Morning Report — The runup to Nov. 5: Mail voting, security threats, lawsuits

Forty-seven days remain until Election Night, but the 2024 election is already underway.

The earliest ballots went out to voters at the beginning of this month and more are soon to follow with millions of Americans expected to cast their votes early and by mail ahead of Nov. 5. Mail voting saw an unprecedented boom in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country. That year, about 43 percent of American voters cast their ballots by mail, and 31 percent voted that way in 2022. 

But the process came under heightened scrutiny that year as former President Trump and his allies baselessly claimed the election was riddled with fraud, frequently taking aim at mailed votes in key battleground states.

The former president’s rhetoric on the issue has often changed; he voted early in the Florida Republican primary in August. He has repeatedly flip-flopped in his messaging, sometimes encouraging them to vote early or by mail — while at other times making false claims about the process’s security.

“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” he falsely claimed at a February rally in Michigan. “Get that through your head. It has to be.”

FOUR YEARS LATER, election officials are warning that mail voting could face delays and disruption if the U.S. Postal Service fails to fix persistent issues. The Hill’s Ella Lee writes that in a recent letter, groups representing election officials nationwide said “serious questions” remain about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver election mail in a “timely and accurate manner.” Annie Norman, campaign manager at the Save the Post Office Coalition, said rules and regulations about ballot deadlines and mailing cutoffs “vary pretty widely” from state to state.

“We just believe that somebody’s ZIP code shouldn’t determine their ability to participate in democracy,” Norman said.

THEN THERE’S THE COUNTING. Flashback to 2020, when Election Day turned into Election Week as states took days to tally their ballots. It might not be much better this year. While some swing states, especially those whose 2020 votes received the most attention, passed new laws and policies aimed to expedite ballot counts, many timelines will look the same. 

Buckle up for long waits and potential challenges to results in some states, experts warn.

“Pre-election litigation has been pretty heavy,” which could set the stage for lawsuits in November, Benjamin Ginsberg, a top Republican election lawyer, told Axios.

Republicans have already filed more than 100 lawsuits against various 2024 election procedures, and Vice President Harris’s campaign told The New York Times its election legal team is 10 times larger than President Biden’s was in 2020.

Washington Examiner: Trump faces a “difficult proposition” to find lawyers for 2024 election challenges.

Once the ballots are counted, they must be certified so that electors can cast their ballots in the Electoral College. A group of bipartisan former governors, concerned by fake elector schemes launched in 2020, on Tuesday urged current governors in a letter, first obtained by Politico, to certify the election results by the federal December deadline.

AN UNDERCURRENT OF WORRY accompanies the preparations for Election Day, and the weeks surrounding it. Reacting to events in 2020 — when “Stop The Steal” rallies and threats to election workers defined the days after Nov. 3 — local election directors from Ohio to Georgia are ramping up security to safeguard workers and polling places, as well as the integrity of ballots and voting procedures.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that one of the top threats facing the country in the lead-up to election day is “lone offenders” aiming to disrupt voting and other public targets. Meanwhile, the FBI and Postal Service are investigating suspicious mail containing a white powdery substance sent to election offices in at least 16 states.

“This is one of the things that I have to say is just crazy, outrageous to me — the election threats to workers of both parties and their families, the bullying, the harassment,” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said during an agency-sponsored online event. “These folks, they are not doing it for pay. They’re not doing it for glory. They’re doing it because they believe it’s the right thing to do to defend our democracy.”

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Andrew Harnik | Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is a cosponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act, a pending bill aimed at protecting children from the harms of social media.

CONGRESS

CHILDREN ONLINE: Senators and parents want House lawmakers to move on legislation aimed at increasing children’s digital safety and privacy before lawmakers recess for the election. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for the House to bring the legislation to the floor. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the co-author of the Kids Safety Online Act, is unhappy that the bill remains stalled in the House.   

Meta’s Instagram on Tuesday announced its most dramatic effort yet to protect young users from dangers on its platform, implementing new “teen account” settings that will automatically make millions of teen accounts private, restrict what kinds of content those users can view on the app and give parents more control settings. Instagram plans to apply the changes for all teen accounts in select countries, including the United States, starting next week (CNN).

FUNDING THE GOVERNMENT: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is eyeing another effort today to approve a short-term funding measure to avert a shutdown. It’s a risky, time-intensive move he tried unsuccessfully last week ahead of a looming Sept. 30 deadline. Johnson wants to pair a six-month continuing resolution with a Trump-backed bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote, but there are not enough GOP votes to pass his plan, and the Senate and Biden say they oppose it, too. 

Given Republicans’ narrow 220-211 majority, and some members’ opposition to short-term funding Band-Aids in principle, it’s unlikely Johnson can push the package through the House.

Is there a speedy fallback option? It’s not one Johnson favors. Republicans and Democrats both broadly agree that a shutdown before the election would be unwise and unpopular. Democrats in both chambers and many Senate Republicans instead want a three-month extension of current funding that would let lawmakers work out final spending plans in a “lame duck” session after the election and before a new administration gets to work. If the past is prologue, this season’s shutdown drama will go down to the wire.

VETERANS: Meanwhile, the House Tuesday approved a $3 billion funding patch for the Veterans Affairs Department and immediate support for benefits. The VA expects a much larger shortfall over the next year, and Republicans aren’t agreeing upfront to filling the funding gap as they prepare to play hardball over government spending totals after Election Day

Predicting and planning victory: The Speaker used a Tuesday speech to sketch his legislative agenda in the first 100 days should Republicans control the House and the White House next year. Among the goals: an “America first” economic plan that includes tax cuts and probusiness investments, an end to Democrats’ green climate and energy policies, changes in public education and reduced federal spending and debt. Johnson would also like to keep his job leading House Republicans.

Senate show vote: Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to block a Democratic bill that would ensure access to in vitro fertilization treatments. It was the second time since June that the majority sought to put Republicans on record on an issue that has divided the GOP amid the national abortion rights debate. Trump recently proposed mandated universal coverage of IVF.

Tax politics and policy: Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee is probing corporate strategies that minimize their federal tax liabilities, and the Treasury Department has corporations with profits above $1 billion in its tax rulemaking crosshairs (The Hill).

The Hill: Republican lawmakers have balked this week at various proposals to boost Secret Service funding in the wake of two assassination attempts aimed at Trump since July.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Hussein Malla | Police officers in Beirut inspected damage Tuesday to a vehicle in which a hand-held pager exploded. Thousands of people were injured and some killed when manipulated pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria.

INTERNATIONAL 

TECH WARFARE: Hundreds of handheld pagers exploded in Lebanon and parts of Syria on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people, including members of the militant group Hezbollah, and wounding thousands, officials said. Hezbollah and government officials are saying Israel is responsible for the attack, which wounded about 2,800 people.

Israel implanted small amounts of explosives in pagers that Hezbollah had ordered from a Taiwanese company, The New York Times reports, according to American and other officials. At 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that looked as though it was from Hezbollah leadership — but instead activated the explosives.

The office of Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, labeled the incident “criminal Israeli aggression” in a statement, adding that it was “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty.” Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have soared following months of strikes across the Lebanese-Israeli border. Israeli officials this week said the military was ready to take action against the group. Hezbollah has vowed to respond to the attack.

The New York Times: Senior Hezbollah members have used pagers for years but their use increased after the Oct. 7 attacks, when the group’s leader warned that Israeli intelligence had penetrated the cellphone network.

Many of the explosions took place in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Residents there reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets followed by a blast like a firework. Mohammed Awada, 52, told The New York Times, “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him.”

CNN: Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Egypt on Tuesday amid rising doubts that a cease-fire and hostage deal can be agreed to in Gaza before Biden leaves office. It’s the first time since the Oct. 7 attacks that Blinken has visited the Middle East without a stop in Israel.

CEASE-FIRE? Some of Ukraine’s allies are starting to talk about how the fight against Russia’s invasion might end, raising concerns in several other Western capitals that these efforts could lead to Kyiv being forced into a premature cease-fire (Bloomberg News).

ELSEWHERE

© The Hill / Illustration by Courtney Jones; pictures Julia Nikhinson and Matt Rourke, Associated Press; and Adobe Stock | Former President Trump and Vice President Harris are locked in a tight race with 47 days until Nov. 5.

POLITICS & CAMPAIGNS

Trump tonight plans a campaign rally on Long Island, where affluent IRS filers in high-tax New York are particularly critical of a $10,000 cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, enacted by the former president with help from congressional Republicans in 2017. 

That limit, known as the SALT cap, should be eased rather than extended in law at the end of 2025, Trump said Tuesday on social media, reversing his earlier position.

Repealing or relaxing the SALT cap creates unusual cross-party and geographic coalitions. Many Republicans support keeping the cap because it raises federal revenues to offset tax cuts conservatives favor and because it forces residents of high-tax states, particularly blue states, to bear the full cost of state taxes.

CRITICAL TO CORDIAL: Harris advised Trump during a news media interview Tuesday to cease and desist his false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets. His recent remarks during their debate were followed by bomb threats in Ohio, which prompted the state’s governor to send protection to some schools.

“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” the vice president said. “And we’ve got to say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country,” she added in response to journalists’ questions during a Philadelphia event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists. 

Harris, on a different topic, spoke directly by phone with Trump Tuesday to “express that she is grateful he is safe” after Sunday’s presumed assassination attempt at a Florida golf course. President Biden spoke to Trump with a similar message Monday. The vice president’s team described the conversation between the two candidates as “cordial and brief.”

Trump, speaking Tuesday at a Michigan town hall event, commented that the phone calls he received from Biden and Harris were “very nice.” “You know, only consequential presidents get shot at,” he added during remarks.

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports Republican lawmakers believe the threat to Trump Sunday will serve to boost his campaign.

Trump in Flint, Mich., used dire language to assert that if he loses the presidential election and is unable to follow through on proposed higher tariffs, “there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs. It will all be out of here.” 

👉The former president told the audience he will meet in the U.S. next week with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, a country he called “a very big abuser” of American trade policy.

THE CLOSER 

© The Associated Press / Julie Jacobson | Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, pictured in 2011.

And finally … 💦 On this day 154 years ago in 1870, explorers discovered “Old Faithful” in what later became known as the Yellowstone National Park.

The Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition traveled down Wyoming’s Firehole River where the adventurers found an unusual geyser. Nathaniel Langford, the expedition leader, wrote in his journal, “It spouted at regular intervals nine times during our stay, the columns of boiling water being thrown from ninety to one hundred and twenty-five feet at each discharge, which lasted from fifteen to twenty minutes. We gave it the name ‘Old Faithful.’”

Later, Old Faithful was used as a laundry, with one man writing, “Garments placed in the crater during quiescence are ejected thoroughly washed when the eruption takes place. Gen. [Philip] Sheridan’s men, in 1882, found that linen and cotton fabrics were uninjured by the action of the water, but woolen clothes were torn to shreds.” 

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