<It's the same old trolling and cyberstalking from the urchins. Susan's preferred "weed puller" lets you do it again and again and again, for days, weeks, months, years, decades.

You say you've moved up to the adult bar, but you sure don't act like one, and you never will, because you're the troll master in desperate need of attention, to the point of being a troublemaker for negative attention. It's too bad we'll never have a beer together. I'd change your pilehole sideways for starters.

Perv, you can kiss your own narcistic [sic] @#$%*@!. You're of little use to this website that you're hell bent on ruining to make yourself king by eliminating others who wish to comment without your warped approval. King of sick, cruel, unhinged stalker commentary that is.

See what I mean Harry? I have a couple loud shadows, and a couple silent shadows who do the dirty work because they're not man enough to take credit for their devious, underhanded actions.....>

<JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon blasted several major U.S. financial regulatory initiatives on Monday and vowed to oppose those he said would not make banks safer.

The outspoken executive, 68, who runs the largest U.S. lender, criticized what he called overlapping or ill-conceived rules on capital requirements, card payments and open banking.

"It's time to fight back," Dimon said at a conference. Many banks are afraid to "fight with their regulators, because they would just come and punish you more," he added.

"I have been told by people at the Fed, know that because of what you have said and what you wrote about, you know they are coming after you."

The Federal Reserve declined to comment.

"We are suing our regulators over and over and over because things are becoming unfair and unjust, and they are hurting companies, a lot of these rules are hurting lower-paid individuals," he said.

As banks await new proposals under what is known as the Basel III endgame, "the devil is in the details," Dimon said.

He was referring to a proposal by U.S. regulators in July 2023 to align their standards with those of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to help the industry better absorb economic shocks.

The Fed's regulatory chief Michael Barr last month outlined a plan to raise big bank capital by 9%, easing the previous proposal to hike capital 19%. It was a major concession to Wall Street banks that had lobbied to water down the draft.

Despite the apparent industry victory, the plan was still mired in uncertainty, with key details unclear and the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election casting doubt over whether it would survive a new administration.

It will be difficult to get anything done if the proposals do not emerge before the election, Dimon said.

The capital surcharge for global systemically important banks was among the "stupidest" elements of the Basel framework, its operational risk calculations were "ridiculous," and there were "inconsistencies" in the liquidity coverage ratio, he said.

"The biggest problem I have with all these overlapping rules is that we are not stepping back and saying, what could we do better to make the system work better," he added.

Dimon has been floated for senior positions on U.S. economic policy, such as Treasury secretary. Despite opining on what qualities the next president should possess, he has not publicly endorsed either candidate.

The bank chief has been among the most strident critics of regulations and has warned the bank is willing to challenge some rules in court when it sees no other choice.

"It is time to fight back," Dimon told the American Bankers Association, drawing applause and laughter. "We don't want to get involved in litigation just to make a point, but if you're in a knife fight, you better bring a knife and that's where we are."

The CEO also said regulators should not allow card-issuing financial services firms such as American Express, Capital One and Discover Financial Services to charge more for debit card transactions.

This is because banks are limited in how much they can charge for debit cards while card issuers have no such limits.

"It's grossly unfair to allow them to do more," he said.

Dimon, the longest running bank chief at a major Wall Street bank, also criticized the top U.S. consumer finance watchdog's rules unveiled last week which would make it easier for consumers to switch between financial services providers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's "open banking" rule governs data sharing between fintech firms and traditional banks, allowing consumers to easily transfer their personal data between providers free of charge.

Dimon said he was not against open banking but noted that it could compromise consumer data and lead to fraudulent money transfers and he was set to fight it.>

<Donald Trump has a serious Puerto Rico problem — in Pennsylvania.

Many Puerto Rican voters in the state are furious about racist and demeaning comments delivered at a Trump rally. Some say their dismay is giving Kamala Harris a new opening to win over the state’s Latino voters, particularly nearly half a million Pennsylvanians of Puerto Rican descent.

Evidence of the backlash was immediate on Monday: A nonpartisan Puerto Rican group drafted a letter urging its members to oppose Trump on election day. Other Puerto Rican voters were lighting up WhatsApp chats with reactions to the vulgar display and raising it in morning conversations at their bodegas. Some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday in Allentown, a majority-Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state.

And the arena Trump is speaking at is located in the middle of the city’s Puerto Rican neighborhood.

“It’s spreading like wildfire through the community,” said Norberto Dominguez, a precinct captain with the local Democratic party in Allentown, who noted his own family is half Republican and half Democratic voters.

“It’s not the smartest thing to do, to insult people — a large group of voters here in a swing state — and then go to their home asking for votes,” Dominguez said.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Trump. Almost a week before Election Day, he’s pushing to cut into Harris’ margins among Latinos, especially young men who are worried about the economy. But the comments from pro-Trump comedian Tony Hinchcliffe Sunday night, referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” has reverberated throughout Pennsylvania and elsewhere, prompting even the former president’s Republican allies to defend the island and denounce the comments. And with the race essentially a toss up, every vote counts — especially in Pennsylvania.

“This was just like a gift from the gods,” said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all.

“If we weren't engaged before, we're all paying attention now,” Martinez said. He added the morning radio show he hosts was chock-full of callers Monday sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president.

In response to questions on the comments, and whether Trump was planning to publicly denounce them, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “Due to President Trump's plans to cut taxes, end inflation, and stop the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border, he has more support from the Hispanic American community than any Republican in recent history.”

Local Democrats like Dominguez argue the fallout at the very least reminds Puerto Rican voters of Trump’s previous comments about the island, calling it “dirty” and tossing paper towels to survivors during a 2017 visit after Hurricane Maria devastated the island and killed more than 2,000 people.

And in a sign of how worried local residents are, a school district in Allentown announced Monday morning that it had canceled classes for Tuesday, when Trump visits.

The Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the comedian’s comments about Puerto Ricans and Latinos. Danielle Alvarez, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said Sunday evening that the “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Another Trump adviser said the speakers’ remarks were not vetted prior to the rally. Key Republican lawmakers in Florida, New York and other states with large Puerto Rican populations quickly denounced the comments, saying it didn’t reflect GOP values.

But other Trump allies, and his running mate JD Vance, have downplayed the rhetoric as just jokes. During a rally in Wisconsin Monday, Vance said that he had not heard the joke and that “maybe it's a stupid racist joke” or “maybe it’s not” but Harris saying people should get offended by a comedian’s jokes is “not the message of a winning campaign.”

“Our country was built by frontiersmen who conquered the wilderness,” Vance said. “We’re not going to restore the greatness of American civilization if we get offended at every little thing. Let’s have a sense of humor and let’s have a little fun.”

Donald Trump Jr. and other MAGA Republicans have shared social media posts with a similar message.....>

<....But at least one local Republican is denouncing the remarks.

"The comments made by this so-called ‘comedian’ at Madison Square Garden weren’t funny, they were offensive and wrong,” state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie told POLITICO. The Republican is locked in a close race against Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who represents Allentown and a key part of the swingy Lehigh Valley. Mackenzie said he was still looking forward to Trump’s visit.

And, some Pennsylvania GOP strategists, even as they tried to downplay the electoral fallout, acknowledged it was an unforced error at the very least.

Jimmy Zumba, a Latino GOP strategist based in the Lehigh Valley, called them “stupid comments,” that were clearly not based on the immigration and crime themes that Republicans have tried to hammer this cycle.

“Obviously I would love to be talking about that, to be on the offense on that, but right now we’re on the defense trying to defend comments that are not from the campaign or President Trump,” Zumba said, adding he didn’t believe the matter is “going to shift completely a Latino vote.”

But many local Puerto Rican community members are unwilling to let go of the comments.

Roberto L. Lugo, President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, said the nonpartisan group will be releasing a letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, condemning the comments and urging Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans not to vote for Trump. Lugo, who was born in Puerto Rico and now lives in Philadelphia, said Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans are “really disturbed” over the comments.

“I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, I'm independent,” Lugo said. “But at this point, it’s not about political, partisan issues. It is about the respect and honor our Puerto Ricans and Latinos deserved as citizens and legal residents of this country, that’s the issue.”

“We held Trump and his campaign responsible for this disgraceful act,” he added.

State Rep. Danilo Burgos, co-chair of the “Latinos con Harris” group in Pennsylvania, said residents have spread the comments on social media and within Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community.

“I saw two ladies in particular saying they were considering voting for Trump, but they're not now,” he said, “because of the comments.”

He also said that Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny’s endorsement of Harris could be a game changer in Pennsylvania, arguing that a third-party candidate in Puerto Rico’s governor's election surged from a double-digit deficit because the superstar got involved. Bad Bunny has not endorsed a candidate in that race, but has paid for billboards opposing Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon’s New Progressive Party.

“She was running away with the election,” he said. “Now that election is a statistical tie.”

Notably, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son, made a stop in Allentown on Monday, ahead of a planned event in Coplay, Pennsylvania, a Lehigh Valley borough outside Allentown.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday also noted Trump made the choice not to distance himself from the comments.

“If Donald Trump really wanted to disassociate himself with that, the first thing he would have said when he came onto the stage at Madison Square Garden was, ‘hey, listen, I heard that person's attempt at humor. It was not funny. I stand with the Puerto Rican community,’” Shapiro told a local talk news radio station in northeast Pennsylvania. “He didn't do that.”

Republicans have been eager to peel away Puerto Rican and Latino voters from Democrats in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Trump actually made gains among voters in North Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican-dominated neighborhoods in 2020. Harris sought to shore up her support in the neighborhood during a Sunday visit to Freddy and Tony’s, a local Puerto Rican restaurant, where she was speaking about her plans for the island around the same time that Trump’s rally featured the disparaging comments.

Kenny Perez, an employee at Freddy and Tony’s, said in an interview at the restaurant on Monday that he’s often turned off by politics and normally doesn’t vote. But he condemned the Trump rally comments and said while he’s still deciding, this year, he thinks he’ll vote for Harris and "definitely not for Trump.”

“I think he gave Kamala a boost,” Perez added.

Other Puerto Ricans want an apology from Trump himself.

“They should think before they put a person in front of millions of people to talk like that and joke like that,” said Ivonne Concepion, who also lives in North Philadelphia. “He’s gotta say ‘perdon,’ not just sorry, but from here,” she said pointing to her chest.>

<I can't talk too much about it, but I was a special agent with the FBI.

As a member of Special Operations Group 13, I was exposed to a wide range of humanity's worst — from organized crime and terrorist activity to financial abuse and online death threats.

After I left the FBI, I became the global CEO of a cybersecurity firm, where I ran everything from digital forensic investigations to penetration testing.

The problem with staying safe on the internet nowadays is that the horse is out of the barn. But there are still things you can do.

Here are five simple things to bear in mind on the internet:

Always be suspicious

If you receive a video, phone call, voicemail, email, or direct message, try to confirm independently with the sender that it's real.

If you don't recognize the number on a phone call, but it sounds like the person, put them on hold and independently verify it.

Someone once tried to execute a deepfake call on my mother. They sounded like my eldest daughter. My mom was 80 years old then, but the good news is that multiple people in her family were FBI agents or detectives, so she was immediately suspicious.

She called me to check, and my daughter was with me, so she knew it was fake. Other people have not been that careful in the past.

Listen to your phone

You know how your phone sometimes tells you your passwords have been compromised in a data leak? Some people just ignore that, which is astonishing to me.

My father was the former CEO of MasterCard and a former FBI agent himself, but he still ended up having a significant amount of money removed from his checking account due to compromised credentials that he did not reset.

Check the list of apps that have compromised passwords — you might be surprised at how many websites you have a password for in the first place — and go into the apps and change your passwords, at least for the important ones.

Don't use the same password for absolutely everything. You don't need to have 150 passwords for 150 websites — but spread them out.

I know it's a pain, but you are better safe than sorry.

Free WiFi is a risk

If you are going to be using free WiFi at coffee shops or stations, definitely think about installing a VPN on your phone. It's so easy.

And do not make financial transactions on a public WiFi network. You don't know who could have access to that information.

Lock your credit information down

It's easy. Just call the reporting agency (like Experian) and tell them you want to lock your credit bureau. They will develop a passkey for you to unlock it later.

My lifelong friend's father had his identity stolen once, and he didn't have his credit bureaus locked down.

The criminals used a false identity to purchase real estate in Brooklyn in his name and used the real estate to conduct fraudulent transactions.

It was quite a personal and financial disruption in his life.

This is something a lot of people don't do, but it's a free procedure that makes you instantly more protected against fraud.

Post intelligently

Whenever you are posting, always assume it could be used in some form against you. Would you still post it?

It's one thing to post pictures of you having a good time — you do you — but it's another thing to go and publicly tag every person in the photo.

For all the positive things that come from social media, it creates a treasure trove of information for bad actors. You have video, you have pictures, you have associations of friendship. You also have machine learning that can go through all of that at an incredible rate of speed — something that we've never seen before until now.

There are service platforms and ransomware on the dark web that accelerate these exploits. That's also how deepfakes are becoming more and more convincing — they use voice and image models from videos and photos that are out there already.>

<If he winds up losing the election, Donald Trump already has lined up a scapegoat.

Trump is making clear that he'll blame Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee chair who Trump tasked with building the party's massive "election integrity" team.

It's the latest sign of how Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020 are at the core of the GOP's identity — and the "if I don't win, they cheated" mantra Trump has continued into the 2024 campaign.

Under Whatley — and at Trump's insistence — Republicans say they've amassed 200,000 poll watchers and poll workers across the country.

It's an unprecedented program that's partly aimed at collecting evidence of voter fraud at a time when Republicans have filed scores of lawsuits targeting voting eligibility rules, ballot-processing procedures and other issues.

Within the GOP, the program is actually a bigger priority than on-the-ground efforts to reach voters.

At a rally in North Carolina last month, Trump singled out Whatley, a former GOP chair in the state.

"Where are you, Michael? Stand up. We're counting on this guy. I didn't take him from any other state. I took him right from here," Trump said.

"So Michael, you better win or you're never going to be able to come back here. He doesn't win, he won't be at RNC and he will no longer be in North Carolina. He'll be looking for a job," Trump added.

In fact, in private conversations with allies recently, Trump has said he believes the only reason he could lose the election is if Whatley drops the ball on "election integrity" issues.

Whatley has gone to significant lengths to placate Trump when it comes to the ex-president's pet issue.

Besides recruiting and training its sprawling roster of poll watchers, Whatley's RNC has sent Trump supporters who want to be poll workers to their county or state secretary of state offices that run paid poll worker programs.

Whatley also has hired lawyers such as Christina Bobb, a leading purveyor of false fraud claims about the 2020 election.

At the same time, the RNC has pushed out lawyers such as Charlie Spies, who has rejected false voting conspiracies such as claims that voting machines switch votes.

Whatley declined to comment.

"Chairman Whatley has done a phenomenal job leading the RNC," top Trump campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita told Axios in a statement.

"President Trump and his team have the utmost confidence in Chairman Whatley and everything the RNC has done to win this election."

Trump believes that he alone can turn out the vote for Republicans. So early on, he instructed Whatley and the RNC to focus on "election integrity" and leave turning out the vote to him.

"Our primary focus is not to get out to vote," Trump said at a campaign rally in Asheboro, N.C., in August. "It's to make sure [Democrats] don't cheat, because we have all the votes you need."

There's no evidence of significant election fraud in recent U.S. elections.

Democrats see Republicans' integrity units as overkill — an effort to solve a made-up problem that's largely aimed at giving Trump a way to claim he doesn't lose elections.

Whatley has been clear-eyed about the risks of his position, according to a colleague who warned him before he became RNC chair that he would the target of Trump's wrath if the ex-president lost on Nov. 5.

"'He's like, 'I know that if we lose, I'm gonna get the blame,' " the colleague told Axios.>

<Nuns in Erie falsely accused of perpetrating voter fraud. A suburban Philadelphia election-line snafu amplified worldwide in under half an hour. A Tuesday night rallying cry by Donald Trump: “They have already started cheating in Lancaster.”

Across Pennsylvania, local and state officials are warning that efforts by Trump and his supporters to call into question the integrity of the presidential election in the crucial swing state are ramping up—before a single ballot has been counted.

The state’s top election official, Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, said Wednesday that in just the previous 24 hours, several widely disseminated videos lacked context or were false.

“Sharing social posts filled with half-truths or even outright lies is harmful to our representative democracy,” he said at a press conference, urging voters to get information from trusted sources and noting that “mis- and disinformation” about the state’s election is “likely to continue in the coming days and weeks ahead.”

Authorities like Schmidt say they worry the attacks could erode faith in the system while many citizens are still preparing to vote, and that it is setting the stage for fierce post-Nov. 5 legal challenges.

“I don’t think it’s a secret how important Pennsylvania is in determining who will win the race for the White House or control of the Senate,” Schmidt said, of the forces drawing election skeptics to the state.

With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is considered a must-win for both Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, who are virtually neck-and-neck in the state. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated then-President Trump by about 1 percentage point.

While Pennsylvania faced an avalanche of unsuccessful litigation by Trump and his allies challenging the 2020 results, those efforts largely emerged after Election Day. Now, the push to cast doubt on the state’s electoral system is already well under way.

Posts suggesting or declaring systemic fraud in Pennsylvania, propelled by Elon Musk and other pro-Trump influencers on Musk’s X platform, are outpacing public officials’ attempts to explain the realities on the ground. Authorities say the posters are misrepresenting routine or unverified problems, leading to a false narrative about electoral malfeasance.

“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” Trump declared to his nearly eight million Truth Social followers Wednesday morning, demanding an immediate law-enforcement intervention.

Foreign operatives also appear to be playing a role in the escalating effort to portray chaos in Pennsylvania ahead of Nov. 5. Recent viral footage purportedly showing a person destroying mail-in ballots was a hoax created by unspecified Russian actors, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and two other federal agencies.

Many Pennsylvania claims are circulating on X, in an “Election Integrity Community” recently launched by Elon Musk’s PAC as a repository for people to share suspected fraud. Claims shared in the group include one from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of a bus of “non-English speaking ‘citizens’ fast-tracked to the front” of voting lines.

Conservative activist Scott Presler, who heads a voter-registration group called Early Vote Action, is among those zeroed in on Pennsylvania.

On Sunday, Presler thrust Luzerne County into the national spotlight, relaying a “scoop” to his 1.7 million X followers. He shared a video of a county official speaking at a public meeting about a batch of last-minute voter applications, some dating to June, delivered by a former election worker. “If we do not address these inconsistencies,” Presler wrote. “Pennsylvania voters cannot have confidence in fair & free elections.”

“This needs to be investigated,” Musk chimed in, reposting Presler’s message to his own 202 million followers. That had been reposted 17,000 times as of Wednesday.

Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce, a Republican, said Monday his office did investigate. “None of the registrations were fraudulent,” he said in a news release.

Yet Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo doesn’t expect the suspicion to end. “There are people that, no matter what we say or do, are not going to believe that we’re following the system,” she said....>

<....While administrative hiccups or local complaints always arise in elections, the difference now in Pennsylvania is that they are being spread globally by influencers with millions of followers.

In less than 30 minutes Tuesday, the complaint about county workers in Bucks County outside Philadelphia closing down a line too early raced across social media—from the X account of the Trump campaign’s political director, to reposts from conservative celebrities, including commentator Jack Posobiec, to his two million followers.

Bucks officials blamed miscommunication for the fact that people lined up to apply for an on-demand mail ballot were “briefly told they could not be accommodated.”

Trump’s campaign on Wednesday sued the county, claiming its officials violated state election law by turning away voters. Later in the day, a judge extended the deadline for voters to apply for and receive mail-in ballots in person at a local election office.

Trump has called out two Pennsylvania counties, Lancaster and York, for what he said was election fraud.

Authorities in Lancaster County, about 70 miles west of Philadelphia, said Friday they were investigating about 2,500 possible fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted to the elections board on the cusp of the registration deadline. The workers noticed irregularities, didn’t process the applications and referred them to law enforcement.

Officials said the potentially fraudulent applications included people registered in both parties.

Schmidt, the Republican chief election official, called Lancaster County’s actions a sign that “safeguards in our voter registration process are working.”

During a campaign rally in Allentown Tuesday night, Trump portrayed the investigation as complete—and voter-registration applications as actual votes cast in Lancaster. “They have cheated. We caught them with 2,600 votes. Now we caught them cold, 2,600 votes.” He echoed the same message over social media.>

<Gov. Ron DeSantis is using every lever at his disposal to defeat two November ballot measures that would legalize cannabis and restore access to abortions in Florida.

The all-encompassing effort has drawn in state agencies ranging from the one that oversees elections to the one that builds roads. The Republican governor and his administration have openly campaigned against the amendments during events organized by his official office. And they’ve spent taxpayer money on ads warning voters about the dangers of marijuana and pushing back on the abortion amendment, which would overturn the state’s six-week ban.

The flurry of actions has generated litigation, a rebuke from a federal judge and assertions that state officials may be breaking laws designed to prevent the use of state resources to influence an election. DeSantis himself signed a law two years ago that blocks local governments from sending out any kind of communications on local referendums.

“No matter where you stand on an issue, this is still a democracy, and in a democracy, we do not spend taxpayer dollars in advance of a political issue,” State Sen. Joe Gruters, a Sarasota Republican and former chair of the Republican Party of Florida, said last week. “Tax dollars are meant to be spent on our police, schools, roads and other public programs that make our state great, not for political agendas.”

Gruters supports the cannabis amendment but opposes the abortion one.

Those backing the two measures — Amendment 3 and Amendment 4 — have spent millions of dollars on television ads and both the Republican Party of Florida and Florida Democratic Party have also paid for ads urging voters to say “yes” or “no” on the initiatives.

The passage of one or both amendments could undermine DeSantis’ much-touted “Florida Blueprint” that he used while campaigning for president. Abortion-rights supporters launched the push for their initiative shortly after DeSantis signed the six-week ban on abortions last year.

The governor and top state officials are unmoved by the criticism of their intervention in the process.

“State agencies have the authority and dedicated funding to educate the public on important issues, especially those that impact the health and safety of women and children,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for DeSantis. “Of course the state is going to educate Floridians on the dangers associated with drug use and ensure truthful information is disseminated regarding laws that protect the health of moms and their kids."

Past Florida governors have gotten directly involved in political battles over ballot initiatives, which were first authorized by the state’s 1968 constitution. In 1976, then-Gov. Reubin Askew, a Democrat, led the charge to require elected officials to file financial disclosures and later helped defeat an amendment on casino gambling.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush was caught on tape saying he had “devious plans” if voters approved a measure placing limits on the number of students in classrooms. Bush, a Republican, made the class-size measure — which ultimately passed — one of the central issues of his 2002 reelection campaign. He ran campaign ads that contended his opponent would have to raise taxes if it passed.

But the efforts undertaken by DeSantis and his administration appear unlike any previous ones.

“It has not gotten to this level, we are now in the major leagues,” said Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who has done extensive research and writing on ballot initiatives around the country. “Spitballs, pine tar and Vaseline are now in the game.”

The governor’s own chief of staff is helping raise money and direct anti-amendment efforts for two political committees while at the same time helping run the administration. The state’s election crimes office created by DeSantis spent weeks investigating allegations of fraud in the petitions used to place the measure on the ballot even though the petitions had been verified by local election officials. The report is being used in a lawsuit to try to block the abortion amendment even if it passes.

The effort is a reminder of how DeSantis has expanded the power of the governor’s office since his election nearly six years ago. He spent hundreds of millions without legislative approval during Covid-19, he ignored deadlines on judicial picks, and suspended two prosecutors after maintaining they had enacted policies at odds with state law. Previously, governors had largely only suspended local officials who had been arrested....>

<....One part of the effort to derail the amendments includes the state paying for public service announcements that warn of the dangers of marijuana, including one ad funded by the state Department of Transportation that mentions driving statistics from states where it was legalized. The state’s health care agencies have a separate ad warning about teenagers using marijuana.

Smart & Safe Florida, the political committee backing the pot initiative, said it has pulled television records and found that cannabis-related public service announcements paid for by the state have aired 13,000 times so far in the run-up to the election. They put the cost at $50 million. A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a question about the estimate, although it’s possible the state was able to purchase the ads at a discounted rate.

State Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat from South Florida, sued over the DOT ads, maintaining legislators never gave the agency budgetary authority to purchase the air time. But Circuit Court Judge Angela Dempsey, who was first appointed to the bench by Bush and in recent years has made several favorable rulings for DeSantis, tossed the lawsuit.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration launched a website and a series of 30-second advertisements in recent months that warn against voting for the measure. The website, which says “Amendment 4 threatens women’s safety,” led the campaign in favor of the amendment to file a lawsuit asking a state court judge to order the state to take the site down, arguing that it was rife with misinformation and that the agency had misused state funds on a political campaign. A Leon County Circuit judge ruled against the case, writing in his decision that the truth of Amendment 4 is for the voters to decide and not the court.

The state hasn’t just aired its own ads related to abortion and marijuana. The Florida Department of Health also sent cease and desist letters in early October to TV stations that ran advertisements supporting the abortion initiative. It said the ads could be considered an “Unsanitary nuisance” and suggested the stations could face charges.

The letters were signed by the general counsel for the Department of Health, who said in a federal court filing that the letters were actually written by lawyers working for the governor and that he quit after he was pressured to send another round of the letters. The Amendment 4 campaign filed a federal lawsuit to stop the agency from enforcing any laws that were included in the letters. The case is now pending before U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker, who ordered DOH to temporarily stop sending the letters, saying the Amendment 4 advertisements are protected by the First Amendment.

The tug-of-war against Amendment 4 isn’t just limited to ads, but over the actual ballot itself.

This past summer, the DeSantis administration and the Florida House helped reshape the wording of a financial impact statement that is listed on the ballot below the amendment summary. The ballot statement tells voters that Amendment 4 may force the state to pay for abortions through Medicaid and lead to an economic downturn and higher regulatory costs. A legal challenge to this was tossed aside.

DeSantis touted this move during a September speaking event at a Tallahassee church where many of his office employees attended.

“That provides some clarity when a voter sees that,” DeSantis said. “That is not a partisan organization providing that information — that is going to be on the ballot that you actually read.”>

<Former President Donald Trump admitted to a crowd of supporters that he was only there in Albuquerque, New Mexico, because he thought it would improve his image among Hispanic and Latino voters.

Trump’s popularity among voters in the demographic took a steep dive on Sunday, when a comedian called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The former president has refused to offer a personal apology.

“New Mexico, look, don’t make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK?” Trump told the crowd on Thursday.

“First of all, Hispanics love Trump, they do. True. I like them. They’re smart. They’re a lot smarter than the person running for president on the Democrat side,” he said, once again taking a shot at Vice President Kamala Harris’ abilities.

“So I’m here for one simple reason,” Trump said. “I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.”

He continued on, saying, “You know on the East Coast, they like being called Hispanics, you know this? On the West Coast, they like being called Latinos.” Trump said he got in an argument with an adviser over which term to use in Albuquerque, saying he wanted to use Hispanic.

He then took a couple of informal polls of the crowd, asking them to cheer for the term they preferred best (Hispanic) and asking them whether they have cast a ballot yet (a mix).

“I should’ve done this trip about a week earlier. It’s all right, these are minor mistakes,” he said. “It’s good to be with you. I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn.”

Trump’s campaign issued a statement in response to the Puerto Rico controversy to say that the “island of garbage” remark “does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Trump himself has claimed not to know the comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, even though he was opening for the former president at “the world’s most famous arena.”

But the comment sparked a tidal wave of criticism from Democrats, Republicans and celebrities with Puerto Rican heritage — some of whom took the opportunity to endorse Harris.>

<When Elon Musk closed on what looked like a massive overpay for Twitter, I scoffed along with everyone else. What we all failed to see was the savviness of Musk’s purchase and, more importantly, his true endgame (as much as Musk could be said to have one).

In terms of bluntly inserting himself into the daily conversation, the value of Twitter, now X, has been priceless. The closest precedent may be the media empire built by William Randolph Hearst — and Musk has been able to do it all with just one little microblogging site.

Sure, the sale is considered the worst merger-finance transaction since the financial crisis for all those banks that agreed to help Musk with the purchase, probably due in part to the fact that usage in the United States has fallen by 23 percent. But even with the drop in X’s usage, and a desperate need to fill X’s void in the social media universe, nothing has emerged to take its place at the head of The Discourse’s table.

The kind of safe spaces that could be microblogging refuges for the media literati repulsed by Musk and his favorite president, Donald Trump — services like Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads — simply haven’t developed the same primacy as X. The service remains a go-to for tracking news as it breaks, even if it is poorly fact-checked in real time. The mainstream media itself can’t resist continuing to lean on X as a source of gathering either the news itself or the sentiment around that news. The media has almost as much difficulty giving up its X attachment as it does its Trump attachment.

X may also be generally stronger than those hoping for a mass “X-odus” might hope, even as Musk continues to roll back popular features, including features that are fundamental to the platform’s safety, like troll blocking.

Globally, the drop in X’s usage has been in line with other social networks. According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, that drop in total users has been offset by the users who did stick around spending more time, 12 percent, on the platform. In a new media model that is driven by an economy of memes, clicks, attention and the news that only reinforces our own biases, the ability of X, even a diminished X, to be the one-stop shop for all the facets of that economy gives it outsize value.

Musk is estimated to have spent a little over $26 billion of his own money on X. He could very soon recoup all that, though, especially depending on this November’s election result. Hearst may have asked us to “remember the Maine,” but he never got to serve as secretary of War.

Musk, as the Trump cheerleader with the biggest megaphone, is well-positioned whether the ex-president wins or loses....>

<.....If Trump wins, Musk could have an unofficial or official influence on policy, perhaps in his proposed and cheekily named “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency). According to The New York Times reporting, Musk’s companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.

When he isn’t busy profiting from the government, he’s attempting to elude its snares, with companies like Tesla and SpaceX having 20 recent investigations or reviews. As the Times points out, even if there isn’t a conflict within Musk’s direct purview under “DOGE,” regulators may be indirectly pressured by Musk’s cozy relationship with the Once and Future President.

But who’s to say Trump and Musk wouldn’t openly eschew such pesky ethics? In fact, as outlined in the same Times report, “Mr. Musk has hinted at one government efficiency he would like to see: killing NASA’s Starliner contract with Boeing, his main industry competitor.”

If Trump loses, Musk becomes the point of Trump’s media-attacking spear, promoting through his own account and X’s algorithm the narratives that best support a bias toward the belief in a stolen election, undermining what could be a rightfully elected President Harris. For the people “doing their own research” on election interference, Musk and X will be feeding them exactly what they want to see. Whatever the previous failures of content moderation on other social media sites, including the executives at the old Twitter who suppressed the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, they weren’t frequently, strenuously and volubly trying to support a point of view like Musk already has.

Musk remains a visionary, like Schopenhauer writing of talent hitting the target no one else can see or MLK ascending the staircase not yet built. He lives in a future that did not previously exist, one he perhaps willed into existence.

However, the future isn’t one of Musk’s lofty goals like going to Mars or completely eliminating fossil-fueled cars — it is a future where Musk’s media hellscape and personal opinion are able to reign supreme. He is a poster boy for all of us at our worst, an addled dopamine fiend overtaken by the hive mind virus, parlaying his obsession with becoming X/Twitter’s main character for untold political influence at the cost of nearly every one of his ostensibly good works. He gave up being Tony Stark so he could become the world’s richest social media influencer, a curator for the worst the internet has to offer, at great potential profit to himself and his companies, while causing already untold damage to our society.

Now let that sink in.>

<Former President Donald Trump began a Thursday rally in Henderson, Nev., by repeating his closing message, one that surveys show resonates with voters across the political spectrum. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” he asked. The crowd, anticipating the question, erupted with boos and shouts of “No!”

Hours later, during an event in Arizona with the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, the Republican presidential nominee went on a rant about former Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican Trump critic whom he calls a warmonger. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” he said, suggesting she should be sent into battle. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

With polls neck and neck headed into Election Day, comments by both candidates and their allies are threatening to distract from their core arguments regarding immigration, the economy and abortion access, and their efforts to draw support from supporters across the aisle.

While Vice President Kamala Harris’s message has hit road bumps, Trump in particular has suffered unforced errors in the past week: first with Sunday’s “island of garbage” joke about Puerto Rico by Tony Hinchcliffe, a roast comedian at a Madison Square Garden rally, and then Trump’s own remarks Wednesday about protecting women “whether the women like it or not” and Thursday about Cheney, which Democrats called a threat of violence.

Trump spent much of a rally in Pennsylvania this past week distancing himself from the Puerto Rico joke. Zoraida Buxó, Puerto Rico’s Republican shadow senator, endorsed Trump, and the former president said that he had “done more for Puerto Rico than any president by far, nobody close.”

Trump said Friday his point about Cheney was that policies she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, championed were responsible for years of war and death in the Middle East.

But the jab at Cheney, who has endorsed Harris, fueled a new round of criticism from Democrats that threatened to overshadow Trump’s case on the economy and immigration, which polls show to be his strongest issues with voters.

Harris, who has called Trump a fascist, said Friday that his comments showed his true colors. Trump has “increased his violent rhetoric,” and such comments like the one about Cheney “must be disqualifying,” she said in Madison, Wis.

Likewise, the comments about women fed into Democrats’ criticism of Trump over abortion policy, a powerful issue for women who vote. While Trump appointed Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, he has said he wouldn’t support a federal abortion ban.

Trump isn’t the only one to see his final message be muddled. Just as Harris gave her closing argument at a rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Tuesday, President Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” during a call with a Latino voting-rights group, as he discussed the comedian’s line from the Sunday rally. That sparked sharp condemnations from Republicans, and prompted Trump on Wednesday to ride a Trump-branded garbage truck in Green Bay, Wis.

Biden later said he meant to refer to Hinchcliffe alone, not all Trump supporters. But the controversy got new life when the Associated Press reported that the White House had changed the official transcript to point toward Hinchcliffe — making it “supporter’s” instead of “supporters” — before releasing it to the public. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the matter when asked by reporters Friday.

Mark Cuban, a billionaire supporter of Harris, did her no favors when he said on ABC’s “The View” that Trump doesn’t surround himself with “strong, intelligent women.” That set off a round of criticism from prominent women who back Trump, calling the comments sexist. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) said Cuban was saying in essence “that you can’t be strong and intelligent and support President Trump.” She called it a “disgraceful closing argument.”....>

<....Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, said he didn’t see the comedian’s line about Puerto Rico or the statement about Cheney moving the needle with the electorate, nor did he believe that voters liked Harris’s calling Trump a fascist.

“It’s just what we’ve gotten used to, for better or worse,” he said. “We’ve always been a very noisy democracy in which people said the worst about their opponents,” Fleischer added.

The campaigns need to finish on a positive note and address “what specifically are they going to do to fix what is perceived as problems in the United States—it’s not rocket science,” said Mark Campbell, a Republican strategist who managed Glenn Youngkin’s successful Virginia gubernatorial campaign in 2021.

“This election is about how angry are people, and if people are as angry as the Trump campaign believes that they are, he will win it,” Campbell said. “If people still want to be hopeful and optimistic that a new president can fix things without the level of vitriol, then Harris will win.”

Trump’s remarks about women and comments from his Madison Square Garden rally are breaking through to undecided voters in swing states, said a Harris campaign official on a call with reporters Friday. The comments have been “the last straw for these voters,” the official said.

Another potential distraction from the campaign’s closing message: the role Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the presidential candidate turned campaign surrogate, could play in a second Trump administration. Kennedy is a prominent antivaccine activist who has said the country is experiencing a health and wellness crisis.

Kennedy told supporters on a call Monday that Trump had promised him “control of the public health agencies.” Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, saying he has spoken to Kennedy about the issue, on Wednesday questioned the safety of vaccines for children in an appearance on CNN. At the rally in Nevada on Thursday, Trump said that he would have Kennedy “work on health and women’s health” if elected.

On Friday, Harris said Kennedy was “the exact last person in America who should be setting healthcare policy for American families and children.”

The developments haven’t swayed 22-year-old Elizabeth Ragsdale’s vote. “It’s just attention-grabbing,” the Mocksville, N.C., resident said. She is a registered Republican who is backing Trump. While the “miniscandals” haven’t changed her assessment, she acknowledged they might affect young people who have been following the twists and turns on social media.

“It kind of pulls them in, and they’re more willing to look at different options that way,” Ragsdale said.>

<Of all the powers of the presidency, Donald Trump has made clear that regaining control of the Justice Department is most vital to his agenda, both political and personal.

If he wins the election, Trump will take office as a defendant in two federal criminal cases: one active case and another that has been dismissed but that special counsel Jack Smith is seeking to reinstate. Trump’s first, deeply personal order of business will be ensuring those prosecutions come to a swift end.

And he has spoken openly about one of his other primary goals: seeking retribution against his perceived political enemies. His list of targets is long and growing: his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris; President Joe Biden and his family; Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who successfully prosecuted Trump in one of his other criminal cases; and members of the House Jan. 6 select committee, just to name a few. He has threatened to prosecute a host of unnamed Democratic lawyers, political operatives, “illegal voters” and election officials, as well as judges and court officials. He has pledged not only to fire Smith but also to kick him out of the country.

With such draconian plans, Trump is eager to have a chance at a do-over when it comes to choosing appointees to run the Justice Department. He believes, people close to him say, that he erred in his handling of appointments to the department during his term in office. This time around, they say, he won’t risk another Sally Yates or Jim Comey, holdovers from the Obama administration who refused to comply with Trump’s orders. Nor will he take a gamble on anyone who might not prove sufficiently loyal, like Jeff Sessions, the attorney general Trump installed and then swiftly excoriated after Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“From their perspective, they didn't do things right the first time. They didn’t clear house enough,” said a former Trump Justice Department official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about inner workings. “There were insiders thwarting their objectives.”

In a second Trump term, this person said, “loyalty is the most important thing. Competency is probably second.”

“I think he’s looking for somebody who’s totally obsequious,” said Ty Cobb, a former Trump administration lawyer who became a critic of the former president.

Cobb predicted that for secretary of state and the two key “money positions” — Treasury secretary and chair of the Federal Reserve — Trump will name more experienced, better qualified candidates, “whereas in the Justice Department, he really wants somebody there who will do his bidding.”

The Trump campaign says it hasn’t discussed who would serve in a second Trump administration. But people close to the process say conversations about prospective candidates for Justice Department jobs have begun among people including Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, legal advisor Boris Epshteyn, former Trump administration official Kash Patel, as well as the former president’s eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

Who, then, will Trump seek to install as attorney general, deputy attorney general or FBI director? Who will he tap to lead the Office of Legal Counsel or the most powerful U.S. attorney’s offices, like Manhattan and D.C.?

Trump aides have reportedly considered a wide array of candidates, from some predictable names to polarizing choices such as U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who won Trump’s favor when she dismissed the federal criminal case that accused him of illegally hoarding classified documents after he left office.

POLITICO asked more than a dozen Trump allies, former Trump administration officials and others who have worked closely with Trump about the most likely candidates to fill some of these jobs.

Here’s what they said.

Many close to Trump named Jeffrey Clark as an obvious candidate for a top Justice Department job. For most of Trump’s presidency, he was a little-known official who served as an assistant attorney general for environmental issues. But he rose to prominence after the 2020 election, when he proved his loyalty by pressuring other Justice Department officials to support Trump’s attempt to overturn Biden’s victory.

In January 2021, during his last-ditch attempt to hold onto power, Trump considered appointing Clark as the acting attorney general, with the expectation that Clark would have the Justice Department promote Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. Trump backed off when other senior officials threatened a mass resignation if Trump went through with the plan....>

<....Because of his role in Trump’s election plot, Clark was indicted alongside Trump in Georgia. He was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the special counsel’s federal election case against Trump. And a disciplinary panel has recommended that Clark’s law license be suspended for two years.

In Trump’s view, however, those are anything but disqualifications.

People familiar with the former president’s thinking say he sees Clark as obedient and allegiant enough to satisfy Trump, while also having enough familiarity with the department and how to use it to carry out Trump’s wishes.

One roadblock Trump is sure to encounter during the process of selecting appointees is Senate confirmation, which is necessary for positions including attorney general and FBI director, among others. Trump aides are aware that even if the Senate is Republican-led, polarizing figures like Clark — and many of Trump’s other desired picks — are likely to face rough confirmation battles. To solve that, at least temporarily, he is expected to appoint people in an “acting” capacity, which doesn’t require the consent of the Senate.

But there are some Trump boosters who probably could win confirmation relatively easily. One is Sen. Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who converted from a Trump skeptic to a vocal supporter. Trump has toyed with putting Lee in a powerful post before; in 2018, he interviewed Lee about a Supreme Court seat. Like Clark, Lee tried to keep Trump in power following the 2020 election.

And there’s Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican who became one of the most visible supporters of Trump’s effort to overturn the election results. Hawley is one of the Senate’s most conservative members, and of the candidates on Trump’s radar for a top DOJ post, he is among the most traditionally well qualified: He attended Yale Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.

Missouri’s other Republican senator, Eric Schmitt, has also caught Trump’s eye. Like Hawley, Schmitt was Missouri’s attorney general before becoming a senator, and Schmitt used his state job to challenge Covid restrictions like mask and vaccine mandates. He also supported legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. Since joining Congress in 2023, the freshman Republican has taken several steps to ingratiate himself to Trump, including vowing to oppose major legislation and Biden nominees in the wake of Trump’s criminal conviction in Manhattan.

Sitting senators often face an easy confirmation process when nominated for executive branch positions, and Lee, Hawley and Schmitt fit that mold.

In the past year, as he confronted four criminal cases, including one that went to trial, Trump has been surrounded by lawyers, and some of them are now under consideration for Justice Department jobs.

Todd Blanche, the lawyer who led Trump’s criminal defense in the former president’s Manhattan trial, is one name on the list. Though Trump lost that trial, with a jury finding him guilty of 34 criminal counts, Blanche can take credit for securing Trump several plum victories, including getting his federal criminal case in Florida dismissed well in advance of the election and getting his sentencing in Manhattan postponed until after Election Day.

Blanche is a former federal prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office who, in spite of his representation of Trump, remains well regarded by many in and around that office, and some see him as a natural candidate to lead the office should Trump win in November. Blanche is also said to be under consideration for several top Justice Department jobs in Washington.

Likewise, Blanche’s law partner Emil Bove, who represents Trump alongside Blanche in the Manhattan criminal trial as well as the former president’s two federal criminal cases, is under consideration. Bove, too, is a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who was co-chief of the national security unit.

While both Blanche and Bove have the credentials for a senior job in the department, neither is seen as ideological or as unflinchingly loyal as some of the others on the list.>

<....Also in the running is a varied group of former Trump administration officials and staffers.

One is John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe, who is now co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank, became a Trump acolyte during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Then a Texas congressman, Ratcliffe became a sharp critic of Robert Mueller’s probe.

Ratcliffe has had trouble with Senate confirmation in the past: When Trump first nominated him in 2019, questions about whether he had embellished his resume derailed Ratcliffe’s bid to become the country’s top intelligence official. But he ultimately won Senate confirmation for the job the following year.

Many believe Ratcliffe used the post to carry out Trump’s political agenda, and that could put him on Trump’s radar for an important Justice Department job this time around.

Another name being bounced around Trump circles is Jeffrey Jensen, a former FBI agent and the Trump-appointed former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. In 2020, at then Attorney General Bill Barr’s request, Jensen conducted the Justice Department’s review of the criminal case against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, ultimately recommending that the prosecution be dropped.

Also frequently mentioned is Will Levi, Barr’s former chief of staff. Barr broke with Trump when Barr criticized his former boss over Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election — but then said he would vote for Trump this year. Levi, a partner at Sidley Austin who worked as a law clerk for Justice Samuel Alito and then as chief counsel for Lee, has managed to stay in the good graces of Trump supporters.

Others under consideration are from slightly further afield. Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, an advocacy group aimed at the judiciary, is a Republican lawyer who worked as chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley during the Trump administration. As an outside adviser, he led Supreme Court confirmation efforts for Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. He’s a vocal defender of Trump on social media and conservative news sites, and is said to have the backing of Donald Trump Jr., though how seriously is an open question.

Kash Patel, who is assisting in the process of compiling candidates, is also a potential candidate himself. Patel is former federal public defender and former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division who went on to become a top House staffer helping craft Republican responses to the investigations of Trump and Russian election interference. Patel has been a staunch and visible defender of Trump, showing up at his criminal trial in Manhattan and perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. During the Trump administration, he worked as chief of staff to the secretary of defense.

And then there’s Cannon, the judge who dismissed the classified documents case and is also overseeing the criminal case against the man who allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump on his Florida golf course. Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in Florida shortly before he left office, and he has repeatedly praised her for issuing a multitude of rulings favorable to the former president.

ABC News reported last month that top Trump advisers are considering Cannon for the job of attorney general — a scenario that would surely enrage liberals, who say her handling of the documents case suggests that she is not impartial. But that may be precisely what Trump is looking for.>

<If Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is elected president, her U.S. Supreme Court options could be limited, legal experts recently told Newsweek.

If Harris wins this year's election against former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, 70-year-old Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, may retire to allow a young liberal to take her place. However, Sotomayor may not want to lose her place on the Court and Harris would lose her one chance at a Supreme Court nomination.

Los Angeles-based attorney John Perlstein told Newsweek that he believes Sotomayor will want to remain on the Court.

"If Harris is elected, I do not foresee any retirements from the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is capable and appears a lot younger than her age, therefore there is no reason for her to go anywhere," he said. "The conservative justices would hold on under the Harris administration, barring any unforeseen health issues."

The current Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Perlstein added that the Biden-Harris plan for Supreme Court reform will likely not come to pass without Democratic control of Congress.

In July, President Joe Biden announced proposals for Supreme Court reform that include term limits and binding ethical rules that would prevent justices from taking gifts from donors. Such calls have been driven by a slew of controversies involving conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas who have both been accused of accepting luxury gifts and vacations from wealthy GOP donors without properly disclosing them on federal financial forms.

Biden said that the proposed changes aim to restore public trust in the Court and ensure accountability, and also cited the Supreme Court's historic 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office. The controversial ruling distinguished between a president's official and unofficial actions while in office.

Biden said the ruling, which was made in relation to Trump's federal election interference case, means that "there are virtually no limits on what a president can do."

The Court did adopt its first code of ethics in November 2023, which mimicked many of the standards to which lower court judges are held. However, Democrats have said the code does not go far enough, given that there is no outside body to hold justices to its standards.

In announcing the proposals, Biden conceded that it would need congressional approval and said he looked forward to working with Congress to pass the required legislation. Harris, meanwhile, backed the president's proposal.

Perlstein told Newsweek that the proposals are unlikely to become law, even if Harris wins the presidency.

"Unless there's a Democratic President and a Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, then you will not see any Supreme Court reform," he said.

Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, agreed that a Harris presidency had little chance of reforming the Supreme Court.

"Biden's proposal was political theater and had no chance of going anywhere. I don't think that will change in this election because the country remains so divided," he told Newsweek....>

<....He added that Sotomayor, the oldest liberal justice on the Court, may retire if Harris is elected president.

"Sotomayor might resign and has had health problems if a Democrat is elected. I don't see any of the others thinking about resigning, as they seem to enjoy their roles, and are quite vigorous. So absent deaths, which are difficult to predict, I don't see a power shift," Germain said.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers told Newsweek that Democrats will be keen to avoid another Ruth Bader Ginsburg scenario.

Bader Ginsburg, who was one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices, refused to retire during eight years of the Obama presidency. She died at 87 years old in the final two months of Trump's presidency allowing him to nominate conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace her on the Court.

Gillers said that no Supreme Court justice wants to be remembered "as a justice who 'hurt the cause' by staying on too long, which is how Ruth Ginsburg is sometimes remembered."

He also said that the Biden-Harris term limit proposal won't happen.

"There is no chance of imposing term limits on the justices, which requires a constitutional amendment. Senator [Sheldon] Whitehouse has proposed some ways around that but even his proposal would require 60 senators," Gillers said.

In July, Biden said he supports an updated system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Court, noting that the United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court.

Bina Ahmad, a Los Angeles-based civil rights and criminal defense attorney, told Newsweek that it was unlikely that Harris could introduce new Supreme Court ethical rules.

"Judges on the Supreme Court are bound by no enforceable ethics standards, and federal judges in general including the Supreme Court have almost no oversight or incentive to follow ethics rules as they have lifetime appointment. This gives federal judges impunity to do as they please and be accountable to no one. Having an untouchable judiciary is the opposite of what democracies demand.">

<Dana Bash ran out of patience while pressing Republican Sen. Tim Scott about Donald Trump and his pals' recent hints that this election may already be subject to voter fraud.

The CNN host demanded to know whether Trump would honor the results of the election in the event of defeat, but the South Carolina senator neatly sidestepped the repeated questioning.

“One of Donald Trump‘s allies, Steve Bannon, who was released from prison this week, told the New York Times that Trump should simply declare victory on election night regardless of the results,” Bash said on “State of the Nation” Sunday.

Bash pointed out that Bannon had done the same in 2020 and it led to the Jan. 6 insurrection before asking Scott point blank: “Will you urge the former president not to prematurely declare victory again and allow the process to play out so the American people can trust the final legitimate outcome?”

The senator, however, dodged the question.

“We are looking forward to a very good day on Tuesday night without any question. I‘m excited to see the battleground states that we’ve just talked about are all leaning towards Trump. So the good news is, we will have a fair election and Donald Trump will be our next president,” Scott responded.

Bash pressed him again: “I appreciate your optimism, that‘s your job on the eve of the election, but what I’m asking about is what if he doesn’t win?”

“And the fact of the matter is that Trump is already spreading false claims about cheating in Pennsylvania,” she continued. “He has repeatedly predicted a massive victory even though polls show that the race is very close. He’s setting the stage for his supporters not to believe the results if he loses. Do you want him stop doing that?”

“I would never tell any candidate on the ballot to talk about what happens if they lose. Obviously, you’re going to lean into the victory, especially,” Scott began, before Bash interrupted to repeat herself.

“I appreciate that, senator, forgive me but spreading false rumors, saying false things about fraud – you think it’s okay to spread false rumors about fraud and undermine the integrity of the election regardless of what happens?" she said.

Instead of addressing Trump’s election fraud claims, Scott was quick to pass the buck onto the media.

“Dana, the liberal media has done a better job of spreading misinformation,” he began, leading Bash to seemingly lose her cool.

“Oh, come on senator!” she urged.

Bash added, “I can’t let go of the fact that you are saying it’s the media spreading claims. It is not true. It is Donald Trump saying things just about Pennsylvania, just one example, that local officials are saying is not true. We saw what happened on January 6th as a result of that and many other things. You were there at the Capitol. Are you saying, right now, you want to leave this conversation and say you are okay with his rhetoric?”

Scott again did not directly answer the question, instead cryptically speaking about seeing a “strong shift in the right direction among voters.

“You said you believe that the election will be free and fair. So does that mean that you are confident that if Donald Trump loses – I know you think he‘s going to win, but let’s just play this out – if he loses, that he will concede?" Bash asked again.

“I’m confident that he’s going to win without any question. And, yes, I do believe that we will have a fair election. We will honor the results and we will celebrate the 47th president being Donald Trump,” Scott firmly responded.>

<“As Republicans, we are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The startling comment came from a mother of five and grandmother of two, Vikki Westbrook, as she lined up on Sunday outside an aircraft hangar in rural North Carolina. She had come to hear Donald Trump make one of his last pitches of the 2024 presidential election.

Westbrook, 55, wasn’t entirely joking with her “locked and loaded” remark. Nor was she being entirely frivolous.

She does own guns, she said, though she wouldn’t specify how many.

Personally, she intended to avoid any trouble that might erupt in the wake of Tuesday’s election, she said. “I have kids, I can’t afford to go to prison. And I don’t like orange.”

It’s her fellow Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters whom she fears might be tempted to take action should the former president lose the election. “At this point, a lot of Republicans aren’t going to take it any longer. They won’t let the election be stolen from us twice.”

Westbrook remains convinced that the 2020 presidential election was snatched from Trump. Now she is equally certain that should Kamala Harris win on Tuesday, it will be for one reason only.

“Only if they cheat. I’m absolutely positive of that.”

Trump has been studiously nurturing such passions for years, his rhetoric rising in intensity in recent days. He has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will accept the results of the vote count, and earlier on Sunday he told supporters in Pennsylvania that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House four years ago.

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute recorded that one in four Republican Trump supporters believe that were Trump to lose the election, he should declare the results invalid and do “whatever it takes” to retake the White House. That’s a sobering finding, but a grossly understated one, judging from the mood at Trump’s Kinston rally.

“People will riot if Trump doesn’t win,” said Cedric Perness, 38, an African American Trump supporter. He said it would be too dangerous for him to participate in any post-election unrest – “I’d get killed right there.”

Instead he does what he can, he said, to help Trump by selling merchandise on his campaign’s behalf. He has a stall of hats and T-shirts, some saying: “You missed bitches. Two times!”

In the final stages of the 2024 race, Trump has been whipping up the passions of his millions of devoted followers to a fever pitch. In the last three days of campaigning alone he has made four stops in North Carolina, a battleground state which the Democrats have won only twice since Jimmy Carter in 1976 (the other time being Barack Obama in 2008).

Trump must hold North Carolina to have a clear shot at returning to the White House.

In these frantic last hours, he has pursued a two-pronged strategy to fire up his followers. On the one hand, he has been raising their expectations by claiming that he is well ahead in the polls.

“We’re going to have on Tuesday a landslide that’s too big to rig,” a tired and hoarse-sounding Trump told the Kinston crowd. “We have a big lead. We have a big lead. The fake news, they don’t tell you this. We have a big, beautiful lead.”

In fact, poll trackers suggest that he and Harris remain neck-and-neck in North Carolina and the other six critical swing states.

On the other hand, Trump has also been laying the foundations of a renewed conspiracy, should he need it, to subvert the election results by alleging widespread fraud. He touted the false accusation at the Kinston rally that Democrats are enabling non-citizens to vote in vast numbers, accusing the Biden administration of pursuing an open-border policy on the southern border with Mexico “maybe [because they] want to put them on the voting rolls. That’s probably the reason.”

Supporters at the rally faithfully parroted the lie on Sunday.

“That’s why they opened the border, to allow all the illegals in so they could vote for Democrats,” said a woman in the line who declined to give her name. “There’s always been corruption in this country, but I had no idea it was this bad. America has been run into the ground – anyone with half a brain can see that.”....>

<....Almost as pervasive as the supporters’ belief in the demonic intentions of Democrats was their frustration at what they could do about it. Last time around, such toxic emotions culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Kinston rally goers, following Trump’s lead, universally dismissed January 6 as a “set up” in which peaceful and patriotic Americans were lured into a dastardly deep-state trap. Westbrook, the “locked and loaded” grandmother, admitted to having been present at the Capitol that day.

Hundreds of Trump supporters, driven to distraction by the then president’s “stop the steal” rhetoric, stormed the heart of American democracy on that day. In the violent clashes that ensued, approximately 140 police officers were assaulted.

That’s not how Westbrook sees it. “It wasn’t what they said happened. The only people causing trouble were antifa, they were put into us to cause problems.”

This is a lot for any American voter to be carrying. The 2020 election was stolen from her candidate of choice, she firmly believes, and now she’s worried that Tuesday could see a repeat performance.

“Four years ago I felt angry, very angry. This time I will be even more angry.”

Should her worst fears come to pass, and Trump lose, where will all that powerful emotion go?

“If he loses, I’m scared,” the grandmother said.>

<Kamala Harris is hard to avoid in North Carolina these days. Turn on your TV and there she is (except when Donald Trump is on instead). On the radio: Kamala. Switch to Spotify if you want, but you’ll get Kamala ads there too. It’s enough to make you want to get out of the house and drive somewhere, but that’s only going to take you past a parade of Kamala billboards. You might even find yourself passing a Harris-Walz field office.

This makes sense. North Carolina is a key swing state in the election. Harris can win without it, but Trump probably cannot. In 2020, it gave Trump his narrowest victory, with a margin of fewer than 75,000 votes. Harris; Trump; their respective running mates, Tim Walz and J. D. Vance; and a host of surrogates have made many visits to the state and plan to keep coming right up until Election Day. Both campaigns are blanketing the airwaves.

But the similarities end there. The Trump campaign is running a lean operation in North Carolina, with far less physical presence: fewer field offices, fewer paid staffers, less footprint in general. I’ve driven on interstates across half the state in the past couple of weeks, and dead deer have outnumbered Trump billboards by roughly a 2-to-1 ratio. Simply put, the Trump campaign seems to barely exist here.

What’s happening in North Carolina is a microcosm of the way the Harris and Trump campaigns are approaching the race nationally, as well as the results they’re producing. Harris is running a huge, centralized, multifaceted campaign with lots of staff. Trump is running a much leaner campaign, appearing to rely more on high-profile visits than organizational infrastructure, and farming out some get-out-the-vote operations, a central function of any political campaign, to independent groups. And in North Carolina, as in the nation overall, the result is a deadlock in the polls.

The gap between these two approaches stems from different resources, different campaigning philosophies, and different candidates. The Harris campaign has raised a staggering amount of money, allowing it to build a large operation around the country. The Trump campaign, by contrast, is scuffling for money; as of August, The New York Times recently reported, it had 11 paid staffers, compared with 200 four years ago and 600 for Harris this cycle. The Trump campaign appears to be betting that the candidate’s personal charisma and the popularity of his particular brand of grievance politics make up for it.

Trump’s campaign may well be making the right bet. “Trump’s turnout operation is his message,” Mac McCorkle, a public-policy professor at Duke University and retired Democratic strategist, told me. (I am an adjunct journalism instructor at Duke.) “Democrats confuse get-out-the-vote strength a little too much with We have 100 field offices. That’s good for Democrats, but that sometimes we fail to reflect that with a really strong, penetrating message, you don’t need as many field offices.”

Some of the difference is merely strategic. For example, although Harris and allied super PACs and other groups have posted billboards across the state trumpeting her support for entitlements and lower middle-class taxes, Trump and his supporters have evidently decided that billboards in North Carolina aren’t worth it. The Trump campaign has spent a much higher proportion of its budget on sending mailers to voters than Harris’s has.

Some other portion of the difference is more philosophical. At the risk of oversimplification, Democrats rely on a top-down organization, which involves lots of field offices and a great deal of national direction. Republicans tend to prefer a hub-and-spoke model, in which campaigns recruit captains who are then responsible for finding volunteers to work under them. Both of these models have succeeded in the past. In recent years, North Carolina Republicans have been more effective at turning out their voters than Democrats have. To see why getting every voter to the polls can matter, consider the 2020 race for chief justice of the state supreme court, in which Republican Paul Newby beat the incumbent Democrat, Cheri Beasley, by just 401 votes.

<....I’ve attended several recent Harris campaign events across the state this fall. There’s a formula to these things: They’re powered by young women with blue jeans, ponytails, and white HARRIS WALZ T-shirts, and typically feature some national Democratic figure. Last week, I watched the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, campaign for a promotion to first gentleman. His first stop of the day was at a house in southern Raleigh, where the owners had turned their garage into a de facto canvassing base plastered with signs. A table displayed swag—including psychedelic orange stickers reading Donald Trump is weird—that could be earned with two hours of volunteering.

“We want you to get out there and knock on doors and canvass, because we need you to do that so we can win North Carolina, so my wife … can be the next president,” Emhoff said. “You know what’s at stake right now. I don’t have to tell you, but you have to go out there and make the case and just get people to see what is so obvious, what is so clear, to cut through this Trumpian fog.”

The goal of this huge apparatus is to have sustained exposure to voters, in order to both persuade undecided ones and get Harris supporters who are irregular voters to actually cast ballots. “I think having a presence with that infrastructure of our staff and our offices and of our contact and other campaign events that we have—it makes a difference over time,” Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground-state director, told me. “It opens doors, opens minds, to hearing persuasive messages.”

That is the theory, at least. Data so far suggest that Democratic turnout is lagging. North Carolina reports data based on race and partisan registration, not results, so it’s not a perfect proxy for votes, but turnout among Black voters, a key Democratic constituency in the state, is down somewhat. The Harris campaign’s task is to close that gap before or on Election Day.

What about on the Republican side? It’s harder to say. Everything about Trump’s campaign is more distributed: His voters are less concentrated in densely populated areas, and the GOP’s relational organizing style lends itself less to visibility. Even so, I’ve been struck by how invisible the Trump campaign is in North Carolina. Several Democrats told me they were also puzzled about what field operations Republicans were running. But they take little comfort in that, fearing a replay of 2016, when Hillary Clinton greatly outspent Trump and lost the general election.

Nationally, Republicans have expressed concerns about whether the Trump ground game is ready for the election. His campaign has handed much of the turnout operation over to outside groups, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and, more recently, Elon Musk’s America PAC. Ron DeSantis tried something similar in the GOP primary and failed spectacularly, but the temptation to use outside groups with fewer fundraising limits is strong. Reuters reports that Musk’s group has struggled to meet its targets, and The Guardian has revealed that paid canvassers might be falsifying voter contacts.

To get a better grasp of the Trump campaign’s operation in North Carolina, I reached out to spokespeople for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee but received no answer. I also got no answer from Turning Point USA. I emailed a North Carolina–specific address for Musk’s America PAC and received only an automated email inviting me to apply for a paid-canvasser position. Matt Mercer, a spokesperson for the North Carolina GOP, also did not reply to me, but he told The Assembly, “There’s only one ground game this year that’s already been tested—and that’s the Trump campaign in the primary.”...>