Hispanic organization announces Gallego endorsement
The League of United Latin American Citizens' PAC, LULAC Adelante PAC, announced its endorsement of Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in the Arizona Senate race today.
Gallego, who is running for retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's seat, would be Arizona's first Latino senator.
“Ruben has been a steadfast advocate for us, whether bolstering access to educational and employment opportunities or lowering the cost of health care and groceries for families," LULAC's national president, Domingo Garcia, said in a statement.
The endorsement is the second in LULAC's almost 100-year history and its first endorsement in a Senate race. Gallego is squaring off against Republican candidate Kari Lake in a hotly contested race that could help determine the balance of power in Washington.
State courts reject GOP challenges to overseas and military voting
State courts denied Republican efforts to block overseas and military voting laws in the battleground states of North Carolina and Michigan.
In North Carolina, a Wake County judge refused to block a bipartisan law that’s been on the books for more than a decade, which allows the adult children of North Carolina residents living abroad to vote in the state.
“Plaintiffs have presented no substantial evidence of any instance where the harm that plaintiffs seek to prevent has ever fraudulently occurred,” the court wrote, adding that the GOP plaintiffs hadn’t even proven that anyone had voted using his provision.
In Michigan, a similar provision allows a U.S. citizen who is the spouse or child of an overseas voter who previously lived in the state to vote absentee. State election rules specifically say that citizen is eligible even if they’ve never personally resided in Michigan, which the GOP lawsuit took issue with.
“Laches bars this 11th hour attempt to disenfranchise these electors in the November 5, 2024 general election,” the court said, citing the legal doctrine that allows courts to cite an unreasonable delay as grounds for refusal of a claim.
The suits were filed after months of Republican claims that noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections, despite a lack of evidence. Noncitizen voting is a serious crime — punishable by deportation — and one that immediately creates a paper trail that election officials are required to review.
Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump lawyer who was on the former president’s infamous phone call pressuring Georgia election officials after the 2020 election, is working behind the scenes to challenge these laws in two states.
“It is a federal law that has been completely exploited and they’re literally getting people to lie and to say that they’re overseas or to say that they’re citizens and the states are not checking at all,” she said on a conservative radio show recently, noting she was boosting a North Carolina suit and a similar case in Pennsylvania.
There's no evidence that overseas and military voting rules are being abused.
The battle for control of Congress is just as tight as the 2024 presidential race, highlighted by a handful of high-profile contests coast-to-coast. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for "TODAY."
Arizona official pleads guilty in 2022 election certification case
A Republican county supervisor in Arizona pleaded guilty yesterday after she tried to delay certification of the 2022 midterm election results, state Attorney General Kris Mayes announced.
Peggy Judd, a Cochise County supervisor, pleaded guilty to failing to perform duties as an election officer, a misdemeanor. She acknowledged that she failed to canvass the election as required by law, the attorney general’s office said.
Judd will be sentenced to unsupervised probation for at least 90 days and pay a maximum $500 fine, the attorney general’s office said. NBC News has reached out to her for comment.
Harris to visit Texas, which campaign calls 'ground zero' of 'Trump abortion bans'
Harris will travel to Texas on Friday to discuss what's at stake in the election for women's reproductive health services.
The vice president will deliver remarks in Houston about the consequences of abortion restrictions on women and be joined by those who have been directly affected by the bans, a senior Harris campaign official said. Texas law bars abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake. The campaign calls the state "ground zero of extreme Trump abortion bans."
Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who is running against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, will also attend the event.
In response to the announcement, Cruz's campaign spokesperson, Macerena Martinez, said in a statement, "Colin Allred is Kamala Harris."
"They have spent the last four years working hand-in-hand against Texans and the American people with their radical policies, whether those be pushing to allow boys in girls’ sports, allowing dangerous illegal aliens to come into our country, or trying to destroy the oil and gas industry in Texas," Martinez said. "Colin and Kamala share an agenda and now they’ll share a stage for all Texans to see.”
While in Texas, Harris also plans to sit for an interview with podcaster Brene Brown, a professor at the University of Houston.
Harris will then travel to Atlanta on Saturday for an event where she'll be joined by family members of Amber Nicole Thurman, the official said. Thurman died after she was denied medical treatment after experiencing complications related to a medication abortion.
Harris to discuss expanding opportunities for Latino men in Telemundo interview
Harris will discuss her plans to expand opportunities for Latino men in an interview with Telemundo today, her campaign said in a release.
The vice president's plans include creating opportunities for Latino men in the workforce through training programs and apprenticeships, increasing startup funding for businesses and trying to drive up annual the number of Latino homebuyers to almost 600,000, the campaign said.
"A second Trump term would be a disaster for Latinos and their families — raising costs on middle class families by nearly $4,000 a year, separating Latino families, and gutting affordable health care for more than 4 million Latinos," her campaign said.
Arnold Palmer's daughter on Trump's vulgar remarks: 'In my father’s world, this wouldn’t be acceptable'
A daughter of the golfing icon Arnold Palmer said last night on CNN that Trump’s vulgar remarks about her father over the weekend are not acceptable.
Asked if anyone in Trump’s world reached out to her after the former president’s comments, Peggy Palmer Wears said: “They probably have a long line of people to reach out to because it seems to be something he does. Again, it’s locker room talk, it’s something he seems to think is acceptable. In my father’s world, this wouldn’t be acceptable.”
At his campaign rally Saturday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump suggested that Palmer, who died in 2016, had unusually large genitalia.
Can you spot the celebrity ‘deepfakes’ in a new ad warning against election disinfo?
A new public service campaign featuring the actor Rosario Dawson and other Hollywood stars aims to alert Americans not to be duped by AI-generated deepfakes designed to mislead them about when, where and how to vote on Election Day.
“If something seems off, it probably is,” Dawson warns in the video spot, shared exclusively with NBC News.
Other celebrities featured in the video include Chris Rock, Laura Dern, Michael Douglas, Amy Schumer and Jonathan Scott delivering the message that Americans should rely on state secretaries of state for information about voting in the 2024 election and not to fall for unverified claims about alleged changes at polling stations.
The celebrities say Americans may receive a fake message claiming voting has been extended, or a polling location has closed or changed due to an emergency, or that new documentation is required to vote. “These are all scams designed to trick you into not voting. Don’t fall for it,” the celebrities say. At the end, the video reveals that some of the Hollywood stars are mere deepfakes, with their voices and images superimposed on other actors.
Who does China’s president want to win the U.S. election?
HONG KONG — One is a former president who vows to double down on the trade war he started with China but could stoke global instability to Beijing’s benefit. The other is a vice president who might be more conciliatory in the short term but could rally U.S. allies against China’s growing global influence.
Which U.S. presidential candidate would Chinese President Xi Jinping rather work with?
Whoever wins the White House next month — Trump or Harris — will determine the tone and much of the substance of the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Worried by fall of Roe v. Wade, organizers get same-sex marriage on the ballot in three states
Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, doing away with a half-century of precedent, activists worried that other high court decisions could be in jeopardy are taking their concerns to the polls. California, Colorado and Hawaii will soon allow their residents to vote on ballot measures that would remove language from their state constitutions prohibiting same-sex marriage.
The landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, guaranteeing same-sex couples across the country the right to marry, makes these state bans unenforceable. However, these ballot measures seek to proactively protect these marriage rights should Obergefell ever be overturned.
Paul Smith, a Georgetown law professor who argued the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the country’s remaining anti-sodomy laws, said the high court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, should serve as a cautionary tale.
“We’ve had the example of how Dobbs can take down a long-standing precedent. Suddenly there are these state laws that were sitting there dormant, that came springing back to life,” he said, referring to the dozens of states that now have abortion bans following the Dobbs decision. “These states don’t want their same-sex marriage bans to come springing back to life, so they’re going to do something about it, if just in case.”