Maya Rudolph and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris appear on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 2, 2024 in New York City. With only days to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning in battleground states along with making the appearance on SNL. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — On the final frantic Sunday of the presidential race, while Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a Black church service in Michigan, former President Donald Trump told supporters at a Pennsylvania rally that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

At a campaign rally at an airplane tarmac in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Trump again perpetuated the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and claimed that this year’s election would also be stolen because election results could take a while to be counted.

“These elections have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” he said. “Bunch of crooked people.”

Election officials have warned that results could take days to finalize.

The comments came as new polls showed good news for Harris. A highly regarded pollster in Iowa showed a shocking lead for Harris there and New York Times-Siena College polls of the seven major battleground states showed slight leads for Harris in some Sun Belt swing states, while Trump made gains in the Rust Belt.

As the campaign dwindles to its final hours, here are seven key developments from this weekend:

Trump says he ‘shouldn’t have left’ White House

Trump spent much of his Lititz rally complaining about the election process and media coverage, seeming to repeat his false claim that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.

“I shouldn’t have left, I mean, honestly,” Trump said. “We did so well, we had such a great — so now, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there.”

He also joked about shooters targeting reporters covering his event, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.

He pointed to protective glass covering him on two sides and noted a press section was on another side of him.

“To get me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news,” Trump said. “And I don’t mind that so much.”

In a statement that seemed to contradict the plain meaning of Trump’s remark, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung denied Trump was encouraging violence against reporters.

“The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,” Cheung wrote. “It was about threats against him that were spurred on by dangerous rhetoric from Democrats. In fact, President Trump was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”

Harris heads to the Big Apple

Harris made an unscheduled trip to New York City Saturday, where she made a surprise appearance during the cold open of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” alongside actress Maya Rudolph, who portrays the veep in the live sketch comedy show.

In the three-minute opener, Rudolph approaches a vanity dresser and wishes she could talk to “someone who was in my shoes” as a “Black, South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay Area.”

Rudolph turns toward the faux mirror, and Harris, on the other side, responds, “You and me both, sister.”

They wore identical suits and Harris turned to Rudolph and said that she is “here to remind you, you got this.”

“Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors,” Harris said, joking about a recent campaign event where Trump tried to open the door to a garbage truck.

Rudolph cackled, doing an impersonation of Harris’ laugh, before the two women began a pep talk with puns of Harris’ first name.

“Now, Kamala, take my palmala,” Rudolph said. “The American people want to stop the chaos.”

“And end the dramala,” Harris said.

Harris and Rudolph then stood side-by-side and said they were going to vote for “us.”

Harris joked and asked Rudolph if she was registered to vote in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Harris headed from New York to Michigan, where she spoke Sunday at the historically Black Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ in Detroit.

Polling bombshell in a non-swing state

Polling in the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, reported a shocking lead for Harris in a state that Trump easily won in 2016 and 2020, with women and independent voters breaking for the Democratic presidential nominee.

The poll shows Harris leading with 47% of likely voters compared to 44% with Trump, according to the Register.

The Trump campaign quickly called the Iowa poll “a clear outlier,” and instead cited a poll by Emerson College as accurate, which showed the former president having 53% support compared to 43% for Harris.

Trump also took his grievances to his social media site, Truth Social.

“All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT,” he wrote. “I LOVE THE FARMERS, AND THEY LOVE ME.”

The New York Times/Siena College Sunday polls found that Harris is improving in North Carolina and Georgia while Trump has gained in Pennsylvania and maintains a strong advantage in Arizona. Harris is still ahead in Nevada and Wisconsin, according to the poll, but Michigan and Pennsylvania remain tied. The poll of Georgia showed Harris with a 1-point edge.

Both candidates were within the polls’ margins of error, meaning that the seven swing states could tip to either candidate.

While both Democratic and Republican politicians have expressed confidence in winning the election, polling experts said during a panel hosted by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute in late October there’s no way to know for sure who will control the White House until all the votes are counted.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, founding partner at Echelon Insights, said there’s about a 60% chance that this year’s nationwide polling has been mostly correct, though she emphasized that the people who focus their careers on political polling are dedicated to providing a realistic understanding of where campaigns are headed.

“We are trying our very hardest to get it right,” Anderson said. “Even if you don’t believe in our altruism or even if you don’t believe in our academic and intellectual integrity, believe in nothing else than our financial incentives. You want to be the pollster who was right. It is very good business to be the pollster who is right.”

Jeff Horwitt, partner at Hart Research, said during the panel his firm has wrapped up its polling for this election year and expressed skepticism about the polls that emerge close to Election Day.

“Because our job, for our political clients, is to tell them the contours of the election,” Horwitt said. “How do we convince voters to vote for our candidate? What are the most effective messages? What do we have to think about? So the public polls are seeing now, they’re super interesting, and they’re important, but they’re not actionable.”

Trump welcomes sexist insult

As Trump spent his weekend in a campaign blitz across North Carolina, he welcomed a sexist remark from a rallygoer in Greensboro who suggested that Harris worked as a prostitute.

During the Saturday night rally, Trump questioned whether Harris’ previously worked at a McDonald’s. Her campaign has stated that she worked the summer job in 1983. In a campaign photo opportunity, Trump visited a closed McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where he handed fries to pre-screened people at the drive through.

“It’s so simple,” Trump said. “She’s a significant liar, and when you lie about something so simple, so she never worked there –”

“She worked on a corner,” a man from the crowd shouted.

Trump laughed at the crude comment.

“This place is amazing,” Trump said. “Just remember, it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

Harris has significantly gained support with women, according to the Pew Research Center. Trump has often dismissed criticism that he has lagged among women.

During a rally last week in Wisconsin, and in an attempt to win over women voters, Trump said that he would protect women and “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.”

Trump repeats ‘father of fertilization’ claim

At a Greensboro, North Carolina, rally Saturday, Trump again called himself “the father of fertilization,” a title he first gave himself during a Fox News town hall with women voters last month.

“I consider myself to be the father of fertilization,” he said Saturday.

The Iowa poll — and other late surveys — showed a stark gender gap, with women voters increasingly preferring Harris.

Nearly twice as many Iowa independent women voters, 57% to 29%, favored Harris. That represents a major gain for Harris since a September survey by the same pollster showed the vice president’s edge with independent women was only 5 percentage points.

Democrats have sought to exploit their advantage with women voters by emphasizing Trump’s record on abortion access. The former president appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn the federal right to an abortion.

A flurry of state-level policymaking on reproductive rights has followed, including restrictions on in vitro fertilization, a common fertility treatment.

Trump has said he opposed an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the treatment in the state, but had not previously taken a position on the issue.

Early voters up to 76 million

More than 76 million voters had already cast ballots through early and mail voting by midday Sunday, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Roughly half of those have come in states that track voters’ partisanship. About 700,000 — roughly 2% of the total — more Democrats have voted in those states than Republicans, but the numbers include California, where Democrat Joe Biden won more than 5 million more votes than Trump in the 2020 election.

Among the six states — Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado, Idaho and Virginia — that track voters’ gender, women accounted for 54% of the vote, compared to 43.6% for men.

‘Election eve’ blitz

The candidates for president and vice president plan to sprint across the key swing states in the campaign’s final days, with particular focus on Pennsylvania, the largest of the contested states where polling has shown a deadlocked race.

The Harris campaign announced Sunday the vice president would be in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on Monday, the night before Election Day, for rallies and musical performances. Scheduled entertainers and speakers included Oprah Winfrey, The Roots, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Harris is also set to hold an event in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a majority-Latino city, on Monday. Part of Harris’ closing message has highlighted racist comments Trump and his supporters have made about Latinos.

After spending much of the weekend in North Carolina, Trump will also hold a rally in Pittsburgh on Monday evening.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, will be in Milwaukee on Monday.

Trump running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will hold events in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania on Monday.

Harris will hold an election night watch party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s watch party will be at his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which is a mega church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 as part of a “souls to the polls” push. Harris presented the stakes of the presidential race in stark terms: “And now we face this question: what kind of country do we want to live in? A country of chaos, fear and hate or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?” (Photo by Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

WASHINGTON — A new poll released Monday by a civic engagement group found that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris continues to grow her support with Latinos in critical battleground states.

In a tight presidential race, both campaigns have tried to court the Latino vote — one of the fastest-growing voting blocs.

The poll for Voto Latino by the firm GQR surveyed 2,000 Latinos registered to vote in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — although not Georgia — from Sept. 25 to Oct. 2.

Vice President Harris even outperformed President Joe Biden in several swing states compared to his 2020 presidential results, according to the poll.

In August, Harris had the support of about 60% of Latino voters compared to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 29%, according to the poll. Both candidates increased their support of that voting bloc in October, with Harris at 64% and Trump at 31%.

The poll found that Harris’ growth has come from young Latino voters, ages 18 to 29.

In the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the poll found that Harris outperforms with Latino voters compared to Biden’s estimated wins among Latinos in 2020. In Arizona, Biden had 61% of the Latino vote four years ago, and Harris now polls at about 66%, the survey said.

In Pennsylvania, Biden had 69% of the Latino vote compared to Harris now polling at 77%, and in North Carolina, Biden had 57% of the Latino vote compared to Harris’ support of 67%, the poll said.

In 2020, Biden won Arizona and Pennsylvania by slim margins but lost North Carolina to Trump.

Trump visits Asheville, Harris teams up with Liz Cheney

After Hurricane Helene’s destruction in late September, campaigning in western North Carolina resumed Monday.

Trump visited Asheville, North Carolina, Monday afternoon to survey the destruction left by the aftermath of the Category 4 hurricane. While there, he stressed the importance of early voting, which is already underway in the state.

“It’s vital that we not let this hurricane that has taken so much also take your voice,” Trump said. “You must get out and vote.”

Harris on Monday blitzed around the suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming for “moderated conversations.”

Arnold Palmer, McDonald’s and Usher

With almost two weeks until Election Day on Nov. 5, both candidates have rolled out celebrities and political stunts in an effort to court every vote in an election that is essentially a dead heat.

That was apparent over the weekend.

In Pennsylvania, Trump ended his Saturday evening with a rally in Latrobe where for roughly 10 minutes he described the male anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said of Palmer, “when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

On Sunday Trump visited a closed McDonald’s, where for 20 minutes he donned an apron, worked the fryers and helped put together orders. He served a few pre-screened people who won the opportunity to partake in the campaign event via a lottery.

The visit to the Golden Arches came after Harris touted her work experience at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, while she was a college student. Trump has cast doubt, without evidence, on whether that actually happened.

On Monday afternoon, after Harris’ jet landed in Michigan, a reporter shouted a question at her as to whether she ever worked at McDonald’s.

“Did I? I did!” Harris said, smiling and putting her thumb up, according to the pool report.

Harris returned to Georgia on Saturday, where she energized her base to take advantage of early voting. More than 1.3 million people have voted in Georgia, according to the Secretary of State’s turnout datahub.

She held a campaign rally alongside R&B singer Usher and visited Sunday church services in the Atlanta area as part of a “souls to the polls” effort.

Another intense week on the way

This week, Trump will attend a roundtable with Latino leaders on Tuesday in Miami, Florida. An earlier planned event with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, was canceled.

In the evening, Trump will then travel to Greensboro, North Carolina, for a rally. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will be campaigning in Arizona.

On Tuesday, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will stump in Madison, Wisconsin, with former President Barack Obama to encourage early voting.

On Wednesday night, Harris will participate in a CNN town hall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Trump on Wednesday will hold a faith-related town hall in Zebulon, Georgia, in the late afternoon. In the evening, he’ll head to Duluth, Georgia, to appear as a special guest at the conservative Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action Rally.

On Thursday, Vance will partake in a town hall in Detroit, Michigan, with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo.

Back in Georgia, Harris and Obama will headline a get-out-the-vote rally.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rallied before a few hundred spectators at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, and her running mate, Walz, have been blanketing Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the 2024 presidential race. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

PITTSBURGH — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged a crowd of Pittsburgh Steelers fans to vote early as he rallied a few hundred of them Tuesday night at the professional football team’s home at Acrisure Stadium.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential running mate campaigned in the southwestern Pennsylvania city as the campaign continues its blitz of the coveted swing state that could decide the 2024 presidential contest.

The race between Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, remains razor-thin in the Keystone State.

Former Steeler Will Allen introduced Walz to a cheering crowd dotted with Steelers hats, jerseys and Terrible Towels, the team’s official rally towel.

“Give me my moment here, yesterday I made my first trip to Lambeau Field,” Walz said, referring to his trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the home of the Green Bay Packers football team. “Today, I’m making my first trip into Steeler territory, so thank you.”

The former high school football coach and teacher visited Wisconsin Monday, which is alongside Pennsylvania on the list of must-win swing states. The others include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

Early mail-in ballot voting is already underway in Pennsylvania.

“If you’re voting by mail, get the damn thing in the mail as soon as possible,” Walz said.

Harris campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania, Monday night before heading to Michigan Tuesday.

Attacks on Trump

Like Harris did in the state’s northwestern corner the previous night, Walz roused the Pittsburgh crowd by attacking Trump’s mental fitness.

“I would not usually encourage this, but go watch this guy, watch his town hall. He stopped taking questions and stood frozen on stage for 30 minutes while they played his Spotify list,” Walz said, referring to Trump’s Monday night town hall outside of Philadelphia.

“If this were your grandfather, you would take the keys away,” Walz said to laughter. “And I tell you this, look, it would be funny if this guy weren’t running for president of the United States.”

In Erie, Harris warned that Trump is “unhinged” and played video clips of the former president explaining his potential plans to use the military to silence “the enemy from within.”

Trump wrote on his social media platform Tuesday morning that Harris’ own health report is “really bad.”

“With all of the problems that she has, there is a real question as to whether or not she should be running for President!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Harris’ medical report released Saturday describes her “in excellent health.”

Walz on the farm

While Walz wore a white shirt and sports jacket when talking to the football fans, earlier in the day he donned a flannel shirt and told supporters gathered outside a barn in Lawrence County that he and Harris would fight for American farmers and resources for rural residents.

The governor also highlighted his bona fides as a veteran, hunter and gun owner. His speech can be viewed in full on C-SPAN.

The Harris-Walz campaign released a plan Tuesday for rural America that promised to shore up rural health care and support small farms.

Walz also stopped at a garden center and cafe in Butler County before heading into the city.

The pro-Democrat Rural USA political action committee highlighted economic analyses Tuesday that show Trump’s promised tariffs would cause farmers to lose business as exports would decline.

Pennsylvania farmers could lose $111 million in soy exports, $50 million in corn exports, $22 million in beef exports and $20 million in wheat exports, according to the analysis from the University of Illinois Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics.

“These new studies literally show that Trump’s tariffs will put Pennsylvania farmers out of business,” Chris Gibbs, an Ohio corn and soybean farmer and president of Rural Voices USA, said in a statement Tuesday. “Exports are vital for Pennsylvania farmers and they cannot absorb the sharp fall in exports and prices these studies foreshadow.”

Trump defended his tariff proposals at the Economic Club of Chicago earlier Tuesday.  He told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait during an hour-long interview that he would spur a manufacturing boom in the U.S. by making tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious” that companies would relocate.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio is scheduled to campaign in Pittsburgh Thursday.

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Republican vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, of Ohio, speaks at a rally at JWF Industries on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance campaigned Saturday in the key battleground of Pennsylvania, where early mail-in voting is already underway as just 25 days remain in the heated 2024 race that will be decided by a handful of states.

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate rallied a crowd of a few hundred at a sprawling riverside manufacturing facility in Johnstown, adhering to the ticket’s main themes of immigration and the economy.

During a question-and-answer session with the press following his prepared remarks, States Newsroom asked Vance if he will commit to the peaceful transfer of power no matter the winner in November.

The coming presidential election is the first since a mob of Trump supporters violently breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, delaying Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged with crimes associated with the attack on the Capitol, during which 140 police officers were assaulted.

“Yes, of course,” Vance replied. “Look, this is very simple. Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on January 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country, and that is always going to happen.”

Vance, Ohio’s junior U.S. senator, in his speech painted Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as “a tax-and-spend San Francisco liberal who wants to open our borders and destroy American manufacturing.”

“Are we going to give Kamala Harris a promotion to president of the United States? Hell no. We are going to tell Harris ‘You are fired,’ and we are voting Donald J. Trump to be our next president,”  Vance said to cheers.

Vance spoke from a stage inside JWF Industries, a local plant that manufactures transportation, energy and defense equipment and vehicles.

Four military tactical utility vehicles framed the stage, where roughly 80 spectators lined the stage behind and to each side of Vance. A couple hundred people sat below the stage, with several empty rows behind them and an empty section to the left.

New poll numbers

Both campaigns and their surrogates are blanketing seven must-win swing states, as the presidential contest remains incredibly tight.

Trump holds an advantage in Arizona, while Harris has a slight lead in Pennsylvania, according to the latest poll results for the key battleground states released Saturday morning by The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College.

Vance urged the crowd to check their voter registration status and talk to family and friends about going to the polls.

“It’s the only way that we’re going to make Donald Trump the next president, so let’s get out there and vote, my friends,” he said.

Vance spent the majority of his remarks faulting Harris and President Joe Biden for economic suffering, including inflation and credit card debt delinquency.

A consumer price index report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed inflation is at its lowest since February 2021.

Vance also attacked Harris for participating in “softball interviews,” citing her recent appearances on podcasts, as well as daytime and late-night TV.

Vance took credit for the Trump campaign ad that features a clip from Harris’ interview on “The View” in which she declined to distance herself from decisions of the Biden presidency.

“The problem with a softball interview is that you still have to be able to hit a softball,” Vance said.

In addition to appearances this week on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” as well as a town hall for Univision, Harris also sat for an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on Monday. Trump backed out of his own promised appearance on “60 Minutes.”

Jan. 6 protesters ‘knuckleheads’

Vance implied accusations of voter fraud during his speech, telling the crowd that “you have to make the margins so big in Pennsylvania that it doesn’t matter what shenanigans Democrats pull at the last minute.”

“We will never have the fake media or the Democrats telling the truth. We do have our own voices, and our own networks, our family and friends. That is the people power that is going to make Donald Trump the next president,” Vance said.

During the reporter Q and A, the crowd jeered when a student journalist from a Pittsburgh university asked if Vance condemned the Jan. 6 violence.

Vance defended Trump’s actions on that day, saying the former president encouraged the crowd to protest “peacefully.”

“And the fact that a few knuckleheads went off and did something they shouldn’t do, that’s not on him. That’s on them,” Vance said to cheers.

Vance chafed at journalists asking more than once about Trump’s refusal to accept that Biden won the 2020 race. The former president continues to repeat the falsehood that he won. Trump challenged election results across dozens of lawsuits in multiple states following the 2020 election and lost them all.

“What Kamala Harris and the media are doing is trying to tell us that we should hear more about what happened four years ago than about her failure in governance,” Vance said. “I think that on November the 5th, we are going to reject it.”

Other questions from the press focused on western Pennsylvania, veterans’ benefits and Project 2025, the 900-page “mandate” for the next government, produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Vance said the conservative project has “no relation” to the Trump campaign. An CNN investigation in June found at least 140 several former Trump administration officials were involved in the project.

Vance spoke for 23 minutes and addressed reporter questions for just under the same amount of time.

Fielding audience questions in Reading 

Later on Saturday, Vance headed east to Reading for a town hall discussion moderated by former ESPN anchor Sage Steele.

Unlike his event in Johnstown, he didn’t take questions from the media, instead fielding questions from audience members. It wasn’t clear how the audience members and questions were selected.

When one audience member expressed concern about government overreach, Vance said the most important job after president in the next administration would be attorney general. “You need an attorney general who believes in true equal justice under law,” adding “we’ve got a few good candidates” without naming anyone specific.

He encouraged the audience to vote for Republican Dave McCormick for U.S. Senate to ensure an AG nominee would be approved, and called current Attorney General Merrick Garland “one of the most corrupt” attorney generals who should be fired

Trump, who was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May, has often criticized the Justice Department for what he views as unfair treatment. During a visit to Reading on Wednesday,Trump reiterated his plan to conduct the largest mass deportation operation for undocumented migrants in American history.

Vance relayed the story of meeting “a Latino immigrant to this country” and her thoughts on immigration.

“She came here 25 years ago, she paid thousands of dollars in fees and legal expenses just to become an American citizen and she is pissed off at the illegal immigration problem because it’s insulting to her,” he said.

Saturday was Vance’s second appearance in Berks County of the 2024 campaign.

According to 2020 Census data, Reading has a Hispanic population of 69%, while 23.2% of Berks County residents are Hispanic, making it the county with the second largest Latino population in Pennsylvania.

In 2020, 69% of Latino voters in Pennsylvania voted for Biden, while 27% voted for Trump, according to exit polling. However, recent nationwide polling shows Trump making significant inroads with Latino voters in the 2024 race against Harris.

On Wednesday, the Harris campaign announced the launch of a group aimed at encouraging support from Latino men titled “Hombres con Harris,” with events planned in Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.

The Harris campaign sent out a statement ahead of Vance’s visit to Reading, criticizing the GOP ticket’s position on abortion and tax policy.

“Pennsylvanians are sick and tired of Trump and Vance’s extremism and divisiveness, which is why they are ready to back the only candidate in this race who is fighting to take our commonwealth forward: Vice President Kamala Harris,” Harris campaign spokesperson Onotse Omoyeni.

An audience member who said she was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic asked Vance what the Trump administration would do to assist small businesses like hers.

Trump, Vance said, would lower business taxes “but only for the businesses that are hiring American workers, we’re not going to reward people for shipping jobs overseas” he added.

In 2019, reports surfaced that undocumented immigrants were previously hired to work at Trump’s resort in New Jersey.

Vance told an audience member who asked about competing with China that he wants to protect the U.S.manufacturing sector and reaffirmed the ticket’s position that tariffs are the most effective way to compete with China.

“When Kamala Harris goes against tariffs and she attacks tariffs all the time, what she’s effectively saying is we’re going to let slave laborers build products and then bring it into our country, undercutting the jobs and the industries of America,” Vance said. “We’ve got to cut that crap out.” Vance said, claiming China “pays slaves $3 a day.”

Several times during the event in Reading, Vance encouraged those to go to a website run by the Trump campaign that promotes voting by mail. Trump criticized vote by mail during his previous presidential election, but has appeared to embrace it over the past few months. But on multiple occasions in Pennsylvania this year he’s criticized vote by mail, calling it “corrupt.”

Vance will be in Pennsylvania for several additional campaign events next week. Harris and Trump will both be in Pennsylvania on Monday; she will appear at a rally in Erie, and Trump will campaign in Montgomery County.

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Gov. Tony Evers said he was "jazzed as hell" to welcome VP Kamala Harris to Wisconsin. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is joining fellow Democratic governors on a bus tour this week across the Midwest to talk to voters about the plans Vice President Kamala Harris has for creating jobs and lowering the cost of living for families.

The “Driving Forward” blue wall bus tour is starting off in Wisconsin Monday where Evers will join Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The tour will include special guests such as Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who will join the governors in Green Bay.

This is the first time Evers is scheduled to appear as a Harris surrogate. In an television interview during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Evers said he believes Harris has a better chance of winning Wisconsin than President Joe Biden did. “I think she’s engaged young people, and I anticipate that campuses across the state will be … active politically,” Evers said. “I do think Joe Biden could have won Wisconsin. It would have been by a smaller amount that he made it before. I think Kamala Harris or win by much more than that.”

Over the course of six days, concluding in Pennsylvania with Gov. Josh Shapiro, Whitmer said she plans to make sure every Midwesterner knows that former President Donald Trump would drive the economy into the ground if given the chance. The best choice for Midwesterners in November is the Harris-Walz ticket, Whitmer said in a statement from her Fight Like Hell PAC.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have lived lives like ours in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Their priority is lowering families’ costs, cutting taxes for the middle class, and creating more good American jobs here at home,” Whitmer said. “Donald Trump is only looking out for himself and his wealthy friends.”

Making note of Project 2025, the 900-plus-page right-wing blueprint outlining plans for Trump’s second term, Whitmer said Trump is seeking unchecked power that would trash economic opportunities for the working class.

Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are all part of the blue wall, which is made of more than a dozen states that have voted Democratic in presidential elections since at least 1992. All three states flipped for Trump in 2016 and flipped again for Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020. All three states are being heavily wooed by Harris and Trump in 2024.

For Pennsylvania, Trump’s chaos is unwelcome and gets in the way of the progress happening in Democratic states, Shapiro said in a statement from the Fight Like Hell PAC.

“Democratic Governors know how to get stuff done and deliver real results – we’ve cut taxes and reduced costs for our constituents, invested in public safety, opened up the doors of opportunity, and protected our fundamental rights and freedoms,” Shapiro said. “We need Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the White House because they’ll be our partners in that work to expand economic opportunity and advance real freedom, bringing people together behind common sense solutions for the American people.”

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Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.

Sen. Bernie Sanders at a rally in Ann Arbor, March 8, 2020 | Andrew Roth

In November’s presidential election, where the results will likely come down to a few thousand votes in battleground states like Michigan, Bernie Sanders told the Michigan Advance on Saturday that the 2023 United Auto Workers (UAW) strike has played a key role in mobilizing voters.

Sanders, who stood in Detroit alongside union leaders on day one of the UAW’s historic six-week strike against the “Big Three” Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — said in a phone interview that the union’s success sent a clear message to politicians that the that the status quo for the working class is “not acceptable.”

“What the UAW did is, I think not only win a very good contract for its own members, but it inspired millions and millions of working class people all over this country,” Sanders said, noting polling during the strike reflected majority support from Americans for striking workers across automotive plants around the country.

And as wages have stagnated, while salaries for CEOs rise, the issue of “corporate greed” speaks to voters in the middle class, Sanders said. Vice President Kamala Harris understands that and is responding to it, he said, while former President Donald Trump touts anti-union policies and viewpoints.

“It’s not just the UAW; not just the automobile industry. It’s happening in virtually every sector of our country. The very rich are becoming much richer; working families are struggling. We’ve got to stand up and fight back. That’s what the UAW did, and I think they galvanized a number of other unions to do the same,” Sanders said. “Young people want to get into unions. Unions are now historically popular, so I think UAW played a very, very important role.”

The Advance asked Sanders about one of the biggest unions in the country with 1.3 million members, the Teamsters, abstaining from endorsing either Trump or Harris and the International Association of Fire Fighters following suit.

But those are only two unions, Sanders said, adding that dozens of other unions have strongly put their support behind Harris who walked with striking UAW workers in 2019 while Trump visited a non-union plant in Macomb County during the 2023 strike.

“I think the choice is pretty clear in terms of who is supporting unions,” Sanders said.

Sanders and Harris are former political rivals who both sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. But while Sanders said they don’t agree on everything, they agree on enough for him to travel to swing states to garner support for her campaign.

“What I learned from her is that she is very, very smart, and she is very focused, and she’s very tough. She’s a very impressive individual and I think she would make a great president,” Sanders said. “I hope that she may have learned that there are many, many millions of people in this country, the richest country on Earth, who are struggling financially, and that it’s important to respond to the needs of those people and hear their pain, and that it is immoral that we are living in an economy in which so few have so much wealth.”

On the drive between speaking engagements in Warren and Saginaw on Saturday, Sanders told the Michigan Advance he has hope for young people flexing their voting power in November. To that end, he’ll be talking with Michigan State University students on Sunday.

Students at universities across the country, including in Michigan, have been the epicenter for public protest against the war in Gaza, with pro-Palestinian encampments cropping up in campuses and criminal charges levied against protesters at the University of Michigan.

And it’s been a potent issue in Michigan, with 100,000 voters voting “Uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primary this winter instead of for President Joe Biden, before Harris became the party’s nominee.

In 2020, Michigan’s 16 electoral votes weren’t won by much more than that, as Biden triumphed in the state by about 154,000 votes.

Many members of Michigan’s large Arab-American community have railed against Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war that’s raged for almost a year and continue to demand that Harris take a more aggressive stance, like committing to stop aid to Israel.

Although Israel had a right to defend itself from the Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack, Sanders said, the U.S. should not be offering military assistance to Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone to “war against the entire Palestinian people.”

“While I have strongly supported the domestic agenda of the Biden administration, the President and I have a very strong disagreement on that,” Sanders said. “Even on that issue, Trump will be worse. I think you have Republicans who are not even prepared to support humanitarian aid [to] the children who are starving, who are injured. … And I would hope that even though there is disappointment in the Biden administration on Gaza and I understand that, I’m sympathetic to that, I think the choice still remains clear, that we’ve got to support Kamala and defeat Donald Trump.”

What’s encouraging to see is that the younger generation, in particular, is demanding progressive and just policies that benefit the average person, Sanders said. Although young people have, in recent history, risen up against racism, sexism and homophobia, he said, the current young generation is “probably the most progressive younger generation in the history of this country.”

“They have been in the forefront in fighting to transform our energy system and save the planet from climate change. So it is a great generation of young people, but … you cannot implement what you believe if you’re not involved in the political process and if you are not voting,” Sanders said.

In 2022, Michigan voters ages 18 to 29 turned out at a rate of about 37% in the November election, higher than any other state in the country. Fellow battleground state Wisconsin led the charge with even younger voters, with nearly half of eligible voters under the age of 25 voting in November 2022. In both cases, the elections were marked by large victories by Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

Even still, youth voter turnout is not a sure thing, as about 60% of people aged 18 to 29 in Michigan who registered to vote didn’t cast a ballot in 2022.

The Harris campaign is showing up in states, partnering with local and statewide leaders, to make their message clear to different corners of the country, Sanders said.

Young people need to understand that what they believe needs to be heard on Election Day, as the threat of climate change could dismantle the future and the government gets in the way of women’s health care. Sanders said he wants young people to understand Trump believes climate change is a hoax and that the government should have a say in reproductive health care while Harris is fighting for young people’s future.

But young voters have to throw the first punch in November.

“I would hope that as young people look at the important issues — women’s rights, civil rights, the climate, income and wealth inequality, higher education and the cost of health care — on all of those issues, Kamala Harris is far, far superior to Donald Trump, and I hope young people come out and vote and make the difference in this election,” Sanders said.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.

Claudia Kline, an organizer for Our Voice, Our Vote Arizona, speaks to a group of canvassers before they set out to knock on doors in 106-degree weather in Phoenix on Thursday, Sept. 26. The organization is part of a coalition that vowed to knock on 3 million doors by November. (Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Arizona Mirror)

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.

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 about 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.”

This story has been updated with additional photographs and data visualization graphics.

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An employee adds a stack of mail-in ballots to a machine that automatically places the ballots in envelopes at Runbeck Election Services on Sept. 25, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. The company prints mail-in ballots for 30 states and Washington D.C. (Photo by 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.”

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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?”

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 

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.

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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)

Editors 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 business agent with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and 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.

“We’ve got record membership and apprenticeship [numbers] right now,” said Miller, crediting the legislation. “Just imagine what another four years of pro-labor, pro-worker investment could do for our union, our communities and for the state of Wisconsin and our economy.”

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?

In Wisconsin, union members’ connections to the Democratic Party appear to have softened since 2016, a review of survey data from the Marquette University Law School poll suggests. While about 65% of union members told pollsters they were Democrats in 2012 through 2015, that dropped to 59% in 2016 and has fluctuated since.

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 August, Teamster retiree Ken Stribling of Milwaukee, president of a retiree group formed to campaign for the pension rescue, addressed the Democratic National Convention to thank Biden and Harris. Legislation had circulated during Trump’s term but the former president never took action to advance it, he said.

“The Biden administration and the vice president were really the ones instrumental in making sure that we got what we deserved,” Stribling said in an interview after his convention appearance.

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.”

The Wisconsin law known as Act 10, enacted in 2011, has weakened the once-powerful The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union. But Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, WEAC’s president, said the union remains active phone-banking weekly and with regular canvassing planned for October.

“We’re making the calls to ensure that our members are well educated on who’s on the ballot this go around and what they’ve done,” Wirtz-Olsen said. 

Those calls focus both on the state races, where educators are hoping that a vastly different Legislature in 2025 could help unlock more funding for public schools, as well as on the national ticket. 

“During the [presidential] debate we had a dozen house parties hosted by our members,” Wirtz-Olsen said. Along with Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate, the contrast between the Harris campaign’s support of public education and Trump’s vow to abolish the federal Department of Education “has them fired up and excited about this race.”

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.

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of  UAW President Shawn Fain.

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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.’”

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.

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.

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Voters in Grand Rapids, Mich., cast their ballots during the state’s August primary

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Some voters are already casting early ballots in the first presidential election since the global pandemic ended and former President Donald Trump refused to accept his defeat.

This year’s presidential election won’t be decided by a margin of millions of votes, but likely by thousands in the seven tightly contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

How legislatures, courts and election boards have reshaped ballot access in those states in the past four years could make a difference. Some of those states, especially Michigan, cemented the temporary pandemic-era measures that allowed for more mail-in and early voting. But other battleground states have passed laws that may keep some registered voters from casting ballots.

Trump and his allies have continued to spread lies about the 2020 results, claiming without evidence that widespread voter fraud stole the election from him. That has spurred many Republican lawmakers in states such as Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina to reel back access to early and mail-in voting and add new identification requirements to vote. And in Pennsylvania, statewide appellate courts are toggling between rulings.

“The last four years have been a long, strange trip,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and executive director of All Voting is Local, a multistate voting rights organization.

“Rollbacks were almost to an instance tied to the ‘big lie,’” she added, referring to Trump’s election conspiracy theories. “And there have been many, many positive reforms for voters in the last few years that have gone beyond what we saw in the COVID era.”

The volume of election-related legislation and court cases that emerged over the past four years has been staggering.

Nationally, the Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group that researches election law changes, tracked 6,450 bills across the country that were introduced since 2021 that sought to alter the voting process. Hundreds of those bills were enacted.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, cautioned that incremental tweaks to election law — especially last-minute changes made by the courts — not only confuse voters, but also put a strain on local election officials who must comply with changes to statute as they prepare for another highly scrutinized voting process.

“Any voter that is affected unnecessarily is too many in my book,” he said.

New restrictions

In many ways, the 2020 presidential election is still being litigated four years later.

Swing states have been the focus of legal challenges and new laws spun from a false narrative that questioned election integrity. The 2021 state legislative sessions, many begun in the days following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, brought myriad legislative changes that have made it more difficult to vote and altered how ballots are counted and rejected.

The highest profile measure over the past four years came out of Georgia.

Under a 2021 law, Georgia residents now have less time to ask for mail-in ballots and must put their driver’s license or state ID information on those requests. The number of drop boxes has been limited. And neither election officials nor nonprofits may send unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to voters.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said when signing the measure that it would ensure free and fair elections in the state, but voting rights groups lambasted the law as voter suppression.

That law also gave Georgia’s State Election Board more authority to interfere in the makeup of local election boards. The state board[AS1]  has made recent headlines for paving the way for counties to potentially refuse to certify the upcoming election. This comes on top of a wave of voter registration challenges from conservative activists.

In North Carolina, the Republican-led legislature last year overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to enact measures that shortened the time to turn in mail-in ballots; required local election officials to reject ballots if voters who register to vote on Election Day do not later verify their home address; and required identification to vote by mail.

This will also be the first general election that North Carolinians will have to comply with a 2018 voter ID measure that was caught up in the court system until the state Supreme Court reinstated the law last year.

And in Arizona, the Republican-led legislature pushed through a measure[AS2]  that shortened the time voters have to correct missing or mismatched signatures on their absentee ballot envelopes. Then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed the measure.

“Look, sometimes the complexity is the point,” said Fried, of All Voting is Local. “If you are passing a law that makes it this complicated for somebody to vote or to register to vote, what’s your endgame here? What are you trying to do?”

Laws avoided major overhauls

But the restrictions could have gone much further.

That’s partly because Democratic governors, such as Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, who took office in 2023, have vetoed many of the Republican-backed bills. But it’s also because of how popular early voting methods have become.

Arizonans, for example, have been able to vote by mail for more than three decades. More than 75% of Arizonan voters requested mail-in ballots in 2022, and 90% of voters in 2020 cast their ballots by mail.

This year, a bill that would have scrapped no-excuse absentee voting passed the state House but failed to clear a Republican-controlled Senate committee.

Bridget Augustine, a high school English teacher in Glendale, Arizona, and a registered independent, has been a consistent early voter since 2020. She said the first time she voted in Arizona was by absentee ballot while she was a college student in New Jersey, and she has no concerns “whatsoever” about the safety of early voting in Arizona.

“I just feel like so much of this rhetoric was drummed up as a way to make it easier to lie about the election and undermine people’s confidence,” she said.

Vanessa Jiminez, the security manager for a Phoenix high school district, a registered independent and an early voter, said she is confident in the safety of her ballot.

“I track my ballot every step of the way,” she said.

Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer and Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the think tank Hoover Institution, said that while these laws may add new hurdles, he doesn’t expect them to change vote totals.

“The bottom line is I don’t think that the final result in any election is going to be impacted by a law that’s been passed,” he said on a recent call with reporters organized by the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based nonprofit that provides grants to support democracy and journalism.

Major expansions

No state has seen a bigger expansion to ballot access over the past four years than Michigan.

Republicans tried to curtail access to absentee voting, introducing 39 bills in 2021, when the party still was in charge of both legislative chambers.

Two GOP bills passed, but Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed them.

The next year, Michigan voters approved ballot measures that added nine days of early voting. The measures also allowed voters to request mail-in ballots online; created a permanent vote-by-mail list; provided prepaid postage on absentee ballot applications and ballots; increased ballot drop boxes; and allowed voters to correct missing or mismatched signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.

“When you take it to the people and actually ask them about it, it turns out most people want more voting access,” said Melinda Billingsley, communications manager for Voters Not Politicians, a Lansing, Michigan-based voting rights advocacy group.

“The ballot access expansions happened in spite of an anti-democratic, Republican-led push to restrict ballot access,” she said.

In 2021, then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed into law a measure that transitioned the state into a universal vote-by-mail system. Every registered voter would be sent a ballot in the mail before an election, unless they opt out. The bill made permanent a temporary expansion of mail-in voting that the state put in place during the pandemic.

Nevada voters have embraced the system, data shows.

In February’s presidential preference primary, 78% of ballots cast were ballots by mail or in a ballot drop box, according to the Nevada secretary of state’s office. In June’s nonpresidential primary, 65% of ballots were mail-in ballots. And in the 2022 general election, 51% of ballots cast were mail ballots.

Last-minute court decisions

Drop boxes weren’t controversial in Wisconsin until Trump became fixated on them as an avenue for alleged voter fraud, said Jeff Mandell, general counsel and co-founder of Law Forward, a Madison-based nonprofit legal organization.

For half of a century, Wisconsinites could return their absentee ballots in the same drop boxes that counties and municipalities used for water bills and property taxes, he said. But when the pandemic hit and local election officials expected higher volumes of absentee ballots, they installed larger boxes.

After Trump lost the state by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020, drop boxes became a flashpoint. Republican leaders claimed drop boxes were not secure, and that nefarious people could tamper with the ballots. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, then led by a conservative majority, banned drop boxes.

But that ruling would only last two years. In July, the new liberal majority in the state’s high court reversed the ruling and said localities could determine whether to use drop boxes. It was a victory for voters, Mandell said.

With U.S. Postal Service delays stemming from the agency’s restructuring, drop boxes provide a faster method of returning a ballot without having to worry about it showing up late, he said. Ballots must get in by 8 p.m. on Election Day. The boxes are especially convenient for rural voters, who may have a clerk’s office or post office with shorter hours, he added.

“Every way that you make it easy for people to vote safely and securely is good,” Mandell said.

‘A case of crying wolf again’: Election experts say Wisconsin is prepared to avoid conspiracies

After the high court’s ruling, local officials had to make a swift decision about whether to reinstall drop boxes.

Milwaukee city employees were quickly dispatched throughout the city to remove the leather bags that covered the drop boxes for two years, cleaned them all and repaired several, said Paulina Gutierrez, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.

“There’s an all-hands-on-deck mentality here at the city,” she said, adding that there are cameras pointed at each drop box.

Although it used a drop box in 2020, Marinette, a community on the western shore of Green Bay, opted not to use them for the August primary and asked voters to hand the ballots to clerk staff. Lana Bero, the city clerk, said the city may revisit that decision before November.

New Berlin Clerk Rubina Medina said her community, a city of about 40,000 on the outskirts of Milwaukee, had some security concerns about potentially tampering or destruction of ballots within drop boxes, and therefore decided not to use the boxes this year.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, who serves the state capital of Madison and its surrounding area, has been encouraging local clerks in his county to have a camera on their drop boxes and save the videos in case residents have fraud concerns.

A risk of confusing voters

Many local election officials in Wisconsin say they worry that court decisions, made mere months before the November election, could create confusion for voters and more work for clerks.

“These decisions are last-second, over and over again,” McDonell said. “You’re killing us when you do that.”

Arizonans and Pennsylvanians now know that late-in-the-game scramble too.

In August, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated part of a 2022 Arizona law that requires documented proof of citizenship to register on state forms, potentially impacting tens of thousands of voters, disproportionately affecting young and Native voters.

Whether Pennsylvania election officials should count mail ballots returned with errors has been a subject of litigation in every election since 2020. State courts continue to grapple with the question, and neither voting rights groups nor national Republicans show signs of giving up.

Former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, who is now president of Athena Strategies and working on voting rights and election security issues across the country, said voters simply need to ignore the noise of litigation and closely follow the instructions with their mail ballots.

“Litigation is confusing,” Boockvar said. “The legislature won’t fix it by legislation. Voter education is the key thing here, and the instructions on the envelopes need to be as clear and simple as possible.”

To avoid confusion, voters can make a plan for how and when they will vote by going to vote.gov, a federally run site where voters can check to make sure they are properly registered and to answer questions in more than a dozen languages about methods for casting a ballot.

Arizona Mirror’s Caitlin Sievers and Jim Small, Nevada Current’s April Corbin Girnus and Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall contributed reporting.

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The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, leaves the stage after speaking during a campaign rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Sept. 18, 2024 in Uniondale, New York. Trump held his first rally after Saturday’s apparent assassination attempt, the second one in two months after being injured at a rally in Butler, Penn. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will depart from the presidential swing-state map with visits to Ohio and Colorado in the coming weeks to continue to promote debunked viral stories smearing immigrant communities in those states.

At a Wednesday evening rally in New York, Trump said he would visit Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado, towns that he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have singled out as being harmed by immigration.

Trump falsely claimed during the Sept. 10 presidential debate that Haitian migrants in Springfield ate residents’ pets. Debate moderators corrected the statement, which has also been disputed by officials including the state’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. But Trump continues to cite the town to support his hardline immigration position.

Speaking to supporters in Uniondale, New York on Wednesday, he falsely claimed that migrants in the town were there illegally and said 32,000 arrived in a matter of weeks.

Estimates from official sources based on government data range from 12,000 to 20,000 Haitian arrivals since 2020. Most are in the country legally, with many given Temporary Protected Status that allows migrants from certain countries affected by violence and other circumstances to live in the United States.

Trump described Springfield and Aurora — where a separate viral rumor imagined Venezuelan gangs took over an apartment building —  as dangerous places, without evidence to support that claim, from which he might not escape.

“They’ve got to get much tougher,” he said of Springfield city leaders. “I’m going to Springfield and I’m going to Aurora. You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Gotta do what I gotta do. ‘Whatever happened to Trump?’ ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.’”

Neither Ohio nor Colorado are among the seven competitive states that will decide the presidential election, but the stops would serve to highlight Trump’s focus on immigration as his core campaign issue.

Hispanic heritage

The Trump campaign framed immigration in a different way during a call with reporters Thursday morning celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month.

On the campaign call, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican whose parents emigrated from Cuba, said life was better for all Americans, including Hispanic Americans, during Trump’s presidency than under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Rubio focused on economic factors and fear of crime.

“That impacts everybody,” he said. “I think it has special meaning in the Hispanic American community because you have to understand that whether it was your parents, your grandparents or yourself, you came here because you wanted a better life. They weren’t happy with their life somewhere else. It was unsafe. You couldn’t get ahead. And so they came to the United States in hopes of fulfilling their dreams and their hopes for themselves and for their families.”

In a White House event for Hispanic Heritage Month Wednesday, Biden touted job numbers for Hispanic Americans, saying his administration oversaw the “lowest Hispanic unemployment rate on record.”

Biden criticized Republican rhetoric on immigration, celebrating the United States’ identity as “a nation of immigrants,” calling on Hispanic Americans to vote for Harris against Trump in November.

“This is the single most consequential election in maybe the lifetime of anyone standing here, because it matters,” he said. “The other team doesn’t see the world like we see it. They don’t have the same attitude we have. They are the most close-minded people I’ve ever dealt with.”

White dudes

A pro-Harris group representing a different demographic launched a $10 million ad campaign in battleground states Thursday.

White Dudes for Harris released a one-minute video ad, the first in the eight-figure campaign, targeting white male voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to a news release from the group.

White men vote more Republican than other groups, and have backed Trump by wide margins in his previous White House runs. His successful 2016 campaign won white men nationwide by a 62% to 32% margin, according to the Pew Research Center. Trump carried Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a combined 80,000 votes in 2016.

The ad opens by bemoaning that Trump had damaged white men’s reputation. A male narrator then compliments Harris’ and vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s approach.

“They’re actually talking to guys like us — no lectures, no BS,” the voiceover says. “Just real solutions that protect our freedoms and help us take care of the people who matter.”

Oprah and Adelson

The Harris campaign is scheduled to hold a virtual event with famed actress, producer and former talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday evening.

Organizers expect the event to reach more than 200,000 people in real time, with additionally tens of millions likely to see clips shared afterward.

Trump is scheduled to appear with conservative megadonor Miriam Adelson in a Washington event titled “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America.” Adelson is Jewish and a vocal advocate of U.S. support for Israel.

Friday, Harris will campaign in Georgia and Wisconsin.

Trump is scheduled to hold a rally Saturday in North Carolina.

Polling snapshot

Polls published Wednesday and Thursday showed a mixed view of the race.

Harris and Trump were tied nationally at 47% in a New York Times/Sienna College poll that surveyed likely voters from Sept. 11 to Sept. 16. Harris led, though, in the key state of Pennsylvania, 50% to 46%, in the same poll.

A separate poll, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, showed the Keystone State deadlocked at 49%.

Marist found Harris led by 1 point in Wisconsin, 50% to 49%, and by  5 points in Michigan, 52% to 47%.

Those states, along with Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, will likely decide the election.

Nebraska pushed to adopt winner-take-all

Two other races, though, could be competitive.

Maine and Nebraska both allocate two electoral votes to the winner of the state popular vote, and the rest by congressional district.

Purple districts in each state will likely go to the candidate who loses the state overall, though some Republicans are pushing  Nebraska to adopt a winner-take-all system.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen discussed the issue Wednesday with state senators, and the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation endorsed a winner-take-all approach in a Wednesday letter posted to X.

Nebraska’s statewide electoral votes are nearly certain to go to Trump, whose campaign has pressured state officials to nix the current system.

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

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