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Trump Campaign Sues Nevada Over Mail-In Voting

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By NBC News. President Trump’s reelection campaign is suing Nevada over a newly passed bill that expands mail-in voting for the November general election[.] . . .

The lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party against Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, on Tuesday takes aim at Assembly Bill 4, under which all active registered voters in Nevada will be sent mail ballots for the November 3 election. The Trump campaign claims the measure “makes voter fraud and other ineligible voting inevitable.”

“Many of AB4’s provisions are head-scratching — particularly given the stark irregularities in Nevada’s June 2020 primary election, and because AB4 changes so many election laws so close to the 2020 general election,” the Republicans said in their lawsuit.

The legal challenge from the Trump campaign and the GOP claims several of the bill’s provisions are unconstitutional, including one that requires election officials to count ballots received up to three days after Election Day even if the date it was postmarked is unclear. They are also targeting two sections of the bill that dictate the number of in-person polling places for early voting and day-of voting, claiming the provisions will lead to more polling places for voters in urban counties than rural counties. (Read more from “Trump Campaign Sues Nevada Over Mail-In Voting” HERE)

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Wealthy Donors Pour Millions Into Fight Over Mail-In Voting

By AP News. Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election.

In the battleground of Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail. Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court. . .

The massive effort by political parties, super PACs and other organizations to fight over whether Americans can vote by mail is remarkable considering the practice has long been noncontroversial. But the coronavirus is forcing changes to the way states conduct elections and prompting activists across the political spectrum to seek an advantage, recognizing the contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden could hinge on whether voters have an alternative to standing in lines at polling places during a public health crisis. (Read more from “Wealthy Donors Pour Millions Into Fight Over Mail-In Voting” HERE)

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Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok in 45 Days

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President Trump issued an executive order Thursday night that would see the social media platform TikTok banned within 45 days.

TikTok is a video sharing mobile application, owned by ByteDance Ltd., that the Trump administration has deemed a national security threat on the basis that the app has been gathering data that could potentially be shared with the government of China.

“TikTok automatically gathers vast swaths of information from its users, including internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search history,” the executive order said.

“This data threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to Americans’ personal and propietrary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information and blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The U.S. ban puts pressure on the China-based company to sell the app’s U.S. platform – Microsoft is reportedly a leading contender, but the deal will be closely monitored by the Trump administration. (Read more from “Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok in 45 Days” HERE)

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Trump Finalizes Rule Defining Gender as a Person’s Biological Sex

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The Trump administration on Friday finalized a regulation that defines gender as a person’s biological sex, reversing an Obama-era rule aimed at protecting transgender people against sex discrimination in health care.

The Health and Human Services Department regulation says essentially that “gender identity” is not protected under federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in health care.

The policy shift was long sought by religious and social conservatives. The Obama administration’s regulation defined gender as a person’s internal sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, policy adviser for The Catholic Association, praised the move. She said preventing “discrimination on the basis of sex” was intended “to ensure that women are treated on a par with men.”

“Changing the definition of sex to mean ‘gender identity’ and to include unfettered access to abortion would not have protected the vulnerable,” she said. “Instead, it would have made it impossible for doctors to decline to perform ethically problematic procedures (like late-term abortion) and experimental and dangerous ones (like the removal of healthy organs from young patients with gender dysphoria.) Getting the government out of the business of social engineering, and out of the way of sound medical ethics and patient care is a step forward.” (Read more from “Trump Finalizes Rule Defining Gender as a Person’s Biological Sex” HERE)

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Twitter Places Ban on Trump Campaign Account

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Twitter temporarily banned the Trump 2020 campaign from tweeting on their social media platform until they deleted a video about the coronavirus on Wednesday.

Liz Kelley, a spokesperson for Twitter, told the Washington Post that the video was “is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation.” . . .

The Trump Team tweet contained a video of President Donald Trump from an interview with Fox News where he said that children were “almost immune” from the coronavirus.

Facebook also took down a post from the president about children contracting coronavirus on Wednesday.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” said Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook. (Read more from “Twitter Places Ban on Trump Campaign Account” HERE)

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President Trump Is Encouraging This State to Vote by Mail; Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots

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By Fox News. President Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon that Florida voters should vote by mail this November, claiming that there is nothing to worry about in terms of security.

The president has generally railed against mail-in voting, claiming that Democrats are going to take advantage of the system to commit fraud and rig the election against him. At this point, however, he appears confident that this will not be the case in the Sunshine State. . .

Some states, like Maryland, are mailing absentee ballot applications to voters rather than the ballots themselves. A common practice, this process requires voters to provide personal information in order to get a ballot. What is new is states mailing ballots to voters unprompted, which has caused concerns over how states decide who to send them to. Trump on Monday threatened legal action against a universal mail-in voting plan in Nevada.

Trump and other Republicans have warned that mail-in voting could lead to ballot harvesting, ballots for dead people or ballots for people who no longer live at the residence where they are sent being fraudulently filled out. Additional concerns include ballots being lost in the mail and disenfranchising voters. (Read more from “President Trump Is Encouraging This State to Vote by Mail” HERE)

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Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots

By The Hill. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is under intense partisan scrutiny from both President Trump and Democratic lawmakers, who are warning the agency is ill-equipped to handle the tens of millions of mailed-in ballots expected to be sent for the November election.

Many states have moved to expand access to mail balloting in an effort to reduce in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, leading to growing concerns that Postal Service delays could draw the vote count out for days or weeks past Election Day.

There are fears that ballots that are late, missing or disqualified for small irregularities will lead to lawsuits and questions about the integrity of the elections.

The coronavirus pandemic has hampered post office operations and led to delays in mail delivery. The Postal Service faces serious financial pressures, and Congress is at odds over whether to provide additional assistance, even as it handles more shipments. (Read more from “Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots” HERE)

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Trump Appropriately Argues COVID Stat Pushed by Axios is Irrelevant: ‘You Can’t Do That’ (VIDEO)

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(See editor’s note, below)

By National Review. President Trump argued that the number of COVID deaths per capita is irrelevant and pointed to the number of deaths in proportion to cases as a sign that the U.S. is doing well in its battle against the virus during an interview with “Axios on HBO” Monday.

“I’m talking about death as a proportion of population,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan told the president. “That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”

“You can’t do that,” Trump responded, adding that the data should “go by the cases.”

“It’s surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population vs. South Korea,” Swan pushed back, citing reporting from Seoul showing 300 deaths out of the country’s population of 51 million. . .

“You don’t know that,” Trump said in response to South Korea’s numbers, leading Swan to ask the president if he believes the country is faking its statistics. (Read more from “Trump Argues Irrelevant COVID Stat: ‘You Can’t Do That'” HERE)

(Editor’s note: Trump got it right. The more COVID testing that is done, the more known COVID deaths a nation will have. If you don’t test, you don’t have reported COVID deaths. So comparing the U.S. per capita COVID death rate to countries that test far less is an absolutely unfair comparison)

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Trump Weighs Executive Action as Negotiations Progress on Next Coronavirus Stimulus Package

By USA Today. The president on Monday said he was weighing executive action as Congress and the White House struggle to break the impasse over another emergency relief package to counter the coronavirus’ impact on U.S. families and the economy.

Negotiators on Monday signaled they’d made progress hashing out differences between Republican and Democratic proposals for the next stimulus package, though a deal remains far out out of reach and millions of unemployed Americans remain in financial limbo after a $600 weekly unemployment benefit expired on Friday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Congress’ top Democrats, met again Monday with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for several hours, where they examined the competing proposals and went through specific dollar amounts in various areas in the two bills. . .

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Monday floated the possibility of taking unilateral action if a deal could not be made with Democrats, claiming he has the power to step in and curtail Congress should there be a need. The president specifically noted the moratorium on housing evictions that recently expired.

“A lot of people are going to be evicted but I’m going to stop it because I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Trump said at the White House. “I have a lot of powers with respect to executive orders and we’re looking at that very seriously right now.” (Read more from “Trump Weighs Executive Action as Negotiations Progress on Next Coronavirus Stimulus Package” HERE)

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On New Voter Registration in Key States, Trump Is Blowing Biden Out of the Water

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While polling continues to show President Trump behind Biden in key swing states, new voter registration numbers are telling a different story about his chances to win re-election in November.

According to Axios, the RNC continues to register more voters than the Democrat Party in places where it will matter most.

The Trump campaign and RNC have now registered 100,000 new voters in the 2020 cycle, more than doubling their numbers from 2016 and shrinking Democrats’ registration advantage in key swing states, according to new Trump Victory data provided exclusively to Axios.

The Trump campaign and RNC have now registered 100,000 new voters in the 2020 cycle, more than doubling their numbers from 2016 and shrinking Democrats’ registration advantage in key swing states, according to new Trump Victory data provided exclusively to Axios.

(Read more from “On New Voter Registration in Key States, Trump Is Blowing Biden Out of the Water” HERE)

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CNN Host Says He Doesn’t Believe the Polls After Previously Mocking Trump for Criticizing ‘Fake Polls’ (VIDEO)

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CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said in an interview that he didn’t trust the polling showing Joe Biden ahead of President Donald Trump after previously mocking the president for stating the identical opinion. . .

“Biden is up. Michigan was huge for the president, Trump, in terms of winning, uh has a large number of white working class people that is supposed to be his stronghold,” Cuomo said.

“We’ve seen in the polls, you know, you’re too busy you’re not doing poll analysis, he is losing those white voters,” he continued. “Biden is gaining there most of all. And now Trump has pulled the ads. What do you think is going on with the pandemic politics in Michigan?”

Whitmer said that Michigan was going to be a competitive race despite the sign from the Trump campaign that they were going to devote fewer resources to the key swing state.

“See, I’m with you! I don’t believe the polls!” Cuomo responded.

(Read more from “CNN Host Says He Doesn’t Believe the Polls After Previously Mocking Trump for Criticizing ‘Fake Polls'” HERE)

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FBI Officials Allegedly Hid Copies of ‘Key’ Documents After Trump Fired Comey

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FBI officials took pains to hide three copies of “key” documents in the days after President Trump fired Director James Comey, according to a forthcoming book.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote about how Andrew McCabe, who had suddenly been thrust into the acting director role in May 2017, went about opening a criminal case into Trump for potential obstruction of justice.

“Given the wild pace of events, McCabe couldn’t be sure how long he’d last as director, so he wanted to lock down as much evidence as possible,” Toobin wrote in an excerpt of True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump that was published by CNN on Thursday.

“Most important, he told the investigating agents to place Comey’s memos in SENTINEL, the FBI’s case management software,” Toobin wrote. “McCabe knew that once documents were inside the system, they were virtually impossible to remove. With Comey’s memos in the system, the investigators were certain to have access to them ⁠— even if McCabe himself would eventually be gone.” . . .

“Once McCabe became director, Bureau employees grew so concerned that Trump would try to shut down the investigation that they secreted at least three copies of key documents, including Comey’s memos, in remote locations around the Bureau. This was to make sure that in the event Trump directed an end to these inquiries, the documents could always be preserved, located, and shared,” Toobin wrote. (Read more from “FBI Officials Allegedly Hid Copies of ‘Key’ Documents After Trump Fired Comey” HERE)

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Clinton Aide to Biden: ‘Whatever You Do, Don’t Debate Trump’; Biden Campaign Claim He’s Agreed to Debates, Trump Hasn’t

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By News Thud. . .[Joe Lockhart] published an op-ed last week at CNN.com warning Biden that he should not debate Trump because the latter is prone to statement that fail the fact-checking test (original emphasis):

Whatever you do, don’t debate Trump. Trump has now made more than 20,000 misleading or false statements according to the Washington Post. It’s a fool’s errand to enter the ring with someone who can’t follow the rules or the truth. Biden will undoubtedly take heat from Republicans and the media for skipping the debates. But it’s worth the risk as trying to debate someone incapable of telling the truth is an impossible contest to win.

However, Biden has been criticized in past debate performances for his misstatements and outright fabrications. In a debate with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2008, Biden made several false claims, including the odd claim that the United States and France had “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” (Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group with an associated political wing, is still very much there, and is a major part of Lebanon’s government.)

(Read more from “Clinton Aide to Biden: ‘Whatever You Do, Don’t Debate Trump'” HERE)

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Biden Campaign Says It Has Agreed to Debates Already, but Trump Camp Has Not

By Fox News. Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is “very much looking forward to debating Donald Trump,” the former vice president’s campaign deputy manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield told “America’s Newsroom” on Monday.

She added that the Biden campaign has already agreed to the upcoming three presidential debates, while the Trump campaign has not. . .

Trump supporters have poked fun at the former vice president for conducting many of his interviews from home. Trump’s defenders have also speculated about Biden’s overall health and Biden’s refusal to debate could provide more cannon fodder.

When host Sandra Smith asked Bedingfield on Monday if it’s a consideration for Biden to skip the debates all together, she said, “We are very much looking forward to debating Donald Trump” and putting the candidates’ “contrasts on display.”

“I would say there is one candidate in this race who has agreed to three debates and that’s Joe Biden. The Trump campaign has actually not agreed yet to participate in the debates set by the presidential debate commission,” Bedingfield continued. (Read more from “Biden Campaign Says It Has Agreed to Debates Already, but Trump Camp Has Not” HERE)

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