The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago. In this photo, he speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on Sept. 25 in Mint Hill, North Carolina (Brandon Bell/Getty Images).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his plans for steep tariffs on Tuesday, arguing economists who say that those higher costs would get passed onto consumers are incorrect and that his proposals would benefit American manufacturing.

During an argumentative hour-long interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump vehemently denied tariffs on certain imported goods would lead to further spikes in inflation and sour America’s relationship with allies, including those in Europe.

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.

Micklethwait questioned Trump about what would happen to consumer prices during the months or even years it would take companies to build factories in the United States and hire workers.

Trump responded that he could make tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.” Earlier during the interview, Trump mentioned placing tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.

Smoot-Hawley memories

Micklethwait noted during the interview that 40 million jobs and 27% of gross domestic product within the United States rely on trade, questioning how tariffs on those products would help the economy.

He also asked Trump if his plans for tariffs could lead the country down a similar path to the one that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff law becoming law in June 1930. Signed by President Herbert Hoover, some historians and economists have linked the law to the beginning of the Great Depression.

Trump disagreed with Micklethwait, though he didn’t detail why his proposals to increase tariffs on goods from adversarial nations as well as U.S. allies wouldn’t begin a trade war.

The U.S. Senate’s official explainer on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs describes the law as being “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” And the Congressional Research Services notes in a report on U.S. tariff policy that it was the last time lawmakers set tariff rates.

Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, wrote last month that Trump’s proposal to implement tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China as well as 10 to 20% on all other imports could have severe economic consequences.

“It is difficult to see how such a unilateral trade policy in flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules would not lead to retaliation by our trade partners with import tariff increases of their own,” Lachman wrote. “As in the 1930s, that could lead us down the destructive path of beggar-my-neighbor trade policies that could cause major disruption to the international trade system. Such an occurrence would be particularly harmful to our export industries and would heighten the chances of both a US and worldwide economic recession.”

CRS notes in its reports that while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish tariffs, lawmakers have given the president some authority over it as well.

The United States’ membership in the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements also have “tariff-related commitments,” according to CRS.

“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the CRS report states. “This delegation insulated Congress from domestic pressures and led to an overall decline in global tariff rates. However, it has meant that the U.S. pursuit of a low-tariff, rules-based global trading system has been the product of executive discretion. While Congress has set negotiating goals, it has relied on Presidential leadership to achieve those goals.”

The presidency and the Fed

Trump said during the interview that he believes the president should have more input into whether the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates, though he didn’t answer a question about keeping Jerome Powell as the chairman through the end of his term.

“I think I have the right to say I think he should go up or down a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”

Trump declined to answer a question about whether he’s spoken with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since leaving office.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his new book “War” that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times and that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic, which the Kremlin later confirmed, according to several news reports.

Trump said the presidential race will likely come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan and possibly Arizona.

The Economic Club of Chicago has also invited Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for a sit-down interview.

The Isle of Capri casino in Boonville, owned by Caesars Entertainment, has contributed $4.7 million to the campaign to defeat Amendment 2, which would legalize sports wagering in Missouri (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

It’s time to bet the over-under on how much will be spent this year on gambling ballot measures in Missouri.

A good mark might be $60 million. Online bookies poured $32 million so far into the Amendment 2 campaign to legalize sports betting, and a casino company grumpy about the deal countered with $14 million to defeat it.

The campaign for Amendment 5, to authorize a new casino at the Lake of the Ozarks, adds $9.4 million — bringing the total to more than $55 million. 

Winning for Missouri Education, the Amendment 2 campaign funded by DraftKings and FanDuel, has already set a record for the most money donated to a ballot measure campaign. The previous record was $31 million raised by supporters of a 2006 proposal to protect stem cell research. 

The initiative campaign began with vocal support from major professional sports teams but none have contributed any cash for the effort.

“It is a large state, with a lot of TV markets, so it certainly takes resources to get your message out,” said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the campaign. “But the most important thing is that you have a good message and a good initiative for voters.”

Caesars Entertainment is the casino company that dislikes the proposal enough to spend big against it. Caesars employs 2,000 people in Missouri and has a branded online sports betting platform that competes with FanDuel and DraftKings. 

The proposal will mainly benefit the online platforms that have no significant presence in the state, said Brooke Foster, spokeswoman for Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment.

“Obviously they’re not opposed to sports betting,” she said of Caesars’ opposition to Amendment 2. “If it were written in a way that would actually benefit Missouri and Missourians in a more substantial way, it would be different.”

The Amendment 5 campaign cost is being split between Bally’s Corp., which hopes to get the new license, and developer RIS Inc., which holds the land to build it.

“For us, without any organized opposition that we’re aware of, it’s simply a matter of educating the voters about what our amendment does,” said Ed Rhode, a consultant working with the YesOn5 committee. “And what we’re seeing is the more educated they become about this issue, the more likely they are to support it.”

Whether the broadcast spending on the gambling measure exceeds spending by statewide candidates would be an interesting side bet. So far, candidates for statewide office have spent $13.1 million on broadcast time, as tracked by The Independent, while the gambling campaigns have spent $13.7 million.

All three major efforts focus their messages on one issue – education funding. 

Winning for Missouri Education promises that sports wagering will net more than $100 million for education programs over the first five years. 

“Legalizing sports betting will generate tens of millions of dollars every year for our classrooms, helping increase teacher pay,” one ad states.

The Caesars-funded opposition challenges the sincerity of that promise, arguing write-offs and other carve-outs mean the result will be insignificant. 

It is “Lottery 2.0,” one ad states.

“Teachers were told the lottery would raise a lot of money for schools, but that didn’t happen,” the ad begins.

The casino at the Lake of the Ozarks is also selling educational benefits and does so by including language directing all the tax money to early childhood literacy programs in public schools.

The $14.3 million estimate for revenue is “53% more funding for childhood literacy across Missouri, without raising taxes,” the campaign’s ad states.

As the election nears, Winning for Missouri Education is adding a new message — sports betting is already occurring and Missouri isn’t getting any benefit. Hundreds of thousands of Missourians already have accounts with online platforms. All it takes to place a legal bet is cross into a state where it is legal — a list that includes every state bordering Missouri except Oklahoma. 

“Let’s fund education is the more effective argument,” said Terry Smith, a political science professor at Columbia College.“The argument that is less explicitly made, but I’ve heard from a lot of people, is that people are going to gamble on sports, and right now Kansas and states that we border are making all the money. Why shouldn’t we get our share?”

Amendment 2

If voters legalize sports betting, the Missouri Gaming Commission could issue up to 14 licenses for online wagers. Six would go to the major sports teams, six would go to the casino operators and two would be reserved for online bookmakers.

Each of the 13 casinos and each of the sports teams could also operate an in-person, retail sports betting operation on their properties.

The push to legalize sports wagering in Missouri began after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law against wagering on sporting events in 2018. More than 35 states have legalized some form of the gambling since the court decision.

In the bill that was the closest lawmakers ever got to a resolution of the issue, there were no licenses for independent online bookmakers like DraftKings or FanDuel. Instead, the online platforms would have had to provide products branded to a sports team or casino.

The online platforms generate the cash. An economic study produced for Winning for Missouri Education estimates that $21.8 billion will be wagered during the first five years after legalization and more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.

That same study pegs the net to the state over that period at $134 million. Revenue in the fifth year is estimated at $38.7 million, about $10 million more than the maximum annual revenue projected by the fiscal note for the ballot measure.

Questioning the quality of those revenue estimates is a major thrust of the opposition campaign. The proposal before voters sets the tax at 10% of the net revenue — the money lost on wagers that don’t pay out.

But before the tax is applied, the operators would be able to deduct promotional giveaways — the inducements such as free bets to join a platform — as well as applicable federal taxes. Before any money gets to education programs, the initiative sets aside $5 million annually to support help for problem gamblers.

The figures presented in the economic study result in an effective tax rate of 1.4% of actual losses in the first year and 6.9% in the fifth year. As Missouri nets $134 million, those figures show the gambling operators would keep $86 million in tax savings due to write-offs.

“We want the state to be getting lots of revenue off this,” Cardetti said. “But to get people over from the illicit sports betting market or from going over to other states, those promotional credits in the early days are important, but they end up netting the state more revenue in the long run.”

Kansas, which legalized sports betting in September 2022, has received $19.4 million in tax revenue on $4.4 billion wagered, according to data from the Kansas Lottery.

The promotional credits would be capped at 25% of the amount wagered, Cardetti noted, a limit that is not in place in Kansas.

The ads that emphasize Missouri could receive no net revenue from sports wagering is based on the fiscal note estimate, Foster said. The range listed there is zero to $28.9 million annually.

“It’s basically taxpayers subsidizing their marketing,” she said. “Because that’s a marketing tool for them to give you $1,000 to match what’s in your account. But then they are, on paper, in the red.”

Caesars opposes the amendment in part because it does not allow the company to offer online platforms branded to its Missouri properties — Harrah’s Kansas City, Isle of Capri in Boonville and Horseshoe St. Louis at Lumiere Place.

“If we’re going to expand, it needs to be a little more equitable, as far as what the companies actually get,” she said. “But also, they have a concern that’s secondary, which is that there may be some fall off on the business that they’re able to do.”

The opposition campaign is just one company whining they don’t get a big enough slice, Cardetti said.

“The opponents of Amendment 2 are flawed, hugely flawed messengers,” Cardetti said. “Most Missourians can see right through a ‘No’ campaign when they realize that it’s almost entirely funded by one of the largest casino companies in the world.”

Amendment 5

If Amendment 5 passes, it would authorize the MIssouri Gaming Commission to issue one new casino license at a location on the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and its confluence with the Missouri River.

The original law authorizing casino gambling, passed in 1992, limited it to locations on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. An initiative backed by casino operators passed in 2008 to cap the number of licenses at 13, equal to the casinos then existing or licensed for construction.

There’s no guarantee that Bally’s would receive the license or that the location owned by RIS will be awarded the license. But with local backing and everything ready for an application once the measure passes, it has a big head start.

The investment won’t just be a casino, Rhode said. It will be a destination facility at a normally seasonal tourism location, bringing people at otherwise slack times.

“Having a multifaceted tourism attraction at the lake, which includes a casino, a spa, hotel, convention center and other benefits, is going to be a year round economic boon to that region,” he said. “We’re talking $400 million in investment and 500 permanent jobs.”

One casino is almost certain to be built near the lake. The Osage Nation launched a project in 2021 to have a property in Miller County taken into trust as ancestral lands where it could operate a casino and convention center.

Despite the direct challenge from Amendment 5, the tribal government has not tried to stop it.

The fiscal note for Amendment 5 estimates that it would add about $14.3 million to the state treasury each year. Each casino’s net winnings are taxed at 21% and there are no deductions for promotions such as free bets.

The Mark Twain casino in Hannibal has the smallest annual revenue and paid $7 million in fiscal 2024. The Ameristar casino in St. Charles had the largest revenue and paid $58 million.

“This is not us making up a number,” Rhode said. “This is the state auditor assigning this number so that number is what it is. We feel confident in sharing that number.”

The lottery problem

Forty years ago, Missouri also had two gambling proposals on the November ballot.

One established a state lottery, the other authorized parimutuel wagering on horse races. The lottery was passed by lawmakers to follow a move by 10 other states in the early 1980s to authorize lotteries.

The need for new money in education programs was a major selling point for the lottery, Smith said. The nation was coming out of a major recession that had sapped revenues and there was little appetite for raising taxes.

But the bill creating the lottery didn’t earmark the money. Instead, it went into the general revenue fund, where it was only a small portion of the whole. The general revenue fund pays for public schools, higher education, state prisons, Medicaid and a host of other programs.

“If all of a sudden there was an increase in the amount of revenue that was dumped into the K-12 budget and there was no change in the rest of the budget, that’s one thing,” Smith said. “But that history tells us that’s not how it’s going to work.”

The foundation formula is the name of the main state aid program for local schools. When the lottery sold its first ticket, in fiscal 1986, the foundation formula appropriation was $823 million. The following fiscal year, when the lottery contributed $80 million to general revenue, the general revenue transfer to the school fund increased by $73 million.

Throughout the late 1980s, as national figures showed Missouri near the bottom in per-pupil spending and teacher pay, complaints grew that the lottery had not produced the promised results for education.

That led to a 1992 ballot measure earmarking all lottery revenue for education programs. In the first fiscal year that was in effect, the earmarked funds were used for programs supporting minimum teacher salaries and the Career Ladder stipends.

The following year, in fiscal 1995, the foundation formula received its first appropriation of earmarked lottery funds, $33 million. That was about 25% of all lottery revenue that year. The foundation formula appropriation total was $1.4 billion.  

Today all net revenue from bingo, the lottery and casinos is earmarked for education. In the current year’s budget, the lottery is providing $329 million and casino taxes are tapped for $457 million for the $4 billion foundation formula.

Any revenue from Amendment 2 will be an insignificant addition and have no impact on teacher pay, Foster said.

“If you want sports gambling, say that, but don’t put out television ads that have teachers saying teachers are going to get raises,” she said. “We did the math, and even if it was that top $28.9 million, there’s around 900,000 public school kids in Missouri, so that’s 30 bucks a kid.”

Under existing provisions of the constitution, any new revenue from either gambling measure must be used for education programs. The sports wagering amendment does not define which programs the money will support while the Osage River casino proposal adds the earmarking to literacy programs.

The new revenue from sports wagering will make a difference, Cardetti said.

“Not a penny of benefit is going to Missouri, despite the fact that we know thousands of Missourians are already making bets,” he said. “This is the way that we can bring these revenues back to the state of Missouri and regulate something that Missourians are already doing today.”

Election prospects

The good news from history for the promoters of Amendment 2 and Amendment 5 is that Missourians have rarely met a gambling proposal they didn’t like. 

Since 1980, 10 gambling questions have appeared on the ballot and only two — to allow betting on simulcast horse races and authorize a casino at Rockaway Beach on Lake Taneycomo — have been defeated.

In the August St. Louis University/YouGov poll, 50% of voters surveyed said they supported sports wagering after reading the Amendment 2 ballot language while 30% were opposed. The poll did not ask about Amendment 5.

None of the past gambling campaigns had the kind of well-funded opposition that Amendment 2 has drawn. The ads from both sides are filling broadcast airwaves, streaming services and platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.

“We’re using very similar messages that we do on TV and on radio, but now people’s viewing habits are so different and diverse that you’ve got to go meet people where they are,” Cardetti said.

The anti campaign is having an impact, Foster said. 

“It’s definitely tightened,” she said. “It’s margin of error type close, so we’re really pleased to see that.”

The opposition ads clearly state the target is Amendment 2 but the message of skepticism about gambling revenue going to education is having a spillover effect on Amendment 5.

“I bet that they don’t like us or our messaging,” she said.

The opposition to Amendment 2 is making backers of Amendment 5 work harder, Rhode said.

“We’re definitely seeing a little bit of confusion among the voters,” he said. “But the more that we are out there educating voters, you know, sort of what this amendment does, we find the support coming our way.”

The message that the six major professional sports teams back Amendment 2, and that it will keep revenue at home, is just being rolled out to supplement the education message. 

“It makes absolutely zero sense that we have a public policy in the state of Missouri that actively pushes people to go spend money in other states,” Cardetti said.

The opposition campaign would have a tougher sell if that was the message to promote sports wagering from the beginning, Foster said.

“That would be much stronger,” she said. “But the argument ‘let’s make gambling more accessible” is going to hit a lot more roadblocks than ‘let’s give this free money to kids.’”

There are downsides to sports wagering that have not been part of the debate. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported on threats and abuse targeting college athletes who don’t achieve the individual statistics that are fodder for wagers.

And Smith said he’s not entirely comfortable with the bet-from-anywhere nature of sports wagering.

“I’ve observed a lot of young people who are addicted to their phones,” Smith said. “And you know, this is one more piece of candy for them that they might not be able to resist.”

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters aat the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

One of Josh Hawley’s favorite lines of attack during his first run for U.S. Senate in 2018 was to lambaste his Democratic opponent for using a private jet to travel the state. 

“I say, ‘Look, I’m driving everywhere, why don’t you drive?’ She can’t do it,” Hawley told Politico during the 2018 campaign about then-Sen. Claire McCaskill. “She’s totally addicted to her luxury lifestyle.”

Six years later, as Hawley seeks a second term, the attack is being turned back against him. 

Lucas Kunce, the Democratic candidate for Senate, is pouncing on videos being circulated by his campaign of Hawley boarding a Gulfstream IV SP to hopscotch the state last week for rallies with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. 

The three-stop tour with Butker, Kunce said, was the senator’s first event in Missouri in weeks.

“Missouri’s flyover country for this guy,” Kunce said at a campaign rally in Jefferson City on Saturday. By contrast, Kunce says he’s traveling to campaign events in a minivan with his wife and 16-month-old son. 

It’s a familiar knock on Hawley, who even as he was hammering McCaskill in 2018 over private planes still accepted a $6,000 charter jet flight as an in-kind donation from a Jefferson City lobbyist. 

But Hawley’s use of chartered jets began to increase last December, according to his most recent disclosure filed with the Federal Elections Commission in July. Hawley’s campaign spent more than $132,000 on chartered flights between mid-December and June. The largest expenses were $23,000 on March 19 and $21,000 on Feb. 6 to Air Charter Advisors.

The next round of campaign disclosure reports are due this week. 

Responding to the criticism, Hawley’s campaign pivoted to its attack on an essay Kunce wrote in 2021 making the case that the U.S. needed to end its reliance on fossil fuels for the sake of national security.

“We get it,” Abigail Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman, said in an email to The Independent. “Kunce has made it clear he hates all vehicles that run on gas and diesel.”

Hawley and Kunce are entering the final weeks of a contentious fight for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat. 

Every public poll has shown Hawley in the lead, and national Democrats have largely ignored the race. But Kunce has run a populist campaign fueled by millions of small-dollar donations that have allowed him to go toe-to-toe with Hawley in television ad spending. 

Since the August primary, Kunce’s campaign has spent more than $6 million on television advertising, according to FEC records analyzed by The Independent. 

Hawley’s campaign has spent $3.9 million, while an independent PAC supporting his re-election, Show Me Strong, has spent roughly $1.9 million. 

Kunce, a Marine veteran, paints Hawley as an out-of-touch plutocrat that’s he’s dubbed “Posh Josh” who only is running for Senate to benefit himself and his future political aspirations.

“While I spent 13 years in and out of war zones overseas, Josh Hawley and his political buddies were literally waging war on the people I’d signed up to serve right here at home,” Kunce told a rally of supporters at the Marine Corps League in Jefferson City Saturday. “And that’s not a hyperbole.”

Hawley, who served as Missouri attorney general for two years before joining the Senate, has portrayed Kunce as a radical on issues like immigration and LGBTQ rights. And he’s worked to tie Kunce to national Democrats in a state where Republicans have won every statewide election since 2018. 

“We have to save our country,” Hawley told a crowd of supporters in Parkville on Thursday. “We are in crisis. This country is in crisis. It’s in chaos. And you and I know why that’s true. It’s in crisis because of the policies of my opponent, Lucas Kunce.”

Hawley’s campaign has repeatedly demanded Kunce state who he supports in the upcoming presidential election, something he has steadfastly refused to do. 

“Now will he answer a simple question on the presidential election?” said Jackson, Hawley’s spokeswoman. “Is he voting for Trump or Kamala?” 

Kunce says he won’t answer the question because it’s an effort by Hawley to distract voters and nationalize the race. 

And he claims Hawley’s motivation is fear.

“He sees us coming for him,” Kunce said. “He knows he’s unlikable and he knows he is on the wrong side of every single issue.”

The Independent’s Anna Spoerre contributed to this story. 

The Missouri Supreme Court takes the bench on Sept. 10, 2024, in Jefferson City to hear a case questioning whether an amendment to overturn the state's abortion ban will remain on the state's November ballot. From left are Judges Kelly C. Broniec, Robin Ransom, W. Brent Powell, Chief Justice Mary R. Russell, Zel. M. Fischer, Paul C. Wilson and Ginger K. Gooch (Pool photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

If three Missouri Supreme Court judges had their way, voters would not have a say on whether to legalize abortion statewide on this year’s general election ballot.

This November, those voters will have the option to use a power they’ve never used before — to boot two of those judges off the state’s high court.

Abortion rights groups turned in 380,000 signatures this summer for a state constitutional amendment that would establish a right to reproductive health care.

But then a Cole County circuit court judge ruled that their proposed amendment was too vague. That sent the case to the Missouri Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that it met legal requirements in a 4-3 decision.

Now, the abortion amendment will appear on the ballot — alongside retention votes for two of those judges who dissented in the ruling that ultimately put the issue to a statewide vote.

To abortion-rights advocates like Jess Piper, it’s “instant karma.”

She is the executive director of Blue Missouri and ran unsuccessfully in 2022 to represent a district north of St. Joseph in the Missouri House of Representatives.

“You vote against us, and we can vote to not retain you,” she said. Piper will be voting not to retain Missouri Supreme Court judges Kelly Broniec and Ginger Gooch, who dissented last month in the decision to keep abortion on the ballot.

But some political and legal experts say advocates like Piper should brace for times when judges they like might get tossed off the court for their rulings.

It’d be a gamble. Kicking two judges off the Supreme Court is unprecedented in Missouri and would leave two open seats for the next governor to fill. Mounting a political campaign to remove two judges from the court, if successful, could shake the foundation of an institution that has been insulated from politics for 80 years.

“Be careful what you wish for,” said former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Wolff. “You don’t know what you’re going to get on the other side.”

What judges Broniec and Gooch argued on the abortion petition case

The Supreme Court’s Sept. 10 decision put abortion back on the ballot.

Judges on both sides of the opinion contend the legal decision had nothing to do with abortion.

Rather, they say the case turned on a 1997 law that requires initiative petitions specify what parts of Missouri statute or the state constitution would be repealed by a petition.

Anti-abortion groups said that Amendment 3 was not specific about what Missouri laws would be repealed by establishing a right to reproductive health care.

Abortion-rights groups, on the other hand, said that wasn’t required because the abortion amendment doesn’t actually repeal any laws — it simply adds a guarantee in the Missouri Constitution of access to abortion. If the amendment passes, Missouri’s abortion ban passed by the General Assembly will remain in effect until it’s challenged in court.

Ultimately, the courts could overturn some abortion restrictions — not the amendment itself.

The state Supreme Court ruled that the abortion amendment met the necessary legal requirements to be on the ballot. Judge Paul Wilson also wrote in the majority opinion that requiring a petition to specify a list of laws to be repealed would be overly burdensome, making it functionally impossible to amend the constitution in the future.

In her dissenting opinion, Broniec wrote that the 1997 law requiring petitions to specify what laws would be repealed also includes laws that would be invalidated.

The abortion amendment clearly contradicts a handful of existing Missouri laws, she said, including the abortion ban that went into effect in June 2022, a law requiring a parent’s consent for minors to receive an abortion and a law requiring a 72-hour waiting period.

She said that this amendment — and any future amendment — wouldn’t have to list out every possible law that could be repealed. But, she argued, it should have listed the ones that were most obvious.

Gooch agreed with Broniec, as did Judge Zel Fischer, who is due to retire in 2033.

Both Gooch and Broniec declined to comment for this story. They are prohibited from publicly commenting on court issues under the state’s judicial code of conduct.

The 1940 ‘Missouri Plan’ to keep politics out of the Supreme Court

Unlike many other states, Missouri does not directly elect members of its Supreme Court. And to some experts, that’s a good thing.

The system of judge retention elections — rather than contested elections between two candidates — was created by an initiative petition in 1940 in response to an increasingly politicized court.

“There was a very ugly Missouri Supreme Court race between a Boss (Tom) Pendergast candidate and somebody else,” said Wolff, who is also former dean of St. Louis University School of Law.

Pendergast was a political boss in the early 20th century who controlled Kansas City Hall, the police department and even some statewide elections.

“If you wanted to be a judge in Jackson County or even on the Supreme Court of Missouri,” Wolff said, “a person you needed to go see was Boss Tom. That didn’t necessarily mean that you were going to be the best judge.”

But legal scholars at the time argued for a way to hold judges accountable when they misbehave or perform incompetently.

That created the “Missouri Plan” that nine other states copied and that 10 more followed roughly.

A judicial nominating commission — the chief justice, three members of the Missouri Bar Association and three nonlawyers picked by the governor — creates a list of potential nominees.

The governor then picks a nominee from that list to serve on the Supreme Court for one year before facing a retention election.

Judges who are retained face a retention election every 12 years until they retire at age 70.

No campaign to kick out a Supreme Court judge in Missouri has ever been successful.

Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, said that although the governor has some say in who gets nominated, the nominating commission has successfully protected the court from partisan politics for the most part.

Gov. Mike Parson “has not been particularly aggressive in that regard,” he said. “They do have to go through the judicial nominating commission that might take some of the edge off of the heavy partisanship.”

Retention races can be a flashpoint for more partisan politics

Piper posted a video to TikTok shortly after the initiative petition Supreme Court decision, calling on voters to not retain Gooch and Broniec. The video has garnered more than 13,000 likes and 1,600 shares. Since then, she said she has met with voters who told her they wrote down the judges’ names so they’d remember in November.

“They’re really angry,” she said. “We didn’t just do the job, we killed it — 380,000 signatures when we only needed 180,000. It angers people across the political spectrum because you don’t have any right to take away my voice.”

Even if voters toss out the judges, Parson’s probable successor, Republican governor candidate Mike Kehoe, likely would replace them with two conservatives.

“He would appoint people in much the same manner that Parson did,” Piper said.

A Ballotpedia study in 2020 found that only three judges had lost retention out of 155 elections across the country since 2008. The other 98% percent won their races.

In nearby Iowa, voters removed two judges from the Supreme Court when they were up for retention in 2010 after the court unanimously overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2009.

A conservative Missouri group attempted to remove Supreme Court Judge Richard Teitelman in 2004. The campaign argued that Teitelman was opposed to the death penalty and in favor of abortion, and that he opposed the right to firearms.

Missouri Supreme Court judges are prohibited under the code of judicial conduct from making any public statements on how they would rule on any given issue. If they do, they must recuse themselves from any case involving those issues.

That backs judges into a corner in those targeted campaigns where they can’t effectively defend themselves against claims that they support or don’t support an issue.

“It was a campaign generated by the (prospective) speaker of the House,” Wolff said of the 2004 retention campaign. “He was targeting some districts where they were trying to gin up the conservative voters. I don’t think they knew or cared who Judge Teitelman was, but they could get people to the polls.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A handful of people opposed to Amendment 3 protested outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, following a ruling to keep the abortion amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The family business that owns the Kansas City Chiefs is one of the biggest funders of a political action committee opposing a proposed amendment to overturn Missouri’s abortion ban. 

Unity Hunt, the business that controls the assets of the late Lamar Hunt, including the Chiefs, in late September donated $300,000 to the Leadership for America PAC. It is currently running ads on several conservative radio stations across the state opposing the abortion-rights amendment, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 3. 

Leadership for America is an independent spending PAC created in January. Prior to receiving the donation from Unity Hunt, the PAC had $31,159 on hand.

Along with paying directly for radio ads, Leadership for America has donated $100,000 to Vote “No” on 3, the main opposition group in the Amendment 3 campaign. And on Oct. 3, the PAC donated $100,000 to a PAC called Missouri Leadership Fund, which gave $100,000 to Vote “No” on 3 six days later.

A spokesperson for the team said Friday that the donation came directly from Lamar Hunt Jr., and not from the Chiefs team.

Unity Hunt did not respond to requests for comment.

No one from Leadership for America could be reached for comment. The telephone number given to the Missouri Ethics Commission for treasurer John Royal has been disconnected.

The ads, which began airing across the state on Monday, call Amendment 3 “cleverly-worded to convince you that it only allows abortions until fetal viability.” 

“But it has loopholes that allow for abortions through all nine months of pregnancy,” the ad continues. “Abortion proponents used to say ‘safe, legal and rare.’ But now they want abortion as common as the morning after pill.”

Supporters of the amendment say claims of abortions in the third trimester are misleading, since the legal freedoms around abortion would only apply until fetal viability, which is generally considered to be around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The amendment text would allow the Missouri legislature to regulate abortion after fetal viability with exceptions only to “protect the life, or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

Abortion is illegal from the moment of conception in Missouri, with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. 

Failed GOP attempt to keep abortion off Missouri ballot could foreshadow fight to come

Leadership for America has spent a little more than $32,000 on the radio ads, which are set to run through Nov. 4. There are no other broadcast ads opposing the amendment.  

Organized efforts against Amendment 3 have been hugely outspent by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the committee backing the amendment. The campaign reported spending $7.3 million through June 30 and has purchased more than $8.7 million in television ads since the start of September.

Vote “No” on 3 has not filed a full disclosure report but has amassed $870,000 in donations greater than $5,000 since Aug. 30.

While the content of the Leadership for America ad aligns with most other opposition talking points, the original source of the money behind the ad drew some attention. 

“It is incredibly disappointing to see Unity Hunt spend resources on this campaign to spread lies and continue the fear-mongering surrounding Amendment 3,” said state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Democrat from Kansas City. 

Nurrenbern, who is running for the 17th Senate District in Clay County, said she was particularly alarmed by the size of the donation from a family she said “has done so much good for Kansas City and the Kansas City area.” 

State Rep. Ashley Aune, also a Democrat from Kansas City, said she wasn’t surprised to see the Hunt family backing an effort to stop abortion.

“But also, it’s disappointing because when you have such a big platform,” Aune said. “Using that platform to sow misinformation is a really irresponsible way to use it.”

In 2020, Lamar Hunt Jr. served as the master of ceremonies at the Kansans for Life annual Valentine’s Day banquet. 

Hunt, an owner of the Chiefs, told the crowd: “I do not think it is a cliché to say we are in a life and death battle for the truth and authentic dignity of the human person.” 

Hunt six years earlier published a blog post to his website contemplating what he observed as cultural shifts away from the “pro-choice” movement, comparing the momentum in the “pro-life” community to the San Francisco 49ers comeback and near-win in the final seconds of the 2013 Super Bowl.

This story was updated at 3:20 p.m. Friday to include a comment from a Kansas City Chiefs spokesperson.

Success in the 11th, 15th and 17th would give the Democrats 12 seats in the Senate, denying the GOP a supermajority for the first time since 2008 (Getty Images).

Democrats hoping to chip away at the GOP supermajority in the Missouri Senate got a big boost last week when its candidates in two swing districts won the endorsement of the state’s largest business advocacy group. 

In a third hotly contested district, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry chose not to weigh in at all. 

The Missouri Chamber, an historically Republican-leaning organization, formally endorsed Democrat Robert Sauls in Senate District 11 and Joe Pereles in Senate District 15. 

In a third race — for the 17th Senate District in Clay County — the chamber declined to endorse Republican Jerry Nolte or Democrat Maggie Nurrenbern. 

Of the 17 Senate races taking place this year across the state, the 11th, 15th and 17th are widely considered the most competitive. 

Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, is taking on Republican Joe Nicola of Grain Valley for the seat vacated by former Democratic state Sen. John Rizzo. 

Both Pereles and his GOP rival, David Gregory, are from Chesterfield. They’re vying for the seat being vacated by Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig. 

Nurrenbern, a state representative from Kansas City, and Nolte, a former state lawmaker and presiding county commissioner, hope to replace former Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur. 

In announcing its endorsements, the chamber pointed to “political dysfunction” that has derailed the Senate and “stalled key business priorities, harming Missouri employers and families.”

Factional infighting between Republican members of the Freedom Caucus and the Senate’s GOP leadership has derailed the chamber for the last four years.The bad blood came to a head during the 2024 legislative session, when members of the Freedom Caucus waged a 41-hour filibuster that nearly upended the state budget. 

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in living memory, surpassing even the COVID-shortened 2020 session in futility.

Nicola is widely expected to join the Freedom Caucus if he wins next month. Gregory is a trial attorney, a group that has bankrolled Missouri’s Freedom Caucus in recent years. 

“Ultimately, the Missouri Chamber PAC chose to endorse Sauls and Pereles because we believe they are strong candidates and will work with the business community to move Missouri forward,” said Kara Corches, the chamber’s interim president and CEO. 

In addition to its endorsement, the chamber’s PAC reported earlier this month spending $25,000 to support Pereles in the race. 

Republicans currently hold 24 of the Senate’s 34 seats. 

Democrats are expected to pick up one seat currently held by Republicans — the Boone County-based 19th District.  

Success in the 11th, 15th and 17th would give the Democrats 12 seats in the Senate, denying the GOP a supermajority for the first time since 2008. 

Sauls vs. Nicola

Senate District 11 in Jackson County includes eastern Kansas City and Independence. While held by a Democrat for the last few election cycles, former President Donald Trump carried the district in 2020 and 2016. 

Nicola, a pastor, overcame a massive fundraising disadvantage to defeat state Rep. Aaron McMullin in the August GOP primary, spending roughly $100,000 this cycle compared to $500,000 for McMullin. 

His last report, filed in September, shows only $15,000 cash on hand. 

Sauls, an attorney and former prosecutor, was unopposed in the Democratic primary and reported $202,000 cash on hand in September. Since that report was filed, a political action committee supporting his candidacy — called Independence Leadership PAC — has received $130,000 in large contributions.

Sauls began airing television ads this week, spending $134,520 so far. Nicola has not purchased broadcast time.  

Nicola brushed off the chamber’s endorsement, saying that he will be a “pro-business senator” who will “work to cut taxes, slash governmental red tape and let the free market do what it does best: promote entrepreneurship and create wealth.”

But he mostly chalks up the Missouri Chamber’s endorsement to his opposition to “vaccine mandates, China owning our farmland and taxpayer-funded DEI indoctrination.”

“I completely disagree with these positions,” he said, “and the fact that my opponent is endorsed by a group with these radical policies is telling and completely out of touch with my district.”

Pereles vs. Gregory

The 15th District includes a large portion of suburban St. Louis County, including Chesterfield and Ballwin. It has historically been a Republican stronghold, but has slowly trended towards Democrats in recent years. 

Gregory, a former state legislator, won a three-way Republican primary in August, emerging with only $30,000 in his campaign committee and $4,000 in a PAC supporting him called Show-Me Growth PAC, according to disclosure reports filed last month. 

Pereles, a retired Drury Hotel executive, was unopposed in the Democratic primary. His campaign reported $650,000 cash on hand last month, with a PAC supporting him — called Fearless PAC — receiving more than $400,000 in large donations since the primary. 

Pereles is up on TV, spending $53,000 so far on ads hammering Gregory’s support of Missouri’s abortion ban and mocking his push to build a castle in Jefferson City for his family to live in if he were to win the Senate seat. 

The Missouri Senate Campaign Committee, which supports GOP candidates, launched an ad this month trying to tie Pereles to U.S. Rep. Cori Bush and arguing that Pereles is soft on crime. 

Nurrenbern vs. Nolte

The 17th District covers Clay County and was held by Republicans until 2018, when Arthur captured the seat in a special election and cruised to an easy re-election in 2020. 

Both Nolte and Nurrenbern were unopposed in the August primary. 

Nolte reported nearly $70,000 in his campaign account in a disclosure filed last month. 

Nurrenbern reported $375,000 cash on hand as of last month in her campaign committee and another $200,000 in a PAC supporting her candidacy. 

Since the primary, the pro-Nurrenbern PAC — called Northland Forward — has received around $200,000 in large contributions. 

Nurrenbern’s campaign has spent $440,295 on TV ads, while Nolte is currently not on the air. Majority Forward, a PAC organized to support Democratic Senate candidates, has also spent $264,885 so far running a TV ad in the district. 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story. 

Correction: This story was updated on Oct. 11 to note that Lauren Arthur was re-elected to the Missouri Senate in 2020. 

Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages prepare for a press conference in May, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A measure that would guarantee paid sick leave for over 700,000 Missouri workers who currently lack it, as well as gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, will appear on voters’ ballots next month.

The ballot initiative, called Proposition A, has been backed by various unions and workers’ advocacy groups, social justice and civil rights organizations, over 500 state business owners and others. 

Some business groups, including the state Chamber of Commerce, have opposed it, especially the guaranteed sick leave portion. But thus far there hasn’t been a coordinated opposition campaign. 

The campaign in favor of the measure, called Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, has raised over $5 million — including from out-of-state groups that don’t disclose their donors— and collected 210,000 signatures to have the issue placed on the statewide ballot.

Most expect the ballot measure to succeed, given polling, national trends with similar ballot measures and the lack of coordinated opposition. Missourians have approved minimum wage increases on the ballot twice before by wide margins. 

“We believe full-time work deserves better than poverty,” said Richard Von Glahn, campaign manager for Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, “but current minimum wage — that’s what it leads to.” 

The current minimum wage in Missouri is $12.30, which is equivalent to $492 per week, before taxes.

And without sick leave, proponents argue, workers have to choose between their financial and physical wellbeing — going into work sick or losing out on a needed paycheck.

“Everybody gets sick. Everybody has a child or someone they care for that gets sick,” Von Glahn said, “But when there’s an unequal ability to care for yourself or care for your family, that is unjust.”

Businesses would be required to provide one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to five days per year for small businesses and seven days per year for larger businesses. Small businesses are those with fewer than 15 employees.

Some business groups have said the proposal constitutes government overreach in what should be the decisions of business owners.

“A business owner’s ability to set their own workplace policies and procedures is really the bedrock on which our free enterprise system is built,” said Kara Corches, interim president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “So this is creating a new mandate for employers in terms of wage as well as paid leave policy, that is really against that principle of ‘let business decide.”

“…We want to make sure that Missouri is the most business friendly state in the nation, and we don’t think that this proposition is sending that message,” Corches added.

Sick leave

The ballot measure would make sick leave guaranteed for 728,000 workers who currently lack it statewide, or over 1 in 3 Missouri workers, according to an analysis from the progressive nonprofit the Missouri Budget Project.

Many of those who lack paid sick leave are the lowest earners.

“Sick days are very common amongst the highest paid workers, you know, executives, those types of positions,” Von Glahn said, “but particularly in some of the lower wage industries — the industries that we’ve been calling essential for a number of years now — construction, retail, food service, nursing home, childcare workers, they lack access to this.”

Employees would be allowed to take the time for mental or physical illness, to take care of a family member, or due to a domestic violence situation, according to the proposition.

Employers could require documentation when a worker takes three or more days off in a row, such as a doctor’s note, but wouldn’t be allowed to require disclosure of detailed health information.

Corches said the paid sick leave part of the measure is what “gives us a little more heartburn, just because it’s so nebulous,” and open to interpretation. She pointed specifically to confusion around provisions that would give employees a civil cause of action to sue if employers break the law, and another provision that prohibits employers from retaliation when workers take leave. 

“Business owners have enough on their plates, just trying to, you know, keep their businesses open, retain and recruit employees, and this nine page new proposition is very complicated and is going to make compliance quite challenging,” Corches said.

If the measure passes in Missouri, the paid sick time provision will kick in on May 1, 2025.

Ray McCarty, CEO of Associated Industries of Missouri, a business advocacy organization, raised concerns that “you will have people that abuse the system,” meaning those who take sick leave who don’t qualify. McCarty said in some cases employers may need proof of the legitimate absence earlier than three days in, or need to ask for more detailed information.

Missouri would join 15 states that require employers to provide paid sick leave. The United States, unlike nearly every other country, lacks federal paid sick leave, so states, as well as cities, have taken the lead. 

In states that have adopted sick leave mandates, employees take, on average, two more sick days a year than prior to the law going into effect, a National Bureau of Economic Research report found.

Studies have found that offering paid sick time can increase workers’ productivity and reduce illness, and generally adds little or nothing to business expenses.

Nebraska and Alaska also have paid sick leave on the ballot this year.

Minimum wage

The ballot measure also would raise the state’s minimum wage to $13.75 next year and $15 in Jan. 2026. 

The increase would affect over 562,000 workers in the state, according to the Missouri Budget Project, or nearly one in every four workers. The minimum wage would be adjusted based on inflation every year after 2026.

McCarty said most members in Associated Industries of Missouri already pay at least $15 hourly, though they may not realize the “whole wage scale will slide up,” meaning raising the minimum wage could have spillover effects on other wages, for businesses to remain competitive. 

He said some employers could go over to Kansas and pay less, so may choose to be based in neighboring states. 

The states neighboring Missouri already have lower minimum wages, except for Illinois, which is $14 per hour. 

A coalition of hundreds of businesspeople in the state have signed on to support the ballot measure, arguing the policies help their bottom line, causing lower employee turnover, increased productivity and better health and safety conditions.

Ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage are generally likely to succeed, and have previously succeeded in Missouri, amidst legislative inaction or opposition.

Voters approved a minimum-wage hike in 2006, with 75% of the vote, and again in 2018, with 62% of the vote.

Advocates have had success with ballot measures as, for years, Republicans in the legislature have voted against or failed to hear proposals to increase the minimum wage, Von Glahn said. In 2017 the legislature passed a law prohibiting cities from raising the minimum wage beyond that of the state’s, after St. Louis city passed an ordinance to raise the city’s minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage has been stagnant, at $7.25, since 2009. Thirty states, including Missouri, have a minimum wage higher than the federal one.

‘Confident it will pass’

Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages has so far raised over $5 million, according to campaign filings. 

That includes two $1.2 million donations from the D.C.-based Sixteen Thirty Fund, in August and October, a progressive nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors. Other large donors include Missouri Jobs with Justice Voter Action and the D.C.-based The Fairness Project.

The campaign has purchased over $1.4 million in television ads, slated to begin airing next week, according to Federal Communications Commission filings.

The ballot measure would change the state law but not the constitution, meaning the legislature could overturn it, but that is unlikely, McCarty said. 

“I don’t see any politician in their right mind — if this passes with a high percentage of votes, which we expect it will — I don’t see any politician in their right mind completely repealing the entire law,” he said, citing potential concerns about overturning the will of voters.

Corches said the Chamber is focused on the election and would only “start looking at, is it possible to modify this in the Capitol” if it passes.  

Von Glahn said Prop A will be a test of whether or not the legislature “respects the will of voters.”

The St. Louis University/YouGov poll conducted in August found the ballot measure had a strong backing, with 57% of those surveyed supporting it.

“We feel confident that it will pass next month, but we’re also doing the work,” Von Glahn said. “I mean, we’ve got people out canvassing every day, talking to voters about it.”

People toss buckets of water out of a home as the streets and homes are flooded near Peachtree Creek after Hurricane Helene brought in heavy rains over night on Sept. 27 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Megan Varner/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Hurricane season has not only wreaked havoc on people’s lives throughout much of the country, but could also make it more difficult for voters to cast their ballots in hard-hit regions.

Other election threats include misinformation and even terrorism, with warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and an arrest in Oklahoma allegedly connected with an Election Day plot.

Election officials in states regularly affected by hurricane season have considerable experience ensuring residents can vote following natural disasters, but those in other parts of the country less accustomed to the destruction this year are learning as they go.

Voters used to a quick drive to their polling place or a drop box might need to spend more time getting there amid washed-out roads, while some may be so bogged down in rebuilding their lives, they simply choose not to cast a ballot. Regular mail service may be disrupted for mail-in ballots.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said earlier this week he didn’t expect recovery from Hurricane Helene to have a significant impact on voting, lauding county election officials for troubleshooting power outages and a loss of internet during the storm, the Georgia Recorder reported.

Local election officials throughout the state, he said, were ready to ship mail-in ballots on time and didn’t expect any delays to the start of early voting on Oct. 15.

County election officials “really put public service first because they understand how important voting is in 53 counties that so far have been declared federal disaster areas,” he said during a press briefing.

North Carolina’s Board of Elections has implemented changes in 13 counties that will make it easier for residents there to vote by absentee ballot, NC Newsline reported. The emergency measures, adopted unanimously, also allow elections officials to increase outreach to voters and set up alternative voting locations to avoid using locations that were damaged or are inaccessible.

Elections Director Karen Brinson Bell said during that board meeting she expects early voting will still begin on Oct. 17 as previously planned.

“These measures will help eligible voters in the affected areas cast their ballot either in person or by mail,” Brinson Bell said. “They will help county boards of election in western North Carolina administer this election under extraordinarily difficult conditions.”

In Florida, where residents barely began addressing damage from Hurricane Helene before Hurricane Milton emerged, there are disagreements about how best to proceed, the Florida Phoenix reported.

The League of Women Voters of Florida Education Fund and the Florida State Conference of the NAACP have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to extend the voter registration deadline, which ended on Monday.

The organizations argue that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis should have allowed more time for voter registration, since residents have been focused on storm preparation, evacuation and recovery.

“While issuing mandatory evacuation orders, he has refused to extend the voter registration deadline, disenfranchising many Floridians who were unable to register due to a disaster beyond their control,” the organizations wrote in a statement. “Voters should not have to worry about registering to vote while they are trying to protect their lives and communities.”

Elections and artificial intelligence

In Kentucky, elections officials are warning state lawmakers that artificial intelligence has the “potential for significant impact” on elections in the months and years ahead, the Kentucky Lantern reported.

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams urged lawmakers during a meeting of the General Assembly’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force to take the technology seriously.

“Should you take up AI legislation when you return in 2025, I would encourage you to consider prohibiting impersonation of election officials,” Adams said during the meeting. “It is illegal to impersonate a peace officer, and for good reason. It should be equally illegal to impersonate a secretary of state or county clerk and put out false information in any format about our elections.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a report earlier this month saying officials expected “state actors will continue to pose a host of threats to the Homeland and public safety,” including through artificial intelligence.

“Specifically, China, Iran, and Russia will use a blend of subversive, undeclared, criminal, and coercive tactics to seek new opportunities to undermine confidence in US democratic institutions and domestic social cohesion,” the 46-page report states.

“Advances in AI likely will enable foreign adversaries to increase the output, timeliness, and perceived authenticity of their mis-, dis-, and malinformation designed to influence US audiences while concealing or distorting the origin of the content.”

Terrorism and the election 

DHS also expects threats from terrorism to remain high throughout the year, including around the elections, according to the report.

“Lone offenders and small groups continue to pose the greatest threat of carrying out attacks with little to no warning,” the report states.

That appears to be the case in Oklahoma, where federal officials allege a 27-year-old Afghanistan national living in the state purchased an AK-47 and ammunition as part of a plot to conduct an attack on Election Day in the name of ISIS, the Oklahoma Voice reported.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi and a co-conspirator under the age of 18 allegedly met with an FBI asset in rural western Oklahoma to purchase two AK-47 assault rifles, 10 magazines and 500 rounds of ammunition, according to the criminal complaint.

An FBI search of Tawhedi’s phone found communications with a person who Tawhedi believed was affiliated with ISIS. He also “allegedly accessed, viewed, and saved ISIS propaganda on his iCloud and Google account, participated in pro-ISIS Telegram groups, and contributed to a charity which fronts for and funnels money to ISIS,” according to the complaint.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has sought to blame Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris for Tawhedi’s presence within the United States.

Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt released a written statement claiming that Harris “rolled out the red carpet for terrorists like Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi.”

“President Donald Trump will deport illegal immigrants on the terror watch list and secure our borders from foreign threats,” Leavitt wrote.

Tawhedi entered the United States on Sept. 9, 2021, on a special immigrant visa and “is currently on parole status pending adjudication of his immigration proceedings,” according to the criminal complaint.

The co-defendant is Tawhedi’s wife’s younger brother. While unnamed because he is a juvenile, the criminal complaint says he is a citizen of Afghanistan with legal permanent resident status who entered the United States on March 27, 2018, on a special immigrant visa.

Leavitt’s statement didn’t comment on the co-defendant entering the United States during the Trump administration.

Harris has not yet commented publicly on the arrest.

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System’s $30,000 contribution to a campaign backing a court fee for sheriffs’ pensions is raising questions about the misuse of public funds. (Getty Images)

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System last month made a $30,000 investment, hoping for a big return if voters approve a ballot measure imposing a $3 fee on court cases to fund the system’s pensions.

The $30,000 contribution to the Committee to Ensure a Future for Sheriffs & Prosecutors, the committee promoting Amendment 6 on the Nov. 5 ballot, was approved at the system’s Board of Directors meeting in September, executive director Melissa Lorts said Tuesday.

The donation is drawing concern from critics of the proposed amendment — and even lawmakers in support — who question whether the pension board is using taxpayer dollars to support a political campaign.

The fee on court cases could generate about $2 million annually, according to a fiscal note for the legislation putting the measure before voters.

Prosecutors, who would also benefit from Amendment 6, have contributed $50,000 from Missouri Prosecutors Association funds. Sheriffs are the biggest contributors, with $100,000 coming from the Missouri Sheriff’s Association in addition to the donation from the retirement fund.

Amendment would use court fees to fund retirement for Missouri sheriffs, prosecutors

Along with providing the third-largest single contribution to the campaign, the retirement system website is actively promoting passage of the proposal with a box urging a “yes” vote on Amendment 6 and a link to the campaign website.

Lorts is the treasurer of the campaign committee in addition to her duties, which she said are part-time, as fund executive director.

No law is being violated by making the donation, Lorts said.

“I have a legal opinion and these are not public dollars,” Lorts said. “I’m not a political subdivision and they’re not public dollars.”

The legal opinion was not provided in writing, Lorts said. She also said she called the Missouri Ethics Commission and was assured the contribution was legal.

That assurance was not formalized in writing, either, Lorts said.

“My attorney, and I’ve also called Missouri Ethics, says nowhere am I not allowed to do that,” Lorts said. 

Stacy Heislen, acting executive director of the ethics commission, declined to comment on any specific conversations.

“Our practice is to provide an overview of what the statute allows,” Heislen said.

Questions from lawmakers

Leading members of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement weren’t as certain as Lorts that the contributions were unquestionably legal.

State Rep. Barry Hovis, a Cape Girardeau Republican and chairman of the committee, said he would have to know more about the precise source of funds. He said he would ask committee staff to research the question.

“If we think that it’s a Missouri ethics complaint, obviously that report should be made to Missouri ethics to see if they did spend money that’s not viable for a campaign or election,” Hovis said. “I don’t know, I’m just not good enough on the rules to say yes or no on those.”

Hovis, a retired police officer who sponsored the legislation in the Missouri House, said he thinks the fee is reasonable. Sheriffs are vital to the functioning of the courts by serving paperwork, providing security and operating jails, he said.

Another committee member, Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, said he was also uncertain about the legality of the donation and wanted to know more.

“This doesn’t look good, and that’s where I’m at right now,” Beck said. “I would have to talk to some other folks that are a little bit more knowledgeable about this. I personally don’t like the way it looks.”

The fee in question was added to criminal cases in 1983 and expanded to include municipal court cases in 2013. In 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that it was an unconstitutional bar to the courts, which are to be open to all and where “justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay.”

Amendment 6 would overturn that decision by stating that “costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for” sheriffs, former sheriffs, prosecutors and former prosecutors is part of ensuring “that all Missourians have access to the courts of justice…”

Before the Supreme Court decision, the fiscal note for the legislation states, the fee brought about $2 million annually to the pension fund.

The fund in 2023 paid $3.8 million in benefits to 147 retired former sheriffs, one disabled former sheriff, and 52 spouses. The administrative costs of $244,454.

There are 17 retired sheriffs eligible for a pension but not receiving it and 115 currently in office.

“My board voted to contribute because it is important to the 200 members that are currently receiving a benefit that will lose their benefit if we do not receive our $3 fee back,” Lorts said.

Public money to shore up pension fund

During calendar year 2023, without the fees, the fund received $89,502 in contributions, had $38.4 million in assets and had lost $15 million in value over the previous two years. A large portion of the loss in value was due to refunding the unconstitutional fee and other costs from litigation.

To shore up its finances, lawmakers this year appropriated $5 million in general revenue to the fund, $2.5 million in the supplemental spending bill for the year ending June 30 and another $2.5 million in the current year.

Since Jan. 1, sheriffs have been contributing 5% of their salaries toward the pension fund.

By making the contribution after receiving state tax dollars, the fund could have violated rules governing the use of state appropriations, said Sharon Jones, an attorney from Jefferson City who was a member of the legal team that forced changes in the ballot language for Amendment 6.

“I’m not surprised by it even a little bit,” Jones said of the contribution.

The legal question is a murky one, she said. 

“Our campaign finance laws are pretty Wild West,” she said. “Certainly, there have been attempts over the last couple of years specifically aimed at school boards and county people trying to pass levies to say you can’t campaign for it.”

A state law dating to 1988, and strengthened in 2021, prohibits political subdivisions from using public funds to support or oppose any ballot measure or candidate. No one interviewed for this story could point to a specific state law applying that prohibition to state departments or entities created by state statute.

Federal law does prohibit the conversion of public funds to campaign purposes.

“If the sheriff’s pension goes under, the state of Missouri is on the hook for those dollars,” Jones said.

Regardless of the law, she said, it is an improper diversion of money away from its official purpose.

“It’s still public money, and it’s still money that is supposed to be used on the administration of the pension fund and to make sure that there is enough to pay out what’s owed when the time comes,” Jones said.

Frank Vatterott, an attorney, former municipal judge in St. Louis County and a critic of the fee, said the $3 fee has nothing to do with keeping the courts open. 

Vatterott refused to collect the fee while he was a judge. The roots of the constitutional prohibition on the fee, he said, date back to the Magna Carta, the 1215 document that put protections for individual rights into a legally binding document for the first time in England.

“The administration of justice just means the cost to keep the court going, to pay the court clerk and pay the judge and do the paperwork,” Vatterott said. “This is not the administration of justice. These are retirement funds.”

Vatterott said he has no doubt that the system’s money is public funds. And he’s not in doubt about the law.

“You can’t use public money for advocacy, period,” he said. “I would imagine they’re not that dumb.”

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday announced a proposal on long-term care under Medicare focused on the “sandwich generation,” which refers to Americans who are caring for their children while also caring for aging parents (Getty Images).

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a plan Tuesday that would strengthen Medicare coverage to include long-term care for seniors in their homes, tackling one of the biggest challenges in U.S. health care.

The Democratic presidential nominee revealed the proposal while on “The View” — one of several high-profile media appearances this week as she and the GOP presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, sprint to the November finish line.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle: They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all, especially if they work,” Harris said during the live interview. “We’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.”

Harris is focusing on the “sandwich generation,” which refers to Americans who are caring for their children while also caring for aging parents.

Under the plan, Medicare — the nation’s health insurance program for people 65 and older and some under 65 with certain disabilities or conditions — would cover an at-home health benefit for those enrolled in the program, as well as hearing and vision benefits, according to her campaign in a Tuesday fact sheet.

Medicare for the most part now does not cover long-term care services like home health aides.

The benefits would be funded by “expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, increasing the discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, and addressing Medicare fraud,” per her campaign.

Harris also plans to “crack down on pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) to increase transparency, disclose more information on costs, and regulate other practices that raise prices,” according to her campaign, which said she will also “implement international tax reform.”

The campaign did not cite a price tag but noted similar plans have been estimated to cost $40 billion annually, “before considering ​​savings from avoiding hospitalizations and more expensive institutional care, or the additional revenues that would generate from more unpaid family caregivers going back to work if they need to.”

The proposal comes along with the nominee’s sweeping economic plan, part of which involves cutting taxes for more than 100 million Americans, including $6,000 in tax relief for new parents in the first year of their child’s life.

Trump responds

In response to the proposal, the Trump campaign said the former president “will always fight for America’s senior citizens — who have been left behind by Kamala Harris,” per a Tuesday news release.

The campaign also cited Medicare Advantage policies extended by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Trump’s first term.

The campaign reiterated the 2024 GOP platform’s chapter on protecting seniors, saying Trump will “prioritize home care benefits by shifting resources back to at-home senior care, overturning disincentives that lead to care worker shortages, and supporting unpaid family caregivers through tax credits and reduced red tape.”

Harris and Howard Stern

While appearing live on “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday shortly after “The View,” Harris dubbed Trump an “unserious man,” saying the consequences of him serving another term are “brutally serious.”

She also again criticized Trump for nominating three of the five members to the U.S. Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022 — a reversal that ended nearly half a century of the constitutional right to abortion.

“And it’s not about abortion, you have basically now a system that says you as an individual do not have the right to make a decision about your own body. The government has the right to make that decision for you,” she said.

Harris, who said she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet if elected, was asked whether she would choose former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.

Cheney was the vice chair of the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee tasked with investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Harris did not disclose a preference, but said Cheney is “smart,” “remarkable” and a “dedicated public servant.”

Cheney is among some prominent Republicans to endorse Harris. She campaigned with the veep in Ripon, Wisconsin — the birthplace of the Republican Party — just last week.

Trump talks with Ben Shapiro

Meanwhile, Trump said Harris is “grossly incompetent” during an interview that aired Tuesday on “The Ben Shapiro Show.”

“Biden was incompetent, she is equally incompetent and in a certain way, she’s more incompetent,” Trump told Shapiro, a conservative political commentator and co-founder of The Daily Wire, referring to President Joe Biden.

Trump also criticized Harris’ Monday interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” saying the veep “answers questions like a child.”

“She’s answering questions in the most basic way and getting killed over it,” Trump added.

Look ahead for Harris, Trump campaigns

Harris was also set to also appear on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night. She will also appear at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas, Nevada, that airs Thursday.

Trump was slated to participate in a roundtable with Latino leaders and a Univision town hall on Tuesday in Miami, but both events were postponed due to Hurricane Milton.

Trump is set to give remarks Wednesday in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Later that day, he will continue campaigning in the Keystone State with a rally in Reading.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have widely divergent views on education. In this photo, students are shown in a classroom (Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images).

As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris sprint to the November finish line, one sprawling policy area has largely fallen out of the spotlight — education.

Though the respective GOP and Democratic presidential candidates have spent comparatively more time campaigning on issues such as immigration, foreign policy and the economy, their ideas surrounding K-12 and higher education vastly differ.

Trump’s education platform vows to “save American education,” with a focus on parental rights, universal school choice and a fight for “patriotic education” in schools.

“By increasing access to school choice, empowering parents to have a voice in their child’s education, and supporting good teachers, President Trump will improve academic excellence for all students,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement to States Newsroom.

Trump “believes students should be taught reading, writing, and math in the classroom — not gender, sex and race like the Biden Administration is pushing on our public school system,” Leavitt added.

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has largely focused on the education investments brought by the Biden-Harris administration and building on those efforts if she is elected.

“Over the past four years, the Administration has made unprecedented investments in education, including the single-largest investment in K-12 education in history, which Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass,” Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokesperson, told States Newsroom.

Ehrenberg said that while Harris and her running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “will build on those investments and continue fighting until every student has the support and the resources they need to thrive, Republicans led by Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda want to cut billions from local K-12 schools and eliminate the Department of Education, undermining America’s students and schools.”

Harris has repeatedly knocked the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a sweeping conservative agenda that includes education policy proposals like eliminating Head Start, ending time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness and barring teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns different from their “biological sex” without written permission from a parent or guardian.

Trump has fiercely disavowed Project 2025, although some former members of his administration crafted the blueprint.

Closing the U.S. Department of Education

Trump has called for shutting down the U.S. Department of Education and said he wants to “move education back to the states.” The department is not the main funding source for K-12 schools, as state and local governments allocate much of those dollars.

In contrast, Harris said at the Democratic National Convention in August that “we are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”

Living wage for school staff; parental bill of rights

Trump’s education plan calls for creating a “new credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.”

He also wants to implement funding boosts for schools that “abolish teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay,” establish the direct election of school principals by parents and “drastically cut” the number of school administrators.

In contrast, the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform calls for recruiting “more new teachers, paraprofessionals and school related personnel, and education support professionals, with the option for some to even start training in high school.”

The platform also aims to help “school-support staff to advance in their own careers with a living wage” and improve working conditions for teachers.

Trump also wants to give funding boosts to schools that adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice.”

He’s threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach the primarily collegiate academic subject known as “critical race theory,” gender ideology or “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

The Democrats’ platform opposes “the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education,” adding that “public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”

Title IX 

Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration released a final rule for Title IX extending federal protections for LGBTQ+ students.

The updated regulations took effect Aug. 1, but a slew of GOP-led states challenged the measure. The legal battles have created a policy patchwork and weakened the administration’s vision for the final rule.

The updated regulations roll back Title IX changes made under the Trump administration and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Trump vowed to terminate the updated regulations on his first day back in office if reelected.

Student debt and higher education 

Harris has repeatedly touted the administration’s record on student loan forgiveness, including nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost 5 million borrowers.

The administration’s most recent student loan repayment initiative came to a grinding halt in August after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan.

Although little is mentioned about education in Harris’ extensive economic plan, the proposal makes clear that the veep will “continue working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable, so that college can be a ticket to the middle class.”

She also plans to cut four-year degree requirements for half a million federal jobs.

Trump — who dubbed the Biden-Harris administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts as “not even legal” — sought to repeal the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program during his administration.

His education platform also calls for endowing the “American Academy,” a free, online university.

Trump said he will endow the new institution through the “billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.”

Both presidential candidates have said they have general plans to tackle the housing crisis (Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — As the cost and supply of housing remain top issues for voters, both presidential candidates have put forth plans to tackle the crisis, in hopes of courting voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020 exacerbated problems in the housing market, with supply chain disruptions, record-low interest rates and  increased demand contributing to a rise in housing prices, according to a study by the Journal of Housing Economics. 

While housing is typically handled on the local level, the housing supply is tight and rents continue to skyrocket, putting increased pressure on the federal government to help. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump agree that it’s an issue that needs to be solved, but their solutions diverge.

The Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for details on the general housing proposals the nominees have discussed.

Promise: millions of new homes

Harris’ plan calls for the construction of 3 million homes in four years.

The United States has a shortage of about 3.8 million homes for sale and rent, according to 2021 estimates from Freddie Mac that are still relied upon.

Additionally, homelessness has hit a record-high of 653,100 people since January of last year, and a “record-high 22.4 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities,” up from 2 million households since 2019, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

“This is obviously a multi-prong approach, because the factors contributing to high rents and housing affordability are many, and my plan is to attempt to address many of them at once, so we can actually have the net effect of bringing down the cost and making homeownership, renting more affordable,” Harris said during a September interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. 

Promise: single-family zoning

Trump has long opposed building multi-family housing and has instead thrown his support behind single-family zoning, which would exclude other types of housing. Such land-use regulation is conducted by local government bodies, not the federal government, though the federal government could influence it.

“There will be no low-income housing developments built in areas that are right next to your house,” Trump said during an August rally in Montana. “I’m gonna keep criminals out of your neighborhood.”

Promise: getting Congress to agree

Election forecasters have predicted that Democrats will regain control of the U.S. House, but Republicans are poised to win the Senate, meaning any housing proposals will have to be overwhelmingly bipartisan.

“How much money is going to really be available without substantial increases in revenue to be able to do all these things that both Trump and Harris are proposing?” Ted Tozer, a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said in an interview with States Newsroom. “All the money comes from Congress.”

Many of Harris’ policies rely on cooperation from Congress, as historically the federal government has limited tools to address housing shortages.

“On the Democratic side, there’s a hunger for more action, for more direct government intervention in the housing market than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Francis Torres, the associate director of housing and infrastructure at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Nearly all proposals that Harris has put forth would require Congress to pass legislation and appropriate funds. The first is S.2224, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, which would amend U.S. tax code to bar private equity firms from buying homes in bulk by denying “interest and depreciation deductions for taxpayers owning 50 or more single family properties,” according to the bill.

The second bill, S. 3692, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, would bar using algorithms to artificially inflate the cost of rents.

Both bills would need to reach the 60-vote threshold in order to advance in the Senate, whichever party is in control.

Promise: $25,000 down payment assistance

Harris has pledged to support first-time homebuyers, but Congress would need to appropriate funds for the $25,000 down payment assistance program she has proposed that would benefit an estimated 4 million first-time homebuyers over four years.

It’s a proposal that’s been met with skepticism.

“I’m really concerned that down payment assistance will actually put more pressure on home prices, because basically, you’re giving people additional cash to pay more for the house that they’re going to bid on,” Tozer said. “So by definition, they get in a bidding war, they’re going to spend more.”

Harris has also proposed a $40 billion innovation fund for local governments to build and create solutions for housing, which would also need congressional approval.

Promise: opening up federal lands

Both candidates support opening some federal lands for housing, which would mean selling the land for construction purposes with the commitment for a certain percentage of the units to be kept for affordable housing.

The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land, or roughly 30% of all land.

Neither candidate has gone into detail on this proposal.

“I think it’s a sign that at least the Harris campaign and the people in her orbit are thinking about addressing this housing affordability problem really through stronger government action than has happened in several decades,” Torres said.

Promise: expand tax credits

The biggest tool the federal government has used to address housing is through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, known as LIHTC. Harris has promised to expand this tax credit, but has not gone into detail about how much she wants it expanded.

This program awards tax credits to offset construction costs in exchange for a certain number of rent-restricted units for low-income households. But the restriction is temporary, lasting about 30 years. 

There is no similar program for housing meant to be owned.

“It’s an interesting moment, because then on the other side, on the Trump side, even though they diagnosed a lot of the similar problems, there’s not as much of a desire to leverage the strength of the federal government to ensure affordability,” Torres said.

Trump’s record on housing

The Trump campaign does not have a housing proposal, but various interviews, rallies and a review of Trump’s first four years in office provide a roadmap.

During Trump’s first administration, many of his HUD budget proposals were not approved by Congress.

In all four of his presidential budget requests, he laid out proposals that would increase rent by 40% for about 4 million low-income households using rental vouchers or for those who lived in public housing, according to an analysis by the left-leaning think tank the Brookings Institution. 

All four of Trump’s budgets also called for the elimination of housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing. Trump’s budgets also would have slashed the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which is a home energy assistance program for low-income families.

Additionally, Trump’s Opportunity Zones authorized through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are tax incentives to businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, have had mixed results.

Promise: cut regulations and add tariffs

In an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said he wanted to focus on reducing regulations in the permitting process.

“Your permits, your permitting process. Your zoning, if — and I went through years of zoning. Zoning is like… it’s a killer,” he said. “But we’ll be doing that, and we’ll be bringing the price of housing down.”

During campaign rallies, Trump has often said he would impose a 10% tariff across the board on all goods entering the U.S. He’s also proposed 60% tariffs on China.

Trump said at a rally in Georgia that tariff is “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”

Tozer said adding trade policies, such as tariffs on construction materials like lumber, would drive up the cost of homes.

Promise: deport immigrants

Trump has argued that his plan for mass deportations will help free up the supply of housing. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump national press secretary, told the New York Times that deporting immigrants would lower the cost of housing because migration “is driving up housing costs.”

The former president has made a core campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants.

Tozer said housing and immigration are tied, because the ability to build houses comes down to workers, and roughly 30% of construction workers are immigrants. 

“By shutting down the border, you’re possibly shutting down your capacity to build these houses,” he said, adding that all those policies are intertwined.

A driver uses a fast-charging station for electric vehicles at John F. Kennedy airport on April 2, 2021 in New York City (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

Highlighted in Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign as one of the major crises facing the country, climate change has received much less attention in the 2024 race for the presidency.

The candidates, Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, share the twin goals of lowering energy costs and increasing U.S. jobs in the sector, but diverge widely in their plans to get there.

On the campaign trail, each has spent relatively little time detailing their own plans, instead criticizing the other as extreme.

Harris favors an expansion of renewable energy, which supplies power without the carbon emissions that are the primary driver of climate change.

She has touted her tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the broad domestic policy law Democrats pushed through along party lines that includes hundreds of millions in clean-energy tax credits.

Trump supports fossil fuel production, blaming policies to support renewable energy for rising energy prices. He has called for removing prohibitions on new oil and gas exploration to increase the supply of cheap fuel and reduce costs.

Promise: Promote fossil fuels

Both candidates promise to lower the cost of energy.

For Trump, that has involved hammering the Biden-Harris administration for encouraging renewable energy production.

Inflation was caused by “stupid spending for the Green New Deal, which was a green new scam, it turned out,” Trump said at a Sept. 26 press conference. “Do you notice that they never mention anything about environment anymore? What happened to the environment?”

The former president said at a Sept. 25 campaign stop he would “cut your energy (costs) in half,” by reducing regulations and cutting taxes.

He has not produced a detailed plan to achieve that goal.

Implicit in Trump’s argument is that the Biden administration’s focus on renewable energy has hampered oil and gas production, limiting supply and driving up prices.

But Harris has presented her support for renewable energy modes as part of a broader portfolio that includes fossil fuels.

Harris has highlighted the Inflation Reduction Act opened up new leases for oil and gas production while providing incentives for wind and solar power.

“I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels,” she said at a Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Trump.

A report this month from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed that U.S. fossil fuel production reached an all-time high in 2023.

Promise: Promote renewables

Harris has also pointed to provisions of the IRA that provide consumers with tax benefits for green technology, such as home heat pumps, as a way to bring down costs.

“Thanks to tax credits on home energy technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 3.4 million American families saved $8.4 billion in 2023,” her campaign’s 82-page economic plan reads.

Trump also says he supports some climate-conscious technology, including megadonor Elon Musk’s Tesla brand of electric vehicles, but that Democrats have overinvested in non-fossil fuels.

He has called elements of the Inflation Reduction Act “giveaways,” and has singled out spending on electric vehicle charging infrastructure as wasteful.

Promise: Restore jobs

Biden has long talked about a transition away from fossil fuels as a benefit to U.S. workers, positioning them on the cutting edge of a growing industry.

Harris has similarly framed the issue in economic terms, saying the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies have created jobs.

“We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president,” she said at the Sept. 10 debate. “We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world.”

At a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this month, Harris said Trump’s focus on fossil fuels would hamper job growth, saying he would “send thousands of good-paying clean energy jobs overseas.”

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have said Democrats’ focus on renewable energy sources has limited existing energy jobs.

“We’ve got great energy workers in Ohio and all across our country,” Vance said at an August campaign stop in his home state. “They want to earn a reasonable wage and they want to power the American economy. Why don’t we have a president that lets them do exactly that?

“Unleash American energy,” he said. “Drill, baby, drill and let’s turn the page on this craziness.”

Promise: Repeal Democrats’ climate law

Trump has had harsh words for Democrats’ climate law, blaming its spending for rising inflation.

“To further defeat inflation, my plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam. Greatest scam in history, probably,” he told the Economic Club of New York in a Sept. 5 speech.

He said as president he would redirect any unspent funds in the law.

Trump has sought to distance himself from the policy blueprint Project 2025, written by the Heritage Institute.

But there is some overlap between what the conservative think tank has laid out and what Trump said he plans to do in a second term in the White House.

Project 2025 calls for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, describing it as a subsidy to special interests.

Harris often mentions her tie-breaking vote for the law and has described her plans as president to expand on the law’s objectives.

Harris’ policy plan said she “proudly cast” the tie-breaking vote for the climate bill and that, as president, she would “continue to invest in a thriving clean energy economy.”

She added she would seek to improve that spending by cutting regulations “so that clean energy projects are completed quickly and efficiently in a manner that protects our environment and public health.”

Vice President Kamala Harris took part in an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that was released Sunday. In this photo, the “Call Her Daddy” host, creator and executive producer, Alex Cooper, participates in The Art of The Interview session at Spotify Beach on June 20, 2023 in Cannes, France (Photo by Antony Jones/Getty Images for Spotify).

WASHINGTON — In an interview released Sunday on a widely heard podcast geared toward young women, Vice President Kamala Harris stressed the importance of reproductive rights, a central topic in her bid for the White House.

The “Call Her Daddy” host, Alex Cooper, specifically centered the 40-minute interview around issues affecting women such as domestic violence and access to abortion.

Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, joined the Hugh Hewitt radio show Monday, a conservative talk show that has about 7.5 million weekly listeners.

The interview with Trump was mostly about the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. In the attack, 1,200 people — including 46 U.S. citizens — were killed in Israel and hundreds were taken hostage.

On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper noted before the interview that she does not have politicians on her show because it is not focused on politics, but “at the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I’m not a part of it.”

“The conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country,” Cooper said.

She added that her team reached out to Trump and invited him on the show. “If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ any time,” she said.

The podcast is the second-most listened-to on Spotify, with an average of 5 million weekly listeners. The demographics are about 90% women, with a large chunk of them Gen Z and Millennials  — an important voting bloc for Harris to reach with less than a month until the election concludes Nov. 5.

The podcast is part of Harris’ media marathon this week. Late Monday, she will appear on “60 Minutes” for an interview. On Tuesday she is scheduled to be in New York to appear on the daytime show “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Victims of sexual assault

Harris on the podcast touched on several stories she tells on the campaign trail, such as how a high school friend ended up staying with her and her family because the friend was being sexually assaulted at home.

“I decided at a young age I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people,” Harris said.

She added that it’s important to destigmatize survivors of sexual assault.

“The more that we let anything exist in the shadows, the more likely it is that people are suffering and suffering silently,” Harris said. “The more we talk about it, the more we will address it and deal with it, the more we will be equipped to deal with it, be it in terms of schools, in terms of the society at large, right, and to not stigmatize it.”

Cooper asked Harris how the U.S. can be safer for women.

Harris talked about domestic violence and the bind that women can be in if they have children and are financially reliant on an abuser.

“Most women will endure whatever personal, physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food,” she said. “One of the ways that we know we can uplift the ability of women to have choices is uplift the ability of women to have economic health and well-being.”

Cooper asked Harris about the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago and the recent story of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after not being able to receive an abortion following complications from taking an abortion pill.

Harris said states that pass abortion bans will argue there are exceptions “if the life of the mother is at risk,” but that it’s not a realistic policy in practice.

“You know what that means in practical terms, she’s almost dead before you decide to give her care. So we’re going to have public health policy that says a doctor, a medical professional, waits until you’re at death’s door before they give you care,” Harris said. “Where is the humanity?”

Trump criticizes protesters 

Besides the appearance with Hugh Hewitt, Trump is also scheduled late Monday to speak with Jewish leaders in Miami.

During the interview with Hewitt, Trump slammed the pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses and argued that those institutions should do more to quell the student protests.

“You have other Jewish students that are afraid,” Trump said. “Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly.”

Hewitt asked Trump, because of his background as a real estate developer, if he could turn Gaza, which has been devastated by the war, into something like Monaco. The Principality of Monaco is an independent, affluent microstate along the coast of France that attracts wealthy tourists.

“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything,” Trump said, noting the Mediterranean Sea bordering the Gaza Strip. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate.”

The war has drawn massive protests in the United States, and more than 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed, but researchers estimate the death toll is as high as 186,000.

Hewitt asked Trump about Harris’ housing policy that, if approved by Congress, would give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 for a down payment. Both candidates have made housing a top issue.

Trump said he opposed the plan and instead advocated for the private sector to handle housing. He then veered off topic into immigration and without evidence accused migrants at the southern border of being murderers.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Trump has often invoked white supremacist language when talking about immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. He’s also made a core campaign promise of enacting mass deportations of millions of immigrants in the country who are in the country without authorization.

Hurricane interrupts campaign

Some campaign events have been postponed due to Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm barreling toward Florida. It comes after the devastating Hurricane Helene that caused severe damage in western North Carolina and other states in the Southeast.

A Tuesday roundtable with Trump and Latino leaders was postponed, as well as a town hall in Miami, Florida with Univison for undecided Hispanic voters. The Univision town hall with Harris is scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, on Tuesday is scheduled to give remarks in Detroit, Michigan.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is heading to Reno, Nevada, Tuesday for a campaign reception.

Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, joined by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks at the Capitol on Sept. 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans shortly after Election Day will face a major decision for their chamber as well as the national party when they pick a new leader.

Once the dust from the election clears and the balance of power in the Senate is decided, senators will gather behind closed doors to choose who will lead their conference. Come January, that person will step into one of the more important and influential roles in the U.S. government, as well as becoming a prominent figure for messaging and fundraising for the GOP.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Dakota Sen. John Thune have all publicly announced they’re seeking the post. Thune is currently the minority whip, the No. 2 leader in the Senate GOP, and Cornyn held the whip job before him.

The lawmaker who secures the support of his colleagues will replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who since 2007 has led his party through three presidencies, numerous votes on natural disaster aid packages, the COVID-19 pandemic, two impeachments and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

McConnell, who served as majority leader when Republicans controlled the Senate, has been at the center of dozens of pivotal negotiations and ensured his position was a boon for his home state of Kentucky.

The Republican who takes his place will have to navigate choppy political seas in the years ahead as the GOP continues to hold onto the Reagan-era policies many still value, while adjusting to the brand of conservatism that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump champions.

States Newsroom interviewed Republican senators to find out what characteristics they believe the next GOP leader needs to have to earn their vote, and about the challenges that person will face in the years ahead.

While only one senator would volunteer an opinion on a favorite candidate, many said they are interested in a leader who will emphasize moving legislation through the chamber, listen closely to members and forge strong ties with what they hope is a Trump administration.

In search of a workhorse 

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he’s looking for a “competent” Republican leader who will listen to members and work behind the scenes.

“I don’t want to see leaders on television commercials, I don’t want to see them featured in Senate races, I don’t want them as the deciding factor days before an election,” Hawley said. “I want somebody who is going to be a workhorse and who’s going to work with members to achieve our priorities and then get stuff accomplished.”

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said the next GOP leader should hold the line on conservative priorities while also being able to negotiate bipartisan deals during what is expected to be a divided government. Democrats narrowly control the Senate, but Republicans are projected to possibly take the majority in the election.

“I would like somebody who can be strong in the face of opposition, present a strong argument, not afraid to take it to the other side when needed, but then also somebody that could get in the room and negotiate right when it gets tough,” she said.

Capito acknowledged the outcome of the presidential election could have an impact on who becomes the next Republican leader.

“(It) just depends on who wins,” she said.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said his choice will “be the most important vote that I take.”

“You vote for the president, that’s important, but mine is one vote out of 150 million votes, or whatever it is. But this vote will be one out of, hopefully 53, so I think it has a lot of weight,” Marshall said. “And I think it’s really important that we elect a majority leader that shares the same priorities as, hopefully, President Trump.”

Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said the overarching criteria for the next GOP leader is their “ability to get along well with President Trump and the incoming administration.”

“The first 100 days are going to count, and we need to have very close alignment to make certain we’re successful,” Hagerty said.

There is no guarantee that voters will elect Trump as the next president during this year’s presidential election. The next Senate GOP leader could end up working with an administration led by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

That would require whomever Republican senators elect to walk a tightrope on Cabinet secretary confirmation votes, judicial nominees, must-pass legislation and potentially a Supreme Court nominee.

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he’s vetting the candidates based on which one would be the most savvy, strategic, patient and inclusive.

That person, Kennedy said, must also be “willing to test his assumptions against the arguments of his critics and willing to ask God for money if necessary.” McConnell has been known as a prodigious fundraiser for Republicans.

Chairmanship clout

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said she’ll vote for the candidate willing to devote significantly more floor time to debating and voting on bipartisan legislation.

“I think that’s a real problem,” Collins said. “I’d like us to go back to the days where power was vested in the committee chairs. And if they and their ranking members are able to produce a bill, that it gets scheduled for floor consideration.”

Collins, a moderate in a Senate conference packed with more conservative members, said she wants the next Senate Republican leader to recognize “that we’re a big tent party and that we need to be inclusive in our approach.”

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, said he wants a GOP leader to follow “regular order on appropriations.”

“We get them through committee with bipartisan votes, but they’re not getting to the floor,” Hoeven said of the dozen annual government funding bills. “We need to get them to the floor, there needs to be an amendment process, and we need to act on the bills and get back to voting on bills and that’s called regular order. And I think that’s the biggest key for our next leader is to be able to do that.”

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt has begun talking with the candidates and is evaluating their plans for the Senate floor schedule, especially for bringing the annual government funding bills up for debate and amendment.

“I want to know how we’re going to get the appropriations process back working; like, how we’re actually going to move the ball down the field on that,” Britt said. “I want to know how we’re going to actually embolden the committees and the committee process.”

Britt, ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, expressed frustration with how much floor time goes toward confirming judicial nominees, something that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and McConnell have both championed.

Senate floor procedures are much more time-consuming than the rules that govern debate in the House. Legislation can take weeks to move through the filibuster process, which requires 60 votes for bills to advance, and for leaders to negotiate which amendments will receive floor votes.

The Senate, unlike the House, is also responsible for vetting and confirming executive branch nominees, like Cabinet secretaries, as well as judicial nominees. With a new president in place, 2025 will mean many confirmation votes.

“When we have a leader that really knows how to lead, they’ll put appropriations bills on the floor, they’ll figure out how to embolden members,” Britt said, adding that “a weak leader consolidates all the power, and that’s, unfortunately, what I think we have right now when it comes to Chuck Schumer.”

‘Getting stuff done’

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said whomever he votes for needs to “be successful at getting stuff done, finished, completed.”

“We have to be able to get our committees working and get legislation up, negotiated and moved,” Lankford said.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst said whoever takes over as the next GOP leader must be able to communicate well with senators.

That person “needs to be someone that has strategy, and knows how to work the floor, certainly. And then, also fundraising is a portion of that, too.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said his vote will go to the person he believes can best build consensus and listen to members, though he hasn’t yet decided which of the three contenders he’ll support.

“I’m a true undecided,” Boozman said. “I think the reality is most members just want to get the election over. They don’t want to deal with this until then.”

Boozman said the results of the battle for control of the Senate in the November elections could influence which candidate he and his colleagues pick to lead them during the next Congress.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that the next GOP leader should be in tune with Republican voters and the issues important to them.

“It’s someone who I think has an affinity and is in touch with where our voters are,” Rubio said.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley declined to list off any characteristics he believes the next leader needs, saying he doesn’t want any of the three to figure out his choice.

“I wouldn’t want to tell you that, because this is what I told all three people that came to my office — I said, ‘I’m not going to tell either one of you. You’re all friends of mine. You ain’t going to know who I vote for,’” Grassley said. “And if I answered your question, they’re going to start figuring out who I’m going to vote for.”

Grassley said the next leader’s first major challenge will be negotiating a tax bill during 2025 that addresses expiring elements from the 2017 Republican tax law.

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said character matters in determining who he’ll vote for, but said he hadn’t created a score sheet just yet.

“I’ll have an idea of who I’m voting for before the November election,” Moran said. “Those characteristics that I think are important would be important regardless of what the makeup of the House, Senate and the White House is.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson threw his support behind Scott for GOP leader, saying he prefers someone who previously served as a governor and worked in the private sector. He was the only senator interviewed by States Newsroom to reveal his vote, which will be conducted via secret ballot.

He said that Scott “is willing to tackle tough issues.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that Republicans have “a lot of good choices” among the three men and that he wants someone who can carry the GOP message.

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is seen on Jan. 28, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images).

Violent crime and property crime in the United States dropped in 2023, continuing a downward trend following higher rates of crime during the pandemic, according to the FBI’s latest national crime report.

Murders and intentional manslaughter, known as non-negligent manslaughter, fell by 11.6% from 2022. Property crime dropped by 2.4%.

Overall, FBI data shows that violent crime fell by 3%.

Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has been “through the roof” under the Biden administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has cited findings from a different source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime is out of control.

While the FBI’s data reflects only crimes reported to the police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Interviewees are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. But the survey does not include murder data and only tracks crimes against individuals aged 12 and older.

The victimization survey, released in mid-September, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also notes that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.

Many crime data experts consider both sources trustworthy. But the agencies track different trends, measure crimes differently and collect data over varying time frames. Unlike the victimization survey, the FBI’s data is largely based on calls for service or police reports. Still, most crimes go unreported, which means the FBI’s data is neither entirely accurate nor complete.

The victimization surveys released throughout the peak years of the pandemic were particularly difficult to conduct, which is a key reason why, according to some experts, the FBI and the survey may show different trends.

As a result, these differences, which are often unknown or misunderstood, make it easier for anyone — including politicians — to manipulate findings to support their agendas.

Political candidates at the national, state and local levels on both sides of the aisle have used crime statistics in their campaigns this year, with some taking credit for promising trends and others using different numbers to flog their opponents. But it’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about crime trends or attribute them to specific policies.

“There’s never any single reason why crime trends move one way or another,” said Ames Grawert, a crime data expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“When an answer is presented that maybe makes intuitive sense or a certain political persuasion, it’s all too natural to jump to that answer. The problem is that that is just not how crime works,” Grawert told Stateline.

At an August rally in Philadelphia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said: “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”

During Trump’s first three years in office, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people actually decreased each year, according to the FBI, from 376.5 in 2017, to 370.8 in 2018, to 364.4 in 2019.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the rate surged to 386.3, the highest under Trump, which is when the country experienced the largest one-year increase in murders.

Walz’s comments overlook the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And despite the increase that year, the violent crime rate in Trump’s final year remained slightly lower than in the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2016, the rate was 386.8 per 100,000 people.

Following the release of the FBI’s annual crime report last month, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican running for attorney general in North Carolina, shared and later deleted a retweet on X that falsely claimed the FBI’s data showed zero homicides in Los Angeles and New Orleans last year. In fact, FBI data showed that the Los Angeles Police Department reported 325 homicides, while New Orleans police reported 198 in 2023.

Voters worry

Crime has emerged as a top issue on voters’ minds.

A Gallup poll conducted in March found that nearly 80% of Americans worry about crime and violence “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” ranking it above concerns such as the economy and illegal immigration. In another Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described crime in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

Crime data usually lags by at least a year, depending on the agency or organization gathering and analyzing the statistics. But the lack of accurate, real-time crime data from official sources, such as federal or state agencies, may leave some voters vulnerable to political manipulation, according to some crime and voter behavior experts.

There are at least three trackers collecting and analyzing national and local crime data that aim to close the gap in real-time reporting. Developed by the Council on Criminal Justice, data consulting firm AH Datalytics and NORC at the University of Chicago, these trackers all show a similar trend of declining crime rates.

“We live in a world of sound bites, and people aren’t taking the time to digest information and fact check,” Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview with Stateline. “The onus is on the voter.”

Crime trends and limitations

In 2020, when shutdowns in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic kept people at home, homicides surged by nearly 30% — the largest single-year increase since the FBI began tracking crime.

In 2022, violent crime had fallen back to near pre-pandemic levels, and the FBI data showed a continued decline last year. The rate of violent crime dropped from about 377 incidents per 100,000 people in 2022, to around 364 per 100,000 in 2023, slightly below the 2019 rate.

The largest cities, those with populations of at least 1 million, saw the biggest drop in violent crime — nearly 7% — while cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 saw a slight 0.3% increase.

Rape incidents decreased by more than 9% and aggravated assault by nearly 3%. Burglary and larceny-theft decreased by 8% and 4%, respectively.

Motor vehicle theft, however, rose by 12% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of car theft since 2007, with 319 thefts per 100,000 people.

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some crime-data experts caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It can be sort of simplistic to look at national trends. You have to allow the space for nuance and context about what’s happening at the local level too,” said Grawert, of the Brennan Center.

Some crime experts and politicians have criticized the FBI’s latest report, pointing out that not all law enforcement agencies have submitted their crime statistics.

The FBI is transitioning participating agencies to a new reporting system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System or NIBRS. The FBI mandated that the transition, which began in the late 1980s, be completed by 2021. This requirement resulted in a significant drop in agency participation for that year’s report because some law enforcement agencies couldn’t meet the deadline.

In 2022, the FBI relaxed the requirement, allowing agencies to use both the new and older reporting systems. Since the 2021 mandate, more law enforcement agencies have transitioned to the new reporting system.

Reporting crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and some departments may submit only a few months’ worth of data.

Although the FBI’s latest report covers 94% of the U.S. population, only 73% of all law enforcement agencies participated, using either reporting system, according to Stateline’s analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data. This means that 5,926 agencies, or 27%, did not report any data to the FBI.

The majority of the missing agencies are likely smaller rural departments that don’t participate due to limited resources and staff, according to some crime data experts.

But participation in the FBI’s crime reporting program has steadily increased over time, particularly after the drop in 2021. Many of the law enforcement agencies in the country’s largest cities submitted data for 2023, and every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more provided a full year of data, according to the FBI’s report.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

Amendment 6 would open the door to charging criminal defendants fees to fund some law enforcement pensions (Mary Sanchez /The Beacon).

Missouri voters will decide Nov. 5 if retirement funds for sheriffs and prosecutors should be supported with fees collected on court cases.

A fee used to fund sheriffs’ pensions was put in place by state law in 1983.

The Missouri General Assembly placed Amendment 6 on the ballot to reverse a 2021 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that found the fees unconstitutional.

The state’s high court found that court fees for pensions were “not reasonably related to expense of the administration of justice” and thus violated a constitutional ban against using court fees to enhance the compensation of executive department officials, which would include retired county sheriffs.

If approved by a simple majority of voters, the Missouri Constitution will be changed, allowing the legislature to fund benefits for the state’s 114 elected county sheriffs or their surviving spouses through the collection of a $3 fee per case where a guilty verdict or plea is reached. Retirement benefits for prosecutors are also included, through a $4 fee.

The exact ballot language is below:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to provide that the administration of justice shall include the levying of costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for certain current and former law enforcement personnel?

State and local governmental entities estimate an unknown fiscal impact.

Fair Ballot Language:

A “yes” vote will amend the Missouri Constitution to levy costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for current and former sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, and circuit attorneys to ensure all Missourians have access to the courts of justice.

A “no” vote will not amend the Missouri Constitution to levy costs and fees related to current or former sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys and circuit attorneys.

If passed, this measure will have no impact on taxes.

What happens if Amendment 6 fails?

If it fails, the Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System predicts that its fund will be insolvent within nine years, said Melissa Lorts, executive director.

“We feel like the $3 fee is really a user fee of the court system,” Lorts said.

Sheriffs are responsible for bringing defendants to the courthouse from the jail, and they administer warrants and manage other aspects of a criminal case, she said.

“So we have a heavy hand in what happens in the court system,” Lorts said.

More than 200 former sheriffs or their surviving spouses currently receive benefits, Lorts said.

The amendment traces back to two speeding tickets in Kansas City and the state supreme court ruling that followed.

Two men admitted to the traffic violations in 2017, ultimately paying a total of $223.50 in fines and fees to the city’s municipal court.

But the men later argued that they didn’t realize that $3 from each case would go toward the sheriffs’ retirement benefits.

The two men led a class action filed with Jackson County Circuit Court, arguing that the extra charge was “unjust enrichment,” a violation of the state constitution.

The case continued to wind through the courts until the Missouri Supreme Court ruled for the plaintiffs in 2021, Lorts said.

The court’s decision cited a 1986 ruling, noting that it laid down “a bright-line rule” barring court fees that benefit executive officials that are not “reasonably related to the expense of the administration of justice.”

The ruling in the traffic case cost the retirement system about $9 million in court costs and settlements and ended its ability to collect the money, Lorts said.

In December 2023, the fund had $38.4 million in assets, a drop of $800,000 from the end of the previous calendar year, according to the Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System annual report.

Beginning in January 2024, active sheriffs began contributing 5% of their salaries to the retirement fund, a change instituted by the legislature.

The legislature also approved $2.5 million to help stabilize the fund, an amount that has been requested again in the coming fiscal year, Lorts said.

What are the arguments against Amendment 6? 

Critics of the fees that Amendment 6 would allow say each county should pay for pensions and other costs related to law enforcement and the courts.

The Washington, D.C.-based Fines and Fees Justice Center told lawmakers that the salaries and benefits for prosecutors and sheriffs should be adequately funded, but that court fees are an “ineffective and counterproductive” approach.

“When fines and fees go unpaid, judges may issue arrest warrants for failing to pay, leading to law enforcement arresting people for not paying financial obligations — most often because they are too poor to pay,” testified Priya Sarathy Jones, deputy executive director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center.

“The time spent on these debt collection and enforcement efforts diverts law enforcement and courts from their core responsibilities … In fact, the collection of fines and fees by law enforcement has been found to be associated with lower clearance rates for more serious crimes.”

Some studies have shown that the cost to municipalities to collect fines and fees can exceed the revenue generated.

The Missouri NAACP argued that the fees “create a negative incentive to give more tickets and charge unnecessary crimes.”

Leonard Charles Gilroy, a vice president of the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles, wrote that changing the state constitution to allow the fees would violate “basics of public finance and fiscal stewardship.”

Public pensions are constitutionally protected benefits, which are obligated to be paid in full regardless of market conditions or revenue generated.

“Law enforcement and courts are core functions of government that should be funded through legislative appropriations, not fees,” Gilroy’s statement said.

“It would be imprudent to revive a policy to fund pension contributions with dedicated fine/fee revenues because those revenues can fluctuate over time, while pension liabilities are always locked in.”

Meanwhile, Amendment 6 came under fire for ballot summary language that the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District ruled was insufficient and unfair.

The court clarified that passage of the measure by voters in the general election would enshrine a broader meaning of the administration of justice in the state constitution.

That court reworded the ballot language voters will see to read: “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to provide that the administration of justice shall include the levying of costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for certain current and former law enforcement personnel?”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jared Young, left, the Better Party candidate for U.S. Senate, with former Republican U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth on Thursday morning during a statewide election tour (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A U.S. Senate candidate seeking to create a new party to bridge political divisions on Thursday enlisted the state’s senior former officeholder to help put a spotlight on his campaign.

Jared Young, a Joplin businessman who petitioned to form the Better Party, toured the state with former U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth, a Republican who was also Missouri attorney general and ambassador to the United Nations.

Young is running against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, who has the same seat Danforth held from 1977 to 1995, Democratic nominee Lucas Kunce as well as Green Party candidate Nathan Kllne and Libertarian Party nominee W.C. Young.

Young is trying to draw disaffected Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats to his banner of the Better Party.

Polling he did in 2023 convinced him an independent candidate had a fighting chance, Young said.

“Hawley is shockingly unpopular for an incumbent Republican in a red state,” Young said.

Danforth, one of Hawley’s earliest boosters, broke with his Republican protégé after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, calling that early support the “worst mistake of my life” and saying on a podcast that it is “what Dr. Frankenstein must have felt.”

Jack Danforth blames Josh Hawley for Missourians losing out on radiation compensation

During a joint interview with the candidate Thursday, Danforth said Young represents a reasonable, results-oriented approach to politics.

The Republican Party once adhered to the principles of controlling the national debt and backing a strong national defense in protection of powers threatened by force, Danforth said. 

“The political system is broken, and my party, both parties, have gravitated toward the fringes,” Danforth said. “But my party, especially the MAGA version, has thrown overboard every principle that the Republican Party stood for, for decades, generations.”

The national debt is $35 trillion and during the Trump administration, Danforth said, it increased 40%.

“Under a Republican president,” Danforth said. “Nobody cares.”

Hawley, Danforth said, disqualified himself as a serious legislator on Jan. 6, 2021.

“He went on national television and he said, ‘this is going to be decided on January 6.’ He knew that that was not true, knew it, and he said it anyway,” Danforth said. “And then he went out front, convened, and he exhorted a mob, knowing that he couldn’t accomplish anything other than convene the mob and exhort the mob.”

The nation deserved an apology from Hawley after the riots, Young said.

“He just sat back and he waited to see which way the political winds were blowing, and as soon as he decided that actually this is politically advantageous to lean into this, he was all in on it and now he sells mugs with his fist raised to the mob,” Young said.

Hawley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Young and Danforth’s criticisms.

Young is one of the best-funded independent candidate in Missouri in recent political history, using $765,000 of his own money and $164,000 raised from donors to finance his campaign. But he’s not registered in any of the polls conducted in the race.

He’s helping Young but not to the extent he did in 2022 when Danforth created a PAC with $5 million to run ads backing independent candidate John Wood. That effort fizzled when Wood withdrew from the race after now-Sen. Eric Schmitt won the Republican primary.

Young had about $465,000 on hand on July 17, while Hawley had $5.8 million and Kunce had $4.2 million. Since then, Hawley has spent $3.3 million on television advertising and Kunce has spent $5.3 million, according to tracking of FCC reports by The Independent. 

A PAC called Show Me Strong has spent another $1.6 million on television ads backing Hawley, but it is the only significant non-candidate spending in the race.

Danforth has opened a network for fundraising, Young said, and he’s working to bring “similarly big names that are disenchanted Republicans that don’t like Josh Hawley to come and join us in the state.”

He knows that it is a longshot race.

“The challenge is just making sure every voter knows who Jared Young is and what I stand for, and I’m comfortable with losing the election if everyone knows about me and they just decide, no, this is not what we want,” he said.

Young, 38, was educated at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2010, and Harvard Law, graduating in 2014. He worked for a year at a Washington, D.C. law firm.

He realized he didn’t want to practice law, Young said, and accepted a job in Joplin at Employer Advantage, a benefits administrator for businesses, where he became CEO. He led the company through an acquisition in 2022 and has been working on the campaign since mid-2023. 

The main message he’s hearing, Young said, is that people want a government that isn’t caught up in endless gridlock.

“We’re so exhausted, so frustrated, so disgusted with the direction and the tone of our national politics,” Young said. “But every election, it seems to be getting worse instead of better, and nobody’s stepping up to say, look, we need something completely different.”

Kunce is using the same playbook as Hawley in his campaign, Young said.

“Now you play anger, you insult, you focus on making them hate Hawley,” Young said. “And so what was his very first thing when he started his campaign? Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward. Josh Hawley is a fraud and a coward. Josh Hawley’s a fraud and a coward. Now it’s more of Josh Hawley is a creepy weirdo.

“It’s not substance, and people are just so exhausted by it,” Young said.

Kunce’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Young said he would back Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford’s bipartisan bill to bolster border security, worked out in prolonged negotiations but scuttled by the opposition of former President Donald Trump. 

He said he opposes any attempt to make abortion policy at the national level. He also opposes Amendment 3, the Missouri ballot measure that would guarantee the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

“I’m a moderate pro-lifer,” Young said. “I believe that every abortion is a tragedy, but that we do ourselves a disservice as the pro-life cause when we take an uncompromising all or nothing approach.”

The annual deficit in government spending can only be closed with a combination of tax increases and cuts, Young said. 

“You can’t do a level of cuts that would make a difference, that would be palatable to the people,” Young said.

During the only debate of the campaign, held at the Missouri Press Association convention last month, Hawley called for the U.S. to cut off aid to Ukraine, which has been on the defensive in a war with Russia since February 2022. Young was on stage that day, as were Kunce and Kline. 

He disagreed with Hawley that day and said Thursday it is essential the aid continue.

“It is in our strategic interest, and it’s our moral duty to be supporting Ukraine,” Young said.

Danforth’s sense that Hawley failed in his duty and his role in promoting Hawley to power makes his opposition to the incumbent a personal matter. 

Hawley is a graduate of Yale Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, Danforth noted. He taught constitutional law at the University of Missouri before winning office.

Hawley is smarter than the politician he plays on TV, Danforth said.

“Members of the Senate are more performers than institutionalists, and they’re performers to get themselves on TV, on MSNBC or Fox News,” Danforth said. “And the way to do that is to be the most outrageous person you can be.”

If he doesn’t win, Young could establish the Better Party for future elections by winning more than 2% of the vote. For the next two election cycles, candidates could run for any partisan office on the party’s ticket, a right that would be extended if it continues meeting the 2% threshold.

“One of the biggest hurdles for independents is they have to expend so many resources just to get on the ballot,” he said, “and they already are resource-poor candidates. It puts them way behind the ball right from the start.”

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters after joining challenger Lucas Kunce in the middle of the floor of the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s failure as a legislator is most glaringly obvious in the demise of a bill providing coverage to Missourians exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons development, former U.S Sen. Jack Danforth said Thursday.

Danforth gave his grade on Hawley’s legislative career during a Thursday tour of the state with Joplin businessman Jared Young, who created a new political party for his bid for the seat Danforth held from 1977 to 1994. Young is trying to draw disaffected Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats to his banner of the Better Party.

Danforth is a Republican who was once considered Hawley’s political mentor, having encouraged him to run for the Senate after less than a year as Missouri’s attorney general.

He later denounced Hawley for his role in objecting to the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, saying he regretted his support of Hawley and that he understands “what Dr. Frankenstein must have felt.” 

On Thursday, Danforth said Hawley’s political style as an antagonistic, camera-seeking populist is the reason the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act renewal bill failed to get to a vote before Congress recessed for the election.

That cost not only Missourians but residents of New Mexico and every other state already covered by the law, Danforth said. Advocates from Missouri and New Mexico, along with other areas where federal weapons work contaminated the land, worked for more than a year to expand the program as it neared a renewal vote.

“He became so obnoxious in his public attacks of the Republican Speaker of the House, the Republican Leader of the Senate, the Republican congressperson from that district, he came away with nothing and ended up killing the whole bill for the rest of the country,” Danforth said.

The law expired Sept. 30. Originally passed in 1990, while Danforth was in office, it provided one-time cash payments to uranium miners who worked in 11 states between 1947 and 1971 and people in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah exposed to fallout from nuclear bomb tests.

To obtain compensation, claimants must prove a diagnosis of particular cancers or other illnesses.

The exposure of Missourians to radioactive waste came from uranium processing in St. Louis for the World War II Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. 

While the presence of radioactive contamination in suburban St. Louis was known for years, an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed in 2023 that the federal government and companies handling the waste were aware of the threat to the public long before informing residents.

Two weeks after The Independent published its findings, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment from Hawley renewing the law and adding Missouri and New Mexico to the list of states where residents are eligible for compensation due to bomb waste and exposure.

The Missouri House established a new committee Thursday that will study the impact of nuclear weapons programs in the state. Its job is to hold hearings and report on any state legislation needed to assist victims.

Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, which has advocated for expanding the law known as RECA, defended Hawley’s work and called Danforth’s comments “petty.”

“What I’d like is for people like Jack Danforth to shut up so that they don’t create another barrier that I have to jump over,” Chapman said.

Chapman said Hawley brought the coalition trying to expand RECA closer than it has gotten before and comments like Danforth’s undermine advocates pushing for the program’s expansion.

As the Congressional session closed in late September, Chapman was in Washington lobbying for the bill and appeared at a news conference with Hawley. At that time, she blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson for refusing to allow a vote on the bill.

She said Johnson was the “only reason these people are suffering right now in this room.”  

Chapman also questioned why Danforth didn’t expand the program to Missouri while in office or lend a hand to advocates since then.

“You’re making poisoned people work twice as hard, Mr. Danforth,” Chapman said, “because you want to take a cheap swing at somebody and play Monday morning quarterback without lifting a finger in the decade-plus I’ve been doing this.”

The Hawley campaign blamed Danforth for not obtaining relief for Missourians when he was a senator.

“Jack Danforth betrayed hardworking Missourians who were poisoned by nuclear radiation when he left them out of the original RECA law,” said Abigail Jackson, spokesperson for Hawley’s campaign. “Josh worked across the aisle to pass his RECA expansion twice in the Senate with huge bipartisan support. Josh’s proposal is currently being negotiated with House leaders. And Missouri hasn’t forgotten how Danforth failed.” 

Danforth said Hawley’s political persona isn’t likely to help get any legislation passed.

“Politics now in the U.S. Senate is largely performative,” Danforth said. “It’s not serious. Hawley is not a serious legislator. He goes to committee hearings and belittles and badgers witnesses. That gets him on the air, and then he gets on Fox News, but he does not legislate.”

People may disagree with Hawley on other matters, Chapman said, but “he’s right” on the RECA bill.

“We have a right to be emotional that our kids are sick,” she said. “And I expect my Senator and electeds to echo that emotion and passion.”

This article has been updated to clarify comments from Dawn Chapman.

Vice President and Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris speaks at an event hosted by The Economic Club of Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University on Sept. 25 in Pittsburgh (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images).

Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney will campaign with Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday in Ripon, Wisconsin — the birthplace of the Republican Party.

As Nov. 5 rapidly approaches, the Democratic presidential nominee continues to rack up support from prominent Republicans as she and former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, battle it out for the Oval Office in a tight contest.

Thursday’s campaign event also coincides with two dozen Wisconsin Republicans endorsing the veep in an open letter.

“We, the undersigned, are Republicans from across Wisconsin who bring the same message: Donald Trump does not align with Wisconsin values,” they wrote. The group included a sitting GOP district attorney for the Badger State’s Buffalo County as well as everyday Wisconsinites, former state lawmakers and elected officials.

“To ensure our democracy and our economy remain strong for another four years, we must elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the White House,” the letter said, adding that the choice for Republicans in November is “a choice between the Wisconsin values of freedom, democracy, and decency that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz represent, and Donald Trump’s complete lack of character, divisive rhetoric, and extremism.”

Wisconsin is a critical swing state that’s flipped between red and blue in recent elections — with Biden narrowly winning in 2020 after Trump secured a GOP victory in 2016.

Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, endorsed Harris last month, saying: “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

Cheney — a vocal Trump critic  — served as vice chair of the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee tasked with investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

She lost her reelection bid for Wyoming’s lone House seat to Harriet Hageman in 2022 during the state’s GOP primary.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, father of Liz Cheney, also said he would vote for Harris. The prominent GOP figure served as veep during the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2009.

More GOP endorsements

Harris has received endorsements from over 230 Bush-McCain-Romney alums and more than 100 Republican national security officials, per the Harris campaign, a backing they describe as a “historic GOP mobilization for Harris.”

Part of the growing group of Republicans backing Harris includes Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump.

During an interview on MSNBC Wednesday night, Hutchinson said she’s “really proud, as a conservative, to have the opportunity to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in this election.”

Hutchinson also disclosed that she’ll be voting for Democrats in the House and Senate, saying she thinks it’s “so important that we get past this period of Donald Trump for America to begin healing.”

Trump in Michigan

Meanwhile, Trump is also heavily campaigning in swing states. He was set to hold a Thursday afternoon rally in Saginaw, Michigan.

The Democratic National Committee released multiple billboards in Michigan ahead of his rally, with a focus on Trump and his running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, continuing to deny the 2020 election results.

During Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Vance and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Vance circumvented a question on whether Trump lost the 2020 election, saying he, himself, is “focused on the future.”

Walz, who posed the question to Vance, called his response a “damning non-answer.”

A version of the DNC billboard is also set to debut in the coming days in Wisconsin and North Carolina to coincide with Trump’s upcoming rallies in those swing states.

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a lengthy and partly redacted motion Wednesday that charts special counsel Jack Smith’s final argument before November that former President Donald Trump acted in a private capacity when he co-conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Much of the motion concerns Trump’s interactions with individuals in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he sought to disrupt election results, Smith alleged.

The document, due on Chutkan’s desk late last month, is central to reanimating the case after months of delay as Trump argued for complete criminal immunity from the government’s fraud and obstruction charges related to his actions after the 2020 presidential contest, which Joe Biden won.

The U.S. Supreme Court returned Trump’s case to Chutkan after ruling that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for core constitutional acts, presumed immunity for acts on the perimeter of official duties, and no immunity for personal ones. At that point it became clear that the case against the Republican presidential nominee would not be tried prior to Election Day.

Smith’s superseding indictment shortly thereafter retained all four felony counts against Trump, and Chutkan is tasked with parsing which allegations can stand in light of the Supreme Court decision.

In his unsealed 165-page motion, Smith outlines Trump’s alleged plots with private lawyers and political allies — names redacted — to ultimately deliver false slates of electors to Congress so that he appeared the winner over Biden in the seven states.

“Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role,” Smith wrote.

Trump slammed the court filing on social media in numerous posts, writing in a mix of upper and lowercase letters that “Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.”

“The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate. The DOJ has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign. This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election,” he continued in just one of his many reactions on his platform, Truth Social.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, faced Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, in a vice presidential debate on Tuesday night.

Here are key arguments from Smith’s filing, which alleges efforts by Trump and allies to subvert voters’ will during the last presidential election:

Arizona

Smith detailed calls to and communications with various Arizona officials, including the governor and speaker of the Arizona state House, arguing the interactions were made in Trump’s “capacity as a candidate.”

• “The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth — and thus their knowledge of falsity — when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the Government will introduce several instances of this pattern, in which the defendant and conspirators’ lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators’ claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona; five days later, it was ‘beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote’: three weeks later, ‘the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000’; days after that, the assertion was 32,000; and ultimately the conspirators landed back where they started at 36,000 — a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.”

Georgia

Smith plans to introduce into evidence Trump’s communications, in his personal capacity, with Georgia’s attorney general, including a call on Dec. 8, 2020, and to the secretary of state.

• Trump “had early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false. Around mid-November, Campaign advisor [redacted] told the defendant that his claim that a large number of dead people had voted in Georgia was false. The defendant continued to press the claim anyway, including in a press appearance on November 29, when he suggested that a large enough number of dead voters had cast ballots to change the outcome of the election in Georgia.”

• “In the post-election period, [redacted] also took on the role of updating the defendant on a near-daily basis on the Campaign’s unsuccessful efforts to support any fraud claims…. He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit.’ [Redacted] was privy in real time to the findings of the two expert consulting firms the Campaign retained to investigate fraud claims — [redacted] and [redacted] — and discussed with the defendant their debunkings on all major claims. For example, [redacted] told the defendant that Georgia’s audit disproved claims that [redacted] had altered votes.”

Michigan

The document details an Oval Office meeting Trump held with Michigan’s Senate majority leader and speaker of the House on Nov. 20, 2020, during which Trump tried to acquire evidence of voter fraud in Detroit.

• “Despite failing to establish any valid fraud claims, [redacted] followed up with [redacted] and [redacted] and attempted to pressure them to use the Michigan legislature to overturn the valid election result.”

Michigan and Pennsylvania

The filing said that directly following the 2020 election, Trump and his “private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes.”

• “For example, on November 4, [redacted]—a Campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant—tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant.”

• “When a colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, [redacted] responded ‘Make them riot’ and ‘Do it!!!’ The defendant’s Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant’s claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.”

Michigan voting machines

Smith will argue that Trump, outside his official presidential duties, tried to persuade political allies in Michigan to sway the election in his favor.

• Among the evidence he will introduce: The former president held a meeting, “private in nature,” with Michigan legislators at the White House.

• Smith also wrote that “In mid-December, the defendant spoke with RNC Chairwoman [redacted] and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been related on December 13 that purported to identify flaws in the use of [redacted] machines in Antrim County, Michigan. [Redacted] refused, telling the defendant that she already had discussed this report with [redacted] Michigan’s Speaker of the House, who had told her that the report was inaccurate. [Redacted] conveyed to the defendant [redacted] exact assessment: the report was ‘f—— nuts.’”

Nevada

In Nevada, Trump allegedly ignored warnings about spreading lies about the state’s election results. Smith wrote: “Notwithstanding the RNC Chief Counsel’s warning, the defendant re-tweeted and amplified news of the lawsuit on November 24, calling it ‘Big News!’ that a Nevada Court had agreed to hear it. But the defendant did not similarly promote the fact that within two weeks, on December 4, the Nevada District Court dismissed Law v. Whitmer, finding in a detailed opinion that ‘there is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud,’ including through the signature-match machines, and that Biden won the election in the state.”

• Trump continued to repeat false claims in tweets and speeches “as a candidate, not as an office holder,” Smith wrote.

Pennsylvania 

In the Keystone State, officials warned Trump there was no smoke and no fire related to election fraud in the commonwealth, Smith wrote.

• “Two days after the election, on November 6, the defendant called [redacted], the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party—the entity responsible for supporting Republican candidates in the commonwealth at the federal, state and local level. [Redacted] had a prior relationship with the defendant, including having represented him in litigation in Pennsylvania after the 2016 presidential election. The defendant asked [redacted] how, without fraud, he had gone from winning Pennsylvania on election day to trailing in the day afterward. Consistent with what Campaign staff already had told the defendant, [redacted] confirmed that it was not fraud; it was that there were roughly 1,750,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in Pennsylvania, which were expected to be eighty percent for Biden. Over the following two months, the defendant spread false claims of fraud in Pennsylvania anyway.”

• “In early November, in a Campaign meeting, when the defendant suggested that more people in Pennsylvania voted than had checked in to vote, Deputy Campaign Manager [redacted] corrected him.”

Wisconsin

Smith wrote Trump ignored reality in Wisconsin as well.

• “On November 29, a recount that the defendant’s campaign had petitioned and paid for confirmed that Biden had won in Wisconsin — and increased the defendant’s margin of defeat. On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Campaign’s election lawsuit there. As a result, on December 21, Wisconsin’s Governor signed a certificate of final determination confirming the prior certificate of ascertainment that established Biden’s electors as the valid electors for the state.”

Trump responded by rebuking the Wisconsin Supreme Court judge who had signed the majority opinion that rejected the lawsuit, forcing the state marshals responsible for the judge’s security to enhance protection due to a rise in “threatening communications.”

Fake electors 

Smith alleged that as Trump and co-conspirators faltered at overturning states’ official election results, they turned their attention to fake slates of electors.

As early as December 2020, Trump and his allies “developed a new plan regarding targeted states that the defendant had lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin): to organize the people who would have served as the defendant’s electors had he won the popular vote, and cause them to sign and send to Pence, as President of the Senate, certificates in which they falsely represent themselves as legitimate electors who had cast electoral votes for the defendant,” Smith wrote.

Trump and his allies lied to Vice President Mike Pence heading toward Jan. 6, “telling him that there was substantial election fraud and concealing their orchestration of the plan to manufacture fraudulent elector slates, as well as their intention to use the fake slates to attempt to obstruct the congressional certification.”

Trump’s alleged lies to Pence and the public “created a tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”

The filing details numerous people, including Trump, pressuring Pence for weeks to use his role overseeing Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote to overturn the election results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Pence, once again, told Trump he would not go along with the plan.

“So on January 6, the defendant sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral vote and to obstruct the certification.”

“Although the attack on the Capitol successfully delayed the certification for approximately six hours, the House and Senate resumed the Joint Session at 11:35 p.m. But the conspirators were not done.”

The filing alleges a co-conspirator once again urged Pence to “violate the law” by delaying the certification for 10 days. He refused.

Pressure on Pence

Smith must prove that Trump’s pressure on Pence was outside of their official duties together, and therefore can not be considered immune from prosecution.

Smith plans to introduce evidence of private phone calls and conversations between Trump and his VP, including some with campaign staff, essentially tying their interactions to their interests as those seeking office again, “as running mates in the post-election period.” Smith also plans to highlight that Pence’s role in certifying the election was largely ceremonial and within the realm of the Senate, and strictly outside the bounds of the Oval Office.  Among Smith’s points made in his motion:

• “Because the Vice President’s role is and has always been ministerial, rather than substantive or discretionary, it is difficult to imagine an occasion in which a President would have any valid reason to try to influence it. As such, criminalizing a President’s efforts to affect the Vice President’s role as the President of the Senate overseeing the certification of Electoral College results would not jeopardize an Executive Branch function or authority.”

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on September 25, 2024 in Mint Hill, North Carolina (Brandon Bell/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that U.S. troops who suffered traumatic brain injuries after Iranian rocket fire in Iraq in 2020 only experienced a “headache,” dismissing the experiences of dozens of American soldiers who were later awarded the Purple Heart.

Trump’s comments came after a reporter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, asked whether he should “have been tougher on Iran” after that nation launched ballistic missiles on Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq in January 2020, during Trump’s presidency. A couple thousand U.S. troops remain on an anti-ISIS mission at the Iraqi air base, one of the largest during the U.S. invasion.

“First of all, injured, what does injured mean? Injured means, you mean, because they had a headache because the bombs never hit the fort?” Trump responded.

“If you were a truthful reporter, which you’re not, you would tell the following: None of those very accurate missiles hit our fort. They all hit outside, and there was nobody hurt, other than the sound was loud, and some people said that hurt, and I accept that,” Trump continued.

Trump added that Iran did “a very nice thing” by missing the military base. Photographs taken after the attack show extensive damage on the base.

U.S. troops at the base, that housed roughly 2,000 soldiers at the time, were given notice to shelter in bunkers. The missiles carried warheads weighing well over 1,000 pounds, leaving impact craters that spanned several feet wide, according to CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post.

While no troops were killed in the attack, hundreds were exposed to blast waves, and many were evacuated to Germany for medical care. Weeks later, more than 100 troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. Dozens were eventually awarded the Purple Heart, including one retired major interviewed by States Newsroom in May.

Soldiers described lasting effects from those injuries as including chronic migraines, vertigo, short-term memory issues and vision impairment.

Trump’s comments Tuesday came as he took questions from the press after delivering wide-ranging remarks at a campaign event at the Discovery World Science Museum on the city’s lakefront.

The reporter did not identify herself before asking her question. Trump’s remarks were recorded in full by the local Fox affiliate and live streamed by the Trump-focused YouTube channel “Right Side Broadcasting Network.”

Details of attack

This is not the first time Trump has downplayed the soldiers’ experiences and injuries stemming from that specific attack.

Iran fired 16 ballistic missiles at the air base and another Iraqi military site between Jan. 7 and 8, 2020. Roughly a dozen landed, according to reports. The attack was in retaliation for a U.S. strike days earlier in Baghdad that killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.

The 2020 attack on the base has been well documented. Images taken by photographers with National Public Radio and The Washington Post showed damaged buildings on the base. The New York Times and The Associated Press compiled video footage and compared satellite images before and after the attack.

CBS News’ “60 Minutes” aired drone footage of the attack and first-hand accounts from troops who described the experience in a nearly 14-minute news package for the television magazine program.

The National Institutes of Health collected medical data from nearly 40 soldiers for months after the attack and found persistent symptoms following concussions.

Military installations that still house U.S. troops in Iraq have been the target of Iranian attacks following the outbreak of violence on Oct. 7 when the Hamas militant group, one of Iran’s allies, launched a deadly surprise incursion into southern Israel, sparking a year-long war that has also drawn in Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, according to the Pentagon.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The Missouri Supreme Court declined to force an investigation into donations to Attorney General Andrew Bailey connected to a witness in a case his office was handling.

In a filing Tuesday evening, the judges denied a request from Lucas Cierpiot — son of state Sen. Mike Cierpiot — to require the disciplinary arm of the court to investigate donations from Micheal Ketchmark and his law firm to a political action committee supporting Bailey. 

Ketchmark, a prominent attorney and large political donor, was called as a witness in a disability discrimination case filed by Lucas Cierpiot’s brother, Patrick, against the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Bailey’s office was defending the state.

After Ketchmark’s law firm donated to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC, Lucas Cierpiot filed a complaint with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, accusing Bailey of using his position as attorney general for personal political gain.

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

GOP legislator’s son asks Supreme Court to order inquiry into donations to Missouri AG

Cierpiot’s complaint was dismissed in March. He asked for further review, but it was dismissed again in May. He then sought an order from the state Supreme Court to force an investigation.

In an email, Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said the court “rightfully denied the frivolous petition” and that Bailey had not violated the rules of professional conduct for attorneys.

Cierpiot said in a text message that he was “very disappointed” by the court’s decision. 

“Missouri really is the ‘Show Me State,’ Cierpiot said. “Isn’t it? ‘Show Me’ just how unethical the Missouri courts can be.”

Cierpiot’s was one of several accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who took office last year after being appointed by Gov. Mike Parson. Bailey is now running for a full term. 

This summer, he narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a defendant in his own case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his license because of the meetings, according to a filing from the county’s attorneys.

Last year, Bailey withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by Warrenton Oil and Torch Electronics regarding video game machines that offer cash prizes. The attorney general’s office bowed out of the case following donations from PACs connected to the companies’ lobbyist. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

Bailey was also the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office after he falsely blamed the Hazelwood School District’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student.

Patrick Cierpiot named Ketchmark as a witness in the underlying lawsuit in May 2022, saying he had urged a Parson staffer not to fire Cierpiot, who was recovering from a bicycle wreck and struggling to keep up with his workload.

The following January, Ketchmark donated $2,825, the maximum that an individual can give, to Bailey’s campaign. Bailey received a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C. by the end of the month.

Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. The firm then gave an in-kind donation of $9,216.53.

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Department of Economic Development and allowed the agency to hire a private law firm to handle the case. At the time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex litigation.” She said Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest in the case.

In rejecting Lucas Cierpiot’s ethics complaint, the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said he failed to allege any violation of the rules of professional conduct. The complaint only outlined the donations from Ketchmark’s law firm to the pro-Bailey PAC, not the donation from Ketchmark to Bailey’s campaign committee. The ethics office drew a distinction between those.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the office said in a court filing responding to Cierpiot’s petition to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel said that before declining to investigate, officials verified that Ketchmark hadn’t contributed to Bailey’s campaign committee, apparently missing the January 2023 donations.

The Supreme Court’s order did not say why it was denying Cierpiot’s request. 

This story was updated at 12:25 p.m. to include comments from Bailey’s office and Cierpiot received after its initial publication.

As response rates drop, pollsters are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to determine what voters are thinking ahead of Election Day, not only asking the questions but sometimes to help answer them. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Days after President Joe Biden announced he would not be seeking re-election, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, polling organization Siena College Research Institute sought to learn how “persuadable” voters were feeling about Harris.

In their survey, a 37-year-old Republican explained that they generally favored Trump for his ability to “get [things] done one way or another.”

“Who do you think cares about people like you? How do they compare in terms of caring about people like you?” the pollster asked.

“That’s where I think Harris wins, I lost a lot of faith in Trump when he didn’t even contact the family of the supporter who died at his rally,” the 37-year-old said.

Pollsters pressed this participant and others across the political spectrum to further explain their stances, and examine the nuance behind choosing a candidate. The researchers saw in real time how voters may sway depending on the issue, and asked follow-up questions about their belief systems.

But the “persuadable” voters weren’t talking to a human pollster. They were conversing with an AI chatbot called Engage.

The speed in which election cycles move, coupled with a steep drop of people participating in regular phone or door-to-door polls, have caused pollsters to turn to artificial intelligence for insights, both asking the questions and sometimes even answering them

Why do we poll? 

The history of polling voters in presidential races goes back 200 years, to the 1824 race which ultimately landed John Quincy Adams in the White House. White men began polling each other at events leading up to the election, and newspapers began reporting the results, though they didn’t frame the results as predictive of the outcome of the election.

In modern times, polling for public opinion has become a business. Research centers, academic institutions and news conglomerates themselves have been conducting polls during election season for decades. Though their accuracy has limitations, the practice is one of the only ways to gauge how Americans may be thinking before they vote.

Polling plays a different role for different groups, said Rachel Cobb, an assistant professor of political science and legal studies at Suffolk University. For campaign workers, polling groups of voters helps provide insight into the issues people care about the most right now, and informs how candidates talk about those issues. It’s why questions at a presidential debate usually aren’t a surprise to candidates — moderators tend to ask questions about the highest-polling topics that week.

For news outlets, polls help give context to current events and give anchors numbers to illustrate a story. Constant polling also helps keep a 24-hour news cycle going.

And for regular Americans, poll results help them gauge where the race is, and either activate or calm their nerves, depending on if their candidate is polling favorably.

But Cobb said she, like many of her political science colleagues, has observed a drop in responses to more traditional style of polling. It’s much harder and more expensive for pollsters to do their job, because people aren’t answering their phones or their front doors.

“The time invested in getting the appropriate kind of balance of people that you need in order to determine accuracy has gotten greater and so and they’ve had to come up with more creative ways to get them,” Cobb said. “At the same time, our technological capacity has increased.”

How AI is assisting in polling?

The speed of information has increased exponentially with social media and 24-hour news cycles, and polls have had to keep up, too. Though they bring value in showing insights for a certain group of people, their validity is fleeting because of that speed, Cobb said. Results are truly only representative of that moment in time, because one breaking news story could quickly change public opinion.

That means pollsters have to work quickly, or train artificial intelligence to keep up.

Leib Litman, co-CEO and chief research officer of CloudResearch, which created the chatbot tool Engage, said AI has allowed them to collect answers so much faster than before.

“We’re able to interview thousands of people within a matter of a couple hours, and then all of that data that we get, all those conversations, we’re also able to analyze it, and derive the insights very, very quickly,” he said.

Engage was developed about a year ago and can be used in any industry where you need to conduct market research via interviews. But it’s become especially useful in this election cycle as campaigns attempt to learn how Americans are feeling at any given moment. The goal isn’t to replace human responses with AI, rather to use AI to reach more people, Litman said.

But some polling companies are skipping interviewing and instead relying on something called “sentiment analysis AI” to analyze publically available data and opinions. Think tank Heartland Forward recently worked with AI-powered polling group Aaru to determine the public perception of artificial intelligence.

The prediction AI company uses geographical and demographic data of an area and scrapes publicly available information, like tweets or voting records, to simulate respondents of a poll. The algorithm uses all this information to make assertions about how a certain demographic group may vote or how they may answer questions about political issues.

This type of poll was a first for Heartland Forward, and its executive vice president Angie Cooper said they paired the AI-conducted poll with in-person gatherings where they conducted more traditional polls.

“When we commissioned the poll, we didn’t know what the results were going to yield,” she said. “What we heard in person closely mirrored the poll results.”

Sentiment analysis

The Aaru poll is an example of sentiment analysis AI, which uses machine learning and large language models to analyze the meaning and tone behind text. It includes training an algorithm to not just understand literally what’s in a body of text, but also to seek out hidden messaging or context, like humans do in conversation.

The general public started interacting with this type of AI in about 2010, said Zohaib Ahmed, founder of Resemble AI, which specializes in voice generation AI. Sentiment analysis AI is the foundation behind search engines that can read a request and make recommendations, or to get your Alexa device to fulfill a command.

Between 2010 and 2020, though, the amount of information collected on the internet has increased exponentially. There’s so much more data for AI models to process and learn from, and technologists have taught it to process contextual, “between-the-lines” information.

The concept behind sentiment analysis is already well understood by pollsters, says Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. In June, Schneier and other researchers published a look into how AI was playing a role in political polling. 

Most people think polling is just asking people questions and recording their answers, Schneier said, but there’s a lot of “math” between the questions people answer and the poll results.

“All of the work in polling is turning the answers that humans give into usable data,” Schneier said.

You have to account for a few things: people lie to pollsters, certain groups may have been left out of a poll, and response rates are overall low. You’re also applying polling statistics to the answers to come up with consumable data. All of this is work that humans have had to do themselves before technology and computing helped speed up the process.

In the Harvard research, Schneier and the other authors say they believe AI will get better at anticipating human responses, and knowing when it needs human intervention for more accurate context. Currently, they said, humans are our primary respondents to polls, and computers fill in the gaps. In the future, though, we’ll likely see AI filling out surveys and humans filling in the gaps.

“I think AI should be another tool in the pollsters mathematical toolbox, which has been getting more complex for the past several decades,” Schneier said.

Pros and cons of AI-assisted polling 

AI polling methods bring pollsters more access and opportunity to gauge public reaction. Those who have begun using it in their methodology said that they’ve struggled to get responses from humans organically, or they don’t have the time and resources to conduct in-person or telephone polling.

Being interviewed by an anonymous chatbot may also provide more transparent answers for controversial political topics. Litman said personal, private issues such as health care or abortion access are where their chatbot “really shines.” Women, in particular, have reported that they feel more comfortable sharing their true feelings about these topics when talking to a chatbot, he said.

But, like all methodology around polling, it’s possible to build flaws into AI-assisted polling.

The Harvard researchers ran their own experiment asking ChatGPT 3.5 questions about the political climate, and found shortcomings when it asked about U.S. intervention in the Ukraine war. Because the AI model only had access to data up through 2021, the answers missed all of the current context about Russia’s invasion beginning in 2022.

Sentiment analysis AI may also struggle with text that’s ambiguous, and it can’t be counted on for reviewing developing information, Ahmed said. For example, the X timeline following one of the two assassination attempts of Trump probably included favorable or supportive messages from politicians across the aisle. An AI algorithm might read the situation and conclude that all of those people are very pro-Trump.

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re navigating towards Donald Trump,” Ahmed said. “It just means, you know, there’s sympathy towards an event that’s happened, right? But that event is completely missed by the AI. It has no context of that event occurring, per se.”

Just like phone-call polling, AI-assisted polling can also potentially leave whole groups of people out of surveys, Cobb said. Those who aren’t comfortable using a chatbot, or aren’t very active online will be excluded from public opinion polls if pollsters move most of their methods online.

“It’s very nuanced,” Ahmed said of AI polling. “I think it can give you a pretty decent, high-level look at what’s happening, and I guarantee that it’s being used by election teams to understand their position in the race, but we have to remember we exist in bubbles, and it can be misleading.”

Both the political and technology experts agreed that as with most other facets of our lives, AI has found its way into polling and we likely won’t look back. Technologists should aim to further train AI models to understand human sentiment, they say, and pollsters should continue to pair it with human responses for a fuller scope of public opinion.

“Science of polling is huge and complicated,” Schneier said. “And adding AI to the mix is another tiny step down a pathway we’ve been walking for a long time using, you know, fancy math combined with human data.”

Attendees cheer during a Missourians for Constitutional Freedom rally on May 3, after the campaign turned in 380,000 signatures for its initiative petition (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

One of my 6-year-olds was on the swings when a man approached and handed me a flier from Missouri Right to Life PAC titled “10 Reasons to Oppose the Pro-Abortion Initiative Petition.”

The man told me that if Amendment 3, the ballot initiative that would end Missouri’s current abortion ban, passes in November, women will be having abortions at nine months, there will be no safety regulations, and women harmed won’t be able to sue for malpractice.

“Sir, this isn’t true,” I told him.

I was breaking the rule of “don’t engage when approached by an abortion opponent” that had been drilled into me when I volunteered collecting signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.

I didn’t tell him that I was familiar with his flier and had written a point-by-point debunking of it. I did try to explain that Amendment 3 only protects abortion up until viability or when the patient is endangered, but that even the restrictions Amendment 3 allows on later abortion are unnecessary. Women who don’t want to be pregnant want to have abortions as early as possible, while would-be parents who have complications far into wanted pregnancies need time to figure out what to do.

I told him my story – that an abortion restriction had almost resulted in my kid on the swings not having a twin brother. When I was pregnant in New York in 2017, there was an inflexible 24-week cutoff in place that nearly forced us to terminate one fetus to save the other before the severity of an anomaly could be known. We fought through that and today have two healthy kids, but other aspiring parents were not so fortunate before New York reformed its law in 2019.

“I’m glad you didn’t kill your baby,” the man said.

I was stunned. I know how proponents of abortion criminalization see women like me, but it’s different to have someone tell you to your face.

When he’d first come up to me, I’d asked him the question I always wish I had the opportunity to ask of “reasonable” conservatives who think criminalizing abortion is reasonable: if abortion is wrong, why can’t you convince women of that? Why do you need to use the law to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will?

I think about this question even more than I used to since the news that abortions have increased since the fall of Roe.

Someone who does not want to be pregnant will walk over hot coals to end her pregnancy. A ban can punish her with having to travel out of state for a later abortion that is more invasive, medically involved, and expensive. It can make her stay pregnant, which for some of us means very ill, for weeks. A ban can take her away from her kids, job, school. Or force her to have a legally gray self-managed medication abortion without local medical support.

The Amendment 3 opponents have to know that they are making life more difficult and dangerous for women who need abortions without stopping them for the most part. Yet, they march on, vilifying women who need later abortions in the quest to keep it impossible to have an early one in this state.

The man answered my question as to why we should be forced to continue pregnancies unwillingly, no matter how early, with an honesty that I haven’t heard from the anti-Amendment 3 campaign: “Because it’s a human being.”

This is something Right to Life, Jay Ashcroft, Andrew Bailey, Mary Elizabeth Coleman, Mike Kehoe et al prefer not to state so plainly in defense of Missouri’s current abortion ban. Instead, they keep coming up with new ridiculous interpretations of Amendment 3 in an attempt to portray it as extreme, no matter how many times the courts explain these claims are unfounded.

They tweet, write up fliers, and file lawsuits alleging dental hygienists will be performing abortions, human cloning will be legal and malpractice laws won’t apply. Horrible women will stay pregnant for nine months only to demand abortions “the very last second that the last toenail leaves the birth canal,” as Ashcroft put it in an evocative encapsulation of their contempt for women who have abortions.

I am telling you now: they don’t believe the things they are saying about Amendment 3 and this will be proven as soon as it becomes law. They will flip flop completely (just like their compatriots in Ohio did) in order to argue that Amendment 3 actually does next to nothing to bar them from enacting and enforcing the kind of endless obstacles that made it nearly impossible to have an abortion in Missouri even before the Dobbs decision.

They make up these wild stories about what Amendment 3 will do in order to obscure what they do believe but don’t say as straightforwardly as the man on the playground: from “the moment of conception” the state of Missouri must be able to dictate what happens to a potential life rather than its potential mother. Once an egg is fertilized I am just “a birth canal.” I am a container that cannot be trusted to decide whether or not to bring a child into the world, and must be forced to do so.

And if the law causes harm or even death to the container, that is unfortunate but justifiable in service to the higher purpose of protecting potential life.

After the man walked away, my son got off the swing and asked, “Mom, why were you talking to that man for so long?”

Good question, kiddo. It was foolish to think I might convince him that I am a human being, too.

The Department of Justice on Friday unsealed an indictment detailing a yearslong hacking scheme by Iran that targeted the 2024 presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump. In this photo, Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. (Chet Strange/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. law enforcement on Friday announced charges against three Iranians who allegedly stole materials from former President Donald Trump’s campaign and tried to pass them to news media and Democrats in an attempt to influence the 2024 election.

The Department of Justice unsealed the indictment detailing a yearslong hacking scheme by Iran that targeted the email accounts of U.S. government officials, journalists, think tank experts, and most recently the 2024 presidential campaigns.

“The defendants’ own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a Friday press conference. Prosecutors believe the defendants acted from Iran and were never in the U.S.

“We know that Iran is continuing its brazen efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and advance its malign activities for the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), a designated foreign terrorist organization,” Garland said.

The unsealed indictment in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came three days after Trump’s campaign revealed the former president was briefed by the U.S. intelligence officials about “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him,” according to a statement Tuesday from Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director.

“Big threats on my life by Iran,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, posted on X Wednesday. Trump suggested at a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina, that Iran could be responsible for two assassination attempts on him.

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not published a statement on the matter. Its most recent press release focuses on the Iranian plot to hack Trump’s campaign.

‘It takes two to tango’ 

Global politics continued to top the U.S. presidential election headlines Friday when Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Trump Tower after announcing the invitation late Thursday at a meandering press conference where he promised, if elected, to strike a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia “quite quickly.”

The pair met behind closed doors in Trump’s New York City skyscraper on the sidelines of this week’s United Nations General Assembly, and one day after Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to meet with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and bipartisan lawmakers.

“After November we have to decide, and we hope that the strengths of the United States will be very strong, and we count on it. That’s why I decided to meet with both candidates,” Zelenskyy said during brief joint comments alongside Trump ahead of the meeting.

Trump, who refused during a live presidential debate to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia, detoured from that stance and hinted Friday that he wants a victory for the Western ally.

“I think the fact that we’re even together today is a very good sign, and hopefully we’ll have a good victory, because (if) the other side wins, I don’t think you’re gonna have victories with anything to be honest with you,” Trump said during the joint remarks.

During the exchange, Trump highlighted his “very good relationship” with Putin and said he could settle the war “very quickly.”

“But you know, it takes two to tango,” he said.

Harris at the border

Harris traveled to the U.S. southern border Friday to stump for a bipartisan border security deal that collapsed in early 2024 shortly after Trump publicly lambasted it.

Harris was scheduled to deliver what her campaign billed as a major speech in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, where she planned to talk about setting and enforcing new immigration rules at the border, according to a senior campaign official.

“Donald Trump cares more about self-interest than solutions. He wants a problem to run on, not a fix for the American people,”  Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement Friday.

“When he was president, Trump created chaos at the border, taking our already broken immigration system and making it worse – leaving behind a mess for the Biden-Harris administration to clean up. Americans deserve a president who puts national security over their own self-interest – that’s Kamala Harris,” the statement continued.

Trump is attacking Harris over border crossings into the U.S. — his central campaign issue — and calling her by the dishonest nickname “border czar” and claiming she caused the “worst border crisis in the history of the world.”

“When you look at the four years that have taken place after being named ‘border czar,’ Kamala Harris will be visiting the southern border that she has completely destroyed,” Trump said at his Thursday press conference.

Biden, in February 2021, tasked Harris with strategizing ways to fight the “root cause” of migration from Central American countries, including economic insecurity, government corruption and gender-based violence.

Trump has historically painted with a broad brush the complex issue of immigration at the U.S. southern border, announcing his first presidential campaign in 2015 by describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” During his own presidency in 2018 he warned of immigrant “caravans” crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. He has promised mass deportations if elected in November.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicly releases numbers of border encounters, apprehensions and expulsions.

Back on the trail

The presidential and vice presidential candidates are scheduled to make the following appearances:

• Harris will deliver a speech in Douglas, Arizona, Friday.
• Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks in Walker, Michigan Friday, followed by a town hall in Warren, Michigan.
• Trump is expected to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game on Saturday in Tuscaloosa, the University of Alabama, as confirmed by States Newsroom last week.
• Not to be outdone on the college football scene, Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is scheduled to attend the Michigan-Minnesota football game Saturday in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Harris will head to Las Vegas, Nevada, Sunday for a campaign rally.
• Trump will also host a rally Sunday, this time in Erie, Pennsylvania.

With many 2017 tax cuts expiring and cost of living a major challenge for Americans, tax policy has become a central issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. (Phillip Rubino/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With the clock ticking on former President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, and high housing, food and child care costs darkening Americans’ mood, tax cuts have become the star of the 2024 presidential contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump wants to overall extend his tax provisions beyond the 2025 expiration date and then some, promising to lower the corporate tax rate even further and lift the cap on the state and local taxes deduction.

He argues the loss in federal revenue will be made up by imposing steep tariffs on imported goods.

Tariff is a “beautiful word,” he told a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, Tuesday night, “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”

“We will take in hundreds of billions of dollars into our treasury and use that money to benefit the American citizens,” he said.

Harris is running on an “opportunity economy” platform that keeps the Biden administration’s promises to not raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 and enact a “billionaire” tax.

The vice president has also vowed to give tax deductions and credits to budding entrepreneurs and first-time homebuyers, and permanently expand the Child Tax Credit.

“Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a middle-class tax break that includes $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child’s life,” Harris said Wednesday at a campaign speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Whoever wins the Oval Office will need a cooperative Congress to enact these policies — with the exception of tariffs, over which the president enjoys wide latitude.

What would it cost?

The barrage of proposals has kept economists busy with near-constant and evolving analyses of how much the tax cut promises would add to the nation’s ballooning federal deficit and change the economy.

Both candidates’ plans come with a price tag in the trillions of dollars, though Trump’s is the more expensive of the two.

Models released in late August by the Penn Wharton Budget Model project Trump’s plan would add up to $5.8 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, while Harris’ plan would increase the deficit by up to $2 trillion over the same time period.

“I think that both candidates are missing the mark when it comes to fiscal responsibility and economic responsibility,” the Tax Foundation’s Erica York told States Newsroom in an interview Monday.

“Neither of them have really outlined a plan that would get us on a sustainable path in terms of debt and deficits, nor that would boost growth and opportunity in the economy. Both are likely to have a negative impact on the economy,” said York, senior economist and research director for the foundation, which generally favors lower taxes.

Promise: No taxes on tips, overtime

Trump, followed by Harris, has proposed to nix taxes on tipped workers — though Harris has suggested limiting the benefit to workers in the service and hospitality industries who earn less than $75,000.

She has also said the tax break would not apply to payroll taxes, meaning the contribution workers pay toward Social Security and Medicare. Trump has not detailed any limits on his proposal for tipped workers.

Economists across the board warn Trump’s plan could incentivize more tipped work. They also question whether Trump and Harris’ proposals would actually benefit low-income workers.

After all, tax benefits for lower income workers who have children phase in as the person earns income. Reporting less income means those taxpayers could ultimately see less help from the Child Tax Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit.

“If you work and you report income, you get these provisions. But if you don’t, you don’t get these provisions. Well, you add exemptions into the tax code that reduces the amount of earned income that you report to the IRS, you could potentially reduce the value of these credits for very low-income households,” Kyle Pomerleau, senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told States Newsroom in an interview Monday.

For instance, a tipped worker who has one child and earns $24,000 annually, half of which comes from tips, could see a $300 decrease in refundable tax credits under this policy, Pomerleau and senior AEI fellows Alex Brill and Stan Veuger wrote in August.

The same principle for lower income taxpayers applies to Trump’s recent promise to eliminate taxes on overtime.

“There could be a negative effect there, depending on how this is structured,” Pomerleau said Monday.

The nonpartisan watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates an elimination of taxes on all overtime would cost the country $1.7 trillion in lost revenue over 10 years. With no guardrails preventing workers switching from salaried to hourly, the price tag could reach up to $6 trillion in the most extreme case, CRFB estimates.

Promise: No taxes on Social Security

Economists monitoring the nation’s Social Security coffers continue to sound alarm bells on the program’s solvency — with little reaction on the campaign trail.

The fund that provides money to senior citizens and people with disabilities is on track to be depleted by 2035, and recipients would face an immediate 17% cut in benefits, as the Tax Foundation’s Alex Durante wrote Tuesday.

Trump has mentioned Social Security during campaign rallies and on his social media platform, but in the context of eliminating taxes on the benefit payments.

While low-income recipients do not pay taxes on their benefits, others do and are projected to contribute $94 billion this year back into the fund.

Nixing those taxes could speed up Social Security’s insolvency by one year, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Promise: New corporate tax rates and tariffs

Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cleared Congress strictly along party lines, permanently lowered the top corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%.

Harris has vowed, if elected, she will bump the rate up to 28%. Analyses from the CFRB, the Tax Foundation, Penn Wharton and the Yale Budget Lab estimate the increase would raise roughly $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade.

The former president wants to cut the rate even further to 15%, a level not seen in the U.S. since the 1930s. Economists estimate the cut would reduce revenue anywhere from $460 billion to $673 billion over 10 years.

“Here is the deal that I will be offering to every major company and manufacturer on Earth: I will give you the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burden and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet, but only if you make your product here in America,” Trump said in Georgia Tuesday.

Trump has big plans for products imported into the U.S. He’s planning to impose up to 20% tariffs on most imports, reaching as high as 60% on Chinese goods and 100% on countries that turn away from the U.S. dollar.

That could cost the typical American household about $2,600 a year as costs on consumer goods would shift to the customer, particularly affecting those with lower incomes, according to economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Speaking at a farming roundtable in Pennsylvania Monday, Trump publicly warned John Deere that if the company moves manufacturing to Mexico, he’ll impose a 200% tariff on tractors coming back over the border.

Experts warn another downside is that the policy invites foreign retaliation.

“So if we are, say, exporting Kentucky bourbon to China, China may say, well, to retaliate for the 60% tax on imports, we’re going to place taxes on this export, and that’s going to have a direct impact on the incomes of Americans and make us poorer,” Pomerleau said.

Promise: A billionaire tax

A familiar refrain from Harris and the Biden administration is that billionaires and wealthy corporations should pay their “fair share.”

The U.S. individual tax rate already progresses with an earner’s income, meaning that the higher your income, the higher your tax rate.

Both Harris and Trump want to keep individual tax rates that were lowered across the board in the 2017 law, but Harris is seeking to increase taxes on long-term capital gains, and levy a minimum tax on unrealized capital gains for very high earners.

For those earning upwards of $1 million a year, Harris proposed raising taxes to 28%, up from 20%, on profits made from the sale of an asset, like stocks, bonds, or real estate, that have been held by the owner for more than a year.

The vice president also proposes quadrupling the stock buyback tax to 4%, up from 1%.

For ultra-wealthy households that have more than $100 million in assets, Harris follows Biden in proposing a 25% tax rate — sometimes referred to as the “billionaire tax.”

Those high-wealth individuals would need to calculate their regular income tax liability and compare it to their total net worth, meaning income plus unrealized capital gains, multiplied by 25%.

“Whichever is greater you pay,” Pomerleau explains. “So if you are in a situation where you have a low effective tax rate relative to this broader definition of income, the minimum tax will kick in and you’ll start paying increments.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the plan could raise $750 billion in revenue over ten years.

Promise: No SALT cap

Ahead of a mid-September campaign rally on Long Island, New York, Trump pledged to abandon the cap in his 2017 law on the state and local tax deduction — simply known in tax parlance as SALT.

As the law stands now, taxpayers can only deduct up to $10,000 of their state and local tax bill from their federal tax liability.

A full SALT deduction is more valuable for higher income taxpayers, and prior to the 2017 cap, 91% of taxpayers who claimed it lived in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.

Eliminating the cap would cut taxes by an average of more than $140,000 for the highest earning 0.1% of households, according to modeling by the Tax Policy Center, a collaboration between the left-leaning Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

The Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates the move could cost $1.2 trillion over a ten-year budget window.

An employee adds a stack of mail-in ballots to a machine that automatically places the ballots Wednesday in envelopes at Runbeck Election Services in Phoenix, Arizona. The company prints mail-in ballots for 30 states and Washington D.C. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — United States Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before Congress on Thursday that voters can “absolutely” trust their mail-in ballots will be secure and prioritized, though he emphasized they must be mailed at least a week ahead of the various state deadlines to be delivered on time.

DeJoy’s testimony to House lawmakers became heated at times, as members questioned whether delays in general mail delivery and previous issues with mail-in ballots in swing states could disenfranchise voters this year.

DeJoy also brought USPS’s facilities into question, calling them “ratty” twice during the hour-long hearing.

His various comments about the management of the USPS and how the agency plans to handle election mail appeared to frustrate some members of the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.

For example, in response to a question from Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan about the pace of mail delivery in his home state, DeJoy responded that “the first rockets that went to the moon blew up, OK.”

Pocan then said: “Thanks for blowing up Wisconsin,” before DeJoy gave a lengthier answer.

“We’re going to do a series of transactional adjustments and service measurement adjustments and service metric adjustments as we move forward with this that are going to get your service to be 95% reliable,” DeJoy said.

Millions of ballots in the mail

The hearing came as state officials throughout the country are preparing to, or have already, sent out millions of mail-in ballots that could very well decide the results of elections for Congress and potentially even the presidency.

Mail-in voting surged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a central part of the 2020 presidential election and has remained a popular way for voters to decide who will represent their interests in government.

Voters can also cast ballots in person during early voting and on Election Day.

Lawmakers focused many of their questions during the hearing on how USPS keeps mail-in ballots secure and whether the agency can deliver them on time, though several members voiced frustration with DeJoy’s plans to change operations at USPS.

When asked specifically whether Americans could trust in USPS to handle their election mail, DeJoy said, “Absolutely.”

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” he testified. “We’ve delivered in the heightened part of a pandemic, in the most sensationalized political time of elections, and … we delivered it 99 point whatever percent, I mentioned earlier.”

DeJoy had previously said USPS delivered 99.89% of mail-in ballots within seven days during the 2020 election.

DeJoy wrote in testimony submitted to the committee ahead of the hearing that not all state laws consider the speed of the USPS when deciding when voters can request mail-in ballots and when those are sent out.

“For example, some jurisdictions allow voters to request a mail-in ballot very close to Election Day,” he wrote. “Depending on when that ballot is mailed to the voter, it may be physically impossible for that voter to receive the ballot mail, complete their ballot, and return their ballot by mail in time to meet the jurisdiction’s deadline, even with our extraordinary measures, and despite our best efforts.”

‘I see horror’

DeJoy brought up the state of USPS facilities on his own at several points during the hearing, implying that they aren’t clean or up to his standards as a work environment.

“I walk in our plants and facilities, I see horror. My employees see just another day at work,” DeJoy said.

Following a question about whether USPS employees had the appropriate training to handle and deliver mail-in ballots on time, DeJoy said leadership was “overwhelmingly enhancing our training,” before disparaging the facilities.

“We’re on a daily mission to train over 600,000 people across 31,000 ratty locations, I might say, on how to improve our operating practices across the board and at this time most specifically in the election mail area,” he testified. “We’re doing very well at this, just not perfect.”

No members of the panel asked DeJoy to clarify what he meant by “ratty” or followed up when he said separately that he was “sitting on about $20 billion in cash.”

A USPS spokesperson said they had nothing to add to DeJoy’s characterization when asked about the “ratty” comment by States Newsroom.

“If you are listening to the hearing, you just heard him describe the condition of postal facilities further,” Martha S. Johnson wrote in an email sent shortly after DeJoy made his “horror” comment. “I have nothing to add to that.”

Deliveries for rural Americans

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright questioned DeJoy during the hearing about how plans to “consolidate resources around regions with higher population densities” under the so-called Delivering for America plan will affect delivery times overall for rural residents.

DeJoy disagreed with the premise of the question, saying he believed it was “an unfair accusation, considering the condition that the Postal Service has been allowed to get to.”

DeJoy said the USPS had committed to a six-day-a-week delivery schedule and pledged that it would not take longer than five days for mail to arrive.

“It will not go beyond five days, because I’ll put it up in the air and fly it if I have to,” DeJoy said.

Cartwright mentioned that 1.4 million Pennsylvania residents requested to vote by mail during the 2022 midterm elections, a number he expected to rise this year.

The commonwealth has numerous competitive U.S. House districts, a competitive U.S. Senate race and is considered a crucial swing state for the presidential election. Several of those races could be determined by mail-in ballots arriving on time.

Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce, chairman of the subcommittee, asked DeJoy about issues with the Cleveland regional sort facility during the 2023 election. The secretary of state, Joyce said, found that some mail-in ballots sent as early as Oct. 24 didn’t arrive until Nov. 21.

“These voters are disenfranchised because of the USPS failures,” Joyce said. “How specifically have you enhanced the all clear procedures you referenced in response to the National Association of Secretaries of State? And can you assure us that these procedures will ensure that that doesn’t happen in this upcoming election?”

DeJoy responded that he would “need the specifics of Cleveland,” but said that USPS procedures are “extremely enhanced.”

Georgia primary problems

Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde, who isn’t on the panel, submitted a question for DeJoy about how a new regional processing and distribution center in Atlanta had “a negative impact” on mail delivery just weeks ahead of the GOP presidential primary earlier this year.

DeJoy said the USPS was investing more than $500 million into the region, but conceded “what went on in Georgia was an embarrassment to the organization, okay, and it should not have happened.”

“We are correcting for it aggressively,” DeJoy said. “Specifically with regard to the primary election, we got through that because I put a whole bunch of people down there and a whole bunch of double-checking processes in place.”

DeJoy added that “the performance was good on election mail for Georgia” and that USPS would deliver Georgia’s mail-in ballots in the weeks ahead “just fine.”

Claudia Kline, an organizer for Our Voice, Our Vote Arizona, speaks to a group of canvassers before they set out to knock on doors Thursday in 106-degree weather in Phoenix. The organization is part of a coalition that vowed to knock on 3 million doors by November. (Gloria Rebecca Gomez / Arizona Mirror)

As former President Donald Trump worked to scuttle a bipartisan border deal in Congress because it threatened to derail his campaign’s focus on immigration, Republicans in Arizona unveiled a plan to empower local officials to jail and deport migrants, decrying the federal government’s lack of solutions.

“Arizona is in a crisis,” state Senate President Warren Petersen said in late January. “This is directly due to the negligent inaction of the Biden administration.”

What followed were months of GOP lawmakers in Arizona making use of Trump’s border security rhetoric, employing xenophobic language to cast immigrants and asylum-seekers as criminals. But there was strident opposition to the plan, too, from many Latino and immigrant Arizonans who traveled to the state Capitol to protest the legislation.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris offer starkly different plans for the future of the 11 million people who live in the United States without legal status. Harris, in a bid to stave off accusations that she’s soft on the border, has sought to establish a firm security stance. To that end, she has vowed to bring back and sign the torpedoed bipartisan border deal.

On the campaign trail, Trump has taken a far more hawkish approach, promising mass deportations. He has offered few details, other than that he would be willing to involve the U.S. National Guard. President Joe Biden, Trump and other recent presidents have deployed the National Guard or military troops to support Border Patrol actions, but not in direct law enforcement roles.

Immigration has consistently ranked high among voter concerns nationwide, following heightened political rhetoric and a record-breaking number of unlawful border crossings in late 2023. Those numbers have since plummeted to a three-year low, but the U.S. border with Mexico remains a key talking point for Republican politicians.

But immigration is a far more complex topic than border security alone, and strategists may be miscalculating by failing to consider some key voters and their nuanced perspectives, recent polling shows.

Growing populations of new and first-generation citizens in the swing states — with the power to sway elections — are transforming demographics and voter concerns.

In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed the legislation that would have allowed local law enforcement to usurp federal authority on immigration, but Republicans repackaged it as a ballot initiative called the “Secure the Border Act.” In a state that Biden won by fewer than 11,000 votes four years ago, and where political strategists anticipate high voter turnout, the ballot measure serves as a test of whether the GOP’s immigration position will drive people to the polls in a swing state.

While many Republicans hope the immigration issue boosts their chances in down-ballot races, progressive organizations are working to mobilize voters in opposition through canvassing and voter registration drives.

Living United for Change in Arizona was established in the aftermath of the state’s controversial “show me your papers” law — SB 1070 — passed 14 years ago by Republican lawmakers. LUCHA Chief of Staff Abril Gallardo derided this year’s Secure the Border Act as the latest iteration of that law.

“Arizonans are sick of Republicans trying to bring back the SB 1070 era of separating families, mass deportations and children in detention centers,” she said. “We’re here to say, ‘Not on our watch.’”

The ballot measure has been widely criticized as greenlighting discrimination. Among other provisions, it would make it a state crime for migrants to cross the southern border anywhere except a legal port of entry and punish first-time offenders with six months in jail. Local police officers would be authorized to carry out arrests based on suspicion of illegal entry, and Arizona judges would be empowered to issue orders of deportation, undermining court rulings that have concluded that enforcing immigration law is the sole purview of the federal government.

Gallardo said that LUCHA is focused on engaging with voters to ensure the proposal fails. The organization is part of a coalition of advocacy groups committed to knocking on more than 3 million doors before November.

“They can try to ignore us, but come Election Day and beyond, they will hear us, they will see us, and they will feel the strength of our movement,” she said.

An August UnidosUS and BSP Research survey asked Latino voters in Arizona about their top priorities on several issues related to immigration policy. The results show strong support for protecting longtime residents from deportation and offering them a path to citizenship — along with cracking down on human smugglers and drug traffickers. Policies centered on building a wall or mass deportation ranked near the bottom. In recent years, Latino voters in the state have helped reject virulently anti-immigrant candidates.

Latino voting strength

In 2020, Latinos made up about 20% of the state’s electorate, and they largely favored Biden over Trump. Then, two years later, a record-breaking number of Latinos voted in an election that saw Democrats win statewide offices. Today, 1 in 4 Arizona voters is Latino, and a new poll from Univision estimates that more than 600,000 will cast their ballots in the state’s November election.

The Grand Canyon State is far from the only swing state with both impactful Latino and new-citizen voting blocs.

Still, campaigns might be ignoring these voters. The UnidosUS poll showed 51% of Latino voters in Georgia hadn’t been contacted by either party or any campaign, even though 56% say they’re sure they’ll vote.

“This is, I think, a wake-up call for both parties to reach out into the Latino community,” said BSP senior analyst Stephen Nuño-Perez in a Georgia Recorder story. “There’s still not a lot of education out there on why Latinos should be voting for one party or the other.”

The numbers hovered right around there in other swing states. In Pennsylvania, that was true for 50% of the people polled. In North Carolina, it was 49%. In Nevada, 53%. In each case, a higher percentage said they plan to vote.

Influence grows in dairy country

The number of Latino voters in Wisconsin is a fraction of the electorate that lives in states closer to the U.S.-Mexico border but no less impactful. There are roughly 180,000 eligible Latino voters who call the Badger State home. Biden carried Wisconsin in 2020 by a margin of just 21,000 votes, less than 1 percentage point.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a civil and workers rights organization that advocates on behalf of immigrants. She said that over time, the Latino vote has become increasingly sought after by politicians looking to gain office.

“If you don’t get it, you don’t win it,” she said.

Neumann-Ortiz said that the rise of the Latino electorate has translated into political power. The group has been a longtime backer of driver’s licenses for Wisconsinites without full citizenship status, and occupational licenses for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a federal policy that grants temporary work permits and protection from deportation to people who arrived in the country as minors.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow people without citizenship status to obtain driver’s licenses. And just 12 give DACA recipients the opportunity to obtain medical or legal licenses.

Legislation in Wisconsin to open up access to either license was blocked by the GOP legislative majority, though the movement behind the proposals drew support from top officials, including Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who backed driver’s licenses for all as a policy priority last year. Influential lobbying organizations, such as the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the Dairy Business Association, both of which lean conservative, also threw their weight behind the push for universal driver’s licenses.

Neumann-Ortiz attributes that support to the fact that immigrants make up a large part of the state’s dairy and agricultural industries. And in rural areas where dairy operations and farms are located, public transportation is sparse. United Migrant Opportunity Services, a Milwaukee-based farmworker advocacy organization, estimates that as much as 40% of the state’s dairy workers are immigrants. Other estimates indicate they contribute 80% of the labor on dairy farms.

Despite being over 1,000 miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration and border security are key issues for Wisconsinites, and their positions appear mixed. In a September survey from Marquette University’s Law School, 49% said they agreed with deporting all immigrants who have lived in the country for years, have jobs and no criminal record, while 51% opposed it.

Newly minted citizens stand to break new electoral ground

Laila Martin Garcia moved to the United States with her husband and infant son eight years ago. November will be the first time she casts her ballot for a U.S. presidential candidate since she became a naturalized citizen two years ago in Pennsylvania, and she’s elated.

“The main reason for me to become a citizen was to vote,” she said. “You know, this is home. This is where my husband is, where my son is being raised, and I wanted to make sure that I was using my voice in any way possible.”

She’s part of another segment of the electorate that will have a chance to respond in the voting booth to the election-year emphasis on immigration: newly naturalized voters. In fiscal year 2023, just over 878,000 immigrants became naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. That number represents a slight decline from the previous fiscal year, when a little more than 969,000 people achieved naturalization –— the highest number of new citizens in a decade.

Newly naturalized voters can close the gaps in swing state races, according to Nancy Flores, who serves as the deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant and refugee rights organizations.

Every presidential election year, the coalition partners with local organizations to assist eligible immigrants as they embark on the naturalization process and help newly naturalized citizens register to vote. New citizens, Flores said, are a great investment, because once they’ve made a commitment to vote, they will likely continue to do so. And naturalized voters appear to cast their ballots at higher rates than U.S.-born citizens. In the 2020 election, about 66% of the general electorate turned out to vote, compared with nearly 87% of naturalized voters surveyed by the organization.

This year appears on track to repeat that trend: As many as 97.3% of naturalized voters residing in states polled by the National Partnership for New Americans — including in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania — reported that they plan to vote this fall.

“For a lot of folks, reaching the point of citizenship is really a lifetime achievement,” Flores said. “And we see that folks really don’t take that lightly.”

And while Flores noted that naturalized citizens don’t fit one single voter profile, most of them do share an immigrant background and so are sympathetic on the issue.

“New American voters are not a monolith,” she said. “Folks that are naturalized are doctors, professors. We have folks that are naturalized that are picking the fruit that we eat. It really runs the gamut, but the common thread is the immigrant experience.”

A poll conducted by the organization found that naturalized voters share many of the same concerns as other U.S. voters, including worries about inflation and the economy. But, Flores added, candidates who are looking to attract naturalized voters are likely to be most successful with the demographic group when they present a positive view of immigration.

“Looking at immigration as an asset to our country, looking at how it can benefit the economy, looking at how we can provide pathways [to citizenship] that are humane — those things resonated with voters,” she said.

Similarly, Martin Garcia’s experiences as an immigrant have colored her views as a voter. Immigration reform, she said, is at the top of her priorities. Originally from Barcelona, Spain, Martin Garcia arrived in the U.S. in the middle of Trump’s first campaign, and she said she saw firsthand what his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies wrought.

In her work as an advocate, she frequently helped families torn apart by deportations, and in her personal life, while trying to share her language and culture with her son, she dealt with nativist hostility. During one incident at the grocery store, while she was helping her toddler identify items in Spanish, a stranger accosted her.

“I remember he came up to me and said, ‘We’re in America, speak American,’” she recalled. “Now that I think of that moment, I have so many things to say to that person. But at that moment, I was so scared. I just took my child, left my cart there with half of my groceries, and left the shop.”

Today, she recalls that incident, and the rallies and protests during Trump’s presidency, as catalysts for her civic engagement. Martin Garcia said she views the 2024 election as an opportunity to look out for the immigrant community’s needs.

“We deserve to thrive, and we will be thinking about that,” she said. “We have to make sure that our communities have the right to thrive in this election.”

What’s on the table at the federal level? 

The failed $118 billion bipartisan border plan set aside $20 billion to pay for more border barriers, expanded detention facilities, more officers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, and legal counsel for unaccompanied children. The bill also included more than $80 billion destined for aid and humanitarian assistance overseas.

The deal would also have overhauled the asylum system and eliminated the so-called “catch-and-release” system. It would have narrowed the criteria under which people can apply for asylum, fast-tracked the processing of existing claims and given migrants work authorizations while their claims reached resolution. The president would have been granted the power to shut down asylum claims processing altogether, once a certain number of claims had come through, resulting in more migrants being automatically deported during periods when there are a lot of border crossings.

For Vice President Kamala Harris to be able to sign the deal if she’s elected president, it would have to clear both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, which appears unlikely unless Democrats win a majority in both chambers in November.

Former President Donald Trump has said that if he’s voted back into the White House for a second term, he will oversee mass deportations in the style of President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation W*tback.” The 1954 policy only succeeded in removing about 300,000 people, despite government claims that more than 1 million people were deported. Discriminatory tactics led to an unknown number of U.S. citizens being deported, too.

While it might at first sound feasible and draw support from some voters, adding context quickly turns them away, said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesperson for America’s Voice, a national immigration reform advocacy organization.

“You start talking about the number of jobs we’re going to lose, and the spike to inflation, and the hit to the U.S. economy contracting that way, and a lot of people turn against mass deportation,” he said.

A May 2024 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that immigrants made up 18.6% of the U.S. labor force — about 1 in 5 workers.

Rivlin warned that mass deportation would necessarily result in the breaking up of families, and leave millions of U.S. citizen children in the lurch. As many as 4.4 million children who are citizens in the U.S. live with at least one parent who does not have full citizenship status.

“You can’t deport 11 million people and not rip apart families, especially because 4 or 5 million children live in those families,” he said. “Are you going to deport them, too? Or are they going into foster care?”

One of the most notorious policies enacted during Trump’s presidency was his “zero tolerance” immigration initiative, which separated thousands of migrant children and babies from their parents at the country’s southern border. The policy ended after broad public backlash and federal lawsuits. More than 1,000 children remained separated from their families as of this spring, according to the most recent data available from the Department of Homeland Security’s task force on reunification.

The majority of American voters, Rivlin said, don’t want overly punitive immigration policies. Most favor opening up legal pathways to citizenship for the millions of people who’ve made their home in the U.S. A June Pew Research survey estimated that 59% of American voters believe that undocumented immigrants living in the country should be allowed to remain legally. And while there’s been an uptick in voters who oppose offering citizenship to people without legal status, they remain in the minority, with 37% supporting a national deportation effort.

Vice President and Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris speaks Wednesday at an event hosted by The Economic Club of Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Harris gave details about her economic platform, including ways to support small businesses and making home ownership more attainable, among other policy proposals. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, laid out more of her economic vision Wednesday during her first one-on-one cable TV interview.

Harris and former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, are laying out dueling economic agendas this week as the two vie for the Oval Office in an extremely close race.

“I really love and am so energized by what I know to be the spirit and character of the American people — we have ambition, we have aspirations, we have dreams, we can see what’s possible, we have an incredible work ethic, but not everyone has the access to the opportunities that allow them to achieve those things, but we don’t lack for those things, but not everyone gets handed stuff on a silver platter,” Harris told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle.

“My vision for the economy — I call it an opportunity economy — is about making sure that all Americans — wherever they start, wherever they are — have the ability to actually achieve those dreams and those ambitions, which include, for middle-class families, just being able to know that their hard work allows them to get ahead,” she said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Harris touted her economic plans in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at Carnegie Mellon University. During her MSNBC interview later in the day, she reiterated her plan to cut taxes for more than 100 million Americans, including $6,000 in tax relief for new parents in the first year of their child’s life.

In that first year, Harris said these parents are going to “need help buying a crib, buying a car seat, and we all benefit when they’re actually able to do what they naturally want to do to take care of their child.”

Part of her economic agenda also includes as much as $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers and an up to $50,000 tax break for first-time small businesses.

She also took jabs at Trump when it comes to the economy, saying he’s “just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues.”

The Trump campaign clapped back at her MSNBC appearance on Wednesday, saying “it was (another) reminder why she never does interviews,” and that she’s “not competent enough — and she has no plans to offer Americans.”

Trump pitched his economic plan earlier this week in Georgia, part of which includes levying tariffs on exported goods, and he vowed to place a 100% tariff on cars imported from Mexico.

Harris to visit southern border 

Harris also touched on immigration, telling Ruhle “we do have a broken immigration system, and it needs to be fixed.”

She also said she would bring back and sign into law a major bipartisan border security bill from earlier this year while pinning its legislative failure on Trump.

“He killed a bill that would have actually been a solution because he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing the problem, and that’s part of what needs to be addressed,” Harris said.

The veep is set to visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday for the first time since becoming the Democratic nominee. Her Douglas, Arizona, visit comes as she’s faced repeated criticism and backlash from both sides of the aisle for her efforts surrounding immigration.

In a Truth Social post earlier this week regarding her upcoming visit, Trump again dubbed Harris a “border czar,” saying “what a disgrace that she waited so long, allowing millions of people to enter our Country from prisons, mental institutions, and criminal cells all over the World, not just South America, many of those coming are terrorists, and at a level never seen before!”

President Joe Biden tapped Harris back in 2021 to help address the “root causes” of migration in Central America, but he did not give her the title of “border czar.” The Department of Homeland Security is in charge of border security.

What’s next for Harris, Trump campaigns

Harris was set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday afternoon.

The meeting between the two leaders “serves as a reminder that the Vice President has been a champion for the United States, advancing our security and prosperity on the world stage and standing up to dictators and autocrats,” her campaign said in a Thursday press release.

This will be her seventh meeting with Zelenskyy, according to her campaign, which noted that as vice president, “she helped rally a global coalition of 50 allies and partners to help Ukraine defend itself.”

Trump is set to deliver remarks in Walker, Michigan, on Friday. Later in the day, he will also host a town hall in Warren, Michigan.

And in the thick of the college football season, Trump is set to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game on Saturday in Tuscaloosa, the University of Alabama confirmed to States Newsroom last week.

Harris’ running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is set to attend the Michigan-Minnesota football game Saturday in Ann Arbor, the Harris-Walz campaign announced.

He’s also slated to campaign there and will “speak with students about the power of their vote and the importance of registering to vote ahead of the November election,” per the announcement.

Former President Donald Trump, Republican presidential nominee, speaks to attendees during a campaign rally Wednesday at the Mosack Group warehouse in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump suggested without evidence Wednesday that Iran could be responsible for two apparent assassination attempts he has faced this year, saying foreign leaders objected to his position on tariffs.

Authorities have made no public statements to support the claim that either would-be assassin — in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July and near Trump’s Florida home this month — was aided by foreign agents or anyone else. Trump tied the two incidents to the separate hacking of his campaign, which U.S. intelligence agencies say was conducted by Iran.

“There have been two assassination attempts on my life — that we know of,” Trump, the GOP candidate for president, said at a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina. “And they may or may not involve — but possibly do — Iran, but I don’t really know.”

Trump also aired his theory on X on Wednesday, saying, “Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again.”

The Trump campaign told USA Today in a statement on Tuesday night that “President Trump was briefed earlier today by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”

USA Today also said a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, acknowledged the briefing occurred but did not provide specifics about what was said.

In his remarks in North Carolina, Trump thanked members of Congress in both parties for approving more funding for the U.S. Secret Service, but added that if he were president when a foreign country threatened a presidential candidate, he would retaliate in the strongest terms.

“So I thank everybody in Congress,” he said. “But if I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We’re going to blow it to smithereens.”

The gunman in the Pennsylvania shooting, Thomas Crooks, was killed by law enforcement at the scene. In the second case, in Florida, Ryan Wesley Routh was charged on Tuesday with attempted assassination of Trump.

In the hour-long speech that included some attention to economic issues, Trump said that he was a target of foreign governments because of his plans to expand tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods.

“I’m imposing tariffs on your competition from foreign countries, all these foreign countries that have ripped us off, which stole all of your businesses and all of your jobs years ago and took your businesses out,” he said. “This is why people in countries want to kill me. They’re not happy with me. It is – it’s a risky business. This is why they want to kill me.”

Trump also said he would set a 15% tax rate on companies that produce their goods domestically.  That low rate, combined with tariffs on foreign goods, would boost U.S. manufacturing, including furniture production that was once a large industry in North Carolina, he said.

Tariffs generally lead to higher prices, which have plagued consumers since 2020.

Harris in Pennsylvania

The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, painted a more optimistic picture of the U.S. economic present and future in her own economy-focused speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Harris acknowledged that prices remained too high.

“You know it, and I know it,” she said, according to a pool report.

Harris said her economic priorities were focused on the middle class, which she contrasted with what she described as Trump’s favoritism to wealthy people.

She said she would encourage innovation by boosting research in a host of technologies from biomanufacturing to artificial intelligence and the blockchain, and said her approach to the presidency would include experimenting with different strategies.

“As president, I will be grounded in my fundamental values of fairness, dignity and opportunity,” she said. “And I promise you, I will be pragmatic in my approach. I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation.”

Immigration blamed by GOP

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, applied their nativist immigration positions to speeches focused on the economy in their Wednesday campaign appearances. Both said immigrants in the country illegally were responsible for driving down employment and wages among U.S.-born workers.

“The jobs are going to illegal migrants that came into our country illegally,” Trump said in North Carolina. “Our Black population all over the country, our Hispanic population, are losing their jobs. They’re citizens of America, they’re losing their jobs.”

In a call earlier Wednesday touting the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ decision not to endorse in the presidential race and an internal electronic poll showing most members supported the GOP ticket, Vance said organized labor had long sought to protect U.S. workers from immigrants.

“The American labor movement has always recognized that illegal labor undercuts the wages of American workers,” Vance said on the call. “Those are folks competing against American citizens and legal residents for important jobs and undercutting their wages in the process.”

Vance said, without citing a source, that all net job growth under Harris and President Joe Biden had gone to foreign workers, including “25 million” immigrants in the country illegally.

Official estimates place the number of immigrants residing in the country without authorization at about 11 million, less than half of Vance’s claim.

A GOP campaign spokesperson did not substantively respond to a question about the source for Vance’s statement that foreign-born workers accounted for all job growth during the Biden administration.

Trump to return to Butler

Trump said Wednesday he would return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the first assassination attempt on him. The former president suffered an injury to his ear during a shooting that killed one rallygoer and injured two others.

“We’re going to go back and finish our speech,” he said in North Carolina.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate interim report published Wednesday made initial conclusions that the U.S. Secret Service failed to adequately plan to secure the outdoor rally and made missteps in communication that led to the shooter being able to fire at the former president.

The report was commissioned by U.S. Sens. Gary Peters, a Democrat of Michigan; Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky; Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut; and Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson. They are the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the panel’s investigations subcommittee.

From left, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz celebrate after Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Aug. 22 during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

TOPEKA — The Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference of Teamsters endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz days after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a presidential candidate in the November election.

The conference cited Harris’ Senate voting record, Walz’ commitment to working families and the middle class and the pair’s strong support of the labor movement as reasons to join hundreds of thousands of other union members in endorsing their campaign.

The conference is made up of more than 15 locals and two joint councils — one based in St. Louis and another in Kansas City, Missouri — that voted along with the conference’s executive board in favor of endorsing the Democratic ticket.

The Teamsters union is America’s largest, with 1.3 million members and nearly 2,000 affiliates across the country. The Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference accounts for roughly 400,000 active and retired members, whose careers range from zookeepers to airline pilots, as the conference’s president, Mike Scribner, likes to put it.

“Union pride is strong in the heartland, and we need a president who is going to stand up to corporate greed and fight for the needs of our families and communities. The Harris-Walz team will do just that,” Scribner said in the Sept. 20 endorsement letter.

The brotherhood’s member polls favored President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race, but subsequent polls revealed majority support for former President Donald Trump.

“A lot of people get wound up with the social issues and the social platforms and social distractions. …That’s not where the Teamsters’ attention is focused,” Scribner told Kansas Reflector on Wednesday.

He lauded Harris’ 2021 tiebreaking vote that authorized $36 billion in pandemic-era funds to be invested in the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Plan in her role as Senate President.

“That saved thousands from poverty,” Scribner said.

In his mind, Harris’ vote carried real weight because of the gravity of a potentially failed multiemployer pension plan, which had been on the brink for about a decade,  he said.

While breaking from the national group, the local Teamsters’ support of a Democratic ticket is on par with tradition. The union has endorsed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 2000, exercising its vast network of workers. Many of them maintained employment, and even worked more than usual, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scribner said.

“I don’t know if the average person realizes when you click a button on the computer, that’s probably a Teamster bringing what you ordered from start to finish,” he said.

The union announced its decision to refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate Sept. 18. It fielded criticism from its former president, and, in the days following, about a dozen locals and conferences endorsed Harris. Since the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska conference announced its own endorsement, Scribner said he has heard input from “both sides of the fence.”

“We are the Teamsters in the heartland. We are representatives for those Teamsters, and an endorsement says just what it says,” Scribner said. “No more, no less.”

This article first appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a part of States Newsroom.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 ended federal abortion rights. (Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

Dr. Kristin Lyerly’s placenta detached from her uterus when she was 17 weeks pregnant with her fourth son in 2007. Her doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, gave the devastated recent medical school graduate one option: to deliver and bury her dead child. But she requested a dilation and evacuation abortion procedure, knowing it would be less invasive and risky than being induced. And she couldn’t fathom the agony of holding her tiny dead baby.

But Lyerly’s doctor declined, giving her a direct window into the many ways Americans lack real choice when it comes to their reproductive health decisions. At the time of this miscarriage, Lyerly was getting a master’s degree in public health before beginning her residency. She was able to get a D&E at the same hospital by a different doctor. As an OB-GYN, she soon would learn how much abortion is stigmatized and limited throughout the country, but also regularly sought after and sometimes medically necessary, including among her many conservative Catholic patients in northeastern Wisconsin.

And then, on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, prompting states such as Wisconsin to resurrect dormant abortion bans from the 19th and 20th centuries. Lyerly’s job changed overnight. She stopped working as an OB-GYN in Sheboygan and moved her practice to Minnesota. She became a plaintiff in a lawsuit over an 1849 Wisconsin feticide law being interpreted as an abortion ban, which has since been blocked.

When a congressional seat opened up in a competitive Wisconsin district this year, the 54-year-old mother of four joined the post-Dobbs wave of women running for office to restore reproductive rights, which this election cycle includes another OB-GYN and a patient denied abortion care. Lyerly’s decision to run is emblematic of the nationwide backlash against the Dobbs decision, which altered the reproductive health care landscape, with providers, patients and advocates turning to the ballot box to change the laws to restore and broaden access.

Wisconsin is among seven swing states expected to determine the country’s next president and federal leaders. And in many ways they’re being viewed as referendums on how much the right to have an abortion can move the needle in a tight presidential election.

“What we’ve seen in every election since the Dobbs decision is that abortion is at top of mind for voters — and it’s not just helping voters decide who or what to vote for. It’s actually a turnout driver,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at national lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All. The group is investing in down-ballot races in conservative districts such as Lyerly’s, buoyed by cash and momentum from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ reproductive-rights-focused campaign.

Anti-abortion money is also flowing through the swing states, led by lobbying groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Women Speak Out PAC. Some of their messaging, adopted by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many GOP candidates, often paints Democrats as champions of infanticide, focusing on the rarest and most controversial type of abortions, those performed in the third trimester.

But aside from that rhetoric, many Republican candidates have been quiet on an issue that for years motivated their staunchest supporters.

SBA Pro-Life America declined an interview for this story but shared a press release outlining the organization’s strategy trying to reach 10 million voters in Montana, Ohio and all of the battleground states except for Nevada. The group endorsed 28 House candidates total this cycle, and a fifth of them are in North Carolina. One of North Carolina’s endorsed candidates in a toss-up race is Republican GOP challenger Laurie Buckhout, who does not mention her abortion stance on her campaign website, and did not return a request for comment.

“Our field team is talking to persuadable and low propensity pro-life voters to urge them to cast their votes against the party that endorses abortion in the seventh, eighth and ninth months,” said SBA’s national field team director Patricia Miles in the press statement.

But throughout this election cycle, polls in the swing states have shown bipartisan support for abortion rights, especially when voters are educated about what abortion bans do. Voters in more than half of the states expected to determine the presidential winner have, to varying degrees, lost access to abortion. And abortion-rights activists across these states told States Newsroom they are determined to protect that access, or to get it back.

Arizona sees backlash after GOP upholds Civil War-era abortion ban

In Arizona, the Dobbs decision resurrected a Civil War-era ban that allowed abortions only to save a pregnant patient’s life.

Legislators repealed the law, but abortion-rights supporters fought for more certainty. This fall, Arizonans will vote on a proposed ballot measure that would protect access until fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Now, two of the judges who upheld the abortion ban — Justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn King — are up for reelection, in races infused with national cash by groups such as RFA and Planned Parenthood. Also on the ballot is Proposition 137, which would give lifetime appointments to state judges. The Republican-initiated measure has garnered controversy in part because it is retroactive to this year’s election, so if approved, any retention bids would be nullified even if the majority votes to unseat the judge.

Ballot organizers turned in more than 800,000 signatures, double the required number, and overcame opponents’ legal challenges to qualify the abortion-rights ballot measure, Proposition 139. Abortion is legal up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, but there are many state restrictions that the Arizona Abortion Access Act would eliminate, such as a ban on any abortions sought for fetal genetic abnormalities and a blocked law from 2021 granting personhood status to fertilized eggs.

Recent deaths reignite controversy over Georgia’s abortion ban

This month, ProPublica reported on the deaths in 2022 of two Georgia women who suffered rare complications after they obtained mifepristone and misoprostol for early-term medication abortions. Both were trying to navigate a new state law that banned abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy and threatened medical providers with up to a decade in prison.

In one case, doctors at an Atlanta-area hospital refused for 20 hours to perform a routine dilation and curettage, a D&C, to clear the patient’s uterus when her body hadn’t expelled all the fetal tissue. In the other, a woman who had ordered the pills online suffered days of pain at home, fearful of seeking medical care. Both women left children behind.

Georgia’s law permits abortion if the patient’s life is at risk, but medical providers have said the law’s language is unclear, tying their hands and threatening the health of patients who have high-risk pregnancies.

Their cases, which a state medical review committee found to be “preventable,” have galvanized activists in the state.

Harris spoke at length about the women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, at a recent campaign event in Atlanta. She blamed their deaths on Georgia’s law, calling it “the Trump abortion ban,” because the former president appointed three justices he’d promised would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,” Harris said. “Understand what a law like this means: Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action. … You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that a health care provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die?”

Failed GOP attempt to keep abortion off Missouri ballot could foreshadow fight to come

Trump has not commented on the deaths. He has repeatedly said this year that abortion access should be left to the states. He has dismissed the idea of a federal abortion ban, but during the presidential debate, he refused to say whether he would veto such legislation.

At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump addressed “our great women” (a demographic he’s trailing among), saying, “you will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and with the vote of the people.”

Abortion was a driving concern in this spring’s qualifying process for Georgia’s 2024 legislative elections — the first opportunity for aspiring state lawmakers to jump on the ballot in response to their state’s severe abortion restrictions.

Melita Easters, the executive director and founding chair of Georgia WIN List, which endorses Democratic women who support abortion rights, was already calling this year’s general election “Roevember” back when President Joe Biden was still the party’s nominee.

But Easters told States Newsroom that having Harris on the ticket instead has elevated the issue of reproductive freedom even more and “has breathed new life into down-ballot campaigns.” Easters said she is especially encouraged after a Democratic state House candidate in Alabama who ran on abortion rights flipped a Huntsville seat during a special election in March.

Michigan Democrats continue betting on abortion after 2022 successes

Michigan was one of the earliest states post-Dobbs to show that abortion rights could be a strong election-winning issue.

Months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Michiganders overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to protect abortion rights in the state constitution; reelected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who vowed to prioritize reproductive freedom; and voted for Democratic majorities in both chambers, giving the party a legislative trifecta for the first time in 40 years. In 2023, the legislature repealed a 1931 abortion ban that was still on the books and passed the Reproductive Health Act, expanding abortion access in the state.

This year, state and national abortion-rights groups have campaigned in toss-up congressional districts across Michigan, warning that a federal ban would supersede the state’s protections.

State judicial races, meanwhile, have attracted millions of dollars, as they could determine partisan control of the Michigan Supreme Court. Democrats secured a slim 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court in 2020 after Republican-nominated justices controlled the court for most of the last few decades.

Nevada reproductive rights activists hope ballot initiative improves turnout

In Nevada, abortion remains legal through 24 weeks and beyond for specific health reasons. In 2023, the state’s Democratic-led legislature passed a law shielding patients and providers from out-of-state investigations related to abortion care; it was signed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Seeking to cement these rights in the state constitution, reproductive health advocates mobilized a ballot initiative campaign, which they hope will drive voter turnout that would affect the presidential and down-ballot races. Constitutional amendments proposed through an initiative petition must be passed by voters twice, so if voters approve Question 6 in November, they will have to approve it again in 2026.

In the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen currently edges Republican Sam Brown, who has had inconsistent positions on abortion and reproductive rights but opposes the abortion-rights measure.

National anti-abortion groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life of America have notably not focused on Nevada in their campaign strategies.

Growing Latinx voting bloc in North Carolina 

National anti-abortion groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life of America have notably not focused on Nevada in their campaign strategies.

In North Carolina many Democrats are campaigning in opposition to a 12-week abortion ban that the Republican-majority legislature passed last year after overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.

In a high-profile race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein faces Republican opponent Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has previously said he believes “there is no compromise on abortion,” according to NC Newsline. The lieutenant governor is now facing calls to withdraw from the race over comments made on a pornography website years ago, and Stein has started racking up endorsements from prominent state Republicans.

Iliana Santillan, a political organizer who supports abortion rights, has focused on mobilizing Latinos, a growing voting bloc in the state. The executive director of progressive nonprofit El Pueblo and its political sister group La Fuerza NC told States Newsroom she’s talked to many young women motivated to secure their own reproductive rights, including her college-age daughter. She said the Latinx community faces additional reproductive care barriers such as language and transportation, with undocumented immigrants scared to cross state lines without a driver’s license.

Santillan also said there’s a misconception that all Latinos are against abortion because they’re Catholic, when in reality opposition to abortion skews among older voters.

“With older folks, the messaging that we’ve tested that has worked is: ‘We don’t want politicians to have a say in what we do with our bodies,’” Santillan said.

Motivated voters in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is the largest swing state and considered essential to win the White House.

In a poll conducted this month by Spotlight PA and MassINC Polling Group, abortion ranked as the fifth most-important concern in the presidential race for likely voters, with 49% naming it as among their top issues.

The issue is far more important to Democrats, however, with 85% calling it a top issue compared with 17% of Republicans. Among those who aren’t registered with either major party, 49% called it a top issue.

In 2022, voters surprised pundits by sending enough Democrats to the state House to flip it blue. Voters were responding to the Dobbs decision, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro told Pennsylvania Capital-Star at a recent Harris campaign event.

Shapiro also won in 2022, and so far his administration has supported over-the-counter birth control pills and ended the state’s contract with a network of anti-abortion counseling centers. He said his administration would not defend a current state law that prohibits state Medicaid funding from being used for abortions.

Abortion isn’t protected under Pennsylvania’s state constitution, but it remains legal up to 24 weeks’ gestation, and clinics there have seen an influx of out-of-state patients.

Wisconsin abortion services resume

After more than a year without abortion access, reproductive health clinics in Wisconsin resumed abortion services in September 2023, shortly after a judge ruled that the 1849 state law that had widely been interpreted as an abortion ban, applied to feticide and not abortion. A state Supreme Court race a few months earlier saw Justice Janet Protasiewicz win in a landslide after campaigning on reproductive freedom.

Seven months later when Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher announced his resignation, Lyerly threw her hat in the ring, running as the only Democrat in the 8th District. She now faces businessman Tony Wied. Although in the past it was considered a swing district, it has leaned conservative in recent election cycles. With the redrawn maps and national support, Lyerly said it’s a competitive race.

“We have the potential to really fix, not just reproductive health care, but health care,” Lyerly told States Newsroom. “Bring the stories of our patients forward and help our colleagues understand, build those coalitions and help to gain consensus that’s going to drive forward health care reform in this country.”

Wied’s campaign website does not mention abortion or his policy proposals related to health care, though the words “Trump-endorsed” appear prominently and abundantly throughout the site. Wied hasn’t said much about the issue beyond it should be a state issue, but the two are scheduled to debate this Friday night. His campaign declined an interview.

Currently the only OB-GYNs who serve in Congress oppose abortion. If Lyerly wins in November, she would not only change that (potentially alongside Minnesota Sen. Kelly Morrison) but also could help flip party control in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most Wisconsin voters oppose criminalizing abortion before fetal viability, according to a poll this year by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation.

Patricia McFarland, 76, knows what it’s like to live without abortion access. For more than 50 years, the retired college teacher kept her pre-Roe abortion a secret, having grown up in a conservative Irish Catholic family like many of her suburban Milwaukee neighbors.

McFarland told States Newsroom she has been politically active most of her life, but the Dobbs ruling dredged up the physical and emotional trauma from the illegal procedure she had alone in Mexico City. Now, McFarland rarely leaves home without her “Roe Roe Roe Your Vote” button, engaging anyone who will talk to her about the dangers of criminalizing pregnancy.

The mother and grandmother said she’s been canvassing and doing informational sessions with her activist group the PERSISTers, as well as the League of Women Voters. As she has warned fellow Wisconsities about the federal power over their reproductive freedom, she said the enthusiasm for abortion rights in her state is palpable.

“For women my age,” McFarland said, “we don’t want our grandchildren to lose their ability to decide when to become a mother.”

Georgia Recorder’s Jill Nolin contributed to this report.

A youngster holds up a pro-union sign during a break between speeches at Labor Fest in Milwaukee Monday. Both presidential candidates are trying to appeal to union members. (Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country. 

Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.

On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for LaborFest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.

He had planned to vote for President Joe Biden for a second term in office, but when the Democratic Party pivoted to Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate, he pivoted as well. “We need somebody to help the middle people,” he said, “so they can advance, get a little bit better than what we are now.”

Campos dismisses the notion that the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is a pro-worker candidate despite Trump’s populist appeal that grabbed a slice of the working class electorate in 2016.

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s ignorant. He’s a rich man, he gets his way. That’s not what this country is about.”

As the Nov. 5 presidential election nears, Democrats are counting on union workers to deliver voters, particularly in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada where unions have remained an influential bloc, even as their strength has declined over the decades.

Many labor union leaders say they’re working as hard as they ever have to oppose Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and elect Vice President Kamala Harris. The AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions that range from Major League Baseball players to firefighters to workers in the food industry, has endorsed Harris.

A growing share of rank-and-file union members, however, have been less likely to follow their leadership — some of them among Trump’s base.

“It has to be recognized that union members are not monolithic in terms of the party they support,” said Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University. “Many unions have 30, 40, maybe 50% or more of their members who either are registered Republicans or are going to support Donald Trump in this election.”

Last week, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien announced the union’s executive council would not endorse either ticket and cited the support of a majority of his members for Trump. (The Teamsters aren’t part of the AFL-CIO).

Other union leaders insist that O’Brien is an outlier.

Nick Webber, a political organizer for the North American Building Trades Unions, said, “It’s unprecedented the amount of interest in people in getting involved” as he marshals  union canvassers this fall for the Democratic national ticket. He said in his conversations he’s hearing union members say “not only, ‘am I going to be voting,’ and [that they’re] tuned in, but ‘how can I get involved’ and ‘doing my part.’”

Appeals to steel and culinary workers

When Biden dropped out July 21, the national executive council of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO endorsed Harris the next day “because we knew that the administration that has been fighting for working people for the last three and a half years, we know what they’ve delivered, and we knew that her record spoke for itself,” said Liz Shuler, national AFL-CIO president, in an interview with NC Newsline.

But the Trump campaign is continuing to try to reach union voters, even as union leaders argue his record as president and his rhetoric — such as suggesting in a conversation with Elon Musk that employers should fire strikers — should make him unacceptable.

In an appeal to United Steelworkers, the most powerful union in western Pennsylvania, Trump said in January he would block a potential acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel.

Nevertheless the union endorsed Biden, who said in a visit in April he also opposed the sale. Both he and Harris reiterated that stance during a Labor Day visit to Pittsburgh. “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain in American hands,” Harris said.

In Nevada, Trump held a rally in June where he proposed ending federal taxes on tipped income — an appeal aimed at the workers in the state’s largest industry, hotel-casinos.

Harris adopted the no-tax-on-tips position as well in a visit in August, a day after the powerful Culinary Workers Local Union 226, endorsed her. The union reports that its 60,000 members are 55% women and 60% immigrants.

In a return visit in August, Trump suggested his “no tax on tips” position would draw Culinary members’ support — “A lot of them are voting for us, I can tell you that,” he said.

But the union responded by doubling down on its support for Harris, who on a visit months before had celebrated the union’s successful contract negotiations with the Las Vegas Strip’s largest gambling-resort corporations.

“Kamala Harris has promised to raise the minimum wage for all workers — including tipped workers — and eliminate tax on tips,” said Culinary Vice President Leain Vashon. Vashon said Trump didn’t help tipped workers while he was president, so “Why would we trust him? Kamala has a plan, Trump has a slogan.”

Making the case

For most union leaders, the case for Harris is the stark contrast they see between Trump’s record in the White House from 2016 to 2020 and that of his successor.

“When you talk about the politics of what’s at stake in this election, it’s very clear,” said Kent Miller, president and business manager for the Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the 2022 bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with only Democratic votes, opened the sluices to fund a range of investments in roads and bridges, clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure.

The programs include strong incentives for union labor and for the enrollment of new apprentices in training programs operated by unions and their employers.

Larry Davis, a Michigan United Auto Workers local president, said Biden-Harris administration policies helped boost the auto industry.

“I can just go from Detroit-Hamtramck, [which was] on the brink of closing, and now you have over 3,000 almost 4,000 workers in there now,” Davis said.

But the messages unions have been pushing about manufacturing growth, the infrastructure advances and jobs — even unemployment rates that have fallen to just over 4% nationally and 3% or lower in states such as Wisconsin — have been slow to resonate with voters who are focused on higher prices resulting from supply chain shortages.

“Part of that is the investment is still in the works,” said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Minnesota. “It was slow to be distributed, and it depended largely on state and local government taking it up and creating jobs. It’s possible some people haven’t felt the full impact.”

Jones also suggests there may have been inadequate messaging from the administration — something that unions are trying to make up for in their member outreach.

Beyond what Miller and other union leaders see as those bread-and-butter accomplishments are other policy stakes in who holds the White House, such as the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board and who holds the post of general counsel, the principal architect of the agency’s legal perspective.

Those differences further underscore what most union leaders see as a sharp distinction between the two tickets. “We’ve seen both these movies before,” said Webber of the electrical workers union.

Under the Trump administration the NLRB veered to positions less favorable to unions, Miller observed. Under Biden, it has issued more decisions that have supported union positions.

How much does Trump appeal?

Can the former president succeed in once again carving out some support among union voters?

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all previously reliable Democratic states with strong union political involvement, famously flipped to Trump by narrow margins in 2016, leading to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s defeat that year. All three flipped back to help carry Biden to victory against Trump in 2020.

Jones said Trump’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2016 — enacted under Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993 — “helped him among a certain demographic in 2016” — primarily working class white men from rural and small town regions.

When Teamsters President O’Brien announced the union wouldn’t make an endorsement this year, the union released a poll of rank-and-file members that found nearly 60% support for Trump compared to 31% for Harris. The union said the survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.

O’Brien’s announcement followed his precedent-breaking speech to the Republican National Convention in July, where he called Trump “one tough SOB,” proclaimed a willingness to work with either political party and attacked business lobbies and corporations.

“I think he feels that at least half of his members are Trump supporters,” said Clark, the Penn State professor, in an interview before the non-endorsement announcement. “And while I think he recognizes that Biden has been very pro-labor, you know, politically, I think he felt a need to sort of send a message to his members that he hears them.”

The outcome opened up a rift in the union, however. Within hours of O’Brien’s announcement, local, state and regional Teamsters bodies representing at least 500,000 members of the 1.3 million-member union endorsed Harris, including groups  in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.

The pro-Harris Teamsters highlighted Biden’s role in signing legislation, included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, that shored up the union’s Central States Pension Fund. The fund faced insolvency by 2026 after years of underfunding.

In a statement, Bill Carroll, president of the union’s Council 39, representing about 15,000 Wisconsin Teamsters, said Harris would also build on Biden’s pro-union record. “In contrast, Donald Trump tried to gut workers’ rights as president by appointing union busters to the NLRB and advocating for national right-to-work,” Carroll said. “Trump’s project 2025 would go even further, attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to organize.”

The labor-related provisions in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document — billed as a blueprint for the next Republican White House — include proposals that experts have said would eliminate public sector unions nationwide, make forming private sector unions more difficult and allow states to opt out of federal labor laws. Other proposals would reduce federal protections for workers whether unionized or not.

Union messaging to members has emphasized the document and its ties to Trump, despite his repeated disavowal of the agenda and claims of ignorance about its contents.

“It is absolutely his plan,” the AFL-CIO’s Shuler told NC Newsline. “He’s had over 100 former administration officials and the Heritage Foundation basically writing the blueprint for his next term, which would eliminate unions as we know it.”

Reaching out to members

Union leaders say they’re trying to make sure their members are seeing the campaign the way they see it.

In Nevada, where the Culinary’s canvassing and get-out-the-vote effort is regarded as one of the state’s most formidable, the union boasts that during the 2022 campaign cycle it knocked on 1 million doors.

This year, UNITE HERE says it is once again mobilizing its members and plans to knock on more than 3 million doors in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan “to ensure that Kamala Harris wins the presidency.”

In Wisconsin, the Laborers are building political messaging into a union project to engage members more closely, “connecting union members with other union members,” Miller said, to explain how negotiations affect wages and health and retirement benefits, as well as the importance of increasing union representation.

“We’re a jobs club,” Miller said. The message to the union members, he adds, is that “at the end of the day it’s everybody’s right to decide who to vote for — but we want to let you guys know these are the issues at stake in this upcoming election.”

Experienced union members are holding one-on-one conversations, particularly with newer and younger members. “We’re not just doing phone calls, we’re doing job site visits, and member-to-member doing doors,” Miller said.

Webber’s work with the building trades group is similar. “We’ve been doing a lot of reaching out and making sure to have those conversations,” he said — on job sites and during union meetings.

The message: “These jobs don’t come out of thin air,” Webber says. “There’s been strategic, intentional investment for a need in the community.”

The communications don’t just focus on other union members, either, he said. “You need to be sure people on the periphery of the union hear [the message],” said Webber. “Union household members are a huge part of these conversations — a partner, a spouse or child.”

On Monday, the United Auto Workers union unveiled a national YouTube video aimed directly at members who might still see Trump through the lens of his attacks on NAFTA in his first presidential campaign.

The UAW has endorsed Harris. In the 3 1/2-minute video, UAW President Shawn Fain finds both Democrats and Republicans culpable for NAFTA and the factory closings over the quarter-century since it was enacted. In 2016, Fain says, “All of that pain had to go somewhere. And for a lot of working-class people, it went to voting for Donald Trump.”

The video, however, portrays Trump as a con man, highlighting his 2017 tax cut as favoring the wealthy and the USMCA, the trade law Trump enacted, as no better than NAFTA, which it replaced.

While emphasizing that “both parties have done harm to the working class,” Fain said that under Biden and Harris, “we’ve seen the tide starting to turn.”

Under Biden there’s been “more manufacturing investment in this country than at any point in my lifetime,” he says, and under Harris, “the Democratic Party is getting back to its roots.”

Paula Uhing is president of the local Steelworkers union at a suburban Milwaukee factory. She’s another enthusiastic Harris supporter, but said she and other labor leaders “know that we still have a lot of work to do” to pull more union voters behind the vice president.

“We have so many union members that vote against their own interests,” Uhing said. “It’s just because they’re not paying attention, they’re not listening to the right people.”

She describes herself as “optimistically cautious,” though. One reason has been some of the conversations she’s had with coworkers.

“There are people at work who are not necessarily turning away from the Republican Party altogether, but they are considering the Democratic ticket,” Uhing said. “They’re looking at it in a completely different way than they did last cycle, which is a good thing.”

Kim Lyons, Pennsylvania Capital-Star; Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current; Rob Schofield, NC Newsline; and Andrew Roth, for Michigan Advance, contributed reporting for this story.

Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, left, wears a bandage to cover his wound from a July 13 assassination attempt as he attends the Republican National Convention with his vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance. Trump will hold another rally at the site where the assassination attempt took place. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, is slated to speak in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5 at the site of the first assassination attempt against him, his campaign announced Wednesday.

Trump will return to the Butler Farm Show, where law enforcement officials say 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks killed one rallygoer, injured two others and shot Trump’s ear on July 13. The attack prompted a slew of federal probes as well as a bipartisan congressional task force to investigate.

The imminent rally also comes as authorities investigate a second suspected assassination attempt against Trump. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh with attempting to kill Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The Secret Service has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks regarding the former president’s security. At a press briefing last week, the federal agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that it failed to protect Trump during the Butler rally.

Days after the first assassination attempt, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would “be going back to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a big and beautiful rally, honoring the soul of our beloved firefighting hero, Corey, and those brave patriots injured,” adding “what a day it will be — fight, fight, fight!”

The Trump campaign said the former president will “honor the memory of Corey Comperatore, who heroically sacrificed his life to shield his wife and daughters from the bullets on that terrible day,” per the Wednesday announcement.

Trump is also set to recognize the two rallygoers who were wounded in the shooting: David Dutch and James Copenhaver.

Trump will also “express his deep gratitude to law enforcement and first responders, and thank the entire community for their outpouring of love and support in the wake of the attack,” his campaign added.

Kristie Hilliard opened her new shop, Kristie Kandies, in downtown Rocky Mount, N.C., after getting tired of her factory job at the local Pfizer plant. She’s seen a steady flow of customers, but says she’s doesn’t think either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would change her economic fortunes. (Kevin Hardy/Stateline)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — The signs on the empty historic buildings envision an urban utopia of sorts, complete with street cafes, bustling bike lanes and a grocery co-op.

“IMAGINE What Could Be Here,” gushes one sign outside the empty, Neoclassical post office. “IMAGINE! A Vibrant Downtown,” reads another mounted on the glass front of a long-ago closed drug store.

In a place like Rocky Mount, North Carolina, it’s not such a stretch: Just across the street, white-collar workers peck away at laptops and sip lattes at a bright coffee bar lined with dozens of potted tropical plants. A few blocks away, a mammoth events center routinely brings in thousands of visitors from across the country. And alongside a quiet river nearby, a meticulously redeveloped cotton mill would be the envy of any American city, with its modern breweries, restaurants and loft living.

An industrial community long in decline, Rocky Mount is slowly building itself back. But in this city of about 54,000, sharply divided by race and class, many residents struggle to cover the basic costs of groceries, housing and child care.

North Carolina reflects the duality of the American economy: Unemployment is low, jobs are increasing and businesses are opening new factories. But high housing and food costs have squeezed middle-class residents despite the gains of rising wages.

“The economy stinks,” said Tameika Horne, who owns an ice cream and dessert shop in Rocky Mount.

Her ingredient prices have skyrocketed, she said, but she can’t continuously raise prices on ice cream cones or funnel cakes. She said last month was her slowest ever, with only $2,000 in sales.

It’s not just the slow sales at her store: Only a few years ago, she paid $700 a month to rent a three-bedroom apartment. Now, her similarly sized rental home costs her $1,350 a month.

Aside from the ice cream shop, Horne also runs a cleaning business with her family and just started a job delivering packages for FedEx.

“It’s just hard right now,” she said.

The economy, a top issue for voters during any election, is particularly important this presidential cycle: Prices of necessities such as groceries aren’t rising as fast as they were, but years of post-pandemic inflation have soured voter attitudes.

And across the country, millions of families are struggling with rising housing costs. In four of the seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — more than half of tenant families spend 30% or more of their income on rent and utilities, according to the 2023 American Community Survey.

In North Carolina, voter anxiety about the soaring rents and grocery bills could tip the scales.

“In terms of its political influence, it’s not actually your personal financial situation that is important, it’s your vision of the national economy,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “So if I get a raise, I tend to credit myself. If I see higher prices, I tend to blame the government or the current situation.”

Around the corner from Horne’s ice cream store in downtown Rocky Mount, Kristie Hilliard greets a steady flow of customers to her new shop, Kristie Kandies. An armed cop, a nurse in scrubs and waist-high kids trickle in to grab a sweet treat.

After getting tired of her manufacturing job at the local Pfizer plant, Hilliard started making confections at home. As her following grew, she got a concession trailer and now has a storefront selling candied grapes, plums, kiwis and pickles.

Hilliard’s treats have attracted attention on social media, causing some buyers to drive in from as far away as Pennsylvania, she said.

A Democrat, she said she still hadn’t made up her mind on the presidential race. But she doesn’t believe either a Harris or a Trump administration would drastically change much for her business.

“They ain’t doing nothing for me now,” she said. “So, what would change?”

A community divided looks to the future

About 60 miles northeast of the state capital, Rocky Mount lies between the prosperous Research Triangle area and North Carolina’s scenic beach communities.

Railroad tracks and a county line slice through the middle of downtown. On the one side is the majority Black and lower-income Edgecombe County. On the other, the more prosperous and whiter Nash County.

While some officials say long-standing attitudes centered on division are fading, the county line has for decades provided a clear delineation of class, race and politics.

Edgecombe County is a Democratic stronghold, but the more populous Nash County is a bellwether of sorts. It was among the 10 closest of North Carolina’s 100 counties in the last presidential election, and one being closely watched this cycle. With 51,774 ballots cast, President Joe Biden took Nash County by 120 votes.

Around Rocky Mount’s downtown area, stately red brick churches and banks line the wide streets. But just a few blocks away, weeds overtake vacant lots, glass is smashed out of abandoned buildings, and razor wire tops the fencing of no-credit-needed car lots and used tire shops.

While the nearby Raleigh metro area has experienced explosive suburban growth, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson said his community has seen an erosion of its middle class with the loss of corporate headquarters and factory jobs.

But he’s optimistic.

Young business owners are investing in downtown. Industries with operations in the Raleigh area are moving east. And both Republicans and Democrats just celebrated the news that Natron Energy plans to build a $1.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant nearby that will employ more than 1,000 people.

“We’ve got a lot of great things that are happening,” the mayor said. “But the key is, how do you build and retain a middle class? Because that’s who does the living and the dying and the investing in a community.”

The mayor’s position is nonpartisan, but Roberson is a Republican who in 2022 ran in the Republican primary for a congressional seat here. This election, however, is a difficult one for him.

Roberson said the economy and his financial position were unquestionably better during Trump’s term, but the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the chaos of the last Trump presidency make him hard to support. At the same time, Roberson worries about Harris’ economic policies; he believes the current administration has accelerated inflation by pumping too much money into the economy.

“At some levels, it feels like I’m voting for somebody who wants to either be a dictator or somebody who wants to create a socialist state,” Roberson said. “And I’m not in either place.”

‘Nobody is immune’

In North Carolina and other swing states, Trump’s television ads hammer the vice president over high prices and “Bidenomics.”

Nash County Republican Party volunteer Yvonne McLeod said the economy, along with immigration, are the top concerns locally. Businesses still struggle to hire, rents have soared and food prices are still up, she said.

“Economically, we’re hurting,” she said.

Democrats must be honest about the financial pressures facing voters, said Cassandra Conover, a former Virginia prosecutor who now leads the Nash County Democratic Party. She noted that Harris ads running in North Carolina speak directly to middle-class concerns.

“Nobody is immune from what’s going on,” Conover said. “She’s telling all of us who are hurting, ‘I know, and we’re working for you.’”

Low-wage states with cheap housing dominated the post-pandemic jobs boom

Polling has shown voters are sour on the economy, with 63% saying the economy was on the wrong track in a Harvard-CAPS-Harris poll released this month. Republicans take a far dimmer view than Democrats.

“From past experience, we would expect Harris to inherit some of the blame or credit for the current economy, but so far in the polls, I would say there has been a surprising willingness of voters to not extend the blame for inflation that they had for Joe Biden onto Kamala Harris,” said Grossmann, the Michigan State University professor.

Housing anxiety

Housing costs have outstripped income gains in the past two decades, but those challenges have intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand increased, construction costs soared and interest rates spiked.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a buyer or a renter,” said Molly Boesel, an economist at CoreLogic, a financial services information company. “You’re seeing your housing costs increase.”

Affordability is “the No. 1 issue” among voters in Nevada this year, said Mario Arias, the Nevada director of the Forward Party, a centrist political party founded by former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang.

A resident of the Las Vegas area, 30-year-old Arias said housing is his biggest financial concern. Throngs of Californians have moved into Nevada to lower their housing costs, but it’s driven up costs for everyone else, he said.

“If you want to get out of being a renter, you have to be in not just a good financial situation, but in a very stable financial situation,” he said.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week for the first time in four years, whichcouldopen the housing market to more homebuyers as mortgage rates ease in the coming months.

The Biden administration has proposed several housing-related policies, including incentives to loosen zoning regulations and capping rent increases from corporate landlords. Harris has announced a proposal to provide up to $25,000 in housing assistance for a down payment to some potential first-time homeowners and promised tax incentives that she say’s would lead to 3 million more housing units by the end of her first term, if she’s elected.

Trump has not waded far into the details of how he would address the affordability issue in a second term. He has said he plans to bring down prices by barring immigrants in the country without legal authorization from getting mortgages. But his proposed immigration policies could further reduce the labor force for building homes. Previously, Trump’s administration talked about trying to cut state and local housing regulations, and it suspended federal regulations on fair housing.

In North Carolina, more than a quarter of the state’s households are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. It’s particularly challenging for renters, nearly half of which are cost burdened, according to the North Carolina Housing Coalition, a nonprofit affordable housing organization.

Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, housing policy director at the coalition, noted that the federal government’s calculation of fair market rent in North Carolina has shot up 14% in just one year — and 38% over the past five years.

“So unless everybody and their mama’s getting 14 to 20 to 38% raises, the math begins to not math,” she said.

It’s a familiar challenge in every swing state.

Rent is eating up a greater share of tenants’ income in almost every state

Wendy Winston, a middle school math teacher in Grand Rapids Michigan, said that though no one political candidate is responsible for the state of the economy, the cost of groceries and housing is hard to ignore.

“I don’t think the economy is terrible. It is sometimes difficult to make ends meet,” Winston said. “I don’t believe that it’s the fault of the government or policies of the government. I feel like it’s the individual corporations trying to make profit off the backs of the middle class.”

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Grand Rapids is about $1,550 a month, according to rental site Apartments.com. Though Michigan ranks fairly average compared with other states for rent prices, the state saw some of the steepest rent increases in the country in recent years, and wages have not kept up. Residents unable to rent new, “luxury” apartments find themselves short of options for places they can afford.

“It’s not just cost, it’s availability,” Winston said. “There are a lot of new housing developments. Apartments and condos and things are being built, but I’m priced out of them. And I have a college degree, so I don’t think that’s helping our families.”

Hoping for revival

Back in North Carolina, near the banks of the Tar River, Rocky Mount Mills has a healthy waiting list for the apartments and the revamped homes it rents.

A former cotton mill built and once operated by slave labor, the campus closed in 1996, reopened in 2015 after a $75 million renovation, and is now home to breweries, restaurants and dozens of high-end apartments.

Chapel Hill native and entrepreneur Cameron Schulz never had Rocky Mount on his radar. But the development’s brewery incubator helped him launch HopFly Brewing Co., now one of the state’s largest self-distributing breweries.

After outgrowing its original space, HopFly relocated to Charlotte, but still operates a taproom in Rocky Mount. The Mills project has reinvigorated the city, Schulz said.

“Rocky Mount’s got one of the most beautiful, quintessential downtown strips that I’ve ever seen anywhere,” he said. “We’ve just got to fill it up with cool places to go, and people to go into those places.”

Main Street suffered for decades after the arrival of malls and a highway bypass. Over at Davis Furniture Company, two employees keep watch over an empty storeroom of sofas, beds and home decor.

Co-owner Melanie Davis said business has been good, though she believes customers are anxious about the presidential election. Pointing down the sidewalk to new restaurants and some loft apartments overlooking the railroad tracks, Davis said she’s bullish on the trajectory of downtown.

“I do feel like we’re on an upswing,” she said.

Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols contributed reporting.

Attendees cheer during a Missourians for Constitutional Freedom rally after the campaign turned in more than 380,000 signatures for its initiative petition to enshrine abortion rights in Missouri’s constitution Friday morning (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Four lawsuits. Several failed attempts to raise the threshold to pass constitutional amendments. One unprecedented attempt to decertify a ballot measure. 

Despite this succession of failed GOP efforts to torpedo Amendment 3 over the past 18 months, abortion will remain on Missouri’s Nov. 5 ballot. 

“What a long strange trip it’s been,” said Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court chief justice and dean emeritus at St. Louis University School of Law, quoting Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. 

In the 18 months since the amendment, which would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability, was proposed as an initiative petition, it has faced a “minefield of ballot litigation” that ended earlier this month when the state’s highest court ruled the measure must stay on the ballot, Wolff said.

On June 24, 2022, Missouri became the first state in the country to ban abortions in response to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling triggered a state law banning all abortions with limited exceptions in cases of medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for victims or rape or incest. 

Since then, citizens in six states have voted to protect or increase abortion access, including in Kansas, Ohio and Michigan. Missouri is among 10 states where abortion will be on the ballot this year. 

Amendment 3 would legalize abortion until the point of fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, including birth control.

For anti-abortion lawmakers, “this is like the mega Super Bowl,” said James Harris, a longtime Republican political consultant.

He said litigation to drive up costs for proponents is advantageous, so lawsuits are par for the course. But the secretary of state’s effort to decertify the measure before the court cases concluded was unique.

While all the attempts were ultimately rebuffed by Missouri’s higher courts, they could foreshadow fights to come if Amendment 3 passes.

Sean Nicholson, a long-time progressive activist who has worked on multiple initiative petition campaigns, but is not involved with Amendment 3, called a circuit court ruling earlier this month that threatened to throw the measure off the ballot “some creative lawyering.”

“Nothing shocks me anymore in terms of what politicians are willing to do,” Nicholson said. “I think fundamentally they are terrified of a straight up or down vote on Amendment 3 and they’re going to pull out everything they can to avoid the consequences of voters having their say.”

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, is among the anti-abortion activists who sued to keep Amendment 3 off the ballot. She said regardless of what happens in November, there’s a long road ahead.

“This is not the end all be all,” Coleman said. “And I think you will see efforts, win or lose, for Missourians to get another say in this.” 

In the courts

In March 2023, 11 iterations of what’s now Amendment 3 were filed by Dr. Anna Fitz-James on behalf of the coalition behind the campaign. The political maneuvering by the state’s Republican elected officials aimed at keeping the abortion-rights amendment off the ballot began almost immediately.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey refused to accept State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s fiscal note summary estimating the potential public cost of the amendment. Bailey, who thought the estimate  should be about $6.9 trillion, attempted to force Fitzpatrick to alter his estimate of $51,000.

By the time Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ordered Bailey to certify the measure with Fitzpatrick’s estimate, the initial certification process, which is supposed to take no more than 54 days, had already taken nearly double that. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Fitzpatrick.

Shortly after, Amendment 3 backers sued Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft over the ballot summary language he drafted, which would have asked Missourians, in part, if they wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.” 

Beetem ruled in September 2023 that Ashcroft’s language was “problematic” and inaccurate. 

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, officially kicked-off signature gathering efforts in January, blaming the previous months of litigation for the delay. 

Despite a May deadline to gather more than 171,000 signatures from Missourians across six of the eight congressional districts, the campaign ultimately filed more than 380,000 signatures with the secretary of state’s office. 

This was despite a “decline to sign” campaign, the distribution of fliers urging Missourians to withdraw their signatures and unsubstantiated warnings that signing the initiative could result in identity theft. 

At the same time, GOP lawmakers failed to pass one of their top priorities — legislation raising the threshold to pass initiative petitions — due in part to a record-breaking filibuster by Senate Democrats.

Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said Missouri has been a battleground for attacks on the initiative process. 

“We’ve seen an escalation of attacks to the ballot measure process and politicians trying to change the rules of the game to prevent citizens from putting these issues on the ballot,” she said. “Like reproductive freedom.”

Shortly after Ashcroft certified the measure for the ballot in mid-August, he posted “fair ballot language” to his official website that mirrored the ballot language rejected by the courts in 2023. Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker ruled the description was “unfair, inaccurate, insufficient and misleading.” 

Ashcroft was ordered to replace his language with the court’s language. 

The final effort to keep Amendment 3 off the ballot began in late August, when a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion lawmakers and activists claimed the initiative petition failed to follow a number of laws. 

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh sided with the plaintiffs, ruling the proposal failed “to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent.”

“I do think the circuit court decision is an important inflection point for the legislature to have a policy discussion in [2025] about when all of these measures are putting umpteen things into the constitution which then directly or indirectly invalidate a statute,” James said. “Should the voter clearly know that, and has it been kind of loosy-goosy?”

The Supreme Court took an expedited appeal of Limbaugh’s ruling. But Ashcroft announced he was decertifying the measure, an unprecedented attempt to rescind his previous decision that the measure had met the requirements to be on the ballot.

The next day, the Supreme Court judges said Ashcroft missed his statutory deadline to change his mind and they allowed the measure to stay on the ballot in a narrow 4-3 vote.

“The litigation, although highly charged, tends to wring out the politics of it and get down to what is legally required and how to apply that,” Wolff said, later adding: “It’s still not going to be easy to pass a constitutional amendment in the future, but I think we have some greater clarity about the process going forward.”

Alice Clapman, senior counsel for voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice — a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on democracy issues — said Ashcroft “acted outside the law” when he decertified the ballot initiative.

It was an example of a series of “particularly brazen” attempts to stop abortion ballot initiatives that reflect a much broader pattern seen across the United States, she said. 

“In a way these tactics to block abortion rights ballot initiatives are really doubling down on the repressive nature of abortion restrictions,” Clapman said. 

Ashcroft called Clapman’s characterization of him “patently false,” saying his decision was within reason until the Supreme Court decided otherwise.

“The court did not follow state statute to stop it from going to the ballot,” he said. “I stepped in and did what the court illegally failed to do.”

Ashcroft added that he was “disheartened” by the rulings, but he expects if Amendment 3 passes, “some people will celebrate, and some people will act in the very same way they did in 1973 when Roe v Wade passed. They will work and act to make sure that women and children are protected.”

Missouri isn’t the only state to have a fight over an abortion amendment play out in new ways. 

In Florida, state police have knocked on voters’ doors to question them about signing a petition to restore abortion rights in their state. A state health care agency also created a website denouncing the amendment, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been particularly vocal in his opposition to it.

In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state’s decision to keep an abortion amendment off the ballot, ruling that the campaign behind the initiative did not submit the correct paperwork on time.

If voters approve Amendment 3, Missouri could be the first state to overturn a statewide ban by the vote of the people. 

2 years after Missouri banned abortion, navigating access still involves fear, confusion

GOP lawmakers over the last decade passed laws targeting abortion providers in order to make obtaining an abortion more difficult. Those laws included mandatory pelvic exams for medication abortions and 72-hour waiting period between the initial appointment and an abortion.

A decade ago, more than 5,000 abortions were performed in the state, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. But by 2020, that number dropped to 167 as providers closed. Between the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 through March 2024, there were 64 abortions under the state’s emergency exemption, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

Meanwhile, a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group, found that in 2023, 8,710 Missourians traveled to Illinois and 2,860 Missourians went to Kansas for the procedure, which remains legal in both states. 

What’s next

Polling has remained favorable for Amendment 3. 

An Emerson College poll found 58% of those surveyed support Amendment 3, with 30% opposed. The most recent SLU/YouGov Poll found that 52% supported the amendment and 34% opposed.

State Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat from Olivette and a long-time advocate for abortion rights, said it’s important to keep in mind Missouri’s recent past.

“The legislature has a history of overturning the vote of the people,” she said.

As far back as 1940, when Missourians approved an initiative for a nonpartisan court plan to select appellate judges, the legislature put a proposition on the ballot two years later hoping to repeal it. Voters rejected the attempt. 

In 2010, voters approved a new statute banning puppy mills by regulating dog breeders. The next year, legislation changed key provisions, such as removing the cap on the number of dogs allowed per breeder, undoing the citizen-led statutory change.

In 2018, Missourians passed a citizen-led amendment that would have required legislative districts be drawn to ensure partisan fairness. This amendment, known as “Clean Missouri,” was repealed two years later through a legislature-proposed amendment.

In 2020, Missouri voters approved Medicaid expansion. Lawmakers refused to fund it until the Missouri Supreme Court ruled they had no choice. 

If Amendment 3 passes, McCreery predicted, Republican lawmakers will try something similar to what happened with Medicaid expansion, “but on steroids.”

“I expect shenanigans moving forward,” she said.

Wolff said lawmakers may also attempt to legislate around the issue. Even though parental consent is not directly mentioned in the amendment, lawmakers could try to rewrite laws requiring it. 

Wolff added that he’s never seen such a unified effort by elected officials to stop a ballot measure. Even the heavily-opposed embryonic stem cell research amendment of 2006 didn’t face such pushback.

But lawmakers limited the kinds of research that could be conducted under the stem cell amendment. Ultimately, those restrictions made it impossible for researchers to move forward. 

“(Amendment 3) is going to be harder to chip around about,” Wolff said. “But they’ll be creative. They’ve already been quite creative, so they will continue. That’s what a democratic republic will give you.”

Coleman said if the amendment passes, it will not be the last time Missourians vote on abortion, adding that an effort similar to the one that undid Clean Missouri is likely. 

“The reason why you’ve seen such passion in the pro-life movement or from elected officials who are pro-life is because that reflects the passion of Missouri citizens who are pro-life,” Coleman said. “Which is to do anything and everything to protect the most vulnerable.”

Wolff agreed that this won’t be the end. 

“There’s nothing permanent,” Wolff said, “in the people’s constitution.”

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia. A handful of issues and groups of voters in battleground states could decide the race. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

It’s been a wild few months in the presidential race: President Joe Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris captured the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and was targeted again at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite the historic lead-up to Election Day, the race has now settled into familiar territory: Much like 2020’s contest, top political strategists on both sides of the aisle expect control of the White House could come down to just a few thousand votes in a handful of battleground states.

“This is not going to be an election where you will see a landslide. It’s going to be won in the margins in six to seven swing states,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told a crowd of state lawmakers from across the country last month.

Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, shared the stage with Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign and advised him in the White House.

Unsurprisingly, the pair disagreed on much.

But while speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Kentucky, the two senior strategists framed the race similarly to the 2020 contest, when fewer than 50,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from an Electoral College tie.

“It is a different race. It has turned in very short time, but the issue set hasn’t changed at all,” Conway said. “And I think that’s what’s important here.”

Like last cycle, the two campaigns are pouring millions into Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In “The Deciders” series, States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, explores the political issues and groups of voters that could make the difference in those seven states and, consequentially, in the race for the White House.

Unsurprisingly, economic issues — namely, stubbornly high prices — are proving central for many voters across the swing states. But voters also are concerned about immigration, abortion access and the future of the Supreme Court.

Swing states prepare for a showdown over certifying votes in November

In states such as Michigan and Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, labor unions could prove instrumental for Harris after years of significant gains by organized labor.

In Georgia and North Carolina, Black voter turnout could make the difference, while Latino voters are closely divided in Nevada after helping propel Biden to victory there four years ago. In every swing state, campaigns are focused on all-important suburban voters.

The election’s outcome also could be shaped by the work of officials who have been debating who can vote and which votes should count since the mayhem of the last presidential contest.

Four years ago, a false narrative that questioned the security and integrity of elections took hold in some legislatures. New laws changed ballot-counting practices and made it more difficult to vote in many states, including swing states. In states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, there is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, local Republicans tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their duties if Trump loses again.

Fears that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain local elections.

With such a close race, voter turnout and motivation will be key in all the battleground states.

As in other swing states, North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes could hinge on how political independents vote, said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on many campaigns.

And those independents can be unpredictable in North Carolina: Their votes helped both Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Trump carry the state in the last two general elections.

“It’s the independents that are up for grabs, and they don’t mind splitting a ticket at all,” Wrenn said. “Ultimately, in the general election, that’s the key group.”

The economy

In every state this year, the economy is a central issue.

As Trump tries to fault Harris and Biden for the high costs of everyday living, polling shows voters blame Harris less for the situation than they did Biden — though likely voters profess more confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy.

For her part, Harris has unveiled plans to lower prices of rent, homebuying and groceries, arguing she will remain focused on the middle class from Day One, contrasting her ideas with what she characterizes as Trump’s catering to billionaires.

In Georgia, Republicans and Democrats alike have found success in recent statewide campaigns by highlighting similar kitchen table issues. After attending a Harris rally in Savannah last month, Georgia voter Sarah Damato said she doesn’t believe Trump will fight for the middle class.

At the event, the vice president told listeners she would lower costs by fighting corporate price-fixing and touted her proposal for a “care economy,” a set of progressive proposals including benefits for parents of newborns and credits for first-time homebuyers.

“Kamala Harris made it very evident today that the American family is the most important thing on her mind these days, and she’s going to make it easier for each one of us to have a brighter future,” Damato said.

Harris unveils plan to curb price gouging, boost child tax credit, tackle rent hikes

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican Party volunteer Sharon Buege said she supports the GOP ticket because she sees the race as a matter of “good versus evil.” Speaking outside a news conference by Trump running mate J.D. Vance, Buege said she opposed “the whole left agenda,” adding that her top issues in the race were border security, the economy, human trafficking, homelessness and “indoctrination” in public schools.

At that same news conference, a man who would only give his name as “John” said the economy and inflation mattered most: “I don’t need a reminder of why to support Trump. I can get that every time I go to the gas station or grocery store.”

Groups of voters

With Republicans looking to run up margins in rural parts of the battleground states and Democrats banking on big leads in cities, the suburbs remain pivotal.

In Georgia, diverse and growing suburbs have helped move the state from reliably red to purple.

In the state’s two largest suburban counties of Cobb and Gwinnett, Biden picked up more than 137,000 votes in 2020 over 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. The same year, Trump boosted his total by just under 32,000 votes over his 2016 performance.

The Trump campaign boasts a mighty in-state operation: nearly 15,000 volunteers signing up between mid-July and the end of August, nearly 300 events scheduled for September, and 4,000 neighborhood organizers and canvassers — known as Trump Force Captains — joining the cause in July and August.

But Team Harris says they are running the largest Georgia operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with more than 200 campaign staff in 28 offices. Harris’ recent visit to the more conservative south side of the state marked her 16th trip to Georgia since becoming vice president and her seventh trip this year.

Harris is hoping to fire up the young, diverse Democratic base, but her team also is hoping she can hang onto or expand on Biden’s coalition of older, affluent, educated and largely white suburbanites.

“Those are the people who are actually kind of pivotal and who will modify or change their behavior,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

“These people are largely Republicans, but they can’t bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump or for Republicans who are closely associated with him,” Bullock said.

Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs executive and political analyst, said the four suburban Philadelphia counties surrounding Pennsylvania’s largest city are key to winning that state. Once a Republican bastion, the so-called collar counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery have swung strongly in the other direction since 2016.

That complicates messaging for both campaigns, Ceisler said. Trump’s anti-abortion stance and Harris’ effort to back away from her earlier statements against fracking — both positions that appeal to rural and western Pennsylvania voters — are potential liabilities in suburbs.

Democrats have a 343,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania. But the state has been decided by narrow margins in the last two presidential elections.

“One of the weaknesses that Biden had as a candidate was he had weakening support among African American voters. And then Trump has actually done fairly well, particularly in some other states, like in Florida, with Latino voters,” Mallinson said, adding that Harris’ nomination changes the equation somewhat.

After Democrats seemingly all but wrote off Arizona for Biden, the contest there is proving more winnable for Harris. Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, but he had been hemorrhaging Latino support this year.

In the manufacturing-heavy upper Midwest, labor unions could prove consequential in not only persuading voters but also motivating them to the polls.

Biden was the first sitting president to visit a picket line when the United Auto Workers last year took on the “Big Three” Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — by going on strike. That effort led to significant increases in pay and benefits for workers.

The UAW, which in August announced a national campaign to motivate its 1 million active and retired members to vote for Harris, says its membership accounted for 9.2% of Biden’s 2020 votes in Michigan alone.

“To me, this election is real simple,” UAW president Shawn Fain told a crowd of about 15,000 people last month at a rally in Detroit for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “It’s about one question. It’s a question we made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?”

Political weaknesses

While Democrats are more motivated than when Biden was the presumptive nominee, they still face internal conflicts, the most high-profile of which has been about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Dee Sull, a Las Vegas attorney who works in immigration and family law, is a registered Democrat who said she would never vote for Trump. Yet she doesn’t really want to vote for Harris, leaving her “very torn” this election.

“I believe our foreign policy in Gaza is completely ridiculous. I’m very disturbed,” she said of U.S. military aid to Israel. “If we’re going to spend money, I want it spent on my kids here — on my neighbors’ kids here.”

Sull said both parties have silenced the voices of those who protest the death and destruction in Gaza. And she was irritated that Palestinian American activists were not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention last month.

Sull won’t sit out the election, but said she would prefer to vote for a third candidate with a viable shot at winning.

“Probably like a lot of Americans would if they had that opportunity,” she said.

For Trump, voters’ overwhelming support for abortion rights could prove a huge liability in swing states.

While Trump has wobbled in recent months on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, the Supreme Court justices he appointed dismantled abortion access across the country in 2022 — an unpopular position even in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio that since have voted to expand abortion rights.

In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood stopped offering abortions at its health clinics after the court’s Dobbs decision because of an 1849 “trigger” state law that immediately took effect. Wisconsin women lost all abortion services there for a year and a half, until a court re-interpreted the state law.

This summer’s shakeup has reset the race, said Amy Walter, publisher of The Cook Political Report, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections. So far, likely voters in the swing states view Harris more favorably than Biden, she said. But with Trump benefiting from an electorate skeptical of the state of the economy, the newsletter characterized the race as “a battle of inches.”

The campaigns both face a lot of voters who are disenchanted with politics altogether, or else unhappy with their options.

Amy Tarkanian, a conservative television commentator who once lauded Trump to national audiences and was chair of the Nevada State Republican Party in 2011-12, said she’s at “a complete loss” this year. She remains a Republican, even after the state party heavily criticized her when, two years ago, she endorsed a pair of Democratic candidates for state offices.

“I’m not happy, or necessarily sold on Kamala,” Tarkanian said. “… But I absolutely do not want to vote for Donald Trump.”

Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small, Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols and Jon King, Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson, NC Newsline’s Galen Bacharier, Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall and John Cole, Georgia Recorder’s Ross Williams, and Wisconsin Examiner’s Ruth Conniff and Henry Redman contributed reporting.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

The Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during an event Friday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is chiding GOP nominee Donald Trump for not agreeing to another presidential debate before voting ends Nov. 5, though he doesn’t appear inclined to change his mind.

“Let’s have another debate,” Harris, the Democratic candidate, said Sunday. “There’s more to talk about and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations that I think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies.”

Harris and Trump debated for the first time on Sept. 10, but so far the two campaigns haven’t reached agreement with another news organization to set up a second debate. Two days after their only debate so far, Trump declared he wouldn’t agree to another.

Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon released a written statement this weekend announcing that Harris agreed to a CNN debate on Oct. 23 and pressing Trump to do so as well.

“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate,” Dillon wrote. “It is the same format and setup as the CNN debate he attended and said he won in June, when he praised CNN’s moderators, rules, and ratings.”

Trump brushed that aside during a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, saying that “it’s just too late” since early and mail-in voting has already begun in some states.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden held their final debate on Oct. 22.

Four years before that, when Trump and Hillary Clinton were vying for the Oval Office, they debated on Sept. 26, Oct. 9 and Oct. 19.

In an attempt to nudge Trump toward debating, the Democratic National Committee has paid for mobile billboards calling him a “chicken” and showing him dressed up in a yellow chicken costume. Those billboards, as well as a second one trying to link him to Project 2025, will be in Pennsylvania on Monday evening ahead of a campaign stop.

DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman wrote in a statement about the chicken billboards that Trump had previously said he’d debate anytime, anyplace.

“The American people deserve another opportunity to hear Vice President Harris and Donald Trump lay out their starkly different visions for our country side-by-side before Election Day,” Rahman wrote. “Instead, Trump is busy hiding from the American people because he knows they’ll reject his Project 2025 agenda to hike taxes on the middle class, ban abortion nationwide, and use the federal government to assert virtually unchecked power over our daily lives.”

Harris and Trump, however, are both in talks with the CBS show “60 minutes” for detailed interviews that would air back-to-back on Oct. 7.

The vice presidential candidates are scheduled to debate on Oct. 1 in New York City, hosted by CBS. That will be the last debate of this cycle unless Trump changes his mind.

Trump, Harris, running mates in swing states

Campaign travel will continue to be a central focus for both Republicans and Democrats this week, with just over six weeks until voting wraps up.

Harris is expected to rally supporters in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday.

Trump will be in Savannah, Georgia on Tuesday to talk about his tax plans before heading to Mint Hill, North Carolina on Wednesday. He then has two stops scheduled in Michigan on Friday; the first in Walker and the second in Warren.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is expected to hold a campaign reception Tuesday in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, won’t be on Capitol Hill for the final in-session week before the election, but will be out on the campaign trail.

Vance is scheduled to be in Traverse City, Michigan on Wednesday before holding two stops in Georgia on Thursday and heading to Newton, Pennsylvania on Saturday.

ormer President Donald Trump walks to speak to the media after being found guilty following his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City. (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors Monday said the man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump at his private golf club in Florida stalked the GOP presidential nominee for a month and in a note offered $150,000 to anyone who could “finish the job,” according to a new court filing.

Federal prosecutors detailed how Ryan Routh left a handwritten note that criticized Trump’s policy in the Middle East, specifically ending U.S. involvement in the Iran nuclear deal.

“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” read the note, according to the court filing. “I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”

Prosecutors said cell phone records showed Routh was located near “Trump International and the former President’s residence at Mar-a-Lago” from Aug. 18 until Sept. 15 — the day of the attempted assassination.

Law enforcement officers also found in their search of Routh’s car, after he was detained, a “handwritten list of dates in August, September, and October 2024 and venues where the former President had appeared or was expected to be present,” according to the court filing.

The FBI is investigating the incident as an apparent assassination attempt, following the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump sustained an injury to his ear. Trump was not injured at his Florida golf club and the U.S. Secret Service confirmed that Routh did not fire his weapon. 

However, Florida’s Republican state Attorney General Ashley Moody is challenging the FBI’s jurisdiction as lead agency in the investigation.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, she argues that because Trump is a Florida resident, the Sunshine State “understandably desires to investigate violations of its own laws, including attempted murder.”

Moody also urged Wray that the FBI and Department of Justice not invoke U.S. code that would suspend state and local jurisdiction in a federal investigation, and instead allow Florida authorities to have access to evidence of the shooting.

“To be clear, I believe it would be a grave mistake for the federal government to invoke this provision, and I urge you to cooperate with the State’s investigation rather than seek to frustrate it,” she wrote.

Moody asked Wray to clarify by Friday if the federal government is invoking that provision, United States Code Section 351 of Title 18, (f).

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has also argued that Florida should conduct its own investigation. He signed an executive order last week to assign the incident to the Office of Statewide Prosecutor, which Moody will supervise.

Trump issued a lengthy statement late Monday that criticized the Department of Justice and FBI and accused the agencies of “mishandling and downplaying the second assassination attempt on my life since July.”

“If the DOJ and FBI cannot do their job honestly and without bias, and hold the aspiring assassin responsible to the full extent of the Law, Governor Ron DeSantis and the State of Florida have already agreed to take the lead on the investigation and prosecution,” Trump said in a statement. “Florida charges would be much more serious than the ones the FBI has announced.”

The new court filing came in advance of Routh’s Monday court appearance in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Last week, Routh was charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and with obliterating the serial number on a firearm, according to court records. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

This article has been updated with new information.

The four candidates for governor met Friday for the first, and perhaps only, debate of the campaign. Appearing are, from left, state Rep. Crystal Quade, the Democratic nominee; Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican candidate; Bill Slantz of the Libertarian Party; and Paul Lehmann of the Green Party (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

SPRINGFIELD — Twenty years of Republican control of the legislature has failed Missouri, giving it the most extreme abortion restrictions in the country and a child care system in crisis, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Crystal Quade said in a debate Friday.

Quade said she backs Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights, and Proposition A, to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2026, as measures that will help Missouri women control their reproductive decisions and earn enough to support their families.

“Right now we have women bleeding out on their bathroom floors because our doctors can not do their jobs,” Quade said

Quade is running an uphill race against Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican nominee, who polls show has a double-digit lead. Kehoe said he opposes Amendment 3 and Proposition A.

“This law goes way too far,” Kehoe said of the abortion-rights amendment. “It is very extreme.”

The minimum wage proposition is bad for business and workers, Kehoe said.

“I don’t think the government should be setting wages for people,” he said.

Quade and Kehoe met in a debate sponsored by the Missouri Press Association as part of its annual convention. They were joined on stage by Libertarian Bill Slantz, a St. Louis-are business owner, and Green Party candidate Paul Lehmann, a retired farmer and minister who lives in Fayette.

Kehoe has been lieutenant governor since 2018, appointed to the post by Gov. Mike Parson after almost eight years in the Missouri Senate. He was a Jefferson City car dealer before he got into politics.

Quade is a four-term state representative from Springfield who has been Democratic leader in the Missouri House for six years. She worked for then-U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill before seeking office.

Quade and Kehoe both won primaries but the GOP contest, which Kehoe won with 40% of the vote, was far more expensive than Quade’s victory over Springfield businessman Mike Hamra. Neither major party candidate has begun their fall television campaign.

The debate Friday could be the only time the two major party candidates are on the same stage. Kehoe has not accepted any invitations for televised debates.

The two found rare agreement on Amendment 2, which would legalize sports betting in Missouri. Kehoe said that because it is legal in adjoining states, it should be legal in Missouri to keep tax money at home.

Quade said she has supported legislation to legalize sports betting but it has been blocked by Republican factions.

“This is another example of where the status quo in Jefferson City is not listening to people,” Quade said.

Missouri is months behind in payments for subsidized child care and that is making a difficult situation a crisis, Quade said.

“The state of Missouri now is not even paying child care providers bills on time,” she said. “We have lost 53 child care providers in the last year because the state of Missouri is not meeting its basic promises.”
Kehoe, who is running with strong backing from Parson, said he agrees the system is in crisis but did not criticize the current issues with payments. Instead, the solution he offered was incentives for businesses to provide child care

“We have $1.4 billion, with a B, of labor sitting at home annually in the state of Missouri because those working folks want to go to work and can’t get child care,” Kehoe said.

There was sharp disagreement between Kehoe and Quade over what can be done to quell gun violence. When asked if he would support allowing local governments to enact restrictions, Kehoe said he did not.

“Every time we put more restrictions on a citizen’s Second Amendment rights, we actually hurt the citizens who are trying to do this law abiding and legally,” Kehoe said.

Quade said local governments are in the best position to decide what their residents need to stay safe.

“What’s going on in Webster County, where I grew up, is different than what’s going on in inner city St Louis,” Quade said. “And I do support the conversation around letting communities decide what is best for themselves.”

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, right, speaks during the Missouri Press Association debate Friday in Springfield. Hawley was joined on stage by, from left, Nathan Kline of the Green Party; Lucas Kunce, Democratic nominee; and Jared Young, who petitioned for a spot on the ballot. David Lieb of the Associated Press, far left, moderated (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

SPRINGFIELD —The United States should abandon its support for Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said Friday during his first debate with challenger Lucas Kunce and two third party candidates.

“I do not support continued funding to Ukraine,” Hawley said, adding that he would not support any more aid until Congress agrees to compensate Missourians who have suffered diseases from exposure to radioactive waste left over from World War II.

Kunce, a Marine veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the alternative to military and economic aid to the beleaguered republic is sending U.S. troops. Hawley’s position will embolden other world adversaries, Kunce said, including China and Iran.

“Our aid to Ukraine, at $200 billion, is infinitely cheaper than the $6 trillion we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, supposedly nation building there once we put boots on the ground,” Kunce said.

Hawley, the Republican incumbent seeking his second term in the Senate, and Kunce, a Democrat making his second run for the Senate, appeared at a debate sponsored by the Missouri Press Association. They were joined on stage by Nathan Kline, nominee of the Green Party, and Jared Young, who petitioned to form the Better Party as the label for his effort.

Kline said U.S. involvement in Ukraine is an example of corporate interests pushing the nation to war and failed policies of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

“The disastrous war in Ukraine is a perfect example of the blue team and the red team skipping hand in hand to Armageddon,” Kline said.

Continued aid to bolster Ukraine is essential for U.S. national security, Young said.

“Russia and China and Iran represent a serious threat to our country,” he said. “They are actively working to undermine the world order that served us so well for the last 60 or 70 years. And in order to push back, we need to have a strong stance.”

The debate was not televised but it was streamed online. Hawley and Kunce have agreed to a televised debate without the other two candidates on Oct. 31.

Throughout the debate, Hawley pushed Kunce to say which candidate he supports for president — Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, or former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Kunce did not respond.

Kunce sought to damage Hawley by tying him to anti-abortion positions that include opposition to protections for in vitro fertilization and support for Missouri’s near-total ban on abortions.

“It’s Josh Hawley’s abortion ban,” Kunce said. “He wants to bans all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.”

Kunce said he supports Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights in Missouri. Hawley said he opposes it and claimed that one reason Kunce backs it is to reverse a Missouri law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for children.
“Lucas Kunce and his allies talk about reproductive health, but what it really does is it allows transgender surgeries without parental consent,” Hawley said.

That characterization, both of his position and the amendment, is wrong, Kunce said.

“He sees mandated sex change surgeries around every single corner because he thinks he can rile people up that way and actually win the election,” Kunce said.

Kunce is the best-funded Democrat running statewide this year, but he is bucking a trend that has seen every statewide Democratic candidate go down to defeat since 2018. Kunce has spent $4.3 million on television ads — more than he had on hand on June 30 — that have been running since late July.

His pace of ad spending in recent weeks has slowed and the coming week will only be half of this week’s buy and one-third of that two weeks ago, according to tracking by The Independent.

In an interview, Kunce said he will be building up his effort again as the election approaches after a first phase of introducing himself to the state.

Hawley’s campaign has spent about $2.8 million on television and an independent PAC supporting his re-election, Show Me Strong, has spent about $1.5 million.

The SLU/YouGov poll in August showed Hawley with a double-digit lead, a margin that has not changed despite the television blitz.

Young is the best-funded independent candidate in the state in many years, but the $900,000 he has raised has not been used for any television advertising. Instead, Young said in an interview after the debate, he’s focused on digital platforms and other ways of making his money stretch.

“We knew all along that nobody was really going to be paying attention until these last two months, and so we’re seeing the momentum pick up,” Young said.

Kline, of Kansas City, works for the city’s Planning and Development Department.

The candidates also addressed immigration, with Hawley accusing Kunce of supporting “putting immigrants on Social Security and Medicare.”

Kunce said Hawley was lying about his views. He backs a bill that was defeated in the U.S. Senate that would increase border patrols and limit the number of people entering every day.

“The sad thing here is that Josh Hawley has voted against keeping us safe,” Kunce said, “because he wants to keep it as a campaign issue rather than address the train wreck we have going on.”

CAPTION: Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives to court for his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30 in New York City (Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump said Thursday night that if he loses the election in November to Vice President Kamala Harris, Jewish voters “would really have a lot to do with that.”

As the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel nears and the war in Gaza continues, the GOP presidential nominee spoke at back-to-back events in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, where he promised Jewish Americans that with their vote, he would be their protector, defender and “the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”

He and Harris, the Democratic candidate, are vying for the Oval Office in a close race that is just 46 days away and in which early in-person voting has already kicked off in multiple states.

“The current polling has me with Jewish citizens, Jewish people — people that are supposed to love Israel — after having done all that, having been the best president, the greatest president by far … a poll just came out, I’m at 40%,” Trump said at an event with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson on combating antisemitism in America.

“That means you got 60% voting for somebody that hates Israel, and I say it — it’s gonna happen,” he said. “It’s only because of the Democrat hold, or curse, on you.”

During the presidential debate earlier this month, Harris echoed her commitment to giving Israel the right to defend itself and said “we must chart a course for a two-state solution, and in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and an equal measure for the Palestinians.”

She called for an immediate end to the war, saying “the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal, and we need the hostages out.”

Trump also addressed the Israeli-American Council National Summit, where he said Israel would face “total annihilation” if Harris is elected. At the earlier event, he said any Jewish person who votes for Harris or any Democrat, “should have their head examined.”

Trump also committed to combating antisemitism at universities across the country, saying that if reelected, during his first week in office his administration would inform every college president that if they don’t “end antisemitic propaganda,” they will lose their accreditation and all federal support.

Harris ad ties Trump to N.C.’s Robinson

Trump made no mention Thursday of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,  the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee. The Trump ally vowed to stay in the race following a scathing CNN investigation published Thursday.

Part of the bombshell CNN report included Robinson referring to himself as a “black NAZI” and writing that “slavery is not bad” in messages posted on pornographic forums in 2010.

The North Carolina Republican, who has a history of making controversial remarks, has become an issue in the presidential race in the crucial swing state.

Trump is set to speak at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday regarding the CNN investigation.

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign launched a TV ad in North Carolina on Friday that seeks to tie the former president to Robinson. Part of the 30-second ad includes Trump saying Robinson has been an “unbelievable lieutenant governor” and that he’s “gotten to know him” and “(Robinson) is outstanding.”

Per the Harris campaign, the ad also seeks to highlight Robinson’s “extreme anti-abortion views.”

Harris addresses reproductive rights

The ad announcement came ahead of Harris’ Friday remarks in Georgia, where she repeated her commitment to reproductive freedom in response to a recent ProPublica investigation linking the state’s restrictive abortion law to the deaths of two Georgia women — Amber Thurman and Candi Miller.

Harris also highlighted the repercussions of “Trump abortion bans” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, which ended the constitutional right to abortion after nearly half a century. Trump appointed three of the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.

“Now we know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia, died because of a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said.

The mother and sisters of Thurman attended a livestreamed event Thursday night in Michigan, where Harris joined Oprah Winfrey.

Harris also made headlines at Thursday’s event when, reiterating she is a gun owner, said that if somebody were to break into her house, “they’re getting shot.” Laughing, the vice president said she “probably should not have said that” and her staff will “deal with that later.”

The Democratic presidential nominee said Thursday she’s in favor of the Second Amendment, but also supported assault weapons bans, universal background checks and red flag laws, calling them “just common sense.”

Harris is also set to speak at a campaign rally Friday night in Madison, Wisconsin.

Trump to attend Alabama-Georgia game 

Trump plans to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game in Tuscaloosa on Sept. 28, the University of Alabama confirmed to States Newsroom.

Security for the former president has been under intense scrutiny, especially after what’s being investigated as the second assassination attempt against Trump in recent weeks.

The university said “the safety of our campus is and will remain our top priority, and UAPD will work closely with the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement partners to coordinate security.”

The Secret Service acknowledged Friday that it failed to protect the former president during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which was the site of the first assassination attempt.

Control of Congress

As the presidential race remains a tight contest, so do races that will determine control of each chamber of Congress.

The Senate map favors Republicans, with several seats now held by Democrats in play. Democrats would likely need to sweep the elections in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and win the presidential race — to keep control of the chamber.

Elections forecasters consider the House more of a toss-up, with nearly 40 races likely to determine which party controls the chamber.

The Missouri Supreme Court takes the bench on Sept. 10, 2024, in Jefferson City to hear a case questioning whether an amendment to overturn the state's abortion ban will remain on the state's November ballot. From left are Judges Kelly C. Broniec, Robin Ransom, W. Brent Powell, Chief Justice Mary R. Russell, Zel. M. Fischer, Paul C. Wilson and Ginger K. Gooch (Pool photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

The decision to keep a constitutional amendment legalizing abortion on the November statewide ballot was decided by a narrowly-divided Missouri Supreme Court, according to opinions released Friday.

The majority opinion was written by Judge Paul Wilson, with Chief Justice Mary Russell, Judge Robin Ransom and Judge Brent Powell concurring. 

The dissent was authored by Judge Kelly Broniec, with Judge Zel Fisher and Judge Ginger Gooch concurring in the dissent.

Amendment 3, if approved by a simple majority, would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, including birth control. Abortion is illegal in Missouri with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for victims or rape or incest. 

The Supreme Court, while divided, made one point clear in both the majority and dissenting opinions: “this case is not about abortion.”

“It concerns only what information the constitution requires proponents to include on any initiative petition,” Wilson wrote in the majority opinion. “It is about form and procedure, not substance.”

Wilson was appointed to the court by then-Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. Russell was appointed by former Democratic Gov. Robert Holden. Powell was appointed by former Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, and Ransom was appointed by current Republican Gov. Mike Parson

Broniec and Gooch were appointed by Parson, and Fisher was appointed by Republican Gov. Matt Blunt.  

Both Gooch and Broniec are up for retention elections this year.

The initial case stemmed from a lawsuit filed in late August by a group of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists claiming the initiative petition that was later certified and approved as an amendment, failed to follow a number of laws. 

This includes a section of state law requiring initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”

The plaintiffs — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest — sued Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft arguing the initiative petition failed to state any laws that would be repealed if it passed. 

Attorneys for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the ballot measure, have said the amendment would not repeal the state’s current abortion law or take it off the books. Instead, they told the courts, it would create a new law that would supersede much of the existing one because not every element of the current law would be rendered moot, including laws protecting women who get abortions from prosecution. 

They also argued anything that falls under the scope of the amendment would be left to the judicial system to interpret and not truly repealed just in the amendment’s passing.

More than 800 Missouri medical professionals sign letter in support of abortion amendment

A majority of the Supreme Court ruled that interpreting the law to require listing every possible provision that could be impacted by an amendment would have “absurd effects.” 

“It seems reasonable to expect that few – if any – initiative petitions could survive under such a statute,” Wilson wrote.

He added that to interpret the statute as such would be unconstitutional because it would impede citizens’ right to the initiative petition process. 

“In fact,” Wilson wrote, “it is hard to imagine how a statute could impair and impede the initiative process more.”

Broniec, in her dissent, took a broader interpretation of the word “repeal,” saying that it is also defined as the ability to “effectively render invalid.”

She called the majority opinion “an absurd result contrary to the plain language” of the state constitution.

If Amendment 3 passes, Broniec wrote, Missouri’s current abortion ban cannot continue to stand. She noted a handful of other current laws that could be in conflict with the amendment, including parental consent for minors and the mandatory 72-hour waiting period between meeting with a doctor and receiving an abortion. 

“Today’s opinion from the Missouri Supreme Court was a complete rejection of the anti-abortion politicians’ arguments and attempts to subvert our constitutional right to vote to protect reproductive freedom,” Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement Friday. “Including access to abortion, birth control and miscarriage care.”

Coleman, one of the plaintiffs, wrote on social media Friday that she agreed the issue at hand wasn’t abortion.

“It is about abrogating the will of the general assembly,” Coleman wrote. “By using absurd arguments to reach their desired result.”

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society who represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement Friday that she still believes the crafters of the initiative petition violated state laws.

“It should not require courage to clearly apply the law, but it does when powerful political forces oppose a just outcome,” Martin said. “We applaud the courage of these three dissenting judges.”

The Supreme Court published its decision on Aug. 10, a few hours after oral arguments were completed and less than three hours before the constitutional deadline to remove a question from the ballot. 

In their decision, the majority reversed a lower court ruling made just four days earlier by Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh, who recommended the measure be stripped from the Nov. 5 ballot. 

As part of its decision, the Supreme Court ordered that Ashcroft “certify to local election authorities that Amendment 3 be placed on the Nov. 5, 2024, general election ballot and shall take all steps necessary to ensure that it is on said ballot.” 

A day earlier, Ashcroft, in an unprecedented move, attempted to decertify the ballot measure based on the lower court’s ruling, and temporarily removed Amendment 3 from the Secretary of State’s website.

Correction: This story was updated at 4:10 p.m. to clarify that Chief Justice Mary Russell was appointed by former Democratic Gov. Bob Holden.

Recent projections tilt in favor of Republicans taking the U.S. Senate, an already closely divided chamber that is sure to be near evenly split again next Congress (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The country’s next president will need a friendly Congress to make their policy dreams a reality, but control of the two chambers remains deeply uncertain with just weeks until Election Day — and whether the outcome will be a party trifecta in the nation’s capital.

Recent projections tilt in favor of Republicans taking the U.S. Senate, an already closely divided chamber that is sure to be near evenly split again next Congress.

And though Vice President Kamala Harris injected a jolt of energy into the Democratic Party, prognosticators still say the prizewinner of the House is anybody’s guess.

“The House is highly close and competitive, and really could go either way.  And I say the same thing about the presidential race,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told States Newsroom on Thursday.

A ‘district-by-district slug fest’ 

Control of the 435-seat House remains a toss-up, with competitive races in both the seven swing states and in states that will almost certainly have no bearing on who wins the top of the ticket.

Sabato’s, an election prognosticator, currently ranks nine Republican seats of the roughly 30 competitive races as “toss-up” seats for the party — meaning the GOP incumbents are locked in competitive races.

The GOP has held a slim majority this Congress, and Democrats only need to net four seats to gain control.

“It really is right on the razor’s edge,” Kondik said. “It’s pretty crazy that, you know, we’ve had two straight elections with just 222-seat majorities. And it’s pretty rare historically for there to be, you know, majorities that small twice in a row — unprecedented.

“Usually you’d have one side or the other breaking out to a bigger advantage, and I think both sides are viewing this, really, as a district-by-district slug fest.”

Sabato’s adjusted its ratings on five races Thursday, including moving Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska to the “toss-up” category from a safer “leans Democratic.” Kondik also nudged the race for Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York to “leans Republican” from “toss up.”

“The big ones are probably Peltola, and then Mike Lawler, who holds one of the bluest seats held by a Republican, but I moved him to ‘leans R.’ It seems pretty clear to me that he’s in a decent position,” Kondik said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s fundraising arm for House races, announced in June nearly $1.2 million in ad buys in Alaska. The organization launched a new ad in the state this month that accuses Peltola of not supporting veterans.

It’s always about Pennsylvania

In addition to Peltola, Kondik ranks nine other Democratic incumbents — of the nearly 40 competitive races — as toss-ups.

Among the toss-ups is the seat currently held by Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the presidential race. Cartwright’s Republican challenger, Rob Bresnahan, runs an electrical contracting company in the northeastern Pennsylvania district that he took over from his grandfather.

Democrats are investing in the seat: Cartwright is running a new ad featuring union workers praising him, and just last week Harris hosted a rally in the district, which includes Scranton.

But the NRCC thinks they have a pretty good chance of flipping his seat.

Breshnahan’s company is “a union shop,” said NRCC head Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina. “So he can talk union talk. He’s a great candidate for us.”

“Matt Cartwright is in trouble,” Hudson said on the conservative “Ruthless Podcast” on Sept. 12.

“I think the way we’ve structured it, the type of candidates we recruited across the country, from Maine to Alaska, from Minnesota to Texas, regardless of top of the ticket, we’re going to pick up seats,” Hudson said.

Van Orden targeted in Wisconsin

But Sabato’s also nudged three seats toward the Democrats’ favor on Thursday.

Kondik moved Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin from the safety of “likely Republican” to the weaker “leans Republican” category.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sees an “important opportunity” in Van Orden’s district. The GOP congressman, who represents central and western Wisconsin, became known for his profanity-laced outburst at young Senate pages for taking photos of the Capitol rotunda.

The Democrats are running challenger Rebecca Cooke, a small business owner, in the hopes of unseating him.

“We have an incredible candidate in Rebecca Cooke (against) one of the most extreme, which is saying a lot, Republicans in the House,” DelBene told reporters on a call Monday.

“We have put Rebecca Cooke on our Red-to-Blue list and are strongly supporting her campaign. She’s doing a great job, and this absolutely is a priority for us,” DelBene said, referring to the DCCC’s list of 30 candidates that receive extra fundraising support.

DelBene said she’s confident in the Democrats’ chances to flip the House, citing healthy coffers and revived interest.

“We have seen huge enthusiasm all across the country. We have seen people, more and more people turning out to volunteer, to knock on doors, to make phone calls,” she said.

Democrats’ cash ‘flooding,’ NRCC chief says

Erin Covey, a House analyst with The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, wrote on Sept. 5 that Democrats have a brighter outlook after Harris assumed the top of the ticket, though November remains a close call.

“Now, polling conducted by both parties largely shows Harris matching, or coming a few points short of, Biden’s 2020 margins across competitive House districts,” Covey wrote.

The NRCC has taken note. During his interview on the “Ruthless Podcast,” Hudson compared Harris becoming the Democrats’ new choice for president as a “bloodless coup,” and said the enthusiasm she’s sparked is a cause for concern for Republicans. Democratic delegates nominated Harris, in accordance with party rules, to run for the Oval Office after Biden dropped out in late July.

“A lot of people, even Democrats, you know, just weren’t comfortable voting for Joe Biden. With Kamala on the ticket, we saw a surge in Democrats coming home and having the enthusiasm,” Hudson said.

Hudson said he also worries about Democrats’ fundraising numbers.

“The one thing that keeps you awake at night is the Democrat money. It’s flooding,” Hudson said. “The second quarter this year I was able to raise the most money we’ve ever raised as a committee, and the Democrats raised $7 million more. I mean, it’s just, they just keep coming. It’s like the Terminator.”

“But we don’t have to match them dollar for dollar,” Hudson said. “We’ve just got to make sure we’ve got the resources we need. And so we’ve just got to keep our pace.”

The DCCC announced Friday it raised $22.3 million in August, bringing its total for this election cycle to $250.6 million.

Senate map tilts toward GOP

Republicans are inching closer and closer to flipping the Senate red during this year’s elections, thanks to a map that favors GOP incumbents and puts Democrats on the defensive in several states.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is widely expected to win his bid for the upper chamber, bringing Republicans up to 50 seats, as long as they hang on in Florida, Nebraska and Texas.

But Democrats will need to secure wins in several challenging states, including Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and break the 50-50 tie through a Democratic presidency — if they want to remain the majority party.

That many Democratic wins seems increasingly unlikely, though not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Montana, where Sen. Jon Tester is looking to secure reelection against GOP challenger Tim Sheehy, has been moved from a “toss-up” state to leaning toward Republicans by three respected analysis organizations in the last few weeks.

The Cook Political Report wrote in its ratings change earlier this month that several “public polls have shown Sheehy opening up a small, but consistent lead.”

“Democrats push back that their polling still shows Tester within the margin of error of the race, and that those are exactly the type of close races he’s won before,” their assessment said. “Tester, however, has never run on a presidential ballot in a polarized environment of this kind before — and even with his stumbles, Sheehy is still the strongest, best financed candidate he’s ever faced.”

Republicans winning Montana’s Senate seat could give them a firm, though narrow, 51-seat Senate majority.

Florida, Texas, Nebraska

That, however, would require the Republican incumbents in states like Florida and Texas — where it’s not clear if evolving trends against Republicans will continue — to secure their reelection wins.

And it would mean holding off a wild card independent candidate in the Cornhusker state.

The Cook Political Report says it’s “worth keeping an eye on a unique situation developing in Nebraska, where independent candidate Dan Osborn is challenging Republican Sen. Deb Fischer.”

CPR also noted in its analysis that Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities, which could rebalance the scales a bit, are Florida and Texas.

“Today, the Lone Star State looks like the better option because of the strengths and fundraising of Democrats’ challenger there, Rep. Colin Allred,” CPR wrote.

If Democrats do hold onto 50 seats, through whatever combination of wins and losses shakes out on election night, majority control would depend on whichever candidate wins the presidential contest.

Given the close nature of several Senate races, it is entirely possible control of that chamber isn’t known until after recounts take place in the swing states.

Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Gary Peters, D-Mich., said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week that he’s known all along Democratic candidates will be in “very right races.”

“In a nutshell, I’m optimistic,” Peters said. “I believe we’re going to hold the majority. I feel good about where we are. We’re basically where I thought we would be after Labor Day in really tight races. None of this is a surprise to us. Now we just have to run our playbook, be focused, be disciplined.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, led this cycle by Montana Sen. Steve Daines, is confident the GOP will pick up the Senate majority following November’s elections.

The group highlighted a Washington Post poll this week showing a tie between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and GOP candidate Dave McCormick in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

NRSC Spokesman Philip Letsou sent out a written statement after the poll’s release that Casey is in the “race for his life…because Pennsylvania voters know Casey’s lockstep support for Kamala Harris and her inflationary, anti-fracking agenda will devastate their economy. Pennsylvanians have had enough of liberal, career politicians like Casey and Harris.”

No change in filibuster in sight

The GOP acquisition of a handful of seats would still require the next Republican leader to constantly broker deals with Democrats, since the chamber is widely expected to retain the legislative filibuster.

That rule requires at least 60 senators vote to advance legislation toward final passage and is the main reason the chamber rarely takes up partisan bills.

A Republican sweep of the House, Senate and White House for unified government would give them the chance to pass certain types of legislation through the fast-track budget reconciliation process they used to approve the 2017 tax law.

How wide their majorities are in each chamber will determine how much they can do within such a bill, given Republicans will still have centrist members, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins, balancing the party against more far-right policy goals.

Home mortgage rates are posted outside a real estate office in Los Angeles after the Federal Reserve interest rates announcement on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced a half-point cut to its benchmark interest rate in the first rate cut since the early days of the COVID pandemic (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

The Federal Reserve’s first key interest rate cut in four years coincides with another major four-year event: the homestretch of the presidential election.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell downplayed the central bank’s role in the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, in announcing the half-percentage point cut in its benchmark rate. But that didn’t stop the candidates’ campaigns from weighing in, and it could prove a key factor for voters.

“This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed, and it’s always the same. We’re always going to this meeting in particular and asking what’s the right thing to do for the people we serve,” Powell said. “Nothing else is ever discussed.”

The decision to cut for the first time during the Biden Administration indicates the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors believe the economy has beaten the COVID-19 pandemic-induced wave of inflation that has plagued it since mid-2021. The Fed hiked its key rate 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 2.5% over the past year, according to the latest release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August. The unemployment rate was 4.2% in August, down from 4.3% in July, but still much higher than 3.5% in July 2023 when the Fed made its last rate hike.

“We now see the risks to achieving our employment and inflation goals as roughly in balance, and we are attentive to the risks of both sides of our dual mandate,” Powell said.

Wednesday’s was the first in what is expected to be a series of key rate cuts. For now, that benchmark rate is 4.75 to 5%

One member of the Fed’s governing board, Michelle Bowman, dissented with the rest of the group, marking the first time a governor has done so since 2005. Bowman preferred a 25 basis point – or quarter percentage point – cut.

Timing of the rate cut

Both campaigns quickly reacted to the news from the Fed.

Trump, speaking at a crypto-themed bar in New York, said the cut should have been smaller.

“I guess it shows the economy is very bad to cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics,” the Republican nominee said. “The economy would be very bad or they’re playing politics, one or the other. But it was a big cut.”

Harris, in a prepared statement, was forward-looking.

“While this announcement is welcome news for Americans who have borne the brunt of high prices, my focus is on the work ahead to keep bringing prices down,” the Democratic nominee said. “I know prices are still too high for many middle class and working families.”

Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and author of, “The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve,” said there is a long history of presidents pressuring the Fed, from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon and Trump, as a president and now as a presidential candidate.

In order to be effective in its role in keeping the economy moving, Binder said, the Fed needs to be trusted as legitimate, and its political support is contingent on doing a good job.

“The Fed doesn’t have the liberty of sitting it out or not doing enough, which can also bring the Fed into politicians’ crosshairs where they really, really don’t want to be,” she said.

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, a research group that advocates for full employment, said the Fed should be examining the economic data.

“That’s what they should look at, not where they are in the electoral seasonal cycle,” she said. “I think that’s the case, by and large. I don’t see anything that’s just a real politicization here.”

What a Fed rate cut means for the economy

Many economists and economic advisers have argued for the Fed to cut rates for months to avoid significant damage to the labor market and in the worst case, a recession.

Now, consumers should begin to see lower costs for borrowing money to buy houses, cars and other necessities.

Kitty Richards, senior strategic adviser at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the Fed should not hold back on cutting rates now that inflation is slowing.

“The Fed pursued four back to back 70-basis-point rate hikes when inflation was heating up. There’s no reason they should allow inertia to hold them back from normalizing rates now that inflation is under control,” she said.

Because shelter makes up so much of inflation, Richards has expressed concern that by keeping rates where they are, mortgage rates have been pushed so high that the housing market is unaffordable for many Americans. This, in turn, affects inflation, she said, creating a vicious cycle.

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive economic policy think tank, stated that the Fed decision is a good sign for the housing market.

“It is good that the Fed has now recognized the weakening of the labor market and responded with an aggressive cut. Given there is almost no risk of rekindling inflation, the greater boost to the labor market is largely costless,” Baker said in a statement. “Also, it will help to spur the housing market where millions of people have put off selling homes because of high mortgage rates.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, left, confronts his Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, over who is ducking debates during a meeting Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, at the Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

After weeks of tussling between the two campaigns, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Democrat Lucas Kunce are finally set to square off in a televised debate less than a week before voters head to the polls.

The debate will air Oct 31 on Missouri Nexstar stations, including KTVI/KPLR-St. Louis, WDAF-Kansas City, KRBK-Springfield and KSN-Joplin and their digital platforms. It could be the only time the two main contenders for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat share a stage.

The Missouri Press Association has held a Senate debate every election cycle for years at its annual convention. Kunce is set to appear at this year’s debate on Friday in Springfield along with third-party candidates Jared Young and Nathan Kline, according to Mark Maassen, the press association’s executive director.

“No word yet from Josh Hawley,” Maassen said.

Hawley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday’s debate.

Caleb Cavarretta, Kunce’s campaign manager, said in an emailed statement that Kunce agreed to Friday’s debate because “unlike Josh Hawley, Lucas respects the responsibility of a candidate and U.S. Senator to connect with folks they are meant to represent.”

“This year, we’ve got two weeks of no excuse in-person absentee voting in Missouri so it would be great for voters to hear from Josh Hawley before then,” Cavarretta said, “but unfortunately he wants to hide out as long as he can before election day.”

Kunce initially challenged Hawley to five televised debates. Hawley, however, demanded a debate at the Missouri State Fair in early August.

When State Fair officials said that was not possible, and that no one from Hawley’s campaign had alerted them to the possibility of a debate, Hawley pushed for a debate hosted by the Missouri Farm Bureau, which has endorsed him in the race.

Kunce said he would sign off on the idea as long as Hawley would formally agree to his suggestion of five televised debates, and the farm bureau showdown never materialized.

Instead, Kunce and Hawley crossed paths at the Governor’s Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair, trading insults and demands for debates.

In 2022, Republican Eric Schmitt also refused to participate in the press association’s debate, only the second time since 1988 that a major-party candidate refused to attend one of the organization’s forums.

While Hawley is unlikely to attend, the two major candidates for Missouri governor will debate on Friday, Maassen said.

Republican Mike Kehoe, Democrat Crystal Quade and third party candidates Paul Lehmann and Bill Slantz have agreed to participate in the gubernatorial forum, Maassen said.

Both the gubernatorial and Senate debates will be moderated by David Lieb of the Associated Press, with a panel of journalists from around the state — Lucas Presson of the Southeast Missourian, Christine Temple of the Springfield Business Journal and Alvin Reid of the St. Louis American.

Entergy Arkansas' 100 megawatt solar and storage plant in Searcy, Arkansas, covers about 800 acres (Robert Zullo/ States Newsroom).

Pennsylvania wants to remain a manufacturing powerhouse. But state leaders also want to reduce climate change-causing emissions from steel mills and other industrial facilities, while cutting back the toxic pollutants that cause health problems in nearby neighborhoods.

Thanks to a nearly $400 million investment from the federal government, the state is preparing a massive plan to help industrial operators upgrade to new technologies and switch to cleaner fuel sources.

“Pennsylvania was one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution, and now we’ve been given the opportunity to lead the nation in the industrial decarbonization movement,” said Louie Krak, who is coordinating the plan for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Leaders in every state in the country have their own big plans. North Carolina and neighboring states are preparing to restore wetlands and conserve natural areas along the Atlantic coast. Iowa leaders intend to plant trees in neighborhoods that lack shade. Local governments in Texas plan to help residents install solar panels on their rooftops. And Utah is readying to purchase electric buses and reduce methane emissions at oil and gas operations.

All of these plans are backed by federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate law passed by Congress in 2022. But former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change measures a “scam” and vowed to rescind “unspent” funds under the law, could throw much of that work into chaos if he retakes the White House.

Legal experts say Trump couldn’t outright cancel the law without an act of Congress. But climate leaders say a Trump administration could create extra barriers for grant awards, slow the approval of tax credits and delay loan requests. If the federal support becomes unreliable, projects could lose financing from the private sector and cease to be viable.

“Even if the money is technically safe, we would definitely expect to see agencies [in a Trump administration] dragging their feet,” said Rachel Jacobson, lead researcher of state climate policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank.

Federal agencies have already announced plans to award $63 billion — mostly in the form of grants — to states, nonprofits and other entities for a host of projects to fight climate change, according to Atlas Public Policy, a climate-focused research group. Many Republican-led states have, for the first time, drafted plans to fight climate change in order to compete for the money.

In addition, the feds are rolling out billions more in loans and tax credits aimed at similar projects. States say the mix of funding sources and financial incentives that will soon be available could supercharge efforts to fight climate change and create green jobs.

Many states whose projects have been approved say they’re urging the feds to issue their funding before the election.

“There’s a risk that an incoming administration could cancel our agreement,” said Krak, adding that Pennsylvania is hoping to finalize its funding award this fall.

Another $30 billion from the law is still up for grabs, much of it aimed at reducing emissions in the agricultural sector. And agencies have just begun offering loans and tax credits to provide hundreds of billions more in financing.

“So many states have climate plans for the first time [because of the federal law],” said Ava Gallo, climate and energy program manager with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a collaborative forum for state lawmakers. “Even states that weren’t supportive of the Inflation Reduction Act are certainly touting these projects.”

State plans

In July, Utah learned that it would be receiving nearly $75 million to carry out its climate plan. The program will pay for electric school and transit buses, help residents purchase electric vehicles and install equipment to reduce methane emissions at oil and gas operations, among many other components.

By 2050, the investments are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.4 million metric tons, said Glade Sowards, who is coordinating the plan for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. Sowards said the plan was also designed to reduce pollution that harms public health.

North Carolina is focused on protecting natural areas. The state filed a joint plan with Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia that is set to receive $421 million in federal funding. The coalition plans to conserve and restore more than 200,000 acres in coastal areas in the four states. While the natural lands are valuable for pulling carbon from the air, the funding will also help to expand state parks and protect residents from flooding.

Like many of the state projects supported through the climate law, the four-state plan has been announced as a recipient but the funding agreement is still being finalized. State leaders are urging the feds to complete that this fall.

“We want to get this done quickly for two reasons: one, so we can get the work underway, but two, to make sure that the money will be there [before a new administration could threaten it],” said Reid Wilson, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The federal law also will pay for trees in urban areas, where they can reduce the dangerous “heat island” effect and limit stormwater runoff and air pollution. Iowa earned a pair of grants totaling more than $5 million to increase tree canopy in its cities.

“We’ve never had this level of funding before,” said Emma Hanigan, urban forestry coordinator with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “We have a really low canopy cover, one of the lowest in the nation.”

Another nationwide program is set to offer funding in all 50 states to help residents put solar panels on their rooftops or buy into community solar operations. In Texas, a coalition of municipalities and nonprofits, led by Harris County (which includes Houston), earned a nearly $250 million award to carry out that work.

The program will largely focus on disadvantaged communities, with a requirement that solar projects reduce participants’ energy bills by at least 20%. Leaders in Texas expect the investment to reach about 28,000 households.

States are also tasked with distributing rebates to help residents with their home energy needs. Wisconsin was the first state to bring its rebate program online, with $149 million in funding. Residents can receive up to $10,000 to improve insulation, upgrade appliances or install electric heat pumps. Over time, they will see greater savings in the form of lower energy bills.

“It’s nice [for a contractor] to be able to sit at the kitchen table and say, ‘You’re getting $3,000 of work here, but the state is paying $2,800,’” said Joe Pater, director of the Office of Energy Innovation with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

Three other states (Arizona, New Mexico and New York) have rebate programs up and running, and others are finalizing applications. Indiana is among the many states awaiting federal approval to launch its program. The state expects to offer $182 million in rebates starting in early 2025. Greg Cook, communications manager with the Indiana Office of Energy Development, said the state is hoping to execute its plan regardless of the election outcome.

The climate law also has boosted “green banks,” which are state or nonprofit-run institutions that finance climate-friendly projects. The nonprofit Coalition for Green Capital received $5 billion of the federal money, which it will use to build a network that includes a green bank in each state, said Reed Hundt, the group’s CEO.

Michigan Saves, a nonprofit bank, expects to receive $95 million as a sub-award from the coalition. Chanell Scott Contreras, the president and CEO of Michigan Saves, said the “unprecedented” funding will enable the bank to expand its work, which includes helping low-income residents weatherize their homes and financing electric vehicle chargers and solar installations.

Loans and tax credits

The grants given out to states and other entities are just the start. The climate law supersized a federal loan program for clean energy projects, bringing its lending authority to $400 billion. And a new mechanism known as elective pay will now allow states, cities and nonprofits to receive the clean energy tax credits that have long been available to the private sector.

Climate advocates say many of the plans that states are setting in motion rely on the financing and tax rebates — components of the law that are most vulnerable to political interference.

“If an administration wanted to completely thwart the ability of [the Department of Energy] to make those loans, they could do so,” said Annabelle Rosser, a policy analyst with Atlas Public Policy, which has been tracking the rollout of the climate law. “That could be cut off at the knees.”

Meanwhile, many states are relying on the new tax credit to support plans such as electrifying state vehicle fleets and installing solar panels on public schools. In Washington state, for instance, the Office of Financial Management is coordinating a governmentwide effort to ensure state agencies use elective pay to bolster their climate work.

But climate advocates fear that an Internal Revenue Service led by Trump appointees could stall that work.

“There’s a lot of concern about what [Trump] would do with IRS staffing to limit the ability for them to get the refund checks out,” said Jillian Blanchard, director of the climate change and environmental justice program with Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit focused on human rights. Such delays could “chill hundreds of thousands of projects,” she said.

“I’m not sure he knows that red states are counting on this money too.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

People watch the ABC News presidential debate between Democratic nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, at a watch party at The Abbey, a historic gay bar in West Hollywood, California. The economy will remain central to both campaigns even as inflation cools and wages increase (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The presidential campaigns are rushing ahead this week without missing a beat, despite numerous law enforcement agencies investigating a possible assassination attempt Sunday on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was looking to pick up an endorsement from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters during a private sit-down interview with the organization on Monday before heading to several campaign stops later this week.

Trump, the GOP nominee, whose campaign is fundraising off a gunman putting an AK-47 through the fence at his Florida golf course before being confronted by the Secret Service, is expected to continue his regular schedule.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, will be on the campaign trail as well, after making headlines this weekend when he seemingly admitted making up a story about Haitian immigrants in Ohio before doubling down on the false claim.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said during a combative interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Vance then insisted that he’s repeating concerns from his constituents, despite public officials and police officers in Ohio saying there’s no evidence of immigrants eating geese or cats.

“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance added.

Vance’s comments and repeated criticism of Harris came shortly after her campaign released a list of 17 Reagan administration officials endorsing her bid for the Oval Office.

“Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic Party and more about our resounding support for democracy,” they wrote. “It’s our hope that this letter will signal to other Republicans and former Republicans that supporting the Democratic ticket this year is the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come.”

Ken Adelman, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and U.S. arms control director; Carol Adelman, USAID assistant administrator; Robert Thompson, senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers; Gahl Burt, White House social secretary; B. Jay Cooper, deputy assistant to the president; Kathleen Shanahan, a staff assistant at the National Security Council; and Pete Souza, official White House photographer were among those from the Reagan administration to publicly voice their support for Harris.

NABJ chat, stops in swing states

Tuesday’s campaign schedule shows a packed day of public events for all the major campaign names.

• Harris is expected to attend a fireside chat with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, months after Trump’s on-stage panel interview with three NABJ journalists stirred up controversy within the organization and made headlines for Trump’s responses to their questions.

• Trump will host a town hall in Flint, Michigan moderated by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, during the evening. Trump also abruptly announced an XSpaces event for Monday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on the social media platform.

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, running mate to Harris, is expected to attend events in Macon and Atlanta, Georgia. He’ll then head to Asheville, North Carolina to give a stump speech.

• Vance is expected to speak at a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood will hear arguments on whether Robert F. Kennedy’s Jr.’s name should be removed from Michigan’s ballot.

“Before a court may issue a temporary restraining order, it should be assured that the movant has produced compelling evidence of irreparable and imminent injury and that the movant has exhausted reasonable efforts to give the adverse party notice,” Hood wrote.

Kennedy, who suspended his bid for the Oval Office last month, had requested an immediate ruling, which the judge denied.

Dr. Jennifer Smith, an OB-GYN in St. Louis, was among 800 Missouri medical professionals who signed a letter in support of Amendment 3, which would legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Dr. Betsy Wickstrom says she’s still lacking clarity on what constitutes a medical emergency under Missouri’s abortion ban, despite the law having been in place for more than two years. 

In Missouri, health care providers who perform abortions not deemed necessary emergencies can be charged with a class B felony, which means up to 15 years in prison. Their medical license can also be suspended or revoked.

So Wickstrom, a high-risk obstetrician in Kansas City more than three decades into her career, must first consult a team of lawyers.

“When we have something that looks like it’s skirting the line and there’s a flicker of a heartbeat, but someone is desperately ill, sure I can call up the attorney,” she told reporters Monday. “But they’re not going to put the hospital’s licensure on the line. They’re going to say ‘you know, good thing you live next to Kansas.’”

Dr. Jennifer Smith, an OB-GYN in St. Louis, agreed. 

“I don’t think that many hospitals feel comfortable testing this law because the government hasn’t provided us any clarity on it,” Smith said. 

Wickstrom and Smith are among more than 500 physicians and more than 300 other medical professionals who signed a letter in support of Amendment 3. If approved by a majority of Missourians on Nov. 5, the amendment would overturn Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and legalize the procedure up until the point of fetal viability. 

Missouri became the first state to enact a trigger law banning abortion except for cases of medical emergencies following the fall of Roe v. Wade in June 2022. There are no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.

“As a result, Missourians are being denied abortions and forced to continue life-threatening pregnancies, risking their health and lives,” the medical professionals wrote in a letter through the Committee to Protect Health Care. “Doctors can’t treat patients with heartbreaking pregnancy complications until they are on the brink of death. Otherwise, they could be put in jail.”

The situation in Missouri leaves pregnant patients with few options, the group of physicians contend.

“It forces many to leave the state to receive care,” the letter continues, “while others are forced to carry a pregnancy against their will. No one should ever have their health deteriorate or need to flee to receive care, nor should anyone have to carry a pregnancy against their will.”

Between June 2022 and March 2024, 64 abortions were performed in Missouri under the state’s emergency exemption, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

Missouri among worst states for women’s overall health, reproductive care, study finds

Wickstrom said she often has difficult conversations with women about growing their families — conversations made more difficult by the ban. 

She has patients diagnosed with cancer who were advised not to start chemotherapy while pregnant. And she has patients with heart disease who might not survive another pregnancy. 

“But can I do anything about that in Missouri?” Wickstrom said. “No. These are people that have to find their way out of the state to get life-saving care.” 

Smith, who has been an OB-GYN in eastern Missouri for more than 20 years, said the questions she’s hearing from patients now are unlike any she’s heard in the past. 

“People are very hesitant to start their families and expand their families in this environment,” she said. 

In the past two years Smith said she’s had men ask her to promise to save their partner before their baby if something were to go wrong during a wanted pregnancy. 

Patients planning their families face similar fears.

“Do you think that it’s safe to be pregnant here? What if I have an ectopic? What if I have a miscarriage?” Smith said she hears often from patients. “What if something’s wrong with the pregnancy? What if something’s wrong with me?”

Hispanic farmworkers harvest Strawberries at a farm in Carlsbad, California (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images).

The farmworkers scattered.

There was a union representative in the workers’ employer-provided housing, on an orchard in upstate New York. Their employer, major apple grower Porpiglia Farms, had hired them on H-2A, or temporary labor, visas. That day in August 2023, according to the workers’ union, United Farm Workers, the orchard’s owners burst in. The farmworkers ran or hid in their rooms.

Following the incident, the UFW filed a complaint with New York state, alleging the orchard prevented workers from exercising their rights. Porpiglia Farms disputed the UFW’s account and said it is working with the UFW. However, on that day, the UFW organizer had “trespassed” in an effort to “gin up a controversy,” Anthony Porpiglia, the owner, said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest by his attorneys. The workers “asked her to leave and she refused,” he said.

The following summer, workers arrived for harvest season. Near the orchard’s entrance, workers, whose union has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, noticed a new sign: “Farmers for Trump.”

The scuffle in the orchard epitomizes the division on immigration between the two presidential candidates and what could be at stake for immigrant workers, who have underpinned the agriculture industry for decades. While Donald Trump’s rhetoric targets its workforce, the industry, writ large, has favored the former president. President Joe Biden’s administration, with Kamala Harris as vice president, has instituted protections paving a path to more farmworker unionization, while also cracking down on border crossings.

A Harris victory would likely mean a continuation of Biden’s efforts — and renewed hope for a path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers. She’s publicly supported one for years. But farmworkers, who are essential to the U.S. economy, will still fear being uprooted regardless of who is president, said Laurie Beyranevand, director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

“At the end of the day, many farmworkers still fear deportation,” she said. “Obviously, that fear, I think, is more pronounced with a policy agenda like the Trump administration, but it’s not as though it’s not present with the Biden administration either.”

Neither campaign responded to a request for comment on their immigration stances.

If re-elected, Trump has promised to deport upwards of 20 million undocumented people, many of them agricultural workers who perform the dangerous jobs most Americans don’t want. Trump supported the use of the H-2A program, which farmers said is necessary to fill labor shortages. But the former president’s close allies have recently proposed eliminating it.

Agriculture corporations have lavished Trump and Republicans with campaign cash. The disparity in spending on conservatives and liberals, in conservatives’ favor, increased during the Trump administration. Rural areas, a proxy for farmers, largely voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

In an interview with The New York Times, Stephen Miller, who led Trump’s immigration efforts during his administration, said the Trump campaign’s goal was to upend industries that rely on immigrant labor.

“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said.

Some research suggests deportations, especially at a large scale, could backfire on U.S. workers. In 2023, University of Colorado researchers estimated that, for every 1 million unauthorized workers deported, 88,000 native workers would lose jobs. When companies lose their labor forces, the researchers concluded, they find ways to use less labor, not replace their lost workers.

A historical example is the end of the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican workers into the U.S. for seasonal jobs. Instead of hiring more U.S. workers when their labor force was suddenly gone, farmers turned to heavy machinery, according to 2017 research. There was no corresponding increase in employment or wages for native workers.

Temporary labor visa programs have exploded in popularity. In 2023, the government granted about 400,000 H-2A visas. But America’s farms still depend on an undocumented workforce. Out of about 2 million farmworkers in the U.S., government surveys show about 44% are undocumented. (Hundreds of thousands of other workers in the food supply chain — meatpacking plants, grocery stores, restaurants — are also undocumented.)

“If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse,” said Mary Jo Dudley, the director of the Cornell Farmworker Program. “There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place.”

Antonio De Loera-Brust, a UFW spokesman, said deporting millions would be nearly impossible logistically. The point of Trump’s rhetoric, he said, was to instill fear in farmworkers so they don’t demand their rights.

Farmers who support Trump are “voting basically to try to deny their workforce labor rights and to try to reduce their workforce’s wages,” De Loera-Brust said. “I don’t think you need to psychoanalyze it that much further beyond, ‘This is in their economic interest.’”

Investigate Midwest requested interviews with several industry groups to discuss the candidates’ stances on immigration and the potential impact on agriculture. The Meat Institute, which represents the meatpacking industry, said the immigration policy it supported was expanding the visa labor program to include its industry.

“Continued labor problems in the processing sector will hamper production and drive-up costs, hurting both upstream producers and downstream consumers,” Sarah Little, the group’s spokesperson, said in an email. “Efforts to address the labor needs of agriculture must consider both the production sector and the processing sector.”

However, most either didn’t respond or declined to comment. For example, the American Farm Bureau Federation, which positions itself as the voice of agriculture, said it does “not endorse candidates nor engage in election politics.”

However, through political action committees, the bureau’s state affiliates endorse candidates. The federation’s current administrative head, Joby Young, was a high-ranking official in Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Farm labor is dangerous. In fields, workers risk pesticide exposure, which can cause skin rashes. Long-term exposure can cause cancer or contribute to developmental issues in offspring. Tractors have crushed limbs. Workers have died falling into grain bins.

The pay is also unappealing. Agriculture is exempt from federal overtime laws. Sometimes, workers are paid “piece rate,” meaning their earnings depend on how much they harvest in a day.

In meatpacking plants, workers perform the same motion, over and over, with sharp knives. Workers have suffered tendinitis, lacerations and amputations. Because it’s so difficult, plants sometimes gradually increase newbies’ hours: It’s called “break-in pain.” And, as the COVID-19 pandemic struck, plant workers were forced to return to their jobs, exposing themselves and their families to the virus.

Many U.S. citizens do not want jobs like this, Dudley said. Sometimes, farmers feel they have no choice but to overlook suspect IDs.

“These are valued employees,” an anonymous farmer told Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after he suspected U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were surveilling his employees. “We get their IDs and everything. Do we know if they’re legal or illegal? Well, we’re going to say we’re open on that. We don’t know that they are, we don’t know that they aren’t. But they are employees and they are the most hard-working people that you can find.”

One of those workers, for decades, was Gloria Solis. In 1998, she left Mexico, where she struggled to afford food and rent, and began picking cherries in Washington state. When Trump was in office, she tried to stay home as much as possible, fearing an interaction with authorities that might lead to deportation. She mostly risked it for her job and for medical appointments for her two sons, who are U.S. citizens, she said in Spanish through an interpreter. Each time, she prayed.

Some of her employers seemed emboldened by Trump, and the employers made it clear that, if she and her coworkers didn’t work hard enough, they could be easily replaced. When Biden was elected, she said, there was a noticeable change. Workers with legal status and workers who were undocumented were treated much more fairly, Solis, now 47, said.

“We know that (Biden) is no longer in it, but there is his partner,” she said. “Hopefully nothing will change (as far as administration policy) because it’s perfectly fine. We are afraid that Trump will be elected. If he gets elected, then we won’t know what to do.”

Trump raids included ag job sites; Biden secured worker protections

Throughout Trump’s administration, immigration authorities raided farms and food processing plants. When Biden was elected, he reversed Trump’s directives. Instead of targeting workers, Biden focused on exploitative employers.

Under Trump, some of the most prominent agriculture companies in the U.S. dealt with immigration raids. In 2018, Christensen Farms — which owns two of the largest pork processing plants in the U.S., Seaboard Foods in Oklahoma and Triumph Foods in Missouri — was caught up in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement action. In 2019, raids in Mississippi rounded up about 700 undocumented workers. Some worked for Koch Foods, which supplies much of the poultry at Wal-Mart.

While the raids barely made a dent in the agricultural workforce, they had an effect. Many farmworkers feared speaking up about workplace abuses, said Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, a National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition advocacy coordinator who previously worked as a Florida farmworker advocate.

“They felt like they couldn’t raise their voices about concerns they had on safety or wage theft or any kind of labor violation,” he said. “They just felt like it made them a target and they could easily be replaced.”

Many farmworkers who have been in the U.S. for decades travel north from Texas and Florida each year to work in Midwestern fields. But, with Trump in office, some in Florida decided to forgo the annual pilgrimage to avoid running into ICE, Xiuhtecutli said. Some took housekeeping or landscaping jobs to make ends meet.

“I don’t think it was necessarily a positive change for them because it wasn’t steady work,” he said. “It was still seasonal.”

Once in office, Biden announced crackdowns on employers in the food supply chain that used migrant child labor, following a New York Times expose. Children worked in factories that processed or produced products for Walmart, Whole Foods and General Mills, the cereal giant.

In 2023, Biden also announced that workers who were in the country without documentation could be granted deferred action — i.e., not immediate deportation — if they witnessed or were victims of labor violations. The change would help hold “predatory” employers accountable, the administration said.

UFW’s De Loera-Brust said the deferred action rule was a “game changer” for unions. A couple dozen members of his union, which represents workers with a variety of legal statuses, have been granted stays under the new rule, he said.

“We’re actually able to tell workers not just that you will get better wages, better protections, better conditions through unionization,” he said. “We can actually also help protect you from deportation.”

Solis, the worker in Washington state, benefited from the new rule. In 2023, she was fired from her job on a mushroom farm. According to the state attorney general, the farm discriminated against female workers, including firing them, and was fined $3.4 million. Because of the incident, Solis was officially allowed to remain in the U.S. When she received the paperwork in the mail, she cried out of happiness all night, she said.

Another Biden rule, implemented this year, allowed H-2A farmworkers to invite union representatives into their employer-owned housing. It also banned employers from retaliating against workers trying to unionize. The state of New York allowed H-2A workers to unionize starting in 2020, which facilitated the unionization effort at Porpiglia Farms. The Biden rule codified the right for H-2A workers nationwide.

In late August, though, a judge temporarily blocked the rule, after 17 Republican-led states sued the Biden administration over it. The administration asked the judge to narrow the breadth of the injunction, which would allow some other farmworker protections to be enacted, according to Bloomberg Law. The request was denied.

Beyranevand, at the agriculture and food systems center, said the rule would be an important step for farmworkers. But the challenge would be enforcing it, and having workers believe they won’t face retaliation.

“I don’t know that a lot of farmworkers are going to invite in labor representatives or anyone that is putting their job in jeopardy if the farm owner is able to catch a whiff of that,” she said.

Trump and his allies promise hard-line immigration policies

Deporting millions of farmworkers could have far-reaching consequences, experts and advocates said.

If the agricultural workforce were suddenly gone, the U.S. would likely have to rely much more heavily on imported food, said Dudley, of the Cornell farmworker program. That could lead to higher food prices, especially if another Trump proposal — replacing the income tax with tariffs on imports — is enacted. In turn, that could put more price pressure on individual consumers, particularly ones in food insecure families, Dudley said. (Some research suggests that more immigrants and H-2A workers in the food system leads to less inflation at the supermarket.)

Relying on imported food could become a national security issue. It could be easier for a foreign adversary to destabilize the U.S. if its food supply was prevented from reaching its shores. (The Biden administration said in a 2022 memo it was looking into how to bolster the security of the food system.)

Another consequence of mass deportation would be the gutting of the social safety net, Dudley said. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid almost $100 billion in taxes, and about a third went to Medicare and Social Security, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“If you transition away from an undocumented labor force in agriculture, construction, restaurants, and other service sectors,” Dudley said, “there would be a significant financial loss to those systems, affecting all beneficiaries including the growing number of ‘baby boomers’ who are increasingly reliant on those programs for their financial well-being.”

The dairy industry relies heavily on undocumented labor, and it can’t use the H-2A program because milking cows is not a seasonal job. When asked to discuss the potential impact of a Trump presidency, the National Milk Producers Federation, which represents the dairy industry, said it had no one on staff “whose expertise aligns with the story you’re writing.” The Dairy Business Association, which represents Wisconsin dairies, said it is not commenting on the election.

Instead of undocumented labor, Trump signaled his support for the H-2A program, an increasingly popular program bereft with labor abuses. In a 2018 press release, Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture called the program a “source of legal and verified labor for agriculture.”

While in office, Trump made it easier for employers to hire H-2A workers, including eliminating some red tape. He also sought to change how visa workers were paid, which would have limited their earnings.

But close allies of Trump have proposed eliminating the program altogether. They’ve also recommended ending its sister program, the H-2B visa, which the meatpacking industry has latched onto. Both visa programs are intended to address seasonal labor shortages.

The influential conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is behind the proposals, known as Project 2025. Trump has distanced himself from it, but The Washington Post reported he flew on a private jet with its leader in 2022, and CNN found at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s administration are involved in the project.

Actually eliminating the visa programs would likely be incredibly unpopular among farmers and industry lobbying groups, especially without a viable alternative, Beyranevand said.

The visa system “provides a really stable workforce for the agricultural sector,” she said. “Without the stability, I would imagine that farm businesses would be really opposed to something like that.”

The number of meatpacking plants that use H-2B visa workers has increased six-fold since 2015, according to federal labor department data. Little said her organization, the Meat Institute, would continue to ensure the H-2B visa was open to the meatpacking industry. Also, the industry supported reforming the H-2A program to “include meat and poultry processing and to recognize the year-round labor needs of the industry,” she said.

Tom Bressner, the executive director of the Wisconsin Agri-Business Association, said his organization wants to see the use of the H-2A program expanded, as well. It also supports streamlining the application process and removing some red tape.

“It’s a good program, but it really needs some major tweaking to make it work more effectively,” he said. “You talk about a nightmare to try to qualify for that program. You’ve got people out there wanting to work and we need them.”

The National Corn Growers Association, which represents an industry that hires H-2A labor regularly, said it did not comment on presidential elections.

De Loera-Brust, with UFW, said he thinks Trump’s campaign rhetoric is not intended to translate into actual, on-the-ground policy. He made similar comments as a candidate in 2016 and as president, but deportations on the scale Trump promised did not occur.

“What I think the mass deportation slogan is really about is scaring workers,” De Loera-Brust said. “It’s about making immigrant workers feel like they cannot count on tomorrow, so they better keep their heads down and not say anything if they’re getting screwed out of their wages.”

Harris has voiced support for a path to citizenship 

In general, top Democrats have cracked down hard on illegal immigration while offering some relief. The Democratic president before Biden, Barack Obama, was often called the “deporter-in-chief” by his critics as he deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump. However, he also instituted the deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA, policy.

At the Democratic National Convention, Harris continued walking this line. In her speech accepting the Democratic Party nomination, she promised to sign bipartisan border security legislation into law.

“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants — and reform our broken immigration system,” she said. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship — and secure our border.”

As president, Biden has cracked down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. In early September, the New York Times reported he was considering making it tougher to enter the country without a visa by permanently blocking most asylum claims. This year, the numbers have dropped to their lowest point in years. (Because of the economic importance of immigration, some experts also worried about how Biden’s policies could impact the economy, Politico reported.)

Biden tasked Harris with addressing immigration. In 2021, she visited the Northern Triangle, the area of Central America where many recent immigrants originate. She spearheaded the Biden administration’s attempt to address poverty, violence and corruption in the area, the so-called “root causes” of immigration. When she visited Guatemala, Harris told those looking to journey to the U.S.: “Do not come.”

In his 2025 budget, Biden said he’d address immigration by hiring more than a thousand new border patrol agents and about 400 immigration judges to reduce the case backlog. In the Democratic Party platform, released for its convention, party leaders said it would “explore opportunities to identify or create work permits for immigrants, long-term undocumented residents, and legally processed asylum seekers in our country.”

Xiuhtecutli, with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the Biden administration probably eased concerns for undocumented immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for decades, mostly because the population was not a near-constant target of powerful politicians.

“There was some relief, at least in the sense that it wasn’t being talked about as openly,” he said, “but, in the community, there’s still the perception that the border was still going to be a hot zone, that it was difficult to cross, still.”

Some farmworker advocates are hopeful for what a Harris administration could mean. When it endorsed Harris, UFW, the California-based farmworker union, said Harris was the “best leader to defeat Donald Trump and to continue the transformative work of the Biden-Harris administration.” Biden, it added, had been the “greatest friend” the union had.

Solis, who is a UFW member, said she hopes Harris continues the policies Biden implemented and possibly goes further. Trump’s rhetoric stigmatized her and her family, she said, particularly when he said he’d end the birthright citizenship of her sons.

“I would tell him — with all due respect because he was president — he does not know how much he has hurt them with the way he expresses himself,” she said.

Mónica Cordero and Jennifer Bamberg contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Initiative campaigns are pouring money into television advertising now that all court challenges are over. The Independent’s ad sale tracking shows $9.1 million has been spent so far, with millions more likely as the election approaches (Getty Images).

Missouri’s November ballot is now set, and initiative campaigns are ramping up spending to convince voters to pass the proposals.

The first to go on the air last week was Winning for Missouri Education, the committee funded by online sports gambling companies for Amendment 2, which would legalize betting on college and professional games.

The committee spent $1.2 million for ads in every media market except north-central and northeast Missouri and another $4.7 million reserving air time through the Nov. 5 election.

Two other initiative campaigns — Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights, and for Proposition A, to boost the minimum wage and require businesses to provide paid sick and family leave —  are making major ad buys for October. Ads to promote passage Amendment 3 will also begin this week in several markets.

Opposition groups are forming to counter those campaigns, but only a group opposing sports wagering, Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment, has bought air time. The group, which formed on Tuesday, on Friday reported $4.1 million in contributions from Missouri casinos to the Missouri Ethics Commission. The group spent $546,805 last week for ads that will run this month in Springfield, St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City.

Missouri abortion-rights campaign doubles its fundraising total since qualifying for ballot

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the committee campaigning for Amendment 3, has spent $3.9 million to purchase ads that will run continuously statewide starting with the week of Oct. 8. The ads that begin this week will run in the St. Louis and Springfield markets.

Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, the committee backing Proposition A, has spent $1.3 million for ads that will begin the week of Oct. 15.

The Independent tracks ad spending by reviewing documents broadcasters must file daily with the Federal Communications Commission. Those totals do not include spending for streaming platforms. 

In the six statewide races, only U.S. Senate candidates Lucas Kunce, the Democratic candidate, and Josh Hawley, the Republican incumbent, have begun television campaigns.

Hawley, Kunce and a PAC supporting Hawley have spent $7.8 million on television since the start of August. Ballot measure spending so far totals $11.6 million.

The outlays to reserve time late in the election are standard strategies, Republican political consultant John Hancock said Thursday.

“You reserve from the back forward,” Hancock said. “You want to make sure you’re up as people are making decisions. It’s entirely possible that those campaigns will buy additional weeks as budgets permit.”

Hancock is working for the Osage River Gaming and Convention Committee, which is backing Amendment 5 on the ballot. The measure, which would authorize a new casino near the popular Lake of the Ozarks tourist area, is the only initiative campaign that has not followed up certification for the ballot with TV ad purchases. Hancock declined to discuss the timeline for doing so.

But after spending $4.3 million so far — all provided by Bally’s, which currently operates a casino in Kansas City, and RIS Inc., a major regional developer near the Lake of the Ozarks — a large outlay for advertising to support Amendment 5 is certain, said Jonathan Ratliff, a Republican consultant who is not currently working on any ballot measure campaigns.

“My rule always when you’re putting these together is if you’re not willing to spend the last million, you shouldn’t pay for the first million,” Ratliff said.

The sports wagering amendment, which survived a court challenge questioning whether it received enough signatures, is using the promise of more money for education in its first ad. Ads from the opposition group, Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment, argue that promise won’t be kept.

The ad now running for the sports wagering initiative features a former teacher and promises it “will raise tens of millions of dollars every year for our classrooms, helping increase teacher pay.”

The fiscal note summary voters will see on the ballot estimates it will bring in $11.75 million in licensing fees, money that would cover the cost of administering the licensing process. Any extra in that fund goes to support veterans programs, including veterans nursing homes.

The net winnings from wagers would be taxed at 10%, which the fiscal summary estimates to be in a range of no new money up to $28.9 million annually. The tax would be applied after gambling companies deduct promotional costs like free wagers for new accounts.

A similar tax structure in Kansas has generated $18.2 million in revenue on $4.1 billion wagered since sports betting became legal in that state in September 2022.

“In reality, Amendment 2 contains no guarantees that a single penny will go to our schools,” Brooke Foster, spokeswoman for the anti-sports wagering committee, said in a news release.

Under the Missouri Constitution, all taxes on casino gambling and the state’s share of lottery ticket sales must be spent on education programs. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the 21% tax on money won by casinos brought in $357.6 million and the lottery produced $388.8 million.

Lawmakers appropriated $8.7 billion from all funds for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and $1.4 billion for the Department of Higher Education.

There is nothing in the amendment that prevents lawmakers from reducing current spending by the amount of new revenue produced by sports wagering.

The sports wagering amendment will keep its promise to bring in tens of millions each year, spokesman Jack Cardetti said. There is little likelihood lawmakers will reduce current spending on education, he contends.

The new revenue could be a significant part of the $100 million needed as supplemental spending for public schools in the current fiscal year, Cardetti said.

Winning for Missouri Education spent $6 million for the signature campaign to get on the ballot, all from the two major online sports betting platforms, DraftKings and FanDuel and their parent companies. 

The $3.52 million contribution from DK Crown Holdings on Aug. 15 is the largest political donation in Missouri this year. BetFair Interactive, owner of FanDuel, added $1.5 million on Thursday.

The ads will run in every market in the state, Cardetti said.

“We’re going to be making sure that Missourians in every corner of the state know how important it is that Missouri doesn’t have sports betting,” he said. “As we sit here today, seven of our eight neighboring states have legalized sports betting, and those dollars are making improvements in those states. Missourians are missing out.

Changes to voting laws are pushing campaigns to spend money earlier, Hancock said. No-excuse absentee voting begins Oct. 22.

“I no longer think it makes practical sense to buy the last two weeks only,” he said. “You’ve got to have at least three.”

Ballot measure campaigns have two goals with their spending plans, Ratliff said. The first is to give an impression of invincibility with heavy rotations for their ads. The idea is to scare off  opposition campaigns.

Ballot measures are easier to defeat than to pass, Ratliff said.

“If any of these groups have any opposition, it makes it a lot harder for them to be successful, especially something like the casino and sports betting stuff,” Ratliff said. “If they don’t have opposition, they have a much, much better chance of passing. Even the slimmest amount of opposition could really knock those back and keep them from passing.”

The key for the ad campaigns, of course, is to get the message seen. And the success of the Kansas City Chiefs is making their game broadcasts some of the most costly any campaign can buy.

Hawley spent $75,000 to run one 30-second spot on KSHB in Kansas City during the Chiefs’ opening game. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom spent $50,000 to reserve two ads during the Oct. 27 game against the Las Vegas Raiders on KMOV in St. Louis.

And it cost Winning for Missouri Education $30,000 for two ads on KJFX in Joplin during the Oct. 20 game against the San Francisco 49ers, the team the Chiefs defeated in this year’s Super Bowl.

Streaming services, cable channels and digital recording mean many viewers are choosing their own schedule for television viewing. But audiences still tune in to live sporting events, Ratliff said.

“They’re gonna watch that live, so they’re worth a lot more,” he said. “Those ads are crazy expensive, and you’re going to see those ads are more valuable because you’re gonna have eyes on it.”

This article has been updated to include spending reported by television stations on Sept. 15.

People watch the ABC News presidential debate between Democratic nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, at a watch party at The Abbey, a historic gay bar in West Hollywood, California. The economy will remain central to both campaigns even as inflation cools and wages increase (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

Inflation hit a three-year low last month, just as the presidential election is heating up.

But the high cost of housing and other necessities will keep the economy central to both of the major campaigns, as seen this week in the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 2.5% in the past year, which is the smallest jump since February 2021, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. The main driver of this increase was shelter, which moved up 0.5% in August. Airline fares, car insurance, education, and apparel also rose that month. But wages also rose 0.4% in August and 3.8% over the past year, and the average workweek increased by 0.1 hour — welcome news for workers trying to keep up with the cost of living.

Voters continue to say the economy is key in deciding who should be president, at 81%, and four in 10 say the economy and inflation are the most important issues guiding that  decision.

Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, blamed the Biden administration for high prices early on Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia, falsely claiming the post-pandemic wave of inflation is the worst ever.

“We’ve had a terrible economy because inflation, which is really known as a country buster, it breaks up countries, we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Trump said.

The worst inflation rate in U.S. history was actually in 1980, at 14%. The current wave – the highest inflation spike since then – peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.

Democratic nominee andVice President Harris responded to Tuesday’s question about the economy by touting tax cut proposals to combat housing costs.

“The cost of housing is far too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time so that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy a car seat, buy clothes for their children,” she said.

Harris also pitched a proposal for a $50,000 tax deduction for small startup businesses.

Taylor St. Germain, an economist at ITR Economics, a nonpartisan economic research and consulting firm based in New Hampshire, said the latest data shows inflation is slowing enough to suggest it’s time for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates.

“It’s encouraging to see that inflation is slowing and slowing to these much lower levels,” said St. Germain said. “However, it is, of course, still elevated and one of the reasons it’s still elevated is that shelter costs are driving a significant portion of that inflation, with rents rising as well, especially as we looked at this latest CPI report.”

The Fed began raising interest rates in March 2022 to bring down inflation, raising interest rates 11 times, and made its last rate hike in July of last year.

Economists are watching closely to see if the Fed cuts rates during its meeting next week, which is expected to have an impact on the housing market and other costs.

Kitty Richards, acting executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank based in Washington, DC, said the Fed’s decisions are contributing to housing costs.

“The problem with housing is fundamentally a supply problem. And the Fed’s actions are actually making that supply problem worse by locking up the housing market and making it more expensive to buy, build or rehab housing,” she said. “Housing is such a big part of people’s experience of the economy and it really matters to folks when they might want to move and look around and they can’t. They can’t even afford to buy a house that is the same price as the house they live in because the interest rates are so high.”

Supporters of Amendment 3 celebrate on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, on the steps of the Missouri Capitol after the state Supreme Court ruled the abortion-rights measure could remain on the ballot (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s campaign to legalize abortion has more than doubled its fundraising totals since it was approved for the ballot in mid-August, despite — and perhaps fueled by — a lawsuit that threatened to knock it off the Nov. 5 ballot. 

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the coalition behind what will appear on the ballot as Amendment 3, has raised more than $16 million since launching in January, according to reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Of that, $9 million in donations greater than $5,000 were reported to the commission since the measure was certified for the ballot on Aug. 13. Campaigns are required to report any donations over $5,000 within 48 hours of receiving them. Reports totaling all donations and expenditures are due to the state each quarter. 

The two most well-established political action committees working to fight the amendment include Missouri Stands with Women, which has raised at least $200,000, and Missouri Right to Life, which has raised nearly $675,000 this election cycle.

The largest donations to Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have come from four out-of-state progressive nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors and are also helping fund reproductive-rights campaigns in several states. 

As of Thursday, the Sixteen Thirty Fund based out of Washington D.C. donated $4.5 million to Missouri’s effort. That includes a $3.5 million check on Aug. 30 — the second largest single donation in Missouri this year. 

The Fairness Project, also based out of Washington D.C., has donated $2.9 million. Most of that money came on Aug. 23, when the organization cut a $2.1 million check to the campaign. 

Both nonprofits also contributed significant funds to the state’s 2020 Medicaid expansion initiative petition effort, which ultimately succeeded, and to the current ballot effort to raise the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave.

The campaign also received $1 million from a nonprofit out of Washington D.C. listed as Open Source Action Fund, which is linked to an address for Open Society Action Fund. The nonprofit was founded by George Soros, a liberal billionaire.

On Thursday, a Virginia-based nonprofit called Global Impact Social Welfare donated $750,000.

Successful statewide ballot initiative campaigns are often multi-million dollar endeavors. 

Missouri Supreme Court rules amendment legalizing abortion will remain on ballot

“It is expensive, and in these places where we can do it, it is the least expensive pathway to restoring rights,” Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, said at a panel discussion during the Democratic National Convention. “In Missouri, for example, it would take a lot more money to flip that legislature and to flip that gubernatorial seat … the best (return on investment) we can get is putting this on the ballot and appealing to those Missouri voters who do want this.”

In an interview with The Independent, Hall said The Fairness Project is both a leading funder and a coalition partner of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom. The coalition also includes the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, the ACLU of Missouri and Abortion Action Missouri. 

She said any assumption that they simply parachute money into states is false. 

“It is impossible for nonprofits like us who may have resources to bring to bear to achieve anything without a campaign that is grounded in grassroots support and the support of Missouri voters,” Hall said. 

The fact that the nonprofits helping bankroll the campaign don’t disclose their donors has become a point of attack from anti-abortion activists and lawmakers in Missouri. 

“There is going to be a massive effort — and by massive I mean to the tune of millions of dollars,” U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said of the abortion ballot campaign at a conference last weekend in Missouri. “Already, George Soros and dark money groups have poured into this state almost $5 million to begin spending on this radical amendment.” 

Stephanie Bell, a spokeswoman for Missouri Stands with Women, blamed “out-of-state liberal groups” for boosting the abortion-rights campaign’s finances.

On Tuesday, after the Missouri Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s attempt to take Amendment 3 from the ballot, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the front-runner for governor, called the ballot measure “a deceptive effort by out-of-state interests.” The Missouri Republican Party called Amendment 3 “bankrolled by radical out-of-state interest groups.” 

Hall, with The Fairness Project, said she doesn’t usually push back on “dark money” criticisms. 

“If they want to focus on this rather than on the issue that Missouri voters care about, which is making sure that everyone in their state has access to lifesaving reproductive health care when they need it,” she said, “then that’s a misread on their part of what Missouri voters care most about.” 

The campaign has seen overwhelming support from across the state, collecting initiative petition signatures from every county and turning in more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in May.

While the top donors have come from out of state, the campaign has also raised several million dollars so far from Missouri individuals and organizations.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, which have clinics in Missouri, have donated more than $1.1 million. The ACLU of Missouri has donated more than $620,000, the Health Forward Foundation based in Kansas City donated $500,000 and Abortion Action Missouri has given more than $230,000.

The campaign stresses that the largest donor base remains Missourians affected by the ban. 

“Throughout the campaign, eight out of 10 online contributions have come from right here in Missouri,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement. “Underscoring the true grassroots nature of this movement.”

Sweet said that in the days following a Friday ruling by a Cole County circuit judge that threatened to remove Amendment 3 from the ballot, more than 2,400 Missourians donated a quarter million dollars to the campaign. 

If Amendment 3 passes by a simple majority in November, Missouri could become the first state to overturn an abortion ban by the vote of the people. It would also join several other states that successfully protected abortion-rights through citizen-led ballot campaigns since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. 

Abortion is illegal in Missouri, with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. The amendment would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability and protect access to other reproductive health care, like birth control. 

“It is truly the grassroots infrastructure in Missouri,” Kelly said. “And the leadership of in-state partners in every ballot measure campaign that advances to voters that we’ve been involved in that make it such an inspiring place to work.”

This story was updated at 12:22 p.m. to correctly state that The Fairness Project is based out of Washington D.C.

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police are welcoming a special security designation from the Department of Homeland Security for Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress will gather to certify the Electoral College vote count for the winner of the presidential election.

The last time Congress undertook the responsibility, a pro-Trump mob attacked the building, eventually breaking through police barricades, severely injuring officers and disrupting the process.

The rioters were spurred on by false claims from former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that he won the 2020 election when he had in fact lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

Members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated or told to shelter in place in their offices as one of the most secure buildings in the country was overrun.

Federal prosecutors have since secured convictions or plea deals for hundreds of the people who attacked law enforcement and obstructed Congress’ responsibility to certify the vote that day.

United States Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger released a written statement Thursday saying the “National Special Security Event designation will further strengthen our work to protect the Members of Congress and the legislative process.”

“The United States Capitol Police has been preparing for the January 6 count, as well as the Inauguration, for several months,” Manger added. “We have made hundreds of changes and improvements over the past three years, and we are confident that the Capitol will be safe and secure.”

National Special Security Events, or NSSEs, are somewhat expected for major events, like State of the Union speeches, presidential inaugurations and the presidential nominating conventions that the Democrats and Republicans hold every four years.

This, however, will be the first time that one has been issued for Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote.

The designation means the U.S. Secret Service will be the lead federal law enforcement agency planning security for the event, despite it being held in the U.S. Capitol, where USCP typically holds the top jurisdiction.

“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” Eric Ranaghan, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division, said in a written statement released Wednesday. “The U.S. Secret Service, in collaboration with our federal, state, and local partners are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”

The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, continue to campaign across swing states as polls show a tight race prior to next week’s presidential debate in Philadelphia (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

After a poor showing in Tuesday night’s ABC News presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump said Thursday in a post to his social media platform he will not participate in any more debates with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris before the Nov. 5 election.

Former President Trump and Harris had differing proposals for a future debate. Trump pushed for an NBC News-hosted meeting on Sept. 25 and Harris’ campaign team said immediately after the Tuesday event that she wanted another debate sometime in October. Fox News had offered to host an October debate.

But Trump put in definitive terms Thursday that he would not take part in another debate with Harris. He claimed victory in Tuesday’s meeting – which initial polls show Harris got the better of ­– and compared Harris’ call for a rematch with that of a boxer who’d lost.

Harris’ time would be better spent working to solve the country’s myriad problems, he said.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.

“KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he added.

In her own tweet roughly an hour after Trump’s, Harris renewed her call for another debate.

“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” she wrote. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate.”

In an average of three national polls compiled by 538, the polling news and data division of ABC News, 57% of respondents said Harris won the debate and 34% said Trump won. That included a Republican-sponsored survey.

Trump and conservative allies spent the post-debate period Tuesday night and Wednesday morning arguing that ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were biased in favor of Harris.

Trump and several others complained that the moderators fact-checked Trump, including on false claims about infanticide and migrants eating pets in Ohio, while not doing the same to Harris.

There will be one more debate, though — between vice presidential nominees U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a Republican, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, who are scheduled to meet Oct. 1 in New York City.

Trump debated President Joe Biden in June when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. The president’s poor performance in that debate spurred his exit from the race — and Harris’ arrival ­— weeks later.

Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 7, 2023, in Lukeville, Ariz. (John Moore/Getty Images).

It’s like clockwork each election cycle.

Politicians reach for an old playbook, brandishing images from the southern border, claiming that undocumented migrants steal jobs and commit violent crimes at an alarming rate.

The intent is to sow fear and misinformation about immigrants for political advantage.

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump talked about immigration more than any other topic, most notably citing false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio city.

“They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said.

Messaging in 2024 is following the pattern, even supercharging it.

The Missouri General Assembly entered the fray this summer, forming the Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes.

That committee recently concluded hearings around the state, including in Kansas City and St. Louis.

It got an earful, with many witnesses trying to explain immigration law and citing data that refutes common messaging that many critics of the committee find starkly anti-immigrant.

“Our immigrant community is not criminal,” Tomas Hernandez testified in Kansas City, with the help of a Spanish language translator. He migrated to the Kansas City area three years ago from El Salvador. “Rather, we are criminalized for the mere fact of being immigrants. For me, it would be terrible if this committee goes (down) this path.”

Undocumented immigrants make for fodder in political campaigns in a country that talks more about building walls or welcoming people to the American dream than it does about finding ways to do either.

Little in that political rhetoric puts statistics in context, acknowledges the need for foreign labor or discusses the dysfunctional and byzantine path to citizenship or legal entry standing in the way of people who want to play by the rules.

Testimony in St. Louis noted that violent crime is falling in Missouri and accused the committee of cherry-picking and exploiting crimes committed by immigrants, which are statistically less likely compared to crimes committed by native-born people.

“This is simply not good governance,” concluded a statement submitted by the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project. “Missourians should be united to solve problems, not create false narratives for political gain.”

The political battle over the immigration narrative is being amplified by plenty of cash. In the first six months of the year, politicians nationwide spent more than $247 million on advertising and social media mentioning immigrants.

The outlay was $40 million more than what was spent on any other topic.

It’s a lot of attention for the estimated 3.3% of the U.S. population who are undocumented immigrants.

Pew Research Center estimates that about one in 100 people in Missouri are undocumented. In Kansas, nearly three in 100 are undocumented. They are a critical source of labor for the economy — and the focus of an ongoing debate about how the country manages its borders.

“I can’t speak for everybody on this committee, but my focus is trying to determine the facts regarding the headlines relating to illegal immigration and crime,” said Missouri Rep. David Casteel, a Republican from Jefferson County. “So without specific data, how can we determine where the truth lies?”

Witnesses speak

Kansas City witnesses tried.

Kansas City Police Department officers said immigration is a federal issue. And they do not routinely ask the immigration status of people because doing so could undercut the trust officers need to solve crime and serve the entire community.

“Our officers work very hard to make sure that people feel safe to call us,” said Officer Octavio Villalobos, “regardless of accent or what they look like on the outside.”

KCPD Maj. Kari Thompson repeatedly told the group that Black men are a heavy focus for the department, both as perpetrators and victims of violent crime — not immigrants from Latin countries.

Pressed for data about crime related to citizens and noncitizens, Thompson promised to share those concerns with superiors.

Labor expert Judy Ancel told the panel that wage theft from local immigrants is their most common brush with crime. She recounted decades of U.S. trade and foreign policy, trying to encourage the committee to understand that, in her view, the country is complicit in the factors that drive migrants to seek asylum at the southern border.

Immigration attorneys speaking to the Missouri legislative committee also highlighted nearly 49,000 cases backlogged at the immigration court in downtown Kansas City.

Immigrants are being told to appear in 2027 or 2028. That causes many people seeking asylum to miss their one-year window to apply for authorization to work, said Michael Sharma-Crawford, a Kansas City immigration attorney.

“The process is daunting,” he said. “That’s the easiest word that I have and it’s probably not strong enough.”

Backlogs in the portion of the immigration system that governs work-related entry into the nation can keep industries, such as the ranchers Sharma-Crawford has represented in western Kansas, from getting enough workers.

Meanwhile, foreign-born children brought to the U.S. by their parents can also find themselves without legal status even as they’re assimilated into American culture, like one student he aided who wore a Nirvana T-shirt.

“You can’t get any more American than grunge rock,” Sharma-Crawford told the panel. “We now have an Americanized, educated immigrant population.”

Immigration basics

Immigration law is among the most complicated parts of the federal government, second only to the tax code.

Those who know the convoluted system best — immigration attorneys, advocates for immigrants and scholars — argue the stakes are huge. Immigration law and policy can determine whether someone is sent back to a nation where they fear for their lives, or whether families remain separated for decades.

“A lot of immigration law is just sometimes outright contradictory because it’s been glommed together over decades,” said David Thronson, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law. “It just doesn’t have any coherence to it, the way something like tax law does.”

The policies and laws are intended to uphold the reunification of families, aid the economy by admitting immigrants with needed skills, provide humanitarian protections and promote national diversity.

The foreign-born population in 2022 was 14.3% of the nation’s residents, according to Pew Research Center. The historic high was 14.8% in 1890.

For decades, studies have concluded that immigrants are net job creators. They tend to start businesses more often than native-born people. And immigrants are about one in every six people in the workforce.

The U.S.-born population also is more likely to commit crimes, violent or otherwise.

But politicians tend to blame worries about the U.S. economy, lost jobs and costs related to housing, education and health care on new arrivals.

In 2024, the criticisms come from both Democrats and Republicans. Former President Donald Trump launched his first campaign by framing immigrants as invaders and calling for mass deportation, which most experts say isn’t feasible given legal concerns and resources. He has continued to call for mass deportation in 2024.

But Lucas Kunce, a Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, has also released ads touting his experience training with agents at the U.S. southern border.

In one ad, Kunce vows: “I’ll secure that border, no matter who the president is.”

Changing rhetoric

Invoking immigrants during political campaigns is not new. But there has been a shift in tone in recent decades.

Thronson begins lessons on immigration and elections by asking students to watch a 1980 GOP presidential primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Bush replied to an audience question about undocumented children attending public schools in Houston for free.

“I’d like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor needs and human needs that that problem wouldn’t come up,” he said.

Bush added that the lack of legal pathways for migrants marked a fundamental problem. He didn’t want young children denied an education. (By 1982, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case, Plyler v. Doe, guaranteed those students the right to attend.)

Reagan proposed what is blasphemy in the 21st century GOP — allowing legal entry and reentry, work visas and to “open the border both ways.”

More than four decades later, an immigration system nimble enough to be responsive to U.S. labor needs still doesn’t exist, Thronson said.

“Both (Reagan and Bush) are significantly further to the left of anybody today, even the left,” he said.

In recent decades, gerrymandering has made congressional and state legislative districts more solidly for one party or the other, Thronson said, and that rewards extreme views during primaries.

One result is the use of immigration as a wedge issue, despite the fact that polling shows broad public agreement that the current system isn’t working.

The last significant change to immigration law came in 1996. It included several measures making it easier to deport people and taking away eligibility for some benefits.

The changes imposed three- and 10-year bans on undocumented immigrants if they leave the country to try and reenter legally.

“So people don’t leave,” Thronson said. “And now we have millions of people in this country who are eligible for visas. They have long-standing marriages to U.S. citizens and families … but they can’t get the visa for which they’re eligible.”

In June, the Biden administration introduced a program allowing a pathway for undocumented people married to U.S. citizens, if they met certain conditions.

In late August, Texas and Idaho filed suit to stop Biden’s plan. Missouri and Kansas are among the 14 states whose Republican attorneys general also joined the lawsuit, which a federal judge put on hold while the issue goes through the courts.

Playing for votes

Campaigns are targeting immigration messages at particular groups.

Black voters are sometimes being encouraged to see a Kamala Harris presidency as a threat. Harris, as vice president, was given the job of exploring the root causes driving many people from Central American countries to the U.S.

Trump has spoken of immigrants coming to take “Black jobs.” Metal signs with racially offensive messaging have appeared at bus stops in Denver and Chicago, goading Black riders to take seats at the back of the bus while “Kamala’s migrants sit in the front.”

The U.S. Border Patrol documented a record 250,000 encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2023, before seeing the numbers begin to drop.

In August, for the first time, the largest civil rights organization working on behalf of Latinos issued a border policy paper based on the views of Latino voters.

The report was a first for the D.C. group, UnidosUS, which is led by Kansas City, Kansas-born and raised Janet Murguia.

Overwhelmingly, Latino voters voiced support for an immigration system and border policies that would be “firm, fair and free of cruelty,” said Cristobal Ramón, senior adviser on immigration with UnidosUS. But he said that, like most Americans, economic issues rank higher with Latino voters.

“Pocketbook issues are always the leading issues for Latinos and Americans writ large,” he said. “Inflation hits everybody.”

The polling showed that Latino voters are not lining up behind hard-line approaches at the border, like separating families, especially children.

But they join other voters in wanting solutions.

“The Latino electorate has had this position for a very long time,” Ramón said. “What’s shifted is just simply that political parties, the candidates, have been starting to pay attention a little bit to where the public is, and have been shifting their positions around that.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey meets with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kansas City (Photo provided by Andrew Bailey's campaign).

Eight months into his term as Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey withdrew his office from defending a state agency being sued by a legislator’s son for disability discrimination.

A few months earlier, his campaign and an affiliated political action committee accepted more than $150,000 in donations connected to a witness in the case.

Incensed by what he saw as the state’s top attorney using his office for political benefit, Lucas Cierpiot — whose brother Patrick filed the original lawsuit and whose father is GOP Sen. Mike Cierpiot — filed a formal complaint accusing Bailey of violating attorney conduct rules.

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, noted in an email that the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed Cierpiot’s complaint without investigating. And legal experts interviewed by The Independent aren’t so sure taking money from a witness would warrant sanctions. 

But Cierpiot remains convinced the attorney general violated ethics rules. He’s now asking the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene and order an investigation. 

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

While Bailey’s office was still in charge of the case, his campaign for reelection launched. 

The first donor to his fledgling campaign committee was Michael Ketchmark, who gave $2,825, the maximum that an individual can donate. By the end of January 2023, Bailey would receive a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C.

According to Patrick Cierpiot’s lawsuit, Ketchmark is a material witness in his case because he spoke to Gov. Mike Parson’s chief of staff in an attempt to keep Cierpiot from being fired from the Missouri Department of Economic Development. 

Ketchmark is a prominent attorney and donor in Missouri politics, including giving huge contributions to Parson. Patrick Cierpiot said he has known Ketchmark for 30 years.

In an email, Ketchmark said he has not been called as a witness by the state in Patrick Cierpiot’s or any other case. Court records in Kansas show Cierpiot called Ketchmark as a witness. Ketchmark did not respond to a question about whether he spoke to the governor’s staff on Cierpiot’s behalf. 

“I have no idea why Patrick was fired, and the fact that Patrick listed me as a witness does not stop me from supporting a political candidate,” said Ketchmark, whose law firm this year alone gave the PAC supporting Bailey $1.1 million.

Todd Graves gets high-powered help lobbying for University of Missouri curator position

Attorneys contacted by The Independent said there is not a specific rule in Missouri barring Bailey from accepting donations from a witness. But Peter Joy, who teaches legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it creates a public confidence issue.

“In terms of public perception,” Joy said, “it raises a lot of questions.”

When someone is running for prosecutor or attorney general, Joy said, it’s a “delicate balance” between being a lawyer and a politician.

“They still owe their primary obligation to the oath that they took to fulfill their elected office,” Joy said, “but…they have a campaign committee that’s soliciting people for contributions and they’re attending fundraisers and they’re speaking before groups where they’re hoping to generate funds to run their campaign and get votes, eventually, to retain their office.”  

Lucas Cierpiot’s filing is the latest in a series of accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who narrowly avoided being questioned under oath last month about his contact with a defendant in the state’s case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his law license in that dispute, according to a filing from Jackson County’s attorneys. 

Last year, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by companies that operate video game machines that offer cash prizes. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

The withdrawal came after Bailey’s PAC accepted large campaign contributions from political action committees linked to a lobbyist for the two companies that brought the lawsuit against the state — Torch Electronics and Warrenton Oil.

It’s also the second time Bailey has been the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office. Earlier this year, the Hazelwood School District lodged a formal complaint about Bailey after his office falsely blamed the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student. 

Patrick Cierpiot sued the Missouri Department of Economic Development two years after he was fired from the department. He said he requested accommodations after breaking his wrist in a bicycle wreck because he was struggling to write and type to keep up with his workload but was fired instead. In its response, the state accused Cierpiot of fraud.

In Cierpiot’s amended lawsuit in May 2022, he named Ketchmark as having urged a Parson staffer not to fire him. 

The following January brought the Ketchmark-affiliated donations to Bailey’s campaign. Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s law firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. 

A few weeks after that, Liberty and Justice received an in-kind donation from the firm totaling $9,216.53. Bailey helped raise money for Liberty and Justice PAC, which, in turn, supported his successful GOP primary run for a full term as attorney general. 

Bailey’s campaign and the PAC received a combined $151,166.53 in cash and in-kind donations from Ketchmark, his relatives and his law firm and associates while Bailey was defending the state in the Cierpiot lawsuit.

Missouri AG drops out of gambling case after taking donations from companies suing state

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from the case and allowed the department to hire a private law firm to handle it. At that time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest and his office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex cases.” 

Lucas Cierpiot filed his complaint four months later in December 2023. It was dismissed by the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel in March. Cierpiot asked for further review, but the case was dismissed again in May.

In response, Cierpiot filed a motion with the state Supreme Court last month asking that it order an investigation. 

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel responded to Lucas Cierpiot’s filing with the Missouri Supreme Court, saying he could not insist on an investigation. It went on to say Cierpiot’s complaint didn’t allege a violation of the rules of professional conduct because it outlined donations from Ketchmark’s firm to the PAC, not from Ketchmark himself to Bailey’s campaign committee.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the response filing says. 

The filing, signed by Chief Disciplinary Counsel Laura Elsbury, claims that before declining to investigate Cierpiot’s allegations, officials “independently verified that (Ketchmark) had not contributed to (Bailey’s) campaign committee.”

But that was wrong. Ketchmark did contribute to Bailey’s campaign committee.

Elsbury said in an email she could not comment on the pending issue. Lucas Cierpiot did not immediately return a  request for comment.

In an interview, Patrick Cierpiot said he doesn’t think it is right for an attorney to take money from a witness.

“If it’s okay for Andrew Bailey to solicit and accept money from a case witness,” Patrick Cierpiot said, “then the Missouri courts are completely blown open for corruption.”

The Missouri Supreme Court takes the bench on Sept. 10, 2024, in Jefferson City to hear a case questioning whether an amendment to overturn the state's abortion ban will remain on the state's November ballot. From left are Judges Kelly C. Broniec, Robin Ransom, W. Brent Powell, Chief Justice Mary R. Russell, Zel. M. Fischer, Paul C. Wilson and Ginger K. Gooch (Pool photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Missourians will have the opportunity to vote to enshrine abortion in the state constitution this November, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a decision published less than three hours before the constitutional deadline to remove a question from the ballot, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that recommended the measure be stripped from the Nov. 5 ballot.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft “shall certify to local election authorities that Amendment 3 be placed on the Nov. 5, 2024, general election ballot and shall take all steps necessary to ensure that it is on said ballot,” the judgment read.

The court has not yet issued an opinion.

“This fight was not just about this amendment—it was about defending the integrity of the initiative petition process and ensuring that Missourians can shape their future directly,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, said in a statement.

In a lawsuit filed late last month, a number of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists sued Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft for certifying Amendment 3 for the ballot.

The suit was brought forward by state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest who in a statement Tuesday said the Supreme Court “turned a blind eye” in its ruling.

“The fight continues against the vile forces who have no regard for innocent life,” they wrote.

On the eve of the Supreme Court hearing, Ashcroft announced he was decertifying the measure, a potentially unprecedented attempt to rescind his previous decision in an attempt to block the measure from the ballot.

The Supreme Court judges said Ashcroft missed his statutory deadline to change his mind.

“Respondent Ashcroft certified the petition as sufficient prior to that deadline, and any action taken to change that decision weeks after the statutory deadline expired is a nullity and of no effect,” the judges wrote.

Amendment 3 — which had been stripped from the Secretary of State’s website on Monday — was again listed under 2024 ballot measures as of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Judge calls Ashcroft’s characterization of abortion amendment ‘unfair’ and ‘misleading’

In order to get a citizen-led Amendment on the ballot, the campaign behind the measure must first collect enough signatures from six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. When asked for signatures, state law requires that the amendment be attached in full.

The initiative petition circulated by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom did not include any current law that would be repealed, the issue at the crux of the lower court’s ruling.

There is also a section of state law that requires initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”

Attorneys for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have said the amendment would not repeal the state’s current abortion law or take it off the books. Instead, they said, it would create a new law that would supersede much of the existing one because not every element of the current law would be rendered moot, including laws protecting women who get abortions from prosecution.

And, they added, anything that falls under the scope of the amendment would be left to the judicial system to interpret.

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh did not agree. On Friday he ruled that the campaign did not meet the sufficiency requirement through a “failure to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent.”

While Limbaugh recommended the amendment be taken off the ballot, he ultimately left the decision up to a higher court.

Four days later, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom.

“What this decision really says today is that we deserve to be on the ballot,” said Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, which is part of the coalition behind the amendment. ”That people deserve to make this decision for themselves.”

If passed on Nov. 5, the amendment would go into effect 30 days later. At that point, Schafer said there will likely be a series of legal challenges to clarify what the amendment means.

“But it’s very clear that when the amendment goes into effect, our state’s total abortion ban is over,” Schafer said.

The amendment reads in part: “The government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care.”

Abortion is illegal in Missouri with limited exceptions for medical emergencies. If the amendment passes by a simple majority, it would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, including birth control.

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “failure to protect voters.”

“We implore Missourians to research and study the text and effects of Amendment 3 before going to the voting booth,” she said in a statement.

Forck, one of the plaintiffs, was among a handful of anti-abortion activists who remained outside the Supreme Court building once a decision came down.

“We are resolved firmly to let the people of Missouri know exactly how insidious this Amendment 3 is,” she said, later adding: “This is a very slippery slope.”

The Missouri Republican Party called the ruling “devastating.”

“This ruling marks the most dangerous threat to Missouri’s pro-life laws in our state’s history,” the party said in a statement Tuesday. “Make no mistake—this amendment, bankrolled by radical out-of-state interest groups, is a direct assault on Missouri families and the values we hold dear.”

So far, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom has raised more than $15 million for the campaign, including seven-figure donations from national groups whose funders are not listed, including the Fairness Project.

With the general election only eight weeks away, Democratic candidates drew on news of the Supreme Court decision to call on supporters.

“Voters will overturn Missouri’s cruel ban that has zero exceptions for rape and incest,” Crystal Quade, the Democratic nominee for governor, said in a statement. “And they deserve a governor who will protect the will of voters and the rights of every Missourian.”

Lucas Kunce, the Democrat running against incumbent U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, took an opportunity to call out Hawley’s opposition to Amendment 3.

“The lies and lawfare,” Kunce said, “used by Josh Hawley and his allies to try to block a citizen-led effort to end their total abortion ban have failed.”

This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. to include reaction to the ruling.

Chuck Hatfield, an attorney for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, argues before the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024 in Jefferson City as the court hears a case questioning whether an amendment to overturn the state's abortion ban should remain on the November ballot (Pool photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

The Missouri Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday morning over whether to allow an abortion-rights amendment to remain on the Nov. 5 ballot. 

The court will decide whether the campaign behind Amendment 3, which would legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, failed to comply with state law when drafting its initiative petition, the text circulated among registered voters. 

They are expected to rule quickly, since the deadline to remove a question from the ballot is 5 p.m. 

A group of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists filed a lawsuit late last month asking the court to take the measure off the ballot, saying the initiative petition failed to list what specific existing laws would be repealed if the amendment passed. 

Missouri law requires that initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.” 

Hours after a bench trial in circuit court on Friday, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, recommending that the measure be taken off the ballot because the citizen-led ballot measure failed to meet the sufficiency requirement through a “failure to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent.” But he left the ultimate authority up to a higher court.

In their briefing to the Supreme Court, the attorneys representing the anti-abortion group wrote that no comparable case has been brought before the court in the past. 

“That is because proposed Amendment 3 is novel in its attempt to attach unlimited other subjects to a single, enormous issue that is so controversial that it eclipses all others in the minds of voters, the media and even the secretary of state,” they wrote. 

Chuck Hatfield, an attorney representing Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, argued to the Supreme Court Tuesday that the opposition’s briefs were “light on legal arguments but weighty with political argument.”

He chalked the lawsuit — filed by state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest — up to politics. 

“The fact that [abortion] is controversial does not mean that the courts and state officials should cast aside the fundamental right to have that vote,” he said. 

He maintained that because the amendment would not literally repeal any part of the law on its own, the campaign did not err. He added that constitutional amendments never repeal state statutes from the books. Instead, courts can render other statues invalid as a result of further legal action. 

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society arguing the case Tuesday on behalf of the plaintiffs, reiterated her contention that the initiative petition illegally included more than one subject, pointing to language protecting “a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” and saying such a phrase encompasses “infinite subjects.” 

Attorneys for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom said the single subject is “reproductive freedom.” 

While Limbaugh did not rule on this single subject claim, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to.

After the hearing, both sides agreed on one point: the case is novel. 

Martin called the amendment novel in all that it encompasses.

Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, which is part of the coalition behind the amendment, said the same of the plaintiffs’ procedural arguments.

Schafer said while an amendment hasn’t been ordered off the Missouri ballot in several decades, Limbaugh’s ruling “threatens to grind our system of constitutional initiative petition to a halt at the last minute, leaving in its wake the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters …”

Martin said they are not trying to “undermine” voters, but rather “protect” them.

“We’ve worked for 50 years for the right to vote on abortion and I would desperately like, along with all Missouri voters, the opportunity to actually do so,” she said. “And not to have to vote on all of these issues at the same time.”

Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including in-vitro fertilization and birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution. 

Abortion is illegal in Missouri, with limited exceptions for medical emergencies.

Since the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 through March 2024, there were 64 abortions performed in Missouri under the state’s emergency exemption, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

Meanwhile, thousands of Missourians have crossed state lines for the procedure. Last year, about 2,860 Missourians traveled to Kansas and 8,710 traveled to Illinois for abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group that closely tracks abortion data.

Ashcroft decertifies measure ahead of ruling

On the eve of the Supreme Court hearing, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft decertified the ballot measure, a potentially unprecedented attempt to rescind his previous decision in an attempt to block the measure from the ballot.

As of Tuesday morning, Amendment 3 remained absent from the secretary of state’s website listing measures to appear on the November ballot.

Ashcroft said he’d mistakenly certified Amendment 3. 

Attorneys representing Ashcroft in Cole County Court on Friday defended his decision. But on Monday, they said he’d realized his error

“This court should simply dismiss this appeal because the appeal has now become moot,” an attorney for Ashcroft told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, adding that Ashcroft believes he has the authority to decertify any measure up until eight weeks before the election.

Judge calls Ashcroft’s characterization of abortion amendment ‘unfair’ and ‘misleading’

Attorneys for the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom in a filing Monday evening asked that Ashcroft be held in contempt of court, adding that his decision went against the court’s stay order filed Monday morning that kept the amendment on the ballot until the highest court’s decision was made.

Hatfield told the judges Tuesday that his team filed a motion asking the court to stay the lower court’s order and keep the amendment on the ballot until they made a decision because “the secretary of state is going to be up to shenanigans and we need a stay” to prevent a “crisis in the system.”  

He recognized the contempt request was “highly unusual” and put the court in a “predicament.”

“It’s open contempt for your authority, It’s open contempt for the rule of law,” Hatfield said of Ashcroft. “It’s open contempt for the proper administration of justice to tell the public that he’s going to take it off the ballot even though we’re here this morning having this discussion.”

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft joined the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol. “I think regardless of what the legislature does, the people of this state – with hard work – can protect all life in this state," Ashcroft said (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft decertified a ballot measure that would legalize abortion, a move aimed at blocking it from appearing on the November ballot, according to a brief filed Monday with the state Supreme Court.

Last month, Ashcroft announced the reproductive-rights proposal would appear on the ballot as Amendment 3. But a Cole County judge on Friday ruled the amendment violated state law and shouldn’t have been certified. 

That ruling is now before the Missouri Supreme Court, with a hearing scheduled Tuesday morning and a ruling expected quickly thereafter. The deadline to remove a question from the ballot is also Tuesday. 

But before the Supreme Court had the chance to weigh in, Ashcroft said he had changed his mind. 

“On further review in light of the circuit court’s judgment, the Secretary believes the amendment is deficient,” the secretary of state argues in a filing with the court. 

As of Monday afternoon, Amendment 3 was no longer listed on the secretary of state’s website as appearing on the November ballot.

“The amendment proponents cannot evade constitutional requirements that advocates of other amendments must and have satisfied simply because the proposed amendment concerns a highly charged moral topic,” the brief read. “This court should enforce the circuit court’s judgment.”

Attorneys for the campaign in a filing Monday evening asked that Ashcroft be held in contempt of court, adding that his decision went against the court’s stay order filed Monday morning that kept the amendment on the ballot until the highest court’s decision was made.

“Secretary Ashcroft’s letter directly tends to interrupt this court’s proceeding and impair respect for this court’s authority,” the filing read.

Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for the campaign behind Amendment 3 — Missourians for Constitutional Freedom — said in a statement Monday that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction at this point, not Ashcroft.

Sweet added the campaign is “confident the court will order the secretary of state to keep Amendment 3 on the ballot.”

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled last week that the measure should be taken off the ballot, but deferred to a higher court for a final ruling. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom quickly appealed.

Missouri law requires that initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.” 

During a circuit court hearing Friday, an attorney representing Ashcroft maintained the office believed that the measure met the minimum requirements to be certified. 

Judge calls Ashcroft’s characterization of abortion amendment ‘unfair’ and ‘misleading’

The anti-abortion plaintiffs who challenged the legality of the amendment have argued that because the campaign behind the ballot measure didn’t list the exact statutes that would be repealed on the initiative petition, the measure is invalid. Attorneys representing Missourians for Constitutional Freedom continue to argue that the measure, if passed, would not truly repeal any part of Missouri’s constitution, but rather supersede most of the current ban on the books. 

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom turned in signatures of more than 380,000 Missourians across the state who supported the issue landing on the ballot. If Amendment 3 is ultimately on the Nov. 5 ballot and wins by a simple majority, Missouri could be the first state to overturn an abortion ban.

Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution. 

Nearly every abortion, with limited exceptions for the life and health of the mother, has remained illegal in Missouri since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedure. Missouri’s ban does not include exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

The plaintiffs — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest — said in a statement Friday evening that the amendment’s scope is about more than just abortion and could be interpreted to also include gender-affirming care and human cloning.

This story was updated at 5:55 p.m. to include a filing from attorneys for the Amendment 3 campaign asking that Ashcroft be held in contempt of court.

Overall, Republicans in statewide contests spent almost $65 million during the primaries, compared to just $4.8 million in the Democratic Party (Getty Images).

The top three finishers combined to spend $27.5 million in the Republican primary for governor, with the winner, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, accounting for almost two-thirds of the total, newly filed campaign disclosure reports show.

Overall, Republicans in statewide contests spent almost $65 million, compared to just $4.8 million in the Democratic Party, where the only significant primary spending was in the race for governor, won by state Rep. Crystal Quade of Springfield.

The new reports, which cover the period from July 27 to Aug. 31, were due Thursday at the Missouri Ethics Commission. Federal candidates do not file post-primary reports.

The next reports are due Oct. 15.

Campaign finance tracking by The Independent shows that having the most money didn’t equal success in either party. It did for Kehoe and State Treasurer Vivek Malek, who spent $5.8 million from his campaign fund and joint fundraising PAC.

But David Wasinger of St. Louis, who won the primary for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Denny Hoskins, the nominee for secretary of state, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who fended off a challenge from Will Scharf, all won while being outspent.

In the Democratic Party, Quade defeated Springfield businessman Mike Hamra despite being outspent almost 3-1. Hamra gave his own campaign more than $2.1 million and spent $3.3 million overall, while Quade raised and spent $1.2 million through her campaign and joint fundraising PAC.

No other contested Democratic primary featured a candidate who spent more than $50,000 to win the nomination. And while some Democrats ended August with bank accounts comparable to their Republican counterparts, polls showing double-digit leads for the GOP in statewide races and the fundraising prowess shown by Republicans show the difficulties any Democrat must surmount to win in November.

The best-funded Democrats who file reports with the Missouri Ethics Commission are state Senate candidates. In five of the six districts being watched closely, Democratic candidates had more in the bank on Aug. 31 than their Republican opponents and more than any statewide candidate from either party except Kehoe.

Almost every candidate running a full-scale campaign for statewide office or the Missouri Senate has both an official campaign committee and a joint fundraising PAC. Official campaign committees are subject to contribution limits – statewide candidates can accept donations up to $2,825 – while the joint fundraising PACs can accept donations of any size.

Campaigns must observe other restrictions on donations as well. Corporations and labor unions are prohibited from contributing directly to candidate and political party committees, but may set up PACs for voluntary contributions from employees or members to do so.

Corporations and labor unions may also contribute to joint fundraising PACs and independent PACs that are allowed to contribute to candidate committees.

The $17.1 million spent by Kehoe and his joint fundraising committee, American Dream PAC, was equal to $64 for each of the 275,139 votes he received in the primary for governor. His two main rivals, state Sen. Bill Eigel and secretary of state Jay Ashcroft, spent $5.8 million and $4.6 million, respectively, which equals $25.46 per vote for Eigel and $28.15 per vote for Ashcroft.

In other races:

• Wasinger spent $2.7 million — $2.6 million of it personal funds – to defeat five other candidates. Hough spent $3.6 million. Wasinger spent just under $13 for each vote he received, while Hough’s spending equalled $18.14 per vote.
• Hoskins spent $241,768 from his campaign fund and benefited from $247,262 spent by Old Drum Conservative PAC. The best-funded candidate in the eight-way race was Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher, who spent $640,000 in campaign funds and $934,000 from his joint fundraising committee, Missouri United PAC. Hoskins spent $3.11 per vote for his primary win, while Plocher spent $18.16 per vote and came in fourth.
• Malek’s $5.8 million in spending included $1.35 million in personal funds and equaled $21.17 per vote. His best-funded opponent in the six-way primary was House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, who spent $737,266 from his campaign committee and $563,121 via the Ozark Gateway Leadership Fund. Smith spent the equivalent of $10.27  per vote and finished fourth.
• The attorney general’s race was second to the gubernatorial primary in total spending. Bailey spent $1.3 million through his campaign and his PAC, Liberty and Justice, spent $5.3 million. Scharf’s campaign spent $1.7 million, and his joint fundraising PAC, Defend Missouri, spent $7.6 million. Another PAC Scharf used for joint fundraising, Club for Growth Action, spent $1.6 million on his behalf. Bailey’s total equals $16 per vote, while Scharf’s costs equal  $45 per vote.

Legislative Democrats have set a goal of breaking the GOP supermajorities that have two-thirds of the seats in the Missouri House and state Senate in Republican hands. That would require at least 55 seats in the House– three more than they have now – and 12 in the Senate – two more than their current strength.

In state Senate races for the competitive seats, Democrats avoided primaries while the GOP winners in three seats drained their campaign treasuries to win the nomination.

In five districts — the 1st and 15th in the St. Louis metropolitan area, the 11th and 17th in the Kansas City region and the 19th in Boone County — Democrats have campaign funds ranging from $550,000 to almost $1 million. No Republican in those districts ended August with more than $70,000 on hand.

In the sixth district considered competitive, the 23rd District in St. Charles County, the candidates entered September with similar amounts on hand. State Rep. Adam Schnelting of St. Charles, who won a four-way primary, had $42,762 in his campaign account and $30,962 in the account of his joint fundraising committee, Protect Our Kids PAC.

Democratic candidate Matt Williams had $40,266 on hand. Williams does not have a joint fundraising PAC.

Supporters of a proposed ballot measure to legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability gathered at a rally hosted by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom on Feb. 6 in Kansas City (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Supreme Court will decide whether abortion-rights will end up on the Nov. 5 ballot after a Cole County judge ruled the proposed amendment violated state law. 

The case bypassed the court of appeals over the weekend and headed straight to the state’s highest court, which scheduled oral arguments for 8:30 a.m. Tuesday — the same day ballots are supposed to be printed for those voting absentee. 

Sunday afternoon, attorneys representing the campaign behind the amendment, which would appear on the ballot as Amendment 3, filed an emergency motion asking the court to allow it to proceed to the ballot while the case plays out. Doing so, they argued, would “preserve the status quo and prevent irreparable harm to intervenors-appellants, election officials throughout the state and Missouri voters themselves.”  

Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including in-vitro fertilization and birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution. 

Abortion is illegal in Missouri, with limited exceptions for the life and health of the mother.

2 years after Missouri banned abortion, navigating access still involves fear, confusion

In late August, a group of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists sued Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, accusing him of wrongly certifying the citizen-led ballot initiative for the Nov. 5 ballot nine days earlier. 

Late Friday evening, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, saying the text of the initiative petition failed to list what existing laws would be repealed if it passed, as he said is required by state law. 

He suggested the amendment be withheld from the ballot, but also left the door open for an appeal to a higher court, saying he recognized  “the gravity of the unique issues involved in this case, and the lack of direct precedent on point.” 

Limbaugh was appointed to the newly-created judicial position in the 19th circuit on Aug. 2 by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, for whom he previously served as general counsel. 

He was previously a potential candidate to replace Eric Schmitt as Missouri Attorney General after he was elected to the U.S. Senate. His father was a federal court judge and his cousin was the late Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio host who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Donald Trump.  

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, quickly appealed his decision.

“Judges come from their own experience and background, and they’re not perfect,” Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, a member of the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom coalition, said Sunday, later adding: “What we’re asking is that the Supreme Court hold us to the same standard everyone else has had.”

Missouri law requires that initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.” 

Loretta Haggard, an attorney representing the campaign said during a hearingFriday that the amendment would not literally repeal the state’s current abortion law and take it off the books, but rather would create a new law that would supersede much of the existing one. 

She said this is because not every element of the current law would be rendered moot: the two texts overlap in that both protect women who get abortions from prosecution and both restrict abortion after fetal viability, generally seen as the point at which a fetus can outside the womb, generally around 24 weeks pregnancy. 

Anything else that falls under the scope of the amendment would be left to the judicial system to interpret, Haggard said. 

During the trial, Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society representing the plaintiffs, also argued the initiative petition illegally included more than one subject, pointing to language protecting “a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” and saying such a phrase encompasses “infinite subjects.”

Haggard contended that the single subject was clear: “reproductive freedom.”

While Limbaugh ruled the initiative petition did not meet the sufficiency requirement through a “failure to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent,” he did not address the single subject claims in his decision. 

The plaintiffs — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest — said in a statement Friday evening that the amendment’s scope is about more than just abortion and could be interpreted to also include gender-affirming care and human cloning. Neither are mentioned by name in the amendment, nor is in-vitro fertilization.

“There is no way to know if the proponents of this radical amendment would have gathered enough signatures to place this on the ballot if the truth about the staggering scope of laws Amendment 3 invalidates had been disclosed,” they said in a statement. 

Wales said the campaign behind Amendment 3 remains undeterred despite the ruling. 

“We are right on the law. The history of how initiative petitions have worked in this state has meant that they’re able to vote on their rights,” Wales said. “The constitution creates a process for citizens to engage in democracy, not one that’s intended to trip them up or hinder them from participating in democracy. We think the court is going to see that.”  

In May, the campaign turned in signatures from more than 380,000 Missourians across the state who supported the issue landing on the ballot. If Amendment 3 is ultimately voted on in November and wins by a simple majority, Missouri could be the first state to overturn an abortion ban by citizen-vote.

“These ballot initiatives just go through shenanigans, often at the eleventh hour, and what it does again every time is fire people up,” Wales said. “We expect to win, and we’re going to take all the energy and use it to galvanize folks to win in November.”

The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Tessa Weinberg/Missouri Independent).

Missouri lawmakers will return to Jefferson City this week to consider whether to override any of Gov. Mike Parson’s vetoes. 

And while they are in town, many will also engage in another veto session tradition — raising campaign cash at a parade of parties and fundraisers all over the Capitol City.

Less than two months out from the November election, there are 25 fundraising events scheduled over the course of three days this week, offering everything from “fellowship and coffee” to “live music” to “debate watch and karaoke.”   

The first event takes place Monday night, when nine incumbent Republican senators will be joined by eight GOP nominees for open Senate seats at the Jefferson City office of the Armstrong Teasdale law firm. 

A few of those listed on the Armstrong Teasdale invite are also scheduled to attend another fundraiser at the same time less than a block away at CORK & and Board, which advertises itself as Jefferson City’s “one and only board game pub.”

On Tuesday, another 19 fundraisers are scheduled, kicking off at 1:15 p.m., when House Majority Leader Jon Patterson will be the special guest at an event for five of his fellow Republican representatives at the offices of the Association of Realtors. 

Democrats get into the act by 3 p.m., with seven representatives holding an event at The Grand Cafe. 

Statewide candidates are raising money Tuesday as well, with Republican Denny Hoskins gathering supporters at Bar Vino to aid his campaign for secretary of state at 3:30 p.m. and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Crystal Quade joins members of her caucus in the House at the Millbottom at 6:30 p.m.

Quade’s rival in the governor’s race, GOP Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, is hosting “dessert by the pool” at his Jefferson City home at 8 p.m.

Patterson, who is expected to be the next House speaker, and state Rep. Alex Riley, the leading candidate to replace Patterson as majority leader, will host a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. at the offices of the Missouri Times, an online compendium of press releases and opinion pieces. That will also be the venue for an 8 p.m. fundraiser for state Rep. Melanie Stinnett of Springfield.

The next morning, GOP Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Curtis Trent will hold a fundraising event at the Association of Realtors headquarters and nine Republican representatives will gather to raise money at a breakfast event just down the street. 

Veto session officially kicks off at noon on Wednesday. 

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas Moore Society, represented a group of Missouri anti-abortion lawmakers and activists Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, during a trial at the Cole County Courthouse (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A Missouri judge ruled Friday evening that a reproductive-rights amendment did not comply with state initiative petition requirements, leaving the door open to potentially withhold it from the November ballot. 

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled that the coalition behind the citizen-led ballot measure failed to meet the sufficiency requirement through a “failure to include any statute or provision that will be repealed, especially when many of these statutes are apparent.”

A spokesperson for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the reproductive-rights amendment, said they plan to appeal. 

Limbaugh also wrote that while he found a “blatant violation” of state law, he “recognizes the gravity of the unique issues involved in this case, and the lack of direct precedent on point.” 

As a result, he won’t issue an injunction preventing the amendment from being printed on the ballot until Tuesday to allow time for “further guidance or rulings” from the appeals court. 

The constitutional deadline for ballots to be printed is Tuesday. 

Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including in-vitro fertilization and birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution. 

“The court’s decision to block Amendment 3 from appearing on the ballot is a profound injustice to the initiative petition process,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager with Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement. “And undermines the rights of the 380,000 Missourians who signed our petition demanding a voice on this critical issue.

The lawsuit was filed two weeks ago by a group of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists against Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who certified the citizen-led ballot initiative for the Nov. 5 ballot  nine days earlier. The group is arguing that the initiative should never have been allowed on the ballot.

The plaintiffs — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest — said in a statement Friday evening that the amendment’s scope is “staggering.” 

“Missourians have a constitutional right to know what laws their votes would overturn before deciding to sign initiative petitions,” they said. “Amendment 3 isn’t just about abortion.”

The plaintiffs were represented in court by Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society who argued during a brief bench trial Friday morning that the campaign behind the amendment fell short of the law by failing to list the specific laws or constitutional provisions which would be repealed if the amendment is approved by voters. 

Missouri law requires that initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.” 

“No one disputes,” she said, “one of its primary purposes and effects is to repeal Missouri’s ban on abortion.” 

Speculation isn’t necessary to come to this conclusion, Martin said, pointing to the ballot summary which reads, in part, that a yes vote would “remove Missouri’s ban on abortion.”

Loretta Haggard, an attorney representing the campaign supporting the amendment, said that while the amendment would supersede existing law, it would not erase it from the current constitutional text, and therefore would not truly repeal the current statute. 

She told the judge in court that this is because the two texts do have some overlapping similarities: both protect women who get abortions from prosecution and both restrict abortion after the point of fetal viability. 

Fetal viability is an undefined period of time generally seen as the point in which the fetus could survive outside the womb on its own, generally around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  

When it comes to everything else, Haggard said, the amendment would leave the current law to be interpreted through the lens of the new law, meaning any restrictions implemented by the government on abortion prior to fetal viability will have to withstand strict scrutiny in court to remain. She ventured that most of Missouir’s current restrictions would not survive for this reason.

Ultimately, Limbaugh sided with the plaintiffs, writing that the page attached to the initiative petition forms “included no disclaimer or any equivalent to a disclaimer.” 

“In fact,” he concluded. “The full and correct text failed to identify any ‘sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.’”

(Getty Images).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge rejected an attempt to invalidate an initiative petition on sports betting Friday, allowing voters to decide whether to enshrine sports wagering in Missouri’s Constitution on the November ballot.

“Lawsuits seeking to remove an initiative petition from the ballot after it has been certified as sufficient by the secretary (of state) are highly disfavored,” Judge Daniel Green wrote in his ruling, quoting from another case that he must rule with “restraint, trepidation and a healthy suspicion of the partisan that would use the judiciary to prevent the initiative process from taking its course.”

Green reviewed lists of petition signatures plaintiffs submitted to allege that the amendment did not meet the minimum threshold in Missouri’s 1st congressional district. The evidence included 95 signatures that plaintiffs called “disqualified voters.”

Green, in his ruling, said the evidence did not show that the voters were ineligible when they signed the petition. Without these 95 signatures thrown out, the petition meets minimum qualifications.

Beyond that, plaintiffs’ argument failed to convince Green that the Missouri Secretary of State incorrectly certified the signatures.

In an argument led by Marc Ellinger — a seasoned Jefferson City attorney with experience representing Missouri gaming companies — plaintiffs took issue with the method the secretary used when calculating the number of votes needed in each district.

But, Green wrote, this calculation has been constant throughout all initiatives in 2022 and 2024 and was used by previous secretaries of state.  The number was determined by multiplying the number of votes cast for governor in 2020 by 8%.

Ellinger said the number should be based on congressional district maps drawn after the 2020 election, but he “presented no evidence from which the court could determine what plaintiff’s target number should be,” Green wrote.

Should the threshold stand, Ellinger argued that there were a plethora of signatures that were improperly certified. For this, his expert witness was Kevin Oglesby, who manages National Political Consultants Inc and was hired to look at the signatures.

Oglesby received information from the secretary of state’s office to assess signatures, and his testimony was a large part of Thursday’s trial as he explained instances he deemed errors.

Local election authorities, which processed the petition for the secretary of state, had more information when reviewing signatures.

Green noted that plaintiffs “did not present evidence to qualify (Oglesby) as a handwriting expert.”

“Court did not find the testimony of the plaintiff’s witness to be credible or particularly helpful,” Green said in his judgment.

His ruling also dismissed a counter-claim by intervenors Winning for Missouri Education, the initiative’s campaign committee. The claim alleged that the committee, which has raised over $6.5 million to support the petition, is harmed by plaintiffs’ accusations

Green said there was no evidence presented on the matter, rendering it “moot.”

Winning for Missouri Education spokesman Jack Cardetti celebrated the victory Friday, focusing on the increased tax dollars that could go to public education if the initiative is approved.

“Today’s ruling, while expected, is nevertheless a big victory for Missourians, who overwhelmingly want to join the 38 other states that allow sports betting, so that we can provide tens of millions in permanent, dedicated funding each year to our public school,” he said. “For too many years, Missourians have watched as fans cross state lines to place sport bets, which deprives our Missouri public schools of much needed funding.”

Ellinger did not respond to a timely request for comment.

Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, speaks to media following a trial over Amendment 3 on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, outside the Cole County Courthouse (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A lawsuit attempting to knock a reproductive-rights amendment off the November ballot could hinge on whether it would immediately repeal Missouri’s current near-total ban on abortion, an issue disputed during a two-hour-long hearing Friday.

Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh said at the completion of Friday’s hearing that he intends to rule quickly because the constitutional deadline for ballots to be printed is Tuesday. 

Two weeks ago, a handful of anti-abortion lawmakers and activists filed a lawsuit against Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who certified the citizen-led ballot initiative for the Nov. 5 ballot  nine days earlier. The group is arguing that the initiative should never have been allowed on the ballot, and they are asking the judge to keep it from being voted on this fall. 

The plaintiffs — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck and shelter operator Marguerite Forrest —are being represented by Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society.

All but Forrest were part of a lawsuit last year challenging the estimated cost of a proposed constitutional amendment ending the abortion ban.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment, turned in more than 380,000 signatures from Missouri voters across the state, clearing the threshold to earn a place on the statewide ballot, where it needs a simple majority to pass. 

Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including in-vitro fertilization and birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution. 

Martin argued Friday that the amendment illegally includes more than one subject, pointing to language protecting “a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” and saying such a phrase encompasses “infinite subjects.”

She contends the amendment could have further-reaching effects that it doesn’t specify, including on Missouri’s current laws prohibiting human cloning, prohibiting the creation of a pre-implanted embryo through in-vitro fertilization solely for the purpose of stem cell research and prohibiting minors from getting gender-affirming health care. 

While none of the above issues are specifically mentioned in the amendment, Martin said she believes they still fall under its scope.

“We believe and think it’s pretty evident that cloning and reproductive technologies are matters related to reproductive health care,” Martin said. 

Loretta Haggard, an attorney representing the campaign supporting the amendment, said trying not only to imagine, but also to list, every law that could be affected by the amendment would be “impossibly burdensome.”  

While Amendment 3 would substantially alter the existing ban, Haggard said what current laws it applies to will need to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“At most there is speculation about how and to what extent Amendment 3 will affect the existing constitutional ban on human cloning.” Haggard said. “Those disputes need to be decided by courts in future cases in light of specific facts with controversies, not by this court.” 

Haggard said the amendment’s single subject and central purpose is clear: “reproductive freedom.”

Martin also claimed the campaign behind the amendment fell short of the law by failing to list the specific laws or constitutional provisions which would be repealed if the amendment is approved by voters. 

Missouri law requires that initiative petitions “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.” 

“No one disputes,” she said, “one of its primary purposes and effects is to repeal Missouri’s ban on abortion.” 

Speculation isn’t necessary to come to this conclusion, Martin said, pointing to the ballot summary which reads, in part, that a yes vote would “remove Missouri’s ban on abortion.”

Haggard contends that while the amendment would supersede existing law, it would not erase it from the current constitutional text, and therefore would not truly repeal the current statute. She said this is because the two texts do have some overlapping similarities: both protect women who get abortions from prosecution and both restrict abortion after the point of fetal viability. 

Fetal viability is an undefined period of time generally seen as the point in which the fetus could survive outside the womb on its own, generally around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  

When it comes to everything else, Haggard said, the amendment would leave the current law to be interpreted through the lens of the new law, meaning any restrictions implemented by the government on abortion prior to fetal viability will have to withstand strict scrutiny in court to remain. She ventured that most of Missouir’s current restrictions would not survive for this reason.

“The measure writes a road map,” she said, “and it’s up to courts and parties in concrete cases to apply those rules in the future.” 

Following the hearing, Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, stood outside the courthouse alongside a few dozen people waving signs in support of the amendment.  

“The most pressing question for the judge right now is ‘does it make legal sense to kick something off the Friday before ballots are to be printed on a Tuesday?’” she asked.” And the answer to that is no.”

Martin said time will tell. 

“Whatever does happen, surely both parties intend to seek whatever review is available by Tuesday and then on into the future,” Martin said outside the courtroom. “This will not be the last day, no matter what happens.” 

This story may be updated.

CAPTION: Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives to court for his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30 in New York City (Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump will not face criminal sentencing in New York for his state felony convictions ahead of the November election, according to a decision released Friday by New York Judge Juan Merchan.

The New York judge said Friday the new sentencing date will be Nov. 26,  according to a letter he issued Friday.

Merchan wrote that the court is “now at a place in time that is fraught with complexities,” referring to the fast-approaching presidential election and the consequential U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that Trump’s legal team has now brought to the center of the New York case.

“Adjourning decision on the motion and sentencing, if such is required, should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and/or any candidate for any office,” Merchan wrote.

“This is not a decision the court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view best advances the interests of justice,” Merchan later concluded.

Trump, vying again for the Oval Office as the Republican nominee, is the first-ever former president to become a felon.

He was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in May after a weeks-long Manhattan trial that centered on hush money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump asked the New York court to delay the sentencing until after the 2024 election, arguing that the question of presidential immunity as it related to the New York conviction remains unresolved.

Friday’s decision marks the second time Merchan has delayed Trump’s sentencing.

Merchan delayed Trump’s initial July sentencing date, just one day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for official “core constitutional” acts and at least presumptive immunity for “outer perimeter” activities, but not for personal ones.

Trump’s lawyers argued the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision nullified his New York state convictions, particularly because the evidence presented at trial could now be considered subject to immunity.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed to a delay while the parties filed legal arguments on the issue of immunity, which Bragg ultimately argued had “no bearing” on Trump’s convictions and evidence examined by the jury.

Trump, who has been entangled on several legal fronts, escalated his separate federal criminal case alleging 2020 election interference all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing presidential immunity for any criminal charges stemming from his time in office.

The case alleging Trump schemed to overturn the 2020 presidential election results was returned to federal trial court. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday released a pre-trial calendar that extends beyond this November’s election.

A case in the Cole County Circuit Court may decide whether sports betting will be on the November ballot (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A Cole County Circuit Court judge must soon decide whether Missouri voters will be able to  enshrine sports betting in the state’s constitution.

A lawsuit brought by two political strategists questions the validity of the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State’s Office. The proposal was certified for the November ballot after being deemed to have collected enough signatures in all but two congressional districts.

But over the course of a nearly seven-hour hearing on Thursday, both sides picked through individual voter records in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District after a petition management firm hired by the plaintiffs said it had found around 750 signatures that should have been deemed invalid — enough to drag the petition below the threshold needed to be placed on the ballot.

Attorneys representing the secretary of state and the sports betting campaign, Winning for Missouri Education, prodded at the petition management firm’s techniques.

Kevin Oglesby, a manager for National Political Consultants Inc — whose company has been investigated for misrepresenting initiative petitions they were hired to canvas for in Michigan in 2020 and 2022 — said he was granted access to petition signatures and voter registration cards through the secretary of state’s office.

With these documents, he testified that he checked through thousands of signatures and compiled a list of those he believes local election officials incorrectly counted as valid.

Marc Ellinger, a veteran Jefferson City attorney representing the plaintiffs, led Oglesby through stacks of signatures by pointing out names and asking what was wrong with the record.

Some, Oglesby said, had signatures that did not match the signature on the voter registration card. Others had different names than noted on the card. One example was someone who had been convicted of a felony and was therefore ineligible to vote.

Ellinger — who touts a focus on gaming law in his biography, including representing the Missouri Gaming Commission — handed out 12 binder-clipped stacks of names Oglesby said were “illegal.”

Assistant Attorney General Eric Kinnaw, who represented the secretary of state’s office, asked Oglesby if he knew whether those who had been deemed ineligible because of death or felony convictions could have been a qualified voter on the date they signed.

He didn’t know.

Chuck Hatfield, representing the sports betting campaign, led Oglesby back through some of the names. Some of them had not been counted in the secretary of state’s certification, he said.

Those with mismatched names were often women, he noted, pointing to a regulation that allows for those who have changed their names to be counted.

Scott Clark, deputy chief of staff for the secretary of state, testified  that there is a process local election authorities are trained on for those with mismatched names.

Petition processors have two software systems available to validate signatures, he said, one of which shows the voter’s history. This allows them to see previous names as well as their full history of signatures sent to the county clerk.

Oglesby had one reference signature per voter to cross-check with the petition. Local authorities can check as many as the county has logged, Clark said.

Tim Morgan, a forensic document examiner, testified that the best practice when verifying a questionable signature is to have “five, 10 to 20” recent signatures.

Ellinger said that would make the secretary of state’s process unscientific with only a historic record.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green, who is presiding over the case, asked if attorneys expected the court to review the documents to determine “whether the signatures match each other or not.”

Ellinger said he should if he’s “not willing to accept the witness’s testimony (as fact).”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Green said.

Attorneys for Winning for Missouri Education submitted a packet of 652 signatures and voter registration cards as evidence. These, they argued, were additional signatures that should be verified.

Hatfield said in his opening statement that some names were excluded from the Secretary of State’s count. The certification of the initiative petition signatures notes that “districts which significantly exceeded the requirements for sufficiency may have additional unchecked signatures.”

Ellinger submitted 350 records in rebuttal, saying over half of those signatures brought by Hatfield were invalid.

The parties must file their proposed judgments Friday afternoon. Green could issue his verdict in the case anytime after. 

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft joined the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has been ordered to remove his characterization of an abortion rights amendment from his government website after a judge deemed it was unfair and violated state statute.

A Cole County judge on Thursday ruled that Ashcroft’s “fair ballot language” summary of the reproductive rights amendment, also known as Amendment 3, was “unfair, inaccurate, insufficient and misleading.”

“Intentionally or not, the secretary’s language sows voter confusion about the effects of the measure,” Circuit Judge Cotton Walker wrote in a Thursday afternoon decision. 

The day Ashcroft certified the abortion-rights amendment for the Nov. 5 ballot, a “fair ballot language” summary for Amendment 3 was also published on his office’s government website. That summary will also appear at every polling place around the state next to sample ballots. By state law this summary must be “true and impartial.”

Ashcroft is vocal in his opposition to abortion.

Amendment 3, if passed by a statewide majority vote, would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up to the point of fetal viability. Since the overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, nearly all abortions became illegal in Missouri, with limited exceptions for the life and health of the mother. 

It would also enshrine other reproductive rights in the constitution, including in-vitro fertilization and birth control, both of which remain legal in Missouri. 

Ashcroft’s summary of the amendment read: “A ‘yes’ vote will enshrine the right to abortion at any time of pregnancy in the Missouri Constitution. Additionally, it will prohibit any regulation of abortion, including regulations designed to protect women undergoing abortions and prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant women.” 

Abortion-rights activists in a lawsuit filed two weeks ago called Ashcroft’s summary of the amendment harmful and confusing to voters.

Walker agreed, ruling that Ashcroft’s assertion that the amendment would allow the right to an abortion at any point in pregnancy “gives voters the wrong idea of what the amendment will accomplish.”

The secretary of state’s office said in a statement that it is reviewing the judge’s decision. 

“Secretary Ashcroft will always stand for life and for the people of Missouri to know the truth,” JoDonn Chaney, a spokesperson for Ashcroft, said Thursday afternoon.

Walker’s decision came a day after a bench trial in which both sides argued over what the amendment would mean for Missourians if approved by voters. 

The brief trial was focused on language around provider immunity.

The amendment reads, in part, that no person “assisting a person in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with that person’s consent be penalized, prosecuted, or otherwise subjected to adverse action for doing so.”

Andrew Crane, a lawyer representing Ashcroft on behalf of the attorney general’s office, argued Wednesday that the amendment would lead to “effectively neutering the government’s ability to enforce any effective regulations” on abortion. 

Such a claim was “politically-charged” and unfounded, since it fails to take into account other language in the amendment protecting patients, said Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, which is representing the plaintiff.

Walker wrote that Ashcroft’s argument runs “contrary to the language of the amendment and will give voters the mistaken impression that the amendment will allow physicians to perform abortions negligently or criminally.” 

The judge said Ashcroft’s argument of provider immunity “ignores, with respect to health care providers, that the protection from prosecution (1) hinges on the patient’s consent and (2) is coextensive with the right to reproductive freedom and its regulation.” 

Walker on Thursday provided new “fair ballot language” to be posted on the secretary of state’s website and at polling places. It reads: 

“A ‘yes’ vote establishes a constitutional right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid; removes Missouri’s ban on abortion; allows regulation of reproductive health care to improve of maintain the health of the patient; requires the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care; and allows abortion to be restricted or banned after fetal viability except to protect the life or health of the woman.”

The Amendment 3 lawsuit was filed by retired physician Dr. Anna Fitz-James, who initially filed the abortion rights initiative petition in spring 2023 on behalf of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment. 

“Missourians deserve the chance to vote on Amendment 3 based on facts,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement following the decision. “And today’s decision brings us one step closer to making that a reality.”

Walker’s decision mirrored one made by Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem last year, after Ashcroft was also sued by the abortion-rights campaign over the initial ballot summary he drafted, which would have asked Missourians, in part, if they wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.” 

Beetem in his ruling a year ago said that Ashcroft’s language was “problematic” and inaccurate. 

Ashcroft appealed, but the higher court sided with Beetem, writing it is “not a probable effect” that the amendment would allow unrestricted abortion in all nine months of pregnancy or that it would toss aside health and safety regulations, “including requirements that physicians perform abortions and that they maintain medical malpractice insurance.”

A second lawsuit regarding Amendment 3 will be challenged at a bench trial on Friday in Cole County after a number of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers asked a judge to block the amendment from the Nov. 5 ballot. Their lawsuit claims Amendment 3 violates the state constitution by including more than one subject and fails to specify which laws and constitutional provisions would be repealed if it was approved.

(Getty stock photo).

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will take the stage next week in the only planned debate between the respective Democratic and GOP presidential candidates between now and November.

It’s the first presidential debate since President Joe Biden bowed out of the race following his own disastrous debate performance in late June against Trump. Biden, who faced mounting calls to resign, passed the torch to Harris back in July.

The veep has embarked on an unprecedented and expedited campaign as she and Trump vie for the Oval Office. The election is just two months away.

Though the Harris and Trump campaigns clashed over debate procedures in recent weeks, both candidates have agreed to the finalized rules. ABC News, host of the debate, released the rules Wednesday.

When and where is the debate? 

The debate will be Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m. Eastern time at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The debate will be 90 minutes long and include two commercial breaks, according to ABC.

The Keystone State — where both Harris and Trump have spent a lot of time campaigning — could determine the outcome of the presidential election. The battleground state has narrowly flip-flopped in recent elections, with Biden turning Pennsylvania blue in 2020 after Trump secured a red win in 2016.

How can I watch the debate? 

The debate will air live on ABC News and will also be streaming on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.

ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the debate.

Harris and Trump will each have two minutes to answer questions and two minutes to give rebuttals. They will also be granted one additional minute to clarify or follow up on anything.

Will the mics be muted? 

Microphones will be muted when it’s not a candidate’s turn to speak, just like the previous debate between Biden and Trump in June.

The candidates will not give opening statements. Trump won a coin flip to determine the order of closing statements and podium placement. Trump, who selected the statement order, will give the final closing statement.

Each closing statement will be two minutes long.

Harris and Trump are not allowed to bring any props or prewritten notes to the debate stage. They will each receive a pen, a pad of paper and a water bottle.

Will there be a live audience? 

There will be no live audience at the National Constitution Center, as was the case in the last presidential debate.

Harris and Trump are not permitted to interact with their campaign staff during the two commercial breaks.

Trump slams ABC ahead of debate

Trump went on the attack over the details of the debate, telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity during an interview Wednesday in Pennsylvania that “ABC is the worst network in terms of fairness” and “the most dishonest network, the meanest, the nastiest.”

He accused the network of releasing poor polls on purpose ahead of a previous election to drive down voter turnout.

Trump also claimed, without evidence, that Harris would get the questions in advance of the debate. ABC’s debate rules state that no candidates or campaigns will receive any topics or questions ahead of the event.

Meanwhile, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance will battle it out at the vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News on Oct. 1 in New York City.

The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, continue to campaign across swing states as polls show a tight race prior to next week’s presidential debate in Philadelphia (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump questioned polls showing a close race against Vice President Kamala Harris and complained about the conditions of an upcoming debate during a Fox News interview Wednesday in Pennsylvania.

Under questioning from a friendly interviewer, Sean Hannity of Fox News, in front of an arena of cheering supporters in Harrisburg, the Republican presidential nominee also reiterated a pledge to conduct a massive deportation operation if elected to another term and attacked Harris for her former position to ban the natural gas extraction technique known as fracking.

Trump agreed to the interview, which had been advertised as a town hall but did not include audience questions, after Harris rejected his proposal for a Fox News debate on the same date. He said Wednesday he would have preferred to be meeting Harris on stage.

“I think he’s a nice guy, but I would have preferred a debate,” Trump said of Hannity. “But this is the best we could do, Sean.”

But Trump spent part of the hour Wednesday criticizing the details of the 90-minute debate the campaigns have agreed to, in Philadelphia on Sept. 10 on ABC.

He called ABC News “the most dishonest network, the meanest, the nastiest,” claimed the network purposely released poor polls ahead of the 2016 election to suppress turnout and said, without evidence, executives would share questions with Harris ahead of the event.

Hannity said he should host the debate instead.

Trump also claimed the family of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, endorsed him. Charles Herbster, who sought the GOP nomination for Nebraska governor in 2022, posted to X a photograph of a group of Walz’s second cousins wearing Trump shirts.

Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, told The Associated Press the family was not particularly close with that branch, and said she would be voting for the ticket that included her brother.

Walz’s brother, Jeff Walz, made disparaging remarks about the Minnesota governor on Facebook, but later told NewsNation he would not comment further.

Bad polls

Hannity’s introduction Wednesday noted polls showed a tight race, but Trump said the enthusiasm among his supporters made that seem unlikely.

“I hear the polls are very close and we have a little lead,” he said. “I just find it hard to believe, because first of all, they’ve been so bad.”

Trump has sought to delegitimize polls and even election results that have not shown him ahead, including during the 2020 campaign, when he said he could only lose by fraud. After his loss to Biden, he made a series of spurious fraud allegations that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He said Wednesday he did well in 2016, when he won the election, but “much better” in 2020, which he lost. The enthusiasm for the current campaign tops either, he said.

Trump also complained that Harris’ entry into the race, after President Joe Biden dropped out following a bad debate performance in June, was “a coup” against Biden.

Immigration claims

Trump spent much of the hour talking about immigration, an issue he has highlighted throughout his time in politics.

He repeated claims, without evidence, that immigrants entering the country illegally were largely coming from prisons and “insane asylums” and said terrorists were entering the country through the southern border.

He described immigrants as a threat to public safety and to safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

“These people are so bad,” he said. “They’re so dangerous. What they’ve done to our country is they’re destroying our country. And we can’t let this happen.”

He seemed to reference a viral claim that Venezuelan immigrants had “taken over” an apartment in Aurora, Colorado. Residents of the building have disputed that description.

Fracking and Pennsylvania

Playing to the audience of supporters in Pennsylvania’s state capital, Trump also attacked Harris for her former position on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique for extracting natural gas that is a major industry in the commonwealth.

Harris said during her short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election she supported an end to fracking. Trump and Hannity brought that up several times Wednesday, with Trump saying it should disqualify her for voters in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes will be key in deciding the election.

“You have no choice,” he said. “You’ve got to vote for me, even if you don’t like me.”

Harris has said this year she does not support a ban on fracking.

More to come

The event was advertised as a town hall and Hannity several times said audience questions would be upcoming, but no members of the pro-Trump audience were given an opportunity to ask a question.

During the interview, Hannity acknowledged Dave McCormick, the Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races, in the crowd.

Hannity indicated at the end of the broadcast that taping would continue, with McCormick asking “the first question,” and air Thursday night. In an email following the event, Fox News spokeswoman Sofie Watson said the portion of the event with audience questions would air “later this week.”

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Cotton Walker listens to arguments during a Sept. 8, 2022, hearing (pool photo courtesy of Emily Manley/Nexstar Media Group).

A judge could decide as early as Thursday whether Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s “fair ballot language” summary for an abortion-rights amendment is truly fair. 

Missouri voters will be asked on Nov. 5 whether they support Amendment 3, which would establish a constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and protect other reproductive rights, including access to in-vitro fertilization and birth control. Abortion became illegal in Missouri in June 2022, with limited exceptions for the life and health of the mother.

Posted at every polling station around the state, next to sample ballots, is “fair ballot language” that summarizes the questions that voters will be asked to decide on. State law requires that this language, written by the secretary of state, be “true and impartial.”

In a lawsuit filed two weeks ago, organizers behind Amendment 3 claimed that Ashcroft’s summary was “intentionally argumentative” and could create confusion among voters. 

The same day Ashcroft certified the measure for the November ballot, his office also published to its website a “fair ballot language” summary statement for the amendment which reads: 

“A ‘yes’ vote will enshrine the right to abortion at any time of pregnancy in the Missouri Constitution. Additionally, it will prohibit any regulation of abortion, including regulations designed to protect women undergoing abortions and prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant women.” 

Missouri voters will decide whether to legalize abortion in November 

The abortion rights campaign is asking the court to issue new “fair ballot language” and order that Ashcroft remove his current language from his government website.

A brief bench trial Wednesday afternoon in Cole County Circuit Court focused in particular on the last sentence of Ashcroft’s summary, and how a court could interpret subsection 5 of the amendment, which reads: “No person shall be penalized, prosecuted, or otherwise subjected to adverse action based on their actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes, including but not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. Nor shall any person assisting a person in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with that person’s consent be penalized, prosecuted, or otherwise subjected to adverse action for doing so.”

Andrew Crane, representing Ashcroft on behalf of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, argued Wednesday that this subsection would result in “effectively neutering the government’s ability to enforce any effective regulations” on abortion. 

Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri, which is representing the plaintiff, called this claim “politically-charged” and unfounded, as it fails to take into account other language in the amendment protecting patients.

“The amendment will provide greater independence from the government,” she told the court. “But it does not create the boundless, limitless, unregulated right the secretary continues to make it to be.” 

Schafer said Ashcroft in the latest language “resurrects his false claims” that have already been denounced by the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Ashcroft was sued last year by the abortion-rights campaign over the initial ballot summary he drafted, which would have asked Missourians, in part, if they wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.” 

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled a year ago that Ashcroft’s language was “problematic” and inaccurate. 

An appeals court agreed, ruling that it is “not a probable effect” that the amendment would allow unrestricted abortion in all nine months of pregnancy or that it would toss aside health and safety regulations, “including requirements that physicians perform abortions and that they maintain medical malpractice insurance.”

However, Crane on Wednesday argued that the appeals court ruling didn’t specifically address the immunity provisions of subsection 5.

Ashcroft, who recently lost a bid for the GOP candidate for governor, has been open about his opposition to abortion. 

During the Midwest March for Life outside in May, he told The Independent of the abortion initiative petition: “I just want to make sure that people know what this amendment will actually do. That it’s abortion from conception until the very last second that the last toenail leaves the birth canal.”

Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, who is overseeing the current case, said he intends to rule on Thursday. 

Walker recently upheld the “fair ballot language” summary written by Ashcroft for a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban ranked-choice voting after two voters sued over the language. The voters called the language imprecise, in part because it doesn’t state that it’s currently illegal for non-citizens to vote in Missouri. 

The Amendment 3 lawsuit was filed by retired physician Dr. Anna Fitz-James, who initially filed the abortion rights initiative petition in spring 2023 on behalf of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the amendment. 

The campaign has raised millions of dollars this election cycle, and recent polling by St. Louis University/YouGov showed 52% of Missouri voters supported Amendment 3. The poll surveyed 900 voters across nine days in August.

Meanwhile, a second lawsuit regarding Amendment 3 is also pending in Cole County after a number of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers asked a judge to block the amendment from the Nov. 5 ballot. Their lawsuit claims Amendment 3 violates the state constitution by including more than one subject and fails to specify which laws and constitutional provisions would be repealed if it was approved.

A bench trial in that lawsuit is scheduled for Friday.

(George Frey/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Latino voters are concerned with the high cost of living, the minimum wage and rising housing costs heading into the November elections, according to a comprehensive survey released Wednesday by UnidosUS, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy center in the nation.

“Laying out a coherent economic policy agenda that will resonate with Latinos … would go a long way, I think, for our community,” Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said on a call with reporters detailing the results of the survey.

The survey included 3,000 eligible Hispanic voters who were interviewed in either English or Spanish, from Aug. 5-23, with oversampling of residents of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Texas and California. The poll, conducted by BSP Research, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

Murguía said Latinos are the second-largest voting-age population and 1 in 5 of them will be casting ballots for the first time in a presidential election this November.

“Top of mind are pocketbook issues,” she said. “Hispanic voters are most deeply concerned, like many of their fellow Americans, about the rising cost of living.”

Another issue that Latinos strongly supported is access to abortion. By a 71% to 21% margin, Latinos oppose abortion bans, according to the survey.

“They do not support making it illegal,” Murguía said.

Minimum-wage workers

Wages and jobs that provide economic security are a top priority for Latino voters, Gary Segura, who conducted the research poll for UnidosUS, said.

Latino workers are disproportionately workers who earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which has not increased since 2009. If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it would be around $24 an hour, according to the AFL-CIO.

“The lived economy for Latinos is different than the lived economy for the nation as a whole,” Segura said.

Segura said during the poll, interviewers followed up with respondents on their concerns about jobs and wages and found that being able to afford necessities like food and housing were top issues.

“People are struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

The number one response was that “jobs don’t pay enough, or I have to take a second job to make ends meet,” Segura said. “We talk a lot about the low levels of unemployment in this society now, which is certainly good news, but the issue is that many of those jobs do not pay enough for the holder of that job to essentially pay their basic living expenses.”

Opinions on immigration

Murguía noted that immigration, which the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has made a core campaign issue, ranks fifth in priorities among Latino voters, tied with concern about gun violence and too-easy access to assault weapons.

“We want to be crystal clear that Latino voters overall are not buying into campaign tactics that demonize immigrants,” Murguía said. “They know the difference between those who mean us harm and those who are contributing to the fabric of our nation.”

Latino voters strongly support a legal pathway to citizenship for those in the  Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, referred to as Dreamers, and for long-term undocumented immigrants, the survey found.

Trump has promised mass deportations should he win a second term, a policy issue that has “virtually no support” by Latino voters sampled in the survey, Segura said.

Segura added that while Trump has campaigned on the issue, his promise to launch mass deportations is not particularly well known in Latino communities.

“Many of the people we speak to believe that (Trump) will do it if he can, but they just don’t actually believe that he can pull that off,” Segura said. “So there’s both a lack of awareness of these really draconian measures or proposals and then a lack of belief that they would actually come to pass.”

He added that he thinks it’s an opportunity for Democrats to campaign on the issue, but Vice President Kamala Harris has mainly criticized Trump for tanking a bipartisan border security deal.

“Our own results suggest that the primary border concern comes from voters who lean in the GOP direction in the first place, and so I don’t see a lot of movement there or a lot of risk for (Democrats), particularly in targeted advertisements and Hispanic voters,” Segura said.

‘Dismissive and diminishing language’

The poll found that 55% of those Latinos had not been contacted by either political party this year.

“We often hear a really dismissive and diminishing language about Latino participation in elections,” Segura said. “‘Latinos don’t vote as often as they should. Latinos will let you down’ and so forth, and no one ever wants to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one is asking Latinos to vote.”

The Harris campaign last month launched a bilingual WhatsApp campaign to target Latino voters. Michelle Villegas, the national Latino engagement director for the Harris campaign, said during a Hispanic Caucus meeting at the Democratic National Convention that the Latino vote is key to victory in three battleground states — Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The survey also found that running mates had an impact on Latino voters. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, gave her a 3-point boost, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, made his rating drop by 3 points.

“Vance has (a) negative impact on the Republican ticket, which is consistent with his low favorability among Latino voters,” according to the survey.

While Democrats have an advantage with Latino voters, and Harris has seen a boost in support compared to when President Joe Biden was in the race, she is still not reaching the levels of Latino support seen in previous elections, Clarissa Martinez De Castro, the vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, said.

“There is work to be done to reach the levels of support Democrats need and had achieved in previous elections, and more intense communication with these voters is needed, particularly on economic issues and immigration,” Martinez De Castro said.

Equis Research, which conducts research and polling specifically about Latino voters, found in a recent poll that Harris has gained significant support from Latinos but that Harris “remains a few points shy of what Biden received in 2020” across battleground states.

Dave Wasinger (photo submitted)

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor has dropped a defamation lawsuit he filed before the Aug. 6 primary against the corporate owner of Missouri television stations and one of his political rivals. 

David Wasinger filed the lawsuit on Aug. 2 claiming that a television ad run by another Republican vying for the lieutenant governor nomination — state Sen. Lincoln Hough — was false and misleading because it claimed he was an “abortion-loving Democrat.”

The suit was filed against the political action committee that supported Hough and paid for the ad, called Lincoln PAC, and Hearst television stations, which ran the ad.

He asked a St. Louis judge to pull the ad off the air and award him at least $25,000 in damages. 

The judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order, and the ads continued airing through the primary election. 

“Simply put, this ad is so riddled with errors and Lincoln PAC does not even attempt to substantiate many of the falsehoods,” the lawsuit alleged. 

Wasinger edged out Hough for the nomination, winning by just one percentage point. 

On Tuesday, he agreed to dismiss the case. 

The lieutenant governor is next in line for governor, sits on various boards and breaks ties in the state Senate. In Missouri, unlike many other states, the lieutenant governor doesn’t run on a ticket with the governor. 

Wasinger is an attorney at a St. Louis law firm he owns and manages, and a certified public accountant. He was the main funder of his own campaign, loaning himself $2.6 million.

He will now face Democrat Richard Brown, a state legislator from Kansas City, and Libertarian Ken Iverson of St. Louis in November.

An election observer monitors two poll workers processing absentee ballots in the Milwaukee Election Commission warehouse on Aug. 13. Discrepancies in the count could be used by county canvassing boards in swing states as a reason not to certify elections (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline).

GRAYLING, Mich. — Clairene Jorella was furious.

In the northern stretches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the Crawford County Board of Canvassers had just opened its meeting to certify the August primary when Jorella, 83 years old and one of two Democrats on the panel, laid into her Republican counterparts.

Glaring, she said she was gobsmacked by the partisan opinions they’d recently aired publicly.

“We are an impartial board,” she told them a day after the primary election, sitting at a conference room table in the back of the county clerk’s office. “We are expected to be impartial. We are not expected to bring our political beliefs into this board.”

The two Republicans, Brett Krouse and Bryce Metcalfe, had two weeks earlier written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, endorsing a candidate for township clerk because of “her commitment to election integrity.”

Citing their positions on the Board of Canvassers, the letter went on to claim that because of new state election laws, including one that allows for early voting, “All of the ingredients required for voter fraud were present.”

Jorella thought the letter was inappropriate. And she had reason to worry, having seen in recent years Republican members of county boards in Michigan and in other states refuse to certify elections when their preferred candidate lost. It was a preview of the battles communities nationwide might face in November’s presidential election.

Metcalfe, 48, said he didn’t do anything wrong.

“I don’t serve the Democrat Party in any way, shape or form,” he said. “I serve the Republican Party.”

“Bryce, you serve the people,” said Brian Chace, 77, the board’s other Democratic member.

Metcalfe raised his voice. “I will not be silenced.”

The board members argued for 20 minutes, then broke into two bipartisan teams to begin their task at hand. In a process known as canvassing, they looked through documents precinct by precinct, making sure that the total votes shown on a polling place’s ballot tabulator matched the number of ballots issued.

While members of the board eventually certified the election after meeting a few times over the following week, the kerfuffle illustrates the tension consuming communities around the country over one of the crucial final steps in elections.

Stateline crisscrossed Michigan and Wisconsin — two states critical in the race for the presidency — to interview dozens of voters, local election officials and activists to understand how the voting, tabulation and certification processes could be disrupted in November.

There is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, Republican members of state and county boards tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their roles if former President Donald Trump loses again.

Last month, the Georgia State Election Board passed new rules that would allow county canvassing boards to conduct their own investigations before certifying election results. State and national Democrats have sued the state board over the rules.

The fear that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain elections. After immense pressure, county officials either changed their minds, or courts or state officials had to step in.

“People are now trying to interfere with this otherwise pretty boring process, based on the false idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and that widespread voter fraud continues to pervade our election system,” said Lauren Miller Karalunas, a counsel for the Brennan Center, a voting rights group housed at the New York University School of Law.

“This is a mandatory process with no room for these certifying officials to go behind the results to investigate anything,” she added.

‘We’re working for the people’

Michael Siegrist, the Democratic clerk for Canton Township, Michigan, has zero patience for election deniers.

On the Saturday before the August primary, he stood before 11 soon-to-be poll workers at a training session, repeatedly emphasizing one point: Run a good, clean, legal election.

“All of the rules we have in place are either to protect the integrity of the election or to protect the voters,” Siegrist said. The trainees nodded along.

Down the hall, two dozen election inspectors and township officials opened and processed absentee ballots.

“We’re working for the people,” Siegrist continued. “We’re not working for ourselves. We’re not working for our philosophies. And we’re not working for our political parties.”

Siegrist, who serves a suburban Detroit community of nearly 99,000 people within Wayne County, has seen it before.

Two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially refused to certify more than 800,000 votes cast during the 2020 presidential election; Siegrist was one of many people who joined a Zoom call the county board set up for public comments two weeks after the election and berated them.

“We are basically doing what no foreign country has ever been able to do, which is successfully undermine our election system,” he told them.

Years later, the Detroit News uncovered audio of Trump pressuring those GOP members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to certify the 2020 election, promising them legal representation.

Siegrist is still concerned about the certification process and worries that board members will be compromised by partisanship and refuse to certify the election in November.

In 2021, Robert Boyd, at the time the newest Republican on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers and one of the people who will be tasked with certifying November’s election, told the Detroit Free Press that if he were in his position in 2020 he would not have certified the election.

Certifying elections had been a mostly routine formality for more than a century across the country. The results that come out after the polls close on election night are unofficial and need to be certified. While laws vary slightly by state, bipartisan, citizen-led panels are typically tasked with certifying elections at both the county and state levels.

Usually known as boards of canvassers, the panel’s job is to compare the number of ballots cast according to poll books with the number of ballots fed through a tabulator. Sometimes, those numbers don’t match.

Those mismatches are to be expected and are almost always handled swiftly. But in 2020, they formed one of the bases for the lie — spread widely by Trump and his supporters — that the election was stolen in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

If the numbers are off in a precinct — usually by one or two votes — a poll worker might provide an explanation to the canvassing board. A voter may have been impatient with a long line and left the precinct with a ballot in hand, for example, or two ballots may have been stuck together. Sometimes, board members ask poll workers or municipal clerks to come in and explain a discrepancy.

It’s a tedious process akin to watching paint dry, said Christina Schlitt, president of the League of Women Voters of Grand Traverse Area, which sends volunteers throughout Michigan to make sure canvassing board members follow the rules.

“They’re not to look for any nefarious actions, although some inexperienced canvassers, particularly in one party, seem to look for problems,” she said, referring to the GOP.

The proper way to contest the election results is not through the certification process, she said. Aggrieved candidates can always call for a recount or go to the courts.

Local officials prepare

Barb Byrum, the Democratic clerk for Ingham County, Michigan, recently had to use some of her political capital to keep an election denier off the certifying panel for the county of nearly 285,000 people.

Republican members of the county’s Board of Commissioners listened to and agreed with Byrum, an outspoken former state representative who is not afraid to negotiate.

“I needed someone else,” she said, praising cooperative local leaders. “Many other county clerks did not have that luxury, so they do have conspiracy pushers and believers on their board of canvassers.”

Byrum, whose county includes the state capital of Lansing, works from the county courthouse in Mason, a rural city of about 8,200 people. “Hometown, U.S.A.” signs line its streets. Downtown, LGBTQ+ flags hang from the windows of Byrum’s first-floor office, where passersby can see them through the beech trees.

After Trump lost Michigan in 2020, his supporters sued to have Ingham County’s and two other counties’ 1.2 million votes excluded from the state’s 5.5 million vote count, saying there had been “issues and irregularities.” At the time, Byrum called the lawsuit “ludicrous” and full of conspiracy theories. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes.

The desire to keep election troublemakers off county canvassing boards is bipartisan.

Justin Roebuck, the clerk for Ottawa County, Michigan, and a Republican, said he has been dispelling election lies about alleged widespread fraud in elections since 2016. So, he feels more prepared than ever to deal with potential disruptions this fall.

“It’s not something that I worry about; it’s something that I prepare for,” said Roebuck, who serves a county of about 301,000 people who live near Lake Michigan’s coastline.

“We’re asking our community to trust us,” he added. “I want to trust them too. I want to be able to dialogue with people, even in heated situations.”

During the 2022 midterm elections, a group of around 15 voters went to the Board of Canvassers meeting and said there must be fraud because the Republican gubernatorial candidate had received fewer voters than the county commissioner in a precinct. They accosted Roebuck in the hallway, he recalled.

Instead of getting security involved, he invited them into a nearby conference room.

“We have to be transparent and talk through the challenges,” he said.

A preview of November

One of the leading voices questioning the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections is named Jefferson Davis.

On the morning of Wisconsin’s Aug. 13 primary, Davis quarterbacked the Republican observers at the Milwaukee Election Commission’s warehouse south of downtown. The only person wearing a suit in a sea of casually dressed election workers, Davis weaved throughout the crowded facility with familiarity.

“I don’t care if you beat me in an election, as long as you don’t cheat or steal or compromise or whatever,” he told Stateline, before outlining eight ways he claimed voter fraud is occuring in Wisconsin, including inflated voter lists, noncitizens voting and harvesting ballots from people in long-term care facilities.

Davis, the spokesperson for a group called the Ad-hoc Committee for the Wisconsin Full Forensic Physical and Cyber Audit, placed his people in front of the yellow caution tape that sectioned off election workers who were processing 23,000 absentee ballots. There were 15 Republican observers and two Democrats and a handful of unaffiliated observers.

Bipartisan pairs of Democratic, Republican or unaffiliated poll workers sorted and counted absentee ballots, checking to see whether the voter had provided their required signature and address on the envelope. The workers wore paper wristbands colored blue, red or purple to mark their party affiliation. Facing hours of work, some brought pillows for their chairs.

Davis’ observers had clipboards and forms, developed by the Republican National Committee, noting the number of security cameras, tables, election workers by political affiliation, building access points and tabulating machines. They also noted when and why each ballot was rejected.

“We care about our Constitution, we care about our freedom, our liberty, our independence, because we cannot have an election stolen again,” Davis said, raising his voice over the whirr of four high-speed letter openers.

Before the ballot-counting process began, Brenda Wood, a member of the Board of Absentee Canvassers in Milwaukee, walked observers through the rules: They had to stay 3 feet away from election workers and could only ask them a voter’s name and address and why an absentee ballot was rejected.

“If they provide only ‘Milwaukee, Wisconsin,’ and not their street address, then it will be rejected,” Wood said.

“Oh good,” Davis quickly responded.

After her spiel, Davis rapidly but politely peppered her with more than 20 questions that he called “quickies,” grilling her on the day’s process. He wanted to make sure there wasn’t any “hanky-panky” going on. Other observers asked one or two questions.

Throughout the day, election workers processed ballots without significant issues. Occasionally, one would raise a cardboard paddle to ask staff a question about procedure or whether they should reject a ballot. At one point, an election worker, overwhelmed by observers asking her questions, put her forehead on the table and asked them to give her space.

“Can we put a note saying the observer wanted this ballot rejected?” asked one GOP observer, wanting to have her concern in writing on the ward’s official documents.

“You can, but we’re not going to reject it,” a commission staffer said. “It’s the rules. It’s how we’ve been doing it.”

Fourteen hours later, around 9 p.m. and after all the absentee ballots had been counted, Bonnie Chang, another member of the Board of Absentee Canvassers, went around with blank flash drives and downloaded the vote totals from the nine ballot tabulators in the warehouse.

A gaggle of observers followed her every step, while the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, a member of the Wisconsin Election Commission who was one of Trump’s fake electors in 2020, and a host of others looked on.

As two county election workers who had been paired that day were leaving the warehouse, one leaned over to the other.

“It’ll be busy in November,” she said.

“We’ll make it through,” he said.

“We always do,” she responded.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

State Rep. Jeff Farnan, a Republican from Stanberry, speaks in the Missouri House during the 2024 legislative session. A well-funded group sought to oust him from his seat with attack ads during the primary election (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The mailers started showing up in Rep. Jeff Farnan’s district months before the Aug. 6 primary, labeling the Republican from Stanberry a tool of teacher’s unions with an agenda of “open borders” and “higher taxes.”

By the time voters went to the polls, the Missouri chapter of the American Federation for Children had spent $90,000 trying to unseat Farnan, who was first elected to the Missouri House in 2022. The reason for the group’s ire: He’d publicly opposed a bill that would expand the state’s tax-credit scholarship program, MOScholars, which moves state funds to private schools.

“They just kind of hinted around the fact that I didn’t believe in school choice,” he said of the mailers. “That is what some of the ads alluded to.”

In the end, the spending had little effect on the primary, and Farnan prevailed with 77% of the vote.

Other GOP incumbents who had opposed the MOScholars bill weren’t so lucky. AFC also prioritized bringing down Reps. Kyle Marquart and Gary Bonacker, who lost their primaries.

In all, American Federation for Children and other groups that support public funds for private education spent a combined $560,000 in legislative primaries this year, bolstering candidates that affirm charter schools and state-funded private-school scholarships and sending out negative ads against opponents statewide.

Quality Schools Coalition, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that advocates for charter schools and other educational options, invested in Republican primaries with no incumbents and two Democratic races with candidates currently in the state legislature. In all, the group spent over $100,000 in campaign ads during the primary.

That compares to $23,400 in ads from the Missouri chapter of the National Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union. Missouri NEA also spent nearly $76,000 in contributions to campaigns.

Mark Jones, communications director for Missouri NEA, called the ads from opposing groups an attempt to “demonize” teachers.

“It is certainly not a surprise that those who want to privatize education first want to attack educators because educators are the most trusted people most parents know in their community,” he said.

The organization puts together an annual resolution with policy positions. There isn’t a mention of “open borders,” but Missouri NEA does advocate for education access regardless of immigration status.

A board elected by Missouri NEA members directs its campaign efforts, he said. Candidates are chosen through a screening process, including voting history — such as the MOScholars bill.

“What you will see during the course of the entire election is that educators are going to hold folks who do not support public education accountable, and we’re going to continue to do that,” Jones said.

Jean Evans, the Missouri lead for the American Federation for Children, said her organization stopped its spending in opposition to Farnan a couple weeks before Election Day after polling made it clear he was going to win easily.

The American Federation for Children’s Missouri political action committee spent about $460,000 during the primary. Evans said there will be continued investment as the general election approaches.

“When you find a good candidate, and there’s a clear contrast from the incumbent, which was what we saw in those races… that’s really what it was about, and letting the voters know,” Evans said.

Bonacker, a House Springs Republican who lost his race after facing AFC’s attack ads, felt like voters lost sight of who he is seeing ads with “open borders” and “higher taxes” in bold.

“I was warned (about the ads). I thought I could weather it,” Bonacker said. “I can’t believe people who know me could fall prey to the constant barrage of misinformation that convinces them otherwise.”

He voted against the MOScholars bill, feeling like the legislation would only hurt his local school district, in which he serves on the board of education. He also didn’t think the state could fund the bill, which will cost nearly $470 million when fully implemented.

On Aug. 6, he lost to newcomer Cecelie Williams, who garnered 59.2% of the vote. Williams ran with messaging that she supported “school choice” in a brief list of issues displayed in her social media posts.

She told The Independent that, while campaigning door to door, about a quarter of people knew about the issue.

“School choice did play a good portion in my election, especially with my opponent being against school choice,” she said. “Once the word got out that he didn’t support school choice, I think that had an influence on it.”

Bonacker also voted against bills in the 2023 legislative session that, now law, place restrictions on transgender athletes and bar transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.

He said the votes weren’t a sign of supporting transgender youth but instead rooted in his views of limited government.

“The government doesn’t need to be in that business, in family medical decisions, doesn’t matter what the subject matter is,” he said.

Williams said his voting history seemed like he was “voting like a liberal.” Bonacker’s voting record shows him voting in line with fellow Republicans more than double the amount he shares with Democratic representatives.

Both AFC and Quality Schools Coalition, which generally spent on different races, pumped money into the Democratic primary in Senate District 13 in St. Louis County. 

State Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark, who voted for the bill expanding MoScholars, challenged incumbent Sen. Angela Mosley, who voted against the bill. In total, the groups spent almost $32,000 supporting Nickson-Clark and almost $27,000 opposing Mosley.

Missouri NEA spent nearly $17,000 opposing Nickson-Clark.

Mosley won the primary, with 56.7% of the vote.

Quality Schools Coalition spent about $28,000 supporting state Rep. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from St. Louis, who said she changed her mind and voted in favor of the MOScholars expansion and explained her decision-making process in an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In July, Missouri NEA spent about $7,000 on mailers opposing Terry. She won her primary with 64.4% of the vote.

Quality Schools Coalition President and CEO Dean Johnson, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement that he would like to see additional “education reform.”

“Quality Schools Coalition was proud to support candidates in the August elections who we believe share these values,” he said. “Depending on outcomes in the general election, it appears that the Missouri House will have a larger number of education reformers than ever before, while support for education reform in the Missouri Senate will remain largely unchanged.”

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images).

A proposal to allow a new casino to be licensed on the Osage River near the Lake of the Ozarks will be on the November ballot, a Cole County judge ruled Friday.

The initiative, which was initially found to be 2,031 signatures short in the 2nd Congressional District, actually did have enough valid signatures, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office conceded when a planned trial over the petition opened before Judge Daniel Green.

The proposed constitutional amendment initially failed to qualify for the ballot because of signatures disallowed by local election officials. An additional 2,230 valid signatures were found by the proponents, Osage River Gaming and Convention, by reviewing the rejections.

Signature verification is “a massive, messy process that does not always produce perfect results,” Chuck Hatfield, the attorney representing the campaign, told Green.

The proposal will be Amendment 5 on the Nov. 5 ballot and joins three other initiative proposals — protecting reproductive rights, listed as Amendment 3; increasing the minimum wage, listed as Proposition A; and legalizing sports betting, listed as Amendment 2.

There are pending court challenges to the reproductive rights and sports wagering proposals that could strike them from the ballot.

The Osage River casino is being pushed by a committee that wants to build a casino to compete with a planned Osage Nation casino in the same area.

“Today is a victory for the initiative petition process and for voters who will benefit from our proposed development at the Lake of the Ozarks,” the committee said in a statement issued after Green ruled. 

The proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to allow a casino along the Osage River between Bagnell Dam and the confluence with the Missouri River. The constitution currently authorizes casinos only along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

The proposal would also override a state law limiting the state to 13 licensed casinos, passed in 2008 as a result of an initiative sponsored by casino operators.

The Lake of the Ozarks is one of Missouri’s busiest tourism destinations. The casino proposal is being bankrolled by Bally’s, which currently operates a casino in Kansas City, and RIS Inc., a major regional developer. 

Each has contributed about half of the $4.3 million raised for the petition drive.

The casino will support more than 700 new jobs in the lake area. The project, if approved, would generate admission and other fee revenue of $2.1 million annually, according to the language appearing on the ballot, and annual gaming tax revenue of $14.3 million.

There are also two constitutional amendments proposed by the General Assembly on the ballot.  Amendment 6 would give the courts power to enforce payment of fees that support retirement benefits for sheriffs and prosecutors. Amendment 7 would ban the use of ranked-choice voting in Missouri elections and restate the current ban on voting by people who are not U.S. citizens.

Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Enmarket Arena on Aug. 29, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia. Harris has campaigned in southeast Georgia for the past two days and on Thursday, she and running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash (Win McNamee/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended her values and vowed, if elected, to appoint a Republican to her cabinet in her first major sit-down interview since her presidential campaign began just over a month ago.

Harris, who rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after President Joe Biden dropped his bid in July, spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash in Savannah, Georgia, for roughly 30 minutes with her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz by her side.

The interview came a week after Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Harris had recently become the target of criticism for not yet participating in an unscripted interview with a major news outlet.

Harris and Walz sat down with the network anchor Thursday afternoon in Georgia during a pause in the pair’s two-day bus tour through the southeastern region of the battleground state.

Harris told Bash that she envisions building an “opportunity economy” for the middle class, including expanding the child tax credit to up to $6,000, providing a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, and combating “price gouging,” to which Harris attributed high grocery prices.

The vice president ticked off Democratic accomplishments under Biden, including capping the price of insulin and reducing child poverty under a pandemic-era temporary expansion of the child tax credit that eliminated the work requirement and paid families in monthly installments.

“I’ll say that that’s good work, there’s more to do, but that’s good work,” Harris said.

The CNN anchor pressed Harris on her changes in policy positions, including immigration and fracking.

Republicans have pounced on Harris’ past statements and accuse her of changing her tune to appeal to more centrist voters. Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday dubbed her “FLIP-FLOPPING KAMALA” on his Truth Social platform, where the current GOP presidential nominee posts numerous times a day.

“​​Let’s be clear, in this race I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings,” Harris said when asked about her past position on decriminalizing the border. “I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws, and I would enforce our laws as president going forward, I recognize the problem.”

Harris also defended her switch from opposing fracking to supporting it.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real,” Harris said.

Despite attacks from Republicans, Bash noted that the Democratic National Convention featured quite a few speakers from the GOP side of the aisle.

Prompted to the idea by Bash, Harris said “it would be a benefit to the American public” to appoint a Republican to her administration cabinet, if elected — though she didn’t name names.

“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” she said.

Harris brushes off Trump’s insults

The interview revealed for many that Harris and Trump have never met face-to-face.They will do so for the first time on the debate stage on Sept. 10, an event that will air on ABC News.

As for her thoughts on Trump, Harris told Bash that the former president is “diminishing the character and the strength of who we are as Americans.”

When Bash asked Harris to respond to Trump’s attacks, including questioning her race, the vice president only briefly addressed them.

“Same old tired playbook, next question please,” she said.

Bash then moved to the topic of the Israel-Hamas war to which Harris responded that she is “unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself,” adding that “how it does so matters.”

She reiterated her plea for a peace deal that includes rescuing hostages who remain in Hamas captivity.

“​​A deal is not only the right thing to do to end this war, but will unlock so much of what must happen next. I remain committed, since I’ve been on October 8, to what we must do to work toward a two-state solution where Israel is secure, and in equal measure, the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”

Walz defense

Bash asked Walz to respond to controversy around how he described his military service that spanned more than two decades in the Army National Guard, but never included combat deployment. Questions arose when Walz said he carried weapons “in war” in a 2018 video where he was speaking about gun violence, according to The Associated Press.

Walz, who also worked as a public school teacher and high school football coach, said he misspoke and that his “grammar is not always correct.”

“I wear my emotions on my sleeve, I speak especially passionately about our children being shot in schools and around guns. So I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where my heart is, and again, my record has been out there for over 40 years to speak for itself,” Walz said.

Bash also asked Walz about his mix-up when describing he and wife’s fertility method; he said it was in vitro fertilization — a topic that has fractured anti-abortion voters — while in reality the couple used artificial insemination.

Walz told Bash, “I certainly own my mistakes when I make them.”

“I spoke about our infertility issues because it’s hell, and families know this. And I spoke about the treatments that were available to us, that had those beautiful children. That’s quite a contrast in folks that are trying to take those rights away from us,” he said.

Just as the interview ended, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform the word “BORING!!!”

A polling location in Jefferson City the morning of Aug. 6 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missourians seem poised to legalize abortion and increase the minimum wage in November but are unlikely to embrace the Democratic statewide candidates who are among the ballot measures’ most ardent supporters, a new poll shows.

The proposal to enshrine the right to abortion up until the point of fetal viability in the Missouri Constitution drew support from 52% of people surveyed between Aug. 8 and 16 for the St. Louis University/YouGov poll. The minimum wage increase, to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2026, had even stronger backing, with 57% of those surveyed saying they support it.

The poll also found majorities supporting every Republican running statewide, who each held at least a 10-percentage point lead over Democratic opponents. Former President Donald Trump was selected by 54% of respondents, with 41% backing Vice President Kamala Harris. The poll gives Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe a 51% to 41% advantage over House Minority Leader Crystal Quade in the governor’s race.

The best-funded Democratic statewide candidate, Lucas Kunce, was 11 percentage points behind incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, with the poll showing Hawley with a 53% to 42% edge.

“I’d be very surprised if any Democrat won a statewide race this year,” poll director Steven Rogers said. “It’s not breaking news that Democrats struggle in statewide races in Missouri.”

The poll surveyed 900 voters and has a 3.8% margin of error. It included 69 questions, seeking views on major issues facing the state in addition to tracking approval ratings for politicians and testing election contests.

The results showed:

• The economy is the biggest concern for voters, listed as the No. 1 issue by 47%. The survey also showed 69% view the national economy as fair or poor and 71% give that rating to the state economy. Health care, at 18%, and education, 16%, are the second and third issues listed as top concerns.
• A plurality of voters, 42%, oppose four-day school weeks, but those aged 18 to 29 support it by a 44% to 35% margin. Voters 65 years old or older had the strongest opposition. A new law requiring a public vote to adopt a four-day week in districts in charter counties and cities larger than 30,000 people had overwhelming support at 77%, which was consistent across all demographic, income and partisan groups.
• Laws to require a background check for gun sales and banning minors from carrying guns on public property without adult supervision also had overwhelming support, 79% and 85% respectively. But voters oppose other measures to control firearms, including allowing local ordinances that are stronger than state law.

Polling by SLU/YouGov began in 2020, making this the second presidential election year for the project. Its last poll before the 2020 election pointed correctly to the outcome, but Republican candidates generally did better than the poll indicated.

Gov. Mike Parson was shown with a 50% to 44% lead over Democratic State Auditor Nicole Galloway and ended up winning by a 57-41 margin. That poll showed then-President Donald Trump with a 52% to 43% advantage over Joe Biden, with the final result a Trump win, also by a 57-41 margin.

Democrats are banking heavily on voter support for ballot measures, especially the abortion rights proposal, to help overcome some of the other disadvantages they face. No Democrat has won a statewide race since 2018.

Historically, however, ballot measures have only a marginal impact on candidate races, said Rogers, an associate professor of political science at St. Louis University.

“A presidential election year is probably the least effective time to have something else to boost turnout,” he said.

Ballot measures can drive turnout. Three of the most high-profile Missouri ballot measures this century — same-sex marriage in 2004, right to work in 2018 and Medicaid expansion in 2020 — were placed on the August primary ballot by governors worried about the impact of ballot-measure voters on November campaigns.

In 2004, the issue coincided with a titanic battle for the Democratic nomination for governor and 847,000 Democrats voted. In 2018, with no significant primary, 607,577 votes were tallied in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and in 2020, where there again was no hotly contested primary, 537,000 Democrats voted in the gubernatorial race.

In years with no high-profile ballot measures, Democrats since 2000 have averaged about 350,000 voters in statewide primaries for governor and U.S. Senate.

Republicans also showed an increase in primary voters in the years with ballot measures, but not by the same degree. In years without controversial ballot measures, the GOP has averaged about 530,000 voters in statewide contests for governor and U.S. Senate. The average for 2004, 2018 and 2020 was about 640,000 votes.