<[Event "58th New England Open"] [Site "Warwick RI"]
[Date "1998.09.06"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Ivanov, Alexander"]
[Black "Yedidia, Jonathan"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B06"]
[WhiteElo "2605"]
[BlackElo "2499"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 Nbd7 7.Bd3 g6 8.Qd2 h6 9.Be3 Ng4 10.O-O Nxe3 11.fxe3 Ne5 12.h3 Bg7 13.a4 O-O 14.Rf2 Bd7 15.Nd5 e6 16.Nc3 Rc8 17.Nb3 Bc6 18.Rd1 Qg5 19.Be2 Rfd8 20.Nd4 h5 21.Bd3 Bh6 22.Re1 Qe7 23.Ref1 Be8 24.Nde2 Bg5 25.Kh2 Bh6 26.Nf4 Rc5 27.b4 Rc7 28.Nfd5 exd5 29.Nxd5 Qh4 30.g3 Qg5 31.Nxc7 h4 32.g4 Bxa4 33.Nd5 Bc6 34.Nf4 b5 35.Qc3 Bg7 36.Qb3 Bd7 37.Be2 Rc8 38.Qa2 Rc3 39.Bd3 0-1>

By the bye, <little wuckfad the stalker>: less than 5000 posts before I hit that number you love to loathe.

<Conservative commentator Meghan McCain piled on praise of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, angering many on the right.

The former “View” host, who’s the daughter of the late GOP presidential nominee John McCain, expressed her rapture on social media over the party atmosphere around Kamala Harris formally accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Maybe republicans just shouldn’t have conventions… just forfeit because I DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU CAN COMPETE WITH THIS!” McCain wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

McCain gushed over a percussion performance of The Pack at the convention.

“Oh man, how cool is this drum line?!” she enthused.

She thanked Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democratic candidate for senator in Arizona, after he honored her father.

Before the fourth night’s session even began on Thursday, she was already dishing out accolades for Democrats’ A-list impact. She called the convention “better than the last 15 years of MTV Awards.”

“Republicans cannot compete on the culture space with artists, musicians or celebrities on any level whatsoever,” she wrote.

Of course McCain got pushback from conservatives, notably Fox News Media contributor Tomi Lahren, who called the DNC performances “tone deaf” and “insulting” for “struggling Americans.”

Another person on X questioned McCain for going out of her way to compliment the gathering. “I’m not that impressed to be honest. I actually can’t believe you are,” the commenter wrote.

Others called her a RINO (Republican in name only) and accused her of being a turncoat. “You’re the Dems #1 Cheerleader, huh?!” someone wrote with a vomiting emoji.

McCain did criticize Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, this week and took shots at the convention’s running time on Monday. But moments earlier praised “classy” Harris and Hillary Clinton.>

No praise, biyatch!

lmao

<Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy has spent the last several months defending himself against accusations that he poses a threat to America’s federal public lands — a mess that the multimillionaire businessman and former Navy SEAL created when, shortly after launching his campaign, he explicitly called for federal lands to be “turned over to state agencies, or even counties.”

Around 640 million acres, or 28% of all land in the nation, are managed by the federal government — and owned collectively by all U.S. citizens. Republicans across Western states, where the vast majority of federal lands are located, have long sought to wrest control of them from the federal government — a move that conservationists and public land experts warn would ultimately lead to them being sold and privatized.

“If that happens, that really means we’re going to lose those federal lands,” said Chris Marchion, a Montana public lands advocate and inductee in the Montana Outdoor Hall of Fame. “The state of Montana does not have the resources to manage those lands, and the first thing they’re going to do is sell it.”

Democratic and conservation-focused political action committees have aired numerous public land-focused attack ads against Sheehy, most of which cite HuffPost’s reporting that first revealed Sheehy’s comments in support of transferring land and his failure to disclose his position on the board of a nonprofit with a history of advocating for privatizing America’s federal lands.

Sheehy meanwhile has accused his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, of politicizing public lands and lying about Sheehy’s agenda for America’s natural heritage. Sometime last month, Sheehy even added a section to his campaign website titled “Public Lands,” in which he declared his belief that “public lands belong in public hands” and vowed to “oppose any federal transfer or sale of our public lands.” The new section sits at the very top of his issues page.

In Sheehy’s first public lands TV ad, released in early August, Stryker Anderson, an avid Montana hunter and hunting guide, says he’s “sick and tired of Jon Tester lying about Tim Sheehy.”

“Here’s the truth: Tim Sheehy knows public lands are important to our way of life,” Anderson tells viewers. “That’s why Sheehy opposes the sale or transfer of our public lands.”

But when reached via email this week, Anderson — one of two key people Sheehy turned to in hopes of restoring his image as a champion of public lands — effectively poured gasoline on the fire that Sheehy and his team have been trying to put out. Anderson plainly stated that he wants to see federal lands transferred to states, a view he understood Sheehy to share. He condemned the federal government as a poor steward of the federal estate and said Sheehy’s past comment in favor of states taking control of federal lands shows his “understanding of proper management.”

“The goal would be to turn them over to the states,” Anderson told HuffPost. “The state of Montana understands our public lands better than the federal government. Just like we don’t understand California, Wyoming, Washington, Arizona, etc. Let the people in their own state decide what is best for them. Our public lands suck almost everywhere because they have no management. Turning over ownership to the states will allow for much better management.”

Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Colorado-based conservation group Center for Western Priorities, called Anderson’s comments “old Sagebrush Rebellion nonsense,” referring to the movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to wrest control of shared public lands from the federal government.

“States can’t afford to fight wildfires or clean up abandoned mines,” Weiss said. “The inevitable result is privatization.”

Asked how “turning over ownership to the states” is any different than a full-fledged public land transfer, Anderson said the TV advertisement’s anti-sale and transfer message was specific to the “sale or transfer to private ownership,” not state ownership.

“You are correct that turning it over would be a transfer,” he said. “But who it is transferred to is what is important.”

Again, Sheehy’s updated website states that he opposes “any federal transfer or sale of our public lands.”

Anderson’s unfiltered endorsement of pawning off federal lands to states — a position he clearly expected Sheehy to advance in Congress — threatens to effectively upend nearly a year of damage control within Sheehy’s camp.....>

<....When reached on Thursday, Sheehy’s campaign dissociated itself from its own public lands surrogate. Campaign spokesperson Katie Martin said Sheehy does not share Anderson’s support for transferring federal lands to states, but did not respond when asked why Sheehy chose to feature someone he does not see eye-to-eye with — particularly on the very subject of the advertisement.

“Your answer shopping won’t change Tim’s position on this issue, which is crystal clear and has been stated to you repeatedly,” Martin said in an email. “Tim opposes any federal transfer or sale or ‘turning over’ of our public lands.”

While that may be Sheehy’s purported position now, he sang a very different tune shortly after launching his campaign. As HuffPost first reported in October, Sheehy told the “Working Ranch Radio Show” that “local control has to be returned, whether that means, you know, some of these public lands get turned over to state agencies, or even counties, or whether those decisions are made by a local landlord instead of by, you know, federal fiat a few thousand miles away.” Contacted about his comments at the time, Sheehy’s campaign tried to walk a splintering tightrope, telling HuffPost that “calling for better management and more local control is not the same as ‘transferring them.’”

Pressed about the conflicting and misleading messaging, Anderson said “it is hard to explain someone’s stance on a 30-second ad or even on someone’s website,” adding that public lands are a “complex issue that takes time to discuss the entire scope.” As for the language Sheehy recently added to his website, Anderson said “he might be saying that because he knows reporters will twist it and make it sound like he is transferring or selling off public lands to private entities.”

“If only we had honest journalism where the reporters cared about truth and the betterment of our lands, wildlife, environment and people,” he said.

The truth is that Sheehy said what he said early in his campaign, flipped his script and spent months working to repair his image, only to then dispatch someone who supports a state takeover of federal lands in hopes of convincing voters that federal lands would be safe in Sheehy’s hands if they elect him to the Senate.

HuffPost also first reported that Sheehy failed to include his post on the board of the nonprofit Property and Environment Research Center, or PERC, in his Senate financial disclosure — a violation of Senate rules that further complicated his already muddled messaging on public lands. Sheehy’s campaign called it an “oversight” and later amended his financial disclosure.

For his second public lands ad, released last week, Sheehy tapped K.C. Walsh, with whom he served on PERC’s board for about a year before launching his campaign for Senate. Walsh is the longtime former president and executive chairman of Simms Fishing Products, the Bozeman, Montana-based manufacturer of high-end fishing gear.

In the ad, Walsh introduces himself as a longtime “advocate for conservation and public lands in Montana.”

“I voted for Jon Tester twice, but this time I’m supporting Tim Sheehy,” Walsh says. “As an aerial firefighter, Tim Sheehy’s been on the front lines, fighting wildfires to protect our forests in rural communities. Tim knows public lands belong in public hands, and I trust Tim Sheehy to protect and preserve access to Montana’s public lands.”

Founded in 1980 and based in Bozeman, PERC advocates for “free market environmentalism” — the idea that private property rights and market incentives achieve better environmental and conservation outcomes than government regulation. Over its history, PERC has called for privatizing federal lands, including national parks, and increasing fees for visiting parks and other federal lands. It has also been a staunch opponent of Montana’s unique stream access laws, which provide anglers and recreationists virtually unlimited access to the state’s rivers and streams, including those that flow through private property.

“Montana has led the way in the erosions of private property rights” via such laws, PERC’s Reed Watson wrote in 2009.

Bradley Jones, a Helena, Montana-based conservation advocate, told HuffPost “it is disingenuous of both Mr. Sheehy and Mr. Walsh to crow about Sheehy’s support for public lands when both of them come from PERC.”....>

<....“This is an organization that has made attacking public ownership of federal lands and support for the giveaway of public waters to the wealthy and landowners blessed enough to own prime real estate a cornerstone of their gospel; though they try to disguise it as academic musings on the economy,” he said. “By association with this group, Sheehy seems to be endorsing PERC’s ideology. Selling Montanans’ publicly owned lands and stream access, which are the only ‘riches’ most Montanans will inherit, is an extremely unpopular idea here.”

Along with serving on PERC’s board since 2020, Walsh is on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and is a past board member of Trout Unlimited. In 2021, Montana GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte, who supports transferring control of federal lands to states and famously sued the state of Montana in 2009 to block river access on his property near Bozeman, appointed Walsh to serve on Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission — a state regulatory advisory committee that Gianforte stacked with rich industry executives.

Walsh did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

PERC has distanced itself from some of its own history, previously telling HuffPost that its past support for privatizing federal lands “is not representative of PERC’s current thinking” and that it “firmly believes that public lands should stay in public hands.”

Still, Sheehy’s time at the think tank has become fodder for his political opponents. In a TV ad earlier this month, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee argued that pay-to-play hunting and fishing access is “Montana’s future if Sheehy has his way.”

“He was on the board of an outfit that wanted to privatize public lands, even our national parks, sold off to the highest bidder,” the ad states. “Sheehy’s loaded, he’ll take that deal. What about you?”

As in previous Montana elections, public lands have emerged as a key issue in this year’s contested Senate race — in no small part because Sheehy stepped on the same third rail as Republicans before him.

Take outgoing Montana congressman and unsuccessful Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. While running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014, Rosendale called for a state takeover of all Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands within Montana’s borders. By the time Rosendale took aim at Tester’s seat in 2018, Montana voters had forced him to turn tail. During a candidate debate that year, Rosendale acknowledged that “there was a time when I thought they could be better managed by the state,” but said he “talked to people all over the state, and they’ve made it exceedingly clear that they do not want those lands transferred. And I not only understand that, I agree with that.”

Nevertheless, Sheehy waded into the same political quagmire. And in recent months, Montana voters have been bombarded with ads that paint Sheehy as a rich outsider who threatens Montana’s prized federal lands and the Montana way of life. A native of Minnesota, Sheehy moved to Montana in 2014 after retiring from the Navy and founded Bridger Aerospace, a Bozeman-based aerial firefighting company.

As Sheehy works to walk back, or camouflage, his anti-federal land views, the Montana Republican Party — a party he’s seeking a leadership role in — is unabashedly clear.

The Montana GOP party platform, adopted in June, calls for the “granting of federally managed public lands to the state, and development of a transition plan for the timely and orderly transfer.”

It’s a position that poll after poll after poll shows a majority of residents in Montana and other states in the Mountain West oppose, as Sheehy is now learning the hard way.

As he campaigns for a fourth term in the Senate, Tester has touted his record of working to safeguard and expand protections for federal lands while casting Sheehy as part of the wealthy class that is buying up big ranches and locking the public out of surrounding public lands.

“Despite his best efforts to hide his position, transplant Tim Sheehy can’t run away from the fact that he publicly called to transfer Montana’s public lands, which would make it much easier for that land to be sold to out-of-state multimillionaires like him,” said Hannah Rehm, senior communications adviser for the Montana Democratic Party.

Sheehy’s troubles in the public lands arena don’t end with his ties to PERC and his pro-transfer comments. His cattle ranch, the Little Belt Cattle Company, has offered the sort of pay-to-play hunting that Tester says is turning Montana into a “playground” for the rich....>

<....As NBC News reported, Sheehy’s ranch contracted with a private outfitter — which one is unclear — to sell paid hunting excursions and touted itself as a “premier destination for hunters” with “private access to over 500,000 acres of National Forest.” In 2022, the ranch offered a five-day, five-person archery hunt costing $12,500, which the Montana Free Press at the time identified as “the most spendy package currently available in Montana.”

Anderson, the outfitter featured in Sheehy’s ad, did not respond to HuffPost’s question about whether he’s ever guided hunts on Sheehy’s property but told HuffPost that Sheehy “allows hunters to come on his place where the previous owners did not.”

Sheehy’s view of the federal estate aligns with many Republicans in red Western states where the federal government controls large swaths of land: simply, that federal agencies are crappy landlords and local residents know best.

“When you get asked by your fellow hunters and fly fishermen, ‘Oh, I hear Tim’s gonna sell public lands?’, you tell them, ‘Hey, that’s @#$%*&!#. He’s not selling any public lands, but what he is saying is us, as the Montanans who live here, when I share a fence line with a [Bureau of Land Management] lease, I should have more say over what happens on the other side of that fence than some guy in New York City who comes and visits to fly fish for a week,’” Sheehy said at a meet-and-greet with voters in Twin Bridges, Montana, last month. “When I have a Forest Service road that goes through my property, and I use that, and I have a lease on that Forest Service, I should have more say of what happens there than some, you know, environmental student in Seattle.”

It’s a way of thinking that casts aside the fact that federal public lands are held in trust for all Americans, not just those most adjacent to them or who have enough money to buy thousands of acres next door. Every American, whether they live 1,000 feet or 1,000 miles from a swath of federal land, has an equal stake.

At the end of the day, Marchion says, Republicans like Sheehy “don’t want to tell you exactly what they want to do” when it comes to public lands. What Sheehy is telling voters now, that he will protect and preserve federal public lands, is “devious” and “deceptive,” he said.

“He’s learned that when he’s attacked for a vulnerability, then he just changes,” Marchion said. “He makes a statement, like, ‘I’m for public lands!’ Bulls*** he is.”

“To say ‘I’m for public lands,’ it’s easy to say that,” he added. “How do you prove it?”>

<Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton's attempt to shut down an immigrant rights group for political speech was just thrown out by a Texas judge.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Paxton was hoping to have Harris County District Judge R.K. Sandill issue a temporary injunction against the organization FIEL Houston ("Familias Immigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha," which translates to "immigrant families and students in the struggle") for alleged "inappropriate political involvement." However, Sandill rejected Paxton's petition on Friday, meaning the group can continue to operate.

The Chronicle's Brooke Kushwaha reported that Paxton was hoping to force FIEL Houston to cease operations after the group spoke out against former President Donald Trump, Republican Governor Greg Abbott and the draconian Senate Bill 4 immigration law Abbott signed in 2023. Houston-based lawyer Christian D. Menefee filed an amicus brief earlier this week on behalf of FIEL Houston, accusing Paxton of using the power of his office to harass pro-immigrant groups.

"It is clear the Attorney General is overstepping his role by singling out organizations like FIEL that advocate for immigrants and their families," Menefee wrote in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter). "Lawsuits like this not only undermine the hard work of organizations that provide critical resources to immigrants but also perpetuate a climate of fear and division."

In her article, Kushwaha noted that FIEL Houston is just the latest target of Paxton's offensive against immigrant rights groups, which he accuses of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. She added: "The case against FIEL Houston is the first time, however, that Paxton has targeted an organization for political speech."

Earlier this year, Paxton announced an investigation into the Catholic-run Annunciation House in El Paso. In a letter to the organization, Paxton's office gave the group just one day to turn over documents containing sensitive information about the migrants that stayed in the group's facilities.

The Texas Tribune reported that Paxton's office described the Annunciation House as "an illegal stash house" that was "engaged in the business of human smuggling." But on the group's website, Annunciation House "accompan[ies] the migrant, refugee, and economically vulnerable peoples of the border region through hospitality, advocacy, and education."

Immigrant-focused charities have been a frequent target of the far right in recent years. Pro-Nazi commentator Stew Peters said in a 2023 speech that aid workers for charities that help undocumented immigrants should be murdered.

""These people cross into Mexico and coach illegals on how to get admitted here…These are these, you know, not-for-profit charities. Catholic Charities is a very good example," Peters said last October. "We need troops on the border that [sic] will shoot people that [sic] are trying to invade our country. That’d be a good first step. But you know what a better second step would be? Shooting everyone involved with these fake charities.">

<The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution.

The group also challenged the right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots.

The Republican group’s platform and policy document noted that “The Constitutional qualifications of Presidential eligibility” states that “No person except a natural born Citizen, shall be eligible, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The same document included former President Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance on a list of preferred candidates for vice president.

The document and the citing of the Dred Scott decision were initially noted by lawyer Andrew Fleischman on X, formerly Twitter.

The group goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

“An originalist and strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution in the Scalia and Thomas tradition, as well as precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases ... have found that a ‘Natural Born Citizen’ is defined as a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child’s birth,” the document states.

The group then cites six cases including Dred Scott v Sandford. The 1857 ruling came a few years before the 1861 outbreak of the US Civil War over the issue of slavery, stating that enslaved people could not be citizens, meaning that they couldn’t expect to receive any protection from the courts or the federal government. The ruling also said that Congress did not have the power to ban slavery from a federal territory.

The NFRA’s platform document argued that “Several states, candidates, and major political parties have ignored this fundamental Presidential qualification, including candidates Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Kamala Harris whose parents were not American citizens at the time of their birth.”

“It is the will of this convention that only candidates who meet the natural born-citizenship standard, interpreted through an originalist and strict constructionist standard, be placed on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballots,” the document states.

Both Haley and Ramaswamy appeared on Republican primary ballots. Former President Ronald Reagan was a member of the now 90-year-old organization, Raw Story noted.

The NFRA’s interpretation of the Constitution would have made several US presidents ineligible to hold office, such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Their parents were born in what was then the British colonies in what would later become the US, meaning that those commanders in chief would not meet the strict standards of the NFRA.

The NFRA also cited the 1939 case Perkins v Elg.

“A child born here of alien parentage becomes a citizen of the United States,” the case states, going against the argument of the NFRA.

The US Archives states on its site that the Scott v Sandford ruling is “considered by many legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court.”

It also notes that the decision was “overturned” by the 13th and 14th amendments which abolished slavery and stated that all people born in the US are citizens.

The Independent has contacted the NFRA for comment.>

<Texas' largest newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, rebuked Governor Greg Abbott on Saturday in an editorial over bussing [sic] migrants to Democrat-led states, writing that "the [southern] border is Abbott's ticket to ride, and he don't care."

Tensions over the handling of the U.S.-Mexico border remains as the country experiences heightened levels of migrant border crossings. There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

Republicans say the uptick in migrants is a direct result of President Joe Biden's border policies, which, they argue, incentivize illegal immigration. Other experts have said various factors, including political and financial instability in some Central American countries, drive migration to the United States.

Abbott, an outspoken critic of Biden over immigration issues, launched his border-control initiative, Operation Lone Star, in 2021 in an effort to combat immigration. According to Abbott, since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the effort has led to over 510,600 illegal immigrant apprehensions.

Abbott's operation has involved transporting migrants, either by bus or by plane, to Democratic-controlled sanctuary cities, which have policies in place that discourage local law enforcement from reporting the immigration status of individuals unless it involves a serious crime.

In an op-ed published by the Chronicle on Saturday titled, "From Beyonce to Abbott's migrant buses, why the no shows?" the newspaper's editorial board critiqued Abbott's vow at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July to keep bussing migrants, noting the drop in the number of migrants being bussed [sic].

Newsweek has reached out to Abbott's office via email for comment.

The number of migrants has declined over the last six months, dropping by more than fourfold since the second half of 2023. The state figures, analyzed by the Chronicle, show that while Abbott's program sent about 77,000 migrants to six Democratic-led cities between August to December of last year, it has only bussed about 17,000 to three cities this year—New York City, Chicago and Denver.

Meanwhile, no buses have been sent by Texas anywhere for nearly two months, according to state data obtained by The New York Times.

According to Texas officials, the reason for the lack of buses was not that the program had been halted, but that there have not been enough migrants to send, the Times reported.

The Chronicle's editorial board took aim at Abbott, accusing him of "trying to take credit" for the decline, writing that there are other factors that likely led to the decline.

"Abbott's office is trying to take credit, pointing to increased razor wire and National Guard troops. But two other factors seem more significant: Mexico's efforts to prevent crossings into the U.S. and President Biden's order in June," the Chronicle's editorial board wrote.

In June, Biden announced an order that blocks asylum requests at the southern border once the average number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening only once that number declines to 1,500 crossings.

"The buses are reportedly still standing by, kind of like the Maytag repairman hoping for a call. We can't imagine Abbott is buoyed or discouraged by this development. His busing campaign was never really about border security. It was a route to political expediency. When it comes to politics, the border is Abbott's ticket to ride, and he don't care," the Chronicle's editorial board wrote.

However, Abbott has insisted on continuing the program vowing at the RNC to keep sending his buses full of migrants to Democrat-led states until "we finally secure the border."

Despite criticisms from Democrats, who accuse Abbott of using migrants as "political pawns," the governor has repeatedly defended his program.

According to the governor's office earlier this month, Abbott's administration has moved over 119,000 migrants since 2022 to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles.

It's unclear why Texas hasn't been sending as many migrants in recent months, but the number of CBP encounters has dropped, which could mean fewer migrants to send, and the program itself has faced legal setbacks that may depress its operations.

Abbott has taken credit for the dip in illegal crossings, boasting in a press release in June that crossings have decreased by 74 percent since the launch of Operation Lone Star.

<Donald Trump heralded an aggressive new phase of his campaign to combat Kamala Harris’s sustained momentum, with a busier schedule in battleground states and amped-up outreach to younger men and women, voters he sees as crucial to victory.

Advisers to Trump, who are bracing for Harris to enjoy a postconvention boost in polls, say he will be more active on the campaign trail after setting a modest pace when President Biden was still in the race.

On Monday, Trump will address a National Guard conference in Detroit. He then has events Thursday elsewhere in Michigan and Wisconsin followed by a rally Friday in Pennsylvania. He is planning a number of interviews and after a long absence, has returned to regular posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he has nearly 90 million followers.

Harris is fresh off a Democratic National Convention in Chicago that was orchestrated to appeal to the political mainstream, replete with patriotic flag-waving, “U.S.A.!” chants and her pledges to get tougher on the border—a key liability for her campaign—and bolster the military. Democrats have enthusiastically rallied around Harris and are showing support in striking ways. The Harris campaign said Sunday that it had raised $540 million in the past month, with $82 million coming during the convention.

This weekend the Trump campaign addressed more moderate voters: women.

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, said Sunday that he could “absolutely commit” that Trump wouldn’t seek a national ban on abortion, a persistent criticism of the Trump campaign at the Democratic convention.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether Trump would veto such legislation, Vance said, “I think he would. He said that explicitly that he would.” The statement reinforced what Trump wrote on Friday on Truth Social: “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” In another post, he was “very proud” to support in vitro fertilization treatments.

Trump has for months wrestled with the abortion issue and sought to lay out a more nuanced position, at once celebrating the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade and yet saying states should set their own policies. As he sought to contain that issue, Trump also spent the weekend ratcheting up attacks on Harris, calling her weak on crime and immigration—and noting she got the nomination without a primary. “This is a threat to Democracy!” he wrote.

Trump, who has struggled to find an approach to Harris since Biden exited the race about a month ago, got a boost Friday when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was dropping his bid and endorsing Trump. Pollsters say Trump stands to pick up mostly dissatisfied Republicans from the Kennedy column, as Democrats who were disillusioned with Biden have moved over to Harris.

Trump has drawn criticism, including from some Republicans, for not keeping a more robust campaign schedule. But with Biden out of the race he is facing a new dynamic in Harris just as the election is moving into a post-Labor Day sprint to Nov. 5.

In a shift, more of the events Trump’s campaign is eyeing are smaller in scale, which saves money, but they also are designed to keep Trump more focused on a given topic, a constant struggle. He has long preferred hosting large, adoring crowds for rallies, but his advisers say those do little to move the needle forward and to guarantee him that edge with undecided and independent voters come November.

Trump has also expanded his campaign staff, including bringing on Corey Lewandowski, who helped manage his 2016 campaign. Lewandowski will provide Trump with another sounding board, people familiar with the move say, and is planning to do a lot of television appearances. He also is well-known enough that he can draw crowds for events.

Lesser known but seen as a vital ally inside Trumpworld is Taylor Budowich, who joined the campaign after running MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super political-action committee. The youthful Budowich has a rapport with Trump, people familiar with the relationship say, and he is adept at offering advice, which could help keep Trump on message.

The Trump campaign says it is putting greater emphasis on having the former president, Vance and campaign surrogates interact with voters in nontraditional ways, pointing to the interview Trump recently did on X with the platform’s owner Elon Musk and his podcast interview with comedian Theo Von. This, campaign officials said, is geared toward reaching out to more undecided voters—chiefly younger men—who likely turn to alternative sources for their news and entertainment. Earlier this month, Trump allies launched a $20 million effort with influencers to register voters and push them to the polls.....>

<....The campaign is also looking to book surrogates on podcast shows geared toward Black audiences—particularly men—such as “Earn Your Leisure,” “Market Mondays” and others.

Trump is expected to do more meet-and-greets and smaller events that take aim at two areas where the campaign believes Harris is most vulnerable: the border and the economy.

Last week, Trump stood a few feet from the border wall in Cochise County, Ariz., where he said Biden and Harris wasted taxpayer money by letting materials purchased for border-wall construction go to waste. He invited relatives of Americans killed by undocumented migrants to deliver heart-wrenching accounts of the dangers they said the country is facing if Harris is elected. A super PAC supporting Trump began running an ad on immigration last week in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump and his allies have shown frustration about the energy and momentum surrounding Harris but continue to expect it to level off. Polls indicate a tight race ahead. Harris leads Trump by 3.6 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight.com average of public polls. But her lead in most polls is within the margin of error—and she trails in many polls of battleground states.

Trump’s campaign, while casting Harris as too liberal for the country, is increasingly trying to play her up as a political lightweight, noting the lack of policy details she has provided so far.

“This is being decided right now on vibes,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, who competed against Trump in the GOP primary and is now a top surrogate. “I think by the time we get to November the reality is many voters are going to demand some level of substance we haven’t gotten yet.”

While the once-disciplined campaign had faced some setbacks in recent weeks as Trump publicly aired his frustrations over Harris’s rapid rise, questioning her racial identity and intelligence, his advisers seem to have worked to get Trump to recognize the potential pitfalls of his outbursts.

At a North Carolina event last week, an event branded as a national security address, Trump lamented over how Barack and Michelle Obama had been “very nasty” toward him in their Democratic convention speeches, and he polled the audience on whether he should use personal attacks or not. The crowd overwhelmingly indicated he should.

“My advisers are fired,” Trump joked. “I would rather keep it on policy. Sometimes it’s hard when you’re attacked on all ends.”>

<This year's election is shaping up to be decided in court, rather than the ballot box, legal experts told Business Insider, and both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are preparing for a nasty legal battle to duke it out.

Republican groups, both formally and informally aligned with Trump, are preparing to challenge the outcome of the election in multiple battleground states.

In Georgia, The Guardian reported Trump allies have adopted new rules for the state's election board, allowing members to potentially delay certification of the election over undefined inquiries into ballot discrepancies.

In Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, per The Washington Post, the GOP has pushed for voter rolls to be purged despite established federal limits on doing so in the months before the election. Republicans in Nevada also filed suit to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted if they're received after election day, though the legal rationale behind the suit has been repeatedly dismissed by courts in the past, the outlet noted.

"You now have, in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, about 70 election deniers and commissions that [sic] are supposed to count the electoral votes, and already there have been about 20 cases where officials in recent elections have refused or delayed certification of results," David Driesen, a law professor at Syracuse University and the author of the book "The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power," told Business Insider.

"So what Trump is going to do is claim some kind of fraud and then try to get the officials who believe him to delay or prevent certification on election results," Driesen said.

Jonathan Diaz, the director for voting advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, told BI that he expects a lot of litigation around the election "as, unfortunately, has become the norm."

Prior to the 2020 election, he said, there used to be a flurry of litigation right before election day about polling places and mail-in ballots. But, he said, there has been a shift since 2020 favoring challenges to post-election processes and lawsuits about counting ballots and certifying official results.

A reinvigorated election denial strategy
While concerns have surged over certification challenges and the purging of voter rolls, Harris' campaign has bolstered its senior legal team in preparation to face off in court, The New York Times reported.

The anticipated legal challenges, largely focusing on delays in certifying results and questions over ballot counts in swing states, could result in a situation where Harris can't claim electoral votes that she's won, Driesen said.

"Or, at least, in a lot of litigation chaos it could end up putting things in the House of Representatives, or could go to the Supreme Court — which is in Trump's pocket," Driesen told BI. "I think that's the strategy, is to try to prevent certification of Harris victories in the swing states where there are substantial numbers of election law deniers. And sometimes they may also try to have state legislatures certify alternative slates of electors, using the inability to certify as an approach."

Both Diaz and Driesen noted that Trump attempted to challenge the legal results of the election in 2020, and the democratic system worked as it was supposed to at the time. In more than 60 challenges over the results of the 2020 election, judges across the political spectrum — including some appointed by Trump himself — roundly dismissed Trump's claims of voter fraud, and President Joe Biden's win was ultimately certified across the nation.

Diaz said that, while the lawsuits filed so far by groups aligned with Trump have largely been frivolous, and he's hopeful the democratic system will again reject Trump's false claims of fraud, the challenges themselves are still dangerous.

"Even if those efforts are not ultimately legally successful in removing people from the roles or in affecting election procedures, they contribute to a really dangerous public narrative of misinformation around election security and around election processes," Diaz said. "They help to plant the seeds for future efforts to overturn election results that don't go the way that these people want."

Representatives for the Trump campaign and Harris' legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.>

<Local election officials in key swing states are taking on new power heading into 2024, worrying some legal observers who expect attempts to slow down the certification process in favor of GOP candidates.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which former President Trump baselessly claimed was rigged against him, local election offices, which typically provide clerical roles, are now giving glimpses into what potential chaos might loom in 2024.

In Georgia, recent last-minute rule changes by the state election board — an unelected panel of three Republicans, one Democrat and a nonpartisan chair — have raised alarm among citizens and election officials that the battleground state’s election results could be easily thrown into disarray.

Michigan and Nevada have also seen their share of attempts to decline certification of certain results. Meanwhile, in Arizona, a local county supervisor is suing to have ballots be counted by hand instead of machines.

“Going into this election, we see election deniers who are more organized than they were before, who have been through this once before, and may have learned something or two from all of their defeats in the 2020 election. And we also see more intensity,” said Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group, a firm that Vice President Harris’s campaign has brought on to assist with election litigation.

In Georgia, the state board recently began requiring local boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, which critics warn could cause delays.

On Monday, the board decided 3-2 that investigations must also be ordered if local election board members locate discrepancies at a precinct. It’s left to the board to determine how to “compute the votes justly” if they identify an error beyond correction.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who has spoken out against the board’s actions as an “11th-hour effort to impose new activist rulemaking,” said earlier this month that refusing to certify election results is unlawful and that counties must certify results by Nov. 12.

“We fully anticipate that counties will follow the law,” Raffensperger wrote on the social platform X.

Trump, on the other hand, has praised the board’s three Republicans as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

Some 850 people attended a virtual meeting Monday where the state election board invited public comment on the proposals. Election workers, voters and the Democratic Party of Georgia pushed back against the new rules as excessive and implemented too late. Administrators of the meeting were frequently forced to mute the microphones of angry detractors attempting to interject.

“This board has wasted time and taxpayer money to reopen issues that have already been settled,” said Allison Prendergast, who identified herself as a Gwinnett County, Ga., voter. “That’s a misuse of power.”

Kathy Boockvar, former secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, said in an interview that the wide range of election officials raising concern about the changes is a red flag the Georgia panel shouldn’t ignore.

“Here we’ve got a situation where both the chief state election official and local county election officials all agree this is a bad idea, which, to me, is full stop — then, this is a bad idea,” Boockvar said.

With just less than 75 days until Election Day, the changes introduce new variables to an election that officials have likely been planning for nearly two years under regular threats. It’s bound to be “disruptive and challenging,” said former Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R).

“It’s just one more example of … a new rule that’s going to impact the administration of elections without any funding or resources to pull it off,” Wyman said.

High-profile conservative activists joined the meeting to express support for the proposed rules, including Harry MacDougald — a lawyer for Jeffrey Clark, the ex-Justice Department official charged alongside Trump in his Georgia election subversion case — and the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who authored Project 2025’s federal election oversight section.

“You need to ignore all these partisan allegations you’ve heard,” said von Spakovsky, who spoke in a personal capacity. “This is a matter of good government, not politics, and those who say, ‘This will disenfranchise voters’ — that’s just not true.”....>

<....The former secretaries of state, Boockvar and Wyman, warned that the flurry of changes could cause delays that bump up on deadlines prescribed in the Constitution.

“If they’re delaying the certification of the presidential election, they’re delaying the certification of the entire election,” Wyman said. “And so, what impact does that have? Does Georgia not have a congressional delegation on the floor of the House when they’re supposed to certify the results, and does that happen in other states? What disruption does that cause?”

The battle over election certifications has already played out in key swing states the last few elections.

In Arizona, GOP board members in two ruby-red Arizona counties — Mohave and Cochise — sought to delay certifying their 2022 vote canvasses until courts and state officials commanded they do so. Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould (R) at the time said he was only voting to certify “under duress.”

As this year’s election approaches, Gould has led an effort for his county to count ballots by hand instead of using machines. After Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) sent a letter saying it was illegal, Gould’s board rejected the idea in a 3-2 vote.

Gould has since sued so his county can order a full hand count, also calling Mayes’s letter “threats and intimidation” and accusing her of abusing her office.

“Hand counting ballots will take much longer and require more staff time than using the machine counts, as the law permits,” said Nkwonta, the Elias Law partner.

In Michigan, officials in Delta County, a rural area in the Upper Peninsula, delayed certification of a recall election ousting three incumbent Republicans. The county ultimately certified the results after initially deadlocking 2-2 in May.

And in Nevada, three Republicans on the Washoe County board last month declined to certify two primary recounts. Commissioner Clara Andriola, one of those Republicans, voted against certifying her own victory.

The board ultimately relented only after Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) went to the state’s highest court, which ultimately dismissed the case as moot Monday.

Its order, however, acknowledged that the issue is “perhaps capable of repetition.”>

<In late February 2019, former Maine governor Paul LePage, a Republican, went on a local radio show to talk politics. The topic of abolishing the Electoral College came up, and LePage essentially freaked out. A national popular vote for president, LePage said, would be tantamount to turning America into a “dictatorship,” and the types of people voting would prefer “the constitution of Venezuela” to that of the United States.

Why? Because, LePage said, echoing an old GOP line rarely spoken in public, if the actual vote reflected the actual public, “it’s only going to be the minorities who would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida.” And those states are filled with Latinx and black people. Speaking of the movement to end the Electoral College, LePage said, “What would happen if they do what they say they’re gonna do, white people will not have anything to say.”

There are basically three types of people—or three movements—interested in limiting the voting public to white people and, even at that, to discouraging young, old, and working-class white people from voting just as aggressively as they want to prevent people of color from voting.

They can be referred to with the shorthand labels of Calvinists, libertarian oligarchs, and white supremacists. There is, of course, considerable overlap among the three, but generally the arguments made—and legislation and policy advanced— reflect one of these three core belief systems.

The Calvinists have a worldview similar to that of the followers of French theologian John Calvin, who adopted the precepts of a new offshoot of Christianity around 1520 in Geneva.

Central to the idea of Calvinism are the doctrines of “total depravity” and “unconditional election.” Calvinism asserted that because we are each born out of a woman’s womb, we’re all “dead” in sin (totally depraved) and unable to save ourselves. Instead of salvation coming from confession or good works, Calvin taught, only his god could decide (unconditionally elect) who would be saved and who would eventually rot in hell.

This solved a big problem for many of the royal families of Europe in the 16th and following centuries: how to use Christianity (denial of which was a capital crime across most of Europe) to justify their absolute rule over their subjects.

If Calvin’s god decided who was to be saved and who was to burn even before birth, how then could mankind separate the saved from the sinners, and the noble from the wicked?

The answer was simple: the outward sign of Calvin’s god’s election or salvation was wealth. Since his god controlled everything and man was without agency, then through “irresistible grace” (the fourth of five Calvinist doctrines) Calvin’s god’s will would be shown to all by virtue of earthly riches and political power.

People were rich and in charge because they were blessed by God and, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:4–6, chosen by him “before the foundation of the world.”

Modern-day conservatives like William F. Buckley and George Will advocate a secular version of Calvinism, but instead of a distant god determining who should rule, DNA would do it: the smart should be in charge, and the dumb should keep their mouths shut and, preferably, not vote or participate in politics at all.

Herbert Spencer, in his 1842 treatise The Proper Sphere of Government, made essentially this same argument, suggesting that while happiness and safety in society were the goals of political activity, they had to be guided by people who had the best DNA (using modern shorthand) and thus should be political leaders. (He also argued in the treatise that government should never provide for education or health care—a conservative ahead of his time.)....>

<....Spencer’s ideas led directly to Francis Galton’s invention of the word eugenics in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. Eugenics held that sterilizing or even killing of what have often been described as defective or substandard people would weed out our gene pool and improve the overall intelligence and fitness of the human race in both current and future generations.

Eugenics was enthusiastically adopted by Winston Churchill, who tried unsuccessfully to make it law in Great Britain in 1912, and Woodrow Wilson, who promoted it heavily in the United States during his presidency, leading every state in the union to put compulsory sterilization laws or policies into effect.

Adolf Hitler, of course, picked up Churchill’s and Wilson’s slogans almost verbatim and applied them to Jews, Gypsies, the mentally disabled, and homosexuals (in that order of aggression), leading Germany straight to the Holocaust.

George Will has argued that if voting is easy and widespread, we’ll experience a sort of reverse social Darwinism, causing people of poorer quality and intelligence to vote and thus screw things up. As he wrote in an article for the Washington Post in 2012, “As indifferent or reluctant voters are nagged to the polls—or someday prodded there by a monetary penalty for nonvoting—the caliber of the electorate must decline.”

This perspective has a long history in American politics. Alexander Hamilton and his conservative wing among the founders and framers of the Constitution believed there must be some filter to keep out what conservative John Adams called “the rabble.”

Hamilton wrote, “If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote. . . . But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others,” they should not be able to exercise the franchise.

Similarly, Adams stated, “Such is the Frailty of the human heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own.” Therefore, men without property should play no role in governance, including not being able to vote.

Adams added, “[G]enerally Speaking, Women and Children, have as good Judgment, and as independent Minds as those Men who are wholly destitute of Property.”

Today’s version of this worldview argues that, instead of through divine predestination, poor people are poor because of defective character or intellect from birth and therefore should be discouraged from voting. And because poverty is most heavily concentrated in communities of color, they are ideally selected first for voter suppression efforts.

Libertarian oligarchs make up the second category of people who argue against widespread voting rights (although it’s not limited to the oligarchs). Libertarianism and Objectivism are inherently and openly in opposition to democracy, referring to the system as “mob rule.”

Scottish lawyer and historian Alexander Tytler (1747– 1813) is often quoted as expressing a similar sentiment. A meme attributed to him began circulating around the time of Reagan’s first election (which was about 200 years after the establishment of the United States) and exploded across the internet during the 2000 election:

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

In fact, this was delivered as part of a 1943 speech by Henning W. Prentis Jr., former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a group that, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, more recently has been heavily funded by the libertarian Koch brothers.

This misattributed quote has had a remarkable impact and endurance, spawning a generation of libertarians and conservatives who love to cite the deadly “Tytler Cycle.”....>