in a statement.

Many of the affected voters are "service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering," Fontes added.

On Friday, Biden administration lawyers also urged the court to turn down the appeal. "Thousands of voters have already registered to vote by filing the federal form without accompanying documentary proof of citizenship," said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. "Judicial intervention at this stage would produce unnecessary confusion and chaos on the cusp of an election."

Arizona is one of the handful of battleground states that could decide who wins the White House. In 2020, President Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.

Last week, the secretary of state's office said 41,128 registered voters in Arizona could be affected by the court's ruling, although some of them are considered "inactive" because they did not vote in the most recent elections.

At issue is a long-running dispute in Arizona over whether voters must furnish proof of their citizenship when they register to vote.

In 1993, Congress sought to make it easier to register to vote. The National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the "motor voter" law, allowed prospective voters to fill out a form to register and sign a sworn statement that they were U.S. citizens.

But in 2004, Arizona required newly registered voters to provide "documentary proof of citizenship."

The ACLU and civil rights advocates sued to challenge that requirement. They cited estimates that more than 13 million Americans lacked access to a birth certificate or other such documents.

They won in the lower courts, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the federal motor voter law preempted or overrode the state's law.

Justice Antonin Scalia spoke for the 7-2 majority and said the federal law requires states to "accept and use" the standard federal form in federal elections....>

<....In response, Arizona adopted a two-track system of voter registrations. To vote in state and local elections, new registrants were required to show proof of their citizenship with a driver's license or a birth certificate.

Those who registered through the federal form were allowed to vote only in federal elections. They are referred to as "federal only" voters. The state later agreed in a 2018 consent decree to give full registration to new voters whose residence and citizenship could be confirmed through its motor vehicles department data base.

But two years ago, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a new law that prohibits registered voters who do not provide proof of their citizenship from voting by mail or in a presidential election.

The Justice Department sued to challenge the laws.

After a 10-day trial, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix blocked enforcement of the new proof-of-citizenship requirement, citing the federal motor voter law and the state consent decree. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order Aug. 1.

A week later, the RNC joined by the two GOP leaders of the Arizona Legislature urged the Supreme Court to set aside Bolton's ruling to the extent that it would "allow voters who have not provided documentary proof of citizenship to cast ballots for president or by mail."

They also argued that a federal judge should not be allowed to make a late change in the state's election rules.

Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who worked on the case, said she found that argument to be surprising.

"They are trying to upend the law as it has been in Arizona at least since 2018," she said. "The voters who registered using the federal form were not asked to provide proof of citizenship."

She said the Republican lawmakers and their attorneys who brought the case "didn't cite a single example of a noncitizen who was enrolled. Not one. Why would someone who is not a citizen try to register? It's a felony and would get you deported, just to cast one ballot.">

<The Republican National Committee has moved to intervene in a new federal lawsuit that alleges county election boards throughout Georgia have illegally removed roughly 1,000 voters from voter registration rolls at the behest of election denial activists, Rolling Stone and American Doom have learned. Many of the voters removed from the rolls are homeless, the lawsuit alleges.

The involvement of the RNC - where the former president installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair - is another concerning sign that the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are interfering in Georgia elections less than 90 days from the presidential election, according to voting rights advocates and Democrats. The RNC's motion to intervene in the lawsuit comes after the new MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board passed a rule allowing county election officials to arbitrarily deny certification of results. On Monday, the State Election Board passed another rule giving even more power to local election officials to refuse to certify results.

At least 19 election deniers sit on county election boards throughout Georgia, Rolling Stone and American Doom have previously found. In some of those counties, election denial activists have filed mass challenges to voters they say should be removed from voter rules. Those challenges alleged that voters had changed addresses but illegally remained on voter rolls. Many of those challenges were "based on unvetted documentation and unreliable information provided by private citizens, such as screenshots of purported property records or social media posts," says the New Georgia Project and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, which filed the lawsuit on July 31.

"The New Georgia Project was built for these fights, and we understand our assignment," the organization says in a statement. "The vote is sacred in a representative democracy, and we will mortgage every asset we have to defend it."

The group is suing the State Election Board, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), and six counties for "repeated, unlawful removal of eligible voters." The suit also targets a state law, SB 189, which allows for mass voter challenges and "further enables these types of unlawful voter removals," according to the group.

In its lawsuit, the New Georgia Project asks a federal judge to declare that the State Election Board, Raffensperger, and the counties violated the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) in removing roughly 1,000 voters since 2022 from Georgia voter rolls.

The RNC filed its motion to intervene in the lawsuit on Friday, noting that it successfully intervened in a previous New Georgia Project lawsuit against Raffensperger, and that the Republican Party has a clear interest "in protecting their candidates, voters, and resources from plaintiffs' attempt to invalidate Georgia's duly enacted election rules. The RNC, in conjunction with the Georgia Republican Party, argues that the parties should be allowed to intervene in the case because their "interests could be irreparably harmed by an order overriding Georgia's election rules and undermining the integrity of Georgia's elections."

Throwing out the challenges would "divert resources from other mission-critical activities, such as voter-turnout and voter-registration efforts, to counteract the injunction against list-maintenance procedures," the RNC and Georgia GOP said in their filing.

This isn't the first time that the RNC and the state party have been intimately involved with Georgia election matters. In July, the parties provided talking points to a pro-Trump member of the State Election Board on a rule that allows for more poll watchers to oversee elections, American Doom found. In emails obtained following a last-minute meeting that the State Election Board is being sued over, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon provided the talking points to Rick Jeffares, a pro-Trump member of the board and one of three Republican board members praised by name by Donald Trump at his Aug. 3 Atlanta rally. Included in those emails was Josh Helton, chief of "election integrity" operations for the RNC.

"New Georgia Project should be applauded for stepping up to fight back against Senate Bill 189, which is a disastrous piece of legislation that targets unhoused voters and makes it easier for private citizens to challenge the eligibility of their fellow Georgians," said Aria Branch of the Elias Law Group. Branch has represented the New Georgia Project in past litigation.

"As we have seen in other states, the RNC's motion to intervene in this case exposes their 2024 strategy: They want right-wing activists to be able to create chaos and disenfranchise lawful voters by overwhelming election officials with last-minute mass challenges in multiple battleground states," she said.....>

<....Now, the RNC argues that throwing out the mass voter challenges that have been brought by election denial activists across the state would "result in more ineligible voters remaining on the rolls."

The New Georgia Project says those challenges violated the NVRA in a variety of ways, including that some of the challenges occurred within 90 days of the March presidential preference primary. The NVRA prohibits voters from being removed from lists of eligible voters within 90 days of an election. The Chatham County board of elections removed "numerous" voters at its January 24, 2024 meeting - ahead of the presidential primary on March 12 and within the 90-day window of the NVRA.

Similarly, Forsyth County removed 900 voters from rolls at a series of election board meetings, one of which occurred just seven days before the March 12 presidential primary, the lawsuit contends. Gwinnett County, where the election deniers David Hancock and Alice O'Lenick serve on the county election board, is accused in the lawsuit of "immediately removing" 50 voters without giving the voters an opportunity to prove their eligibility. Macon-Bibb County removed 45 voters who the New Georgia Project says may have been unhoused because they listed a post office or UPS store as their home address, according to the lawsuit.

There, the chair of the Macon-Bibb County GOP used software created by an election denier backed by Cleta Mitchell's Election Integrity Network to challenge voters' eligibility. According to ProPublica, the Election Integrity Network was also behind the rule passed Monday by the State Election Board that gives local election officials more power to refuse to certify results.

Spalding County, where an election denier serves as election supervisor and two deniers serve on the board, is accused of immediately removing 94 voters from rolls without giving those voters the opportunity to respond to the eligibility challenges. Since 2020, the county has been a hotbed of election denier activity, as Rolling Stone previously reported. Now, Rolling Stone and American Doom have learned from a source in Spalding County that some voter challenges in the county have come "off-the-books" in private conversations between election denial activists and board members.

The county supervisor, Kim Slaughter, is a Trump supporter who has expressed doubt in the results of the 2020 election. The board's chair, Ben Johnson, is a QAnon adherent who believes in election lies, primarily unfounded conspiracies about voting machines. (Johnson's company also contracts with the county on IT work, giving him an unknown level of access to voting machines and other election equipment.) Another board member, Roy McClain, is a full-throated election denier who refused to certify results in 2023.

While Fulton County has not recently kicked voters off the rolls, the county is included in the lawsuit because of its large homeless population and concerns that challenges could be made there, counteracting voter registration programs for the unhoused that are carried out by the New Georgia Project and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute.

The groups say in their lawsuit that SB 189, a voter suppression law passed earlier this year, wrongfully "forces unhoused voters without a permanent address to use their county registrar's office as their mailing address for election purposes." The lawsuit notes that homeless voters "will be unable to obtain their election mail due to the unlawful mailing address restriction" required by SB 189.

"It's not surprising that the GOP is defending the use of mass voter purges by far-right election denier activists," said Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of the left-leaning voting rights group, Fair Fight. "Even though mass voter purges date back to Jim Crow, the modern day GOP's focus is still voter suppression at all costs. From advancing a record number of voter suppression laws since 2020 to attempts here in Georgia, and elsewhere, to interfere in election certification - it seems MAGA is going all out to help Trump win, even if he can't earn a majority of Americans' votes.">

<Not only did Sen. J.D. Vance's (R-OH) team refuse to provide a Washington Post analyst with more information about legislation he repeatedly claims to have introduced, they wouldn't even give her the number.

That's because, according to economics columnist Catherine Rampell [sic], it doesn't exist.

Rampbell Tuesday morning revealed Vance, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's running mate, has misled multiple mainstream media outlets by claiming he'd taken legislative action to help American parents with medical bills.

This has become a pet theme of Vance's as he tries to backtrack from "childless cat lady" comments by arguing Republicans' policy agenda provides more support to families than the Democrats' does, Rampbell wrote.

Just last week, Vance (R-OH) recounted his second child's birth on ABC's Face the Nation and pointed to legislation he said he pursued, Rambell [sic] reported.

“We got these ridiculous surprise medical billings from the hospital because we had chosen an out of network provider, of course, at this most stressful of all imaginable moments,” Vance said. “I’ve actually introduced legislation to stop moms and dads from having to go through those surprise medical billings.”

Vance has made a similar claim on CNN and CBS, Rampbell reported.

"I have sponsored legislation to try to fix things like that so moms and dads don't get these surprise medical bills," Vance said on CNN.

"I've actually sponsored legislation to end that practice," he said on CBS.

"When I first heard these comments, I assumed he was referring to the No Surprises Act, a statute that limited surprise bills from out-of-network providers at otherwise in-network medical settings," Rampbell wrote. "Then I realized this (bipartisan) bill was signed into law in 2020, two years before Vance was elected to the Senate."

Vance's 2022 victory represented the first time he'd ever been elected to public office.

Rampbell decided to go directly to the source and asked Vance's Senate office to point her toward the bill.

"His spokesperson declined to speak on the record or give me the bill number for whatever legislation Vance was citing," Rampbell wrote. "Instead, I was told to read a Politico article that mentions a bill he sponsored on a different issue (related to expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993) as well as another bill that’s at least on the relevant subject, but that he merely considered."

Vance cut off talks for the second bill referenced when he began auditioning to be Trump's running mate, the Washington Post reported last month.

This analysis arrives as Vance targets Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) with controversial accusations of stolen valor, a term usually reserved for those who misrepresent awards received in the armed forces.

Vance's claims are linked to Walz' recent gun control speech in which he references weapons carried into war, which veterans note has a specific meaning that does not apply directly to the Minnesota governor's 24 years with the National Guard.

Harris' campaign later said Walz never intended to mislead Americans about his service and he has since replied by saying, "I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person's service record."

Rampbell argued Tuesday, given the context of Vance's legislative record, his attacks are inappropriate.

"The actual perpetrators of 'stolen valor' in this election are Vance and his party," she wrote. "If not in the military context, then at least in the public service one.">

<Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and controversial owner of X, was the focus of a scathing op-ed in The Guardian over the weekend, which warned Musk appears to be intentionally inciting chaos.

Carole Cadwalladr, a reporter and feature writer for the Observer, penned an article published Sunday titled, “Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America.”

In the piece, Cadwalladr pulls no punches in describing the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol as the “good old days” as the billionaires in our current “reality” have been “unchained” and will not only no longer act as safeguards for society but as accelerants adding to the fuel that burns it down.

“Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a s***,” she writes, adding: Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.

Cadwalladr explains that the world is in a “significantly worse” situation now and for Americans to understand just how dangerous the information environment is today they only need to look at the U.K. She went on to argue that much like Brexit, the U.K. is yet again “the canary in the coalmine.”

“The same transatlantic patterns, the same playbook, the same figures. But this time with a whole new set of dangerous, unchecked technological vulnerabilities to be exploited,” she argued, adding:

In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.

Cadwalladr is referring to Musk — who has endorsed Donald Trump — hyping race riots in the U.K. by sharing disinformation like altered headlines saying that the British government was readying “detainment camps” for anti-immigrant protestors. Musk went so far at one point to post that “civil war is inevitable,” which many took as a call to arms.

Cadwalladr ended by chronicling how X, formerly Twitter, has gutted “its trust and safety team,” as has Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Discord. “In 2020, these efforts seemed pathetic, paltry, inadequate to the scale of the threat. Now they’re gone, just as the tools are becoming even more dangerous,” she wrote, warning that AI has emerged as a tool for manipulating the masses at the same the social platforms are no longer extensively monitoring content.

She ends with an ominous warning, “But what Musk – the new self-appointed Lord of Misrule – has done is to rip off the mask. He’s shown that you don’t even have to pretend to care. In Musk’s world, trust is mistrust and safety is censorship. His goal is chaos. And it’s coming.”>

<“Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” former first lady Michelle Obama said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday. “A familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long.”

“You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope!” she said, adding: “America, hope is making a comeback.”

The rhetoric harkened back to Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 — when Democrats ran on hope and change.

But when you think about it, it’s kind of brutal toward Kamala Harris’s predecessor as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Michelle Obama was quite clearly implying that the party, and perhaps the country, had lost hope under Joe Biden, and that it took Harris to bring that hope back.

Few Democrats have gone so far as to openly admit how bad the vibes had gotten. Even before Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June, his polling had been quite poor for nearly a year. More and more people in the party began to view defeat as highly likely, if not inevitable. Since then, hope has indeed returned, but in this new era of good feelings, few Democrats have publicly dwelled on how bleak things had been.

The speech crystallized something fascinating about how the presidential contest has changed in the past month — namely, that Harris seems to have become the “change” candidate who can channel hopes for the future, even though her administration currently runs Washington and she is the incumbent vice president.

In part, that’s because Harris is younger — not being an octogenarian or even a septuagenarian — and because her election would be a demographic first.

But it’s also because her opponent Donald Trump has already served as president, and has incessantly dominated the nation’s politics and much of its mental mindshare for the past decade. Not only is Trump obsessed with relitigating controversies and grudges from his first term, but he also has too much of a political history at this point to credibly promise he could lead the country in a truly new direction.

When the public is dissatisfied, a newer, lesser-known change candidate can have a real advantage. Without having been in power, such a candidate can be all things to all people; they can represent the public’s hopes, having not yet disappointed them.

Barack Obama thought this was crucial in his rise to political prominence, “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Harris has benefited from a similar dynamic. She has given Democrats, and voters generally, who were disappointed or disillusioned under Biden a reason to hope she will be different in a way that they like.

That was on display Tuesday, when both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and former American Express CEO Ken Chenault spoke effusively about Harris not too far removed from each other. It’s also been evident in how protests of Biden’s Israel policies have been far less of a factor at the convention than many expected. And it’s front and center in the campaign’s rhetoric that Harris wants to go forward, not back.

The risk of being the change candidate is that you are less experienced, but being the incumbent veep helps Harris with that. Currently, she appears to be getting the benefits of experience from serving under Biden without the downsides of being held accountable for his record.

The Trump team now very much wants to recouple Harris and Biden — blaming her for the inflation, foreign crises, and border chaos that have occurred in the past four years. In the face of these attacks, Harris’s task is to ensure voters keep viewing her as the new and hopeful future, rather than the past.>

<The New York Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of the state’s early mail-in voting law, rejecting a lawsuit led by GOP plaintiffs including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

The lawsuit, known as Stefanik v. Hochul, sought to block the implementation of the law, arguing it violated state constitutional provisions. However, the court ruled 6-1 that the law, which allows voters to cast their ballots by mail for any reason before Election Day, does not infringe upon any constitutional rights.

Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the 30-page majority opinion that there is no "clear, unequivocal, and persistent" understanding by government that the state constitution requires in-person voting.

The ruling ensures that early mail-in voting will be widely available to New Yorkers in elections, despite the legal challenge. This ruling marks a victory for proponents of expanded voting access, who argue that the law is crucial for increasing voter participation and ensuring that all citizens can exercise their right to vote.

Republican opponents of the law, such as Stefanik, have expressed concerns that it could lead to voter fraud and undermine the integrity of elections, such as the lack of safeguards and difficulty in assuring that voters cast their ballots in secret, free from improper influences.

Judge Michael Garcia, the sole dissenter in the case, argued the law could potentially conflict with the state constitution’s provisions on in-person voting.

"A review of the plain text of the provisions at issue here establishes that the People intended the Constitution to limit the legislature’s authority to make laws governing absentee voting, and that the Early Mail Voter Act, whatever its merits or flaws as policy, goes beyond those limits and is therefore unconstitutional," Garcia wrote.

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Stefanik said the court "disgracefully claims" to understand the intent of the framers of the state constitution, saying the ruling "disregards prior constitutional amendments on this issue, and constitutional interpretation norms as 'not relevant.'"

"It's never been clearer: the only path forward to Save New York is to get commonsense New Yorkers to swamp the ballot box and vote Republican up and down the ballot and rid ourselves of New York's politically corrupt Democrats," Stefanik added.

New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement applauding the decision, accusing challengers of the law of trying to "put up roadblocks and stifle New Yorkers’ ability to exercise their Constitutional right to vote."

"I will keep working to protect our state’s laws, and will do everything within my power to push back against anti-voting rights efforts and instead empower New Yorkers’ access the polls," James added.

The case previously saw setbacks in February, when a New York judge dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that GOP challengers failed to show the law in question was unconstitutional.

The constitution “in no way limits the Legislature’s inherent plenary power or its constitutional authority to enact laws that generally provide for voting methods other than by ballot,” Albany Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba wrote at the time.>

<I've told the story before, but it bears repeating in the context of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. I attended the Democrats' convention in 2008 and it was a pretty ecstatic atmosphere. The party was set to nominate the first Black candidate for president and his very close primary competitor, Hillary Clinton, was the first woman to make a serious run for it. There had been plenty of bad blood during the primary and there were still some raw feelings that needed to be dealt with before the full celebration could begin. It was up to Clinton to heal the breach and it wasn't going to be easy.

On the night Clinton was to give her big endorsement speech, I stood next to a group of young Black women who were clearly skeptical of her and were big fans of Barack Obama. They were not expecting much. But her speech was exceptional and by the end of it the women I was watching were cheering along with Clinton's supporters whom she had thanked profusely but also pointedly asked, "were you in it for me or were you in it for the country?" She wound it up by exhorting everyone to put their efforts into electing Barack Obama:

This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up. How do we give this country back to them? By following the example of a brave New Yorker, a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad.

And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going.

At the time she gave that speech, it was unclear if she would ever run for office again and her address has been forgotten over the years, replaced by that other convention speech when she accepted the nomination and then her stunned concession speech when Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote in 2016. But I recalled Clinton's 2008 performance on Monday night when she evoked those words again.

"I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, 'Keep going,' surely," Clinton told the crowd at Chicago's United Center.

But Clinton is no longer running herself. She's passed the baton to Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee who may be the one to finally break through what Clinton calls the "highest, hardest glass ceiling." She, like Joe Biden, has done her part and is leaving it to the next generation to carry on the task.

It was good to see her received with such respect and admiration by the delegates at this convention. I was a bit surprised to be honest. But she deserved it having absorbed so much misogyny and inexplicable resentment for decades on behalf of women everywhere, even often from members of her own party. When the crowd started chanting "lock him up" when Clinton mentioned Trump's felony convictions, then smiled beatifically as the audience roared — she had earned that.

Kamala Harris is a seasoned politician but she isn't saddled with the baggage that Hillary Clinton carried with her from the years of being dragged by the right wing. Nonetheless, Trump is pulling the same nonsense with her, calling her "weak" and "low IQ" and suggesting that she's ill-equipped to deal with foreign leaders because she doesn't have the "strength" to stand up to them. Coming from the man who practically gave Vladimir Putin a full-body massage on international TV, that's pretty rich, but it doesn't stop him from doing it. So far, it doesn't seem to have stuck and perhaps that's because many people can see his sexism more clearly now that it's obvious he flings it at any woman who dares to oppose him....>

<....It was interesting that the convention scheduled another strong woman politician just before Clinton's speech, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, who similarly brought the house down with a rousing speech extolling the virtues of working people. She pointed out that Republicans are always taunting her to go back to being a bartender as she was six years ago, and she said she'd be happy to because "there's nothing wrong with working for a living." Her speech, compared to Bernie Sanders' on the second night, speaking to the same issues in a completely different (and fresher) voice, indicates that the populist torch has been successfully passed, too. She is formidable and the reception she received from the crowd shows that her message is now part of the mainstream of the Democratic coalition.

There were a number of other talented women featured on night one, such as the feisty Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (“Kamala Harris has a resume; he has a rap sheet”) who seemed to be channeling an earlier Texas political superstar, Gov. Ann Richards, who was also known for her twinkling eyes and rapier wit. Richards' legacy is safe with Crockett. Michigan, meanwhile, gives us an up-and-coming political star in the dynamic Mallory McMorrow, the state senator who went viral with a stirring speech about abortion rights last year. She was tasked with explaining Project 2025, which she did with appropriate disdain and humor.

And then there's Kamala Harris herself who suddenly radiates confidence and gravitas even as her wide smile and casual body language reveal a person comfortable in her own skin. And she seems to be loving it, which is possibly the most appealing thing about her.

One of the networks interviewed some women delegates who were quite emotional over Hillary Clinton's appearance, feeling bittersweet at seeing her in that spot when by all rights she should have been coming to the end of her second term and passing the torch to her successor. But after the crushing defeat of 2016, they had done what Hillary did after 2008 — they just kept going. And now they are thrilled at the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency.

The Democratic Party is a party full of extremely talented, smart, ambitious women at every level and it's no longer a novelty. What just a few years ago seemed like a treacherous attempt to make a great leap forward finally feels like normal. The party and the country are going to be much better off for it.>

<Less than a month ago, Justice Elena Kagan suggested the Supreme Court consider dialing back its review of significant cases on its controversial emergency docket.

“Our summers used to be actually summers,” Kagan told a group of judges in California, lamenting the “relentless” filing of emergency appeals. “We’ve gotten into a pattern where we’re doing too many of them.”

Since then, the Supreme Court’s emergency caseload has exploded.

In coming days, the high court is expected to tackle short-fuse challenges to President Joe Biden’s latest effort to reduce student debt and to cut planet-warming pollution by limiting power plant emissions. And the court must decide whether Arizona, a presidential battleground, may require thousands of people to prove their US citizenship before voting this year. Also pending is a fight over Biden’s requirement that family planning clinics that receive federal public health funding provide referrals for abortions for patients who request it.

The court’s emergency docket – the “shadow docket,” to critics – is where the justices deal with questions that need resolution faster than the months it can take to submit briefs, hear oral arguments and draft formal opinions on its regular docket.

The cases usually deal with the narrow question of what will happen as that underlying legal process plays out. But the orders can have significant and immediate real-world consequences.

“There’s just no disputing that this has been a busier summer for emergency applications, both by volume and by significance, than any summer we’ve seen in a long time – if ever,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, who says the court is essentially inviting these cases by issuing emergency rulings with more impact.

“It seems pretty clear that there’s a disconnect between the justices’ public comments expressing concern and their behavior when these applications reach them,” said Vladeck, who wrote a book on the issue, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”

“Given that the court continues to grant emergency relief in contexts in which it didn’t until recently – and given that there’s virtually no downside to seeking emergency relief – it’s effectively open season for aggressive lawyers,” he said.

In all, there are 18 emergency cases waiting for an answer from the high court – though 13 of those raise three substantially similar legal questions.

Even if no additional emergency applications land this summer, Vladeck says, the court is already on track to exceed its caseload of the past several summers – including in 2020, when the justices juggled a string of controversial Covid-19-related cases.

The court’s latest emergency order landed Friday, when the justices blocked a Biden administration proposal to shore up civil rights protections for transgender and pregnant students. The new rule, challenged by 10 conservative states, would bar discrimination on the basis of a student’s gender identity.

Combined with a series of lower court decisions, the rule is now on hold in about half the country.

A brief, unsigned order issued by the Supreme Court explained some of the rationale for that decision – the court couldn’t separate the controversial provisions from others that weren’t directly challenged. But critics said the breezy, three-page opinion would likely only sow further confusion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, slammed the “overly broad” ruling, writing in a partial dissent joined by three others that the outcome “deprived” residents in the states that sued “guidance related to their rights.”

The court appeared to send the opposite signal just four months ago. In a case dealing with Idaho’s strict ban on gender-affirming care, the court allowed the state to temporarily enforce the law. Three conservative justices complained that lower courts had imposed a far more sweeping order than necessary – the exact argument the court found unpersuasive in the case of Biden’s rule.

Perhaps underscoring the thorny and often politically heated questions in play on the emergency docket this month, the court has at times been slow to resolve the disputes.

Since mid-2023, the court has needed about 20 days, on average, to resolve significant emergency cases – not including those involving capital punishment – according to a CNN analysis. But it took the justices 25 days to resolve a recent emergency challenge over Biden’s transgender rule....>

<....It’s been 29 days since West Virginia filed the first of several appeals seeking to halt Biden’s power plant rules.

In that case, Republican states and industry groups are challenging an Environmental Protection Agency rule that would compel existing coal and new natural gas power plants to either cut or capture 90% of their climate pollution by 2032. A decision in that case could come as soon as this week.

Biden’s student debt plan in jeopardy – again The Department of Education, meanwhile, has asked the justices to lift a court order blocking a Biden plan to slash monthly student loan payments and quicken the path to forgiveness – a central promise of his 2020 presidential campaign. A decision in that case could also come within days.

And in a case likely to be resolved in coming days, the Republican Party has asked the high court to allow Arizona to enforce a requirement that residents registering to vote for president to document their US citizenship. The case is likely to be one of many election matters to make its way to the Supreme Court amid a historic presidential election. Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have falsely claimed widespread voting by immigrants in the country illegally.

It’s possible the Supreme Court will move some of the pending disputes to its regular, merits docket when the court reconvenes in October for a new nine-month term, scheduling arguments and handing down formal opinions.

In recent years, some of the court’s biggest cases originated on the emergency docket.

In June, for instance, the court handed down a 5-4 decision halting a Biden environmental rule intended to reduce smog and air pollution in a case that arrived on the shadow docket.

But while the practice of moving the emergency cases to the regular docket has picked up in recent years – and is widely seen as a response to criticism – it can have drawbacks.

Speaking at a judicial conference in Sacramento in late July, Kagan suggested that the court may have acted too hastily when it took up a request from Idaho to allow it to enforce a Biden administration rule requiring emergency rooms to perform abortions when the health of the pregnant woman is at stake. By the time it reached the Supreme Court for argument the facts of the case – usually developed by lower courts – were unclear.

In late June, the court handed the issue back to lower courts, punting for now on a review of the underlying legal questions raised.

Although some of the justices may be hesitant to resolve the emergency cases before the questions involved have been fully figured out, there are times when it must, Kagan said. That’s especially true in situations in which a lower court has blocked a law or policy nationwide.

“It’s a very difficult question as to how exactly we should approach these ever-increasing number of emergency petitions,” she said. “But more and more it’s not only the argued cases, but that work that is the Supreme Court’s docket.”>

<The Supreme Court handed the Republican Party a small victory on Thursday, making it marginally harder for new voters to register to vote in Arizona.

The decision, however, could have been much worse for voting rights: Republicans asked the justices to strip thousands of already-registered voters of their ability to vote for president. Three justices voted to do just that, but six members of the Court rejected the request.

Nevertheless, five members of the Court — every member of the Court’s Republican majority except for Justice Amy Coney Barrett — voted to make it marginally more difficult to register to vote in Arizona.

So this is a victory for the GOP, but probably not a particularly significant one. If the three most MAGA-pilled justices, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, had prevailed, a meaningful chunk of Arizona’s voters could have been locked out of voting in the 2024 presidential election. But that didn’t happen.

The Court’s decision to hand Republicans even a small victory here is almost certainly wrong, under a 2006 Supreme Court decision warning judges not to change a state’s election procedures too close to an election. But the impact of Thursday’s GOP victory is likely to be fairly modest.

The case, known as Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, involves a ludicrously complicated system that Arizona uses to register voters.

In 2004, Arizona enacted a law requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (such as a passport or a birth certificate) when registering to vote. This law, however, conflicts with a federal law, known as the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which permits voters in every state to register using a standardized federal form. The federal form requires Arizona voters to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are citizens, but it does not require the same documentary proof that Arizona’s state law requires.

In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013), the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must comply with the NVRA and allow voters who submit the federal form to register — but there was a twist. Inter Tribal also suggested that Congress’s power over voter registration is limited to “federal elections,” so Arizona responded to Inter Tribal by creating two tiers of voters.

Voters who submit the state’s form (including the document proving citizenship) are registered to vote in all elections in Arizona. But voters who submit the federal form are deemed “federal-only” voters and may only vote in congressional and presidential elections — and not for state and local offices.

An expert witness who testified in the RNC case estimated that “approximately one-third of a [percent] of non-Hispanic White voters [in Arizona] are Federal-Only Voters, while a little more than two-thirds of a percent of minority voters are Federal-Only Voters.” So the universe of voters who registered using the federal form isn’t that large, but it is disproportionately non-white, which likely explains the GOP’s interest in this case — among other things, Republicans wanted to prevent these federal-only voters from casting a vote for president.

In 2020, President Joe Biden lost white Arizona voters, but very narrowly won the state due to his strong performance among Latinos. Biden’s margin of victory was only about three-tenths of a percent, so even a small shift in who was allowed to vote in Arizona might have changed the result....>

<....Republicans asked the Court to impose three restrictions contained in a 2022 Arizona state law, which has never taken effect, and which was blocked by a federal court in 2023.

That law sought to ban Arizona’s federal-only voters from voting for president, and it also would have barred them from voting by mail. Although Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch voted to allow these two restrictions to go into effect, a majority of the justices did not.

Additionally, the 2022 law sought to override a 2018 court order that allowed voters who submit the state form without a document proving citizenship to still register as a federal-only voter. Five justices voted to let this provision of the 2022 law take effect. So new voters who submit the state form without the required documentation will not be registered at all.

Voters who submit the federal form, however, will still be registered as federal-only voters.

This decision to allow even a small part of the 2022 law to take effect is almost certainly wrong. The 2022 law was blocked by a 2023 federal court decision, and the Supreme Court ruled in Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006) that “federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.”

Thursday’s order alters Arizona’s state election rules just over two months before a presidential election. Before the Supreme Court ruled, the lower court’s order blocking all three provisions of the 2022 law was in effect. Now the rules have changed, if only slightly.

In the past, the Court’s Republican majority has wielded Purcell very aggressively when lower court judges handed down voting rights decisions making changes that benefited Democrats. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has even suggested that the Purcell window opens up more than nine months before a general election. So the GOP’s request to change Arizona’s voting rules less than three months before an election should have been rejected if the justices were being consistent.

Still, unless the 2024 election is historically close, the likelihood that Thursday’s decision will change the result of the upcoming election is small. Again, a majority of the justices voted to reject the GOP’s most aggressive attack on the franchise — the provision of the 2022 law barring federal-only voters from voting for president.>

<What kind of president would Kamala Harris be?

That’s a question many Americans are rightly asking themselves since the vice president became our presumptive Democratic nominee. As the only member of Congress who’s worked for Kamala Harris, I can provide some insight.

We’ve already seen Donald Trump’s record as president. He let the ultrawealthy off the hook for paying their fair share in taxes. He weakened our international alliances. He proposed cuts to Social Security. In a second Trump term, he would do all this again.

The Biden-Harris administration has cracked down on tax cheats, restored our global standing and protected Social Security. Vice President Harris would continue this work, while bringing her own leadership style. We can look to her record of public service — a record I have observed up close — to see how she works for the people. Kamala Harris took office as California’s attorney general in 2011, during the long, painful aftermath of the Great Recession. At the time, attorneys general from 49 states were negotiating with the nation’s largest banks, demanding that these institutions take responsibility for their role in the foreclosure crisis.

Kamala spent months pushing for a better deal, channeling the pain she’d heard from families on the campaign trail. When the banks refused to do enough, she pulled out of the talks, which threatened to derail the compromise because of California’s size.

This angered the bankers. It annoyed other attorneys general, some of whom had been in office for decades. But it was the right thing for her constituents — and it worked. She got the banks to promise more than quadruple what they initially offered to help Californians. That’s someone who can’t be bought or bullied.

Now, think about Kamala bringing this tenacity to a high-level international meeting like the G7. She won’t go along to get along; she’ll do what’s right for Americans and for a safer, more peaceful world. Kamala knows that respect is not something one can petulantly demand, as Trump does. Respect comes from the moral authority of doing what’s right and speaking truth to power.

Kamala was savvy to press the big banks to do more, but her most remarkable insight guided her next move. She understood that the settlement depended on the banks’ promises to change their unlawful practices — and that given their illegal conduct, it wasn’t enough just to hope that they shaped up. For Kamala, the victory wasn’t the words on the pages of the National Mortgage Settlement or the press conference announcing the deal. Families were counting on government to deliver actual help that improved their lives.

Over objections from the big banks, Kamala appointed me as an independent watchdog for the settlement. She empowered me to hold the banks’ feet to the fire and to get results for Californians. I had no formal legal authority, but I had Kamala’s force of will behind me.

With her backing, we halted hundreds of foreclosures and forced the banks to consider families for loan modifications. We were able to get one family a six-figure compensation check from one major bank for its flawed processes. We caught another major bank forcing consumers to sign away their right to sue for legal violations —breaking a promise it had made in the settlement — and we forced it to send out hundreds of thousands of correction letters. We successfully pressed the banks to work more to reach the hardest-hit communities, and we held workshops for service members and seniors....>

<....We changed lives on the ground. That’s how Kamala is: She sees things through, not stopping until people get help, because she cares about our families.

When she called me to offer me the job as California monitor, I had a 2-month-old. Like many working moms, I had to bring my infant to work because she had nowhere else to go. I remember being embarrassed on the call, worrying if Betsy would cry or fuss while I was talking to the attorney general. I nervously confessed that I had my baby with me.

Kamala didn’t hesitate. She asked how my baby and I were doing and how her siblings were adjusting. She wasn’t making small talk; she genuinely wanted to know. And then she continued to tell me about how important it was that Californians have a watchdog and a place to report any continued bank misconduct.

I had a newborn, two other kids and a full-time job as a college professor. Kamala did not even blink; she expressed confidence in me to do the job and emphasized the importance of the work. This is how I know, very personally, that Americans can count on Kamala to fill her administration with the best, most qualified leaders from all walks of life to advocate for everyday Americans. There couldn’t be a clearer contrast with Donald Trump. As I exposed in congressional hearings, his appointees included a housing secretary who didn’t know basic real estate terms and a postmaster general who didn’t know how much it costs to mail a postcard.

I can assure Americans from personal experience: Kamala Harris’ vision for moving America forward will not just be words on a convention stage or at a press conference. Nor will it be the empty promises and lip service that we hear from too many politicians who pose as leaders. Kamala will do what’s right and go to the mat to get it done.>

<When the U.S. Capitol came under assault on Jan. 6, 2021, major social media platforms suspended the accounts of former President Donald Trump, silencing the megaphone that many believed was not only propelling violence but had become an active threat to U.S. democracy.

But what happens when a social media platform's owner is the one inciting political violence? What happens when the platform refuses to silence those who pour gasoline on the dry tinder of grievance and hatred and toss the lit match to ignite it? What happens when countries, and investors in major global financial centers, come to believe not only that the platform is a threat, but that its owner must be stopped?

The question is pressing, as it becomes increasingly clear that Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, is using X in ways that instigate unrest, as he aims to advance his personal social, political and geopolitical views-views that in recent months appear increasingly aligned with far-right extremism.

Recent developments have put Musk in the cross hairs-making X an unexpectedly apt name-of government officials across the globe, including those in the European Union, Brazil, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Adding pressure on Musk, his antics have thrown X's finances into a downward spiral, weighing on the financial houses that loaned him billions for his overpriced purchase of Twitter. The Wall Street Journal says the deal "has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-2009 financial crisis."

And perhaps most troubling for Musk, his own finances are not immune. His fortune is tied up in illiquid assets, mostly in the companies he founded like SpaceX and Neuralink. Only Tesla is publicly traded, and Musk has tended to use the company as a source of funds in the past. As X is increasingly identified with toxic, incendiary politics, Tesla shareholders are growing alarmed about how the mayhem at X could affect their investment in the electric car company.

There's nothing new about social media playing a nefarious role in political violence. Platforms such as Facebook have come under withering criticism in Sri Lanka, Iraq, and countless other places. But the Musk situation is different.

The main problem now, as the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland put it, is not social media writ large. It is X. And it is not just X. It is Musk himself.

The most recent case enraged officials and citizens across the U.K. and triggered a mass exodus from X to its competitor Threads. Earlier this month in Southport, on the northwest coast of England, a horrific knife attack on children was falsely blamed on a Muslim immigrant, triggering anti-immigrant riots, with mobs attacking mosques and hotels housing migrants-the worst such violence the U.K. had seen in many years.

Much of the focus turned to X, which had welcomed back Britain's most notorious extremists and become a haven for conspiracy theories and misinformation.

The forces arrayed against Musk will exert enormous and growing pressure in the months ahead, testing the strength of his financial and propaganda arsenal.

But it wasn't just the platform's everyday users. Musk tossed his own combustible logs on the raging fire with multiple posts to his nearly 200 million followers-far more than most countries' populations. Musk wrote that "civil war is inevitable" and shared fake news that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer planned "detainment camps" in the Falkland Islands for anti-immigrant rioters. Starmer shot back, warning "social media and those who run them" that whipping up incitement is a crime.

Others were more direct. Bruce Daisley, the former Twitter chief for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, suggested that if Musk continues fomenting arrest, officials should "get an arrest warrant." The Guardian's Freedland, too, said Musk belongs on trial.

In the U.K., Musk is viewed as a public enemy by a significant segment, and as a danger by the government.

The view is shared by the EU. When Musk was about to interview Trump, a candidate he now forcefully supports, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton warned him about "the risk of amplification of potentially harmful content."

Tensions with the EU are sure to rise on a number of fronts. X's new artificial intelligence tool, for example, has resulted in an explosion of fake images, turbocharging the site's ability to broadcast disinformation and incitement in an environment in which safeguards and content moderation are practically absent....>

<....Musk has also come under sharp scrutiny elsewhere. In Brazil, a Supreme Court judge ordered an investigation into his actions in connection with allegations of obstruction of justice, promotion of false news and incitement to crime. Musk just shut down X's Brazil office.

On the other side of the globe, Australian officials have butted heads with the billionaire in the wake of violent attacks promoted on his platform.

As the political pushback grows on multiple fronts, Musk's financial difficulties are also mounting. Does the wealthiest man on Earth have the financial cushion to withstand them?

Not everyone thinks he does.

After telling advertisers in November to "go f–k yourself," revenue at X has collapsed by 84 percent, according to Fortune Magazine, which notes that, "No one knows how much longer X can survive," and recalls that Musk admitted last November that the company could face bankruptcy.

Musk may not care if X makes money. It is giving him a priceless megaphone and the immeasurable power that comes with it. But to pay the interest on the $13 billion he borrowed to buy Twitter and to keep the failing platform afloat, his estimated $235 billion fortune could come under great strain.

One financier wondered how long Musk would be willing to fund the $1 or $2 billion needed every year to keep X alive.

The challenges are growing for the 21st century mogul who was once the subject of near-universal admiration. Musk is becoming a hero of the far right, and a villain in the eyes of much of the rest of the world. The forces arrayed against him-the collapse of X's financial fortunes and user base, the mounting legal cases across the globe, and the revulsion he is provoking in some sectors-will exert enormous and growing pressure in the months ahead, testing the strength of his financial and propaganda arsenal.

The question remains, can a dangerous Musk be stopped?>

<Democratic strategists are hoping that if presidential nominee Kamala Harris performs well in November, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) — who is running against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Lone Star State's 2024 U.S. Senate race — will be among the down-ballot beneficiaries.

Allred knows that he's fighting an uphill battle, as Texas is still a red state. But a University of Texas poll released in early August found Allred trailing Cruz by only 2 percent.

One of Allred's many lines of attack against Cruz is the far-right senator's response to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. In an interview with Baptist News, Allred recalled the day the Capitol was attacked — noting that he played in the National Football League before serving in Congress.

"When you're a former professional football player in a situation like that," Allred told Baptist News, "people will unsurprisingly look to you for protection. So I took my suit jacket off and got ready to take on whatever came through that door."

The Democratic congressman continued, "That day, we came closer to losing our democracy than a lot of people realize, and Ted Cruz is responsible for that. He spread the lie that the election was stolen and was the senator who objected to the certification of the results in an attempt to overturn the will of the American people. But when the mob stormed the Capitol, he hid in a supply closet."

Allred also discussed his religious views during the interview, drawing a distinction between traditional Christianity and far-right Christian nationalism.

The former Baylor Bears linebacker told Baptist News, "My Christian values inspire me to fight for a future where seniors can afford their medications, women can make their own health care decisions alongside their families, faith and doctors, and our border is not only secure but reflective of our values as Texans. Ted Cruz and the Christian nationalist movement fight for a future that simply does not include or care about many Texans.">

Yeah, we knew well before this revelation that Crud was a f***ing pussy.

Your kind of guy, <ursus banalus>.