Donald Trump

Even before election, Trump, allies sue over claims that non-citizens might vote

Published

7 months ago

September 19, 2024

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By David Morgan and Andrew Goudsward

September 19, 20249:51 PM GMT+6Updated 4 hours ago

Former U.S. President Trump rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York, U.S., September 18, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Purchase Licensing Rights

Republicans ratchet up claims of ‘non-citizen voting’
Study shows 0.0001% of 2016 votes were from non-citizens
Issue could become contentious in battleground states

WASHINGTON, Sept 19 (Reuters) – Donald Trump and his Republican allies are ratcheting up baseless claims that the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election could be skewed by widespread voting by non-citizens in a series of lawsuits that democracy advocates say are meant to sow distrust.

At least eight lawsuits have been filed challenging voter registration procedures in four of the seven swing states expected to decide the election contest between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Trump and his allies say the legal campaign, which includes a wide-ranging challenge to the citizenship status of voters in Arizona, is a defense of election integrity.

But their court filings offer little evidence of the phenomenon that independent studies show to be too rare to affect election results, legal experts said.

“The former president is trying to do what he’s done the last three times he’s run, and set up this ‘If I win the election is valid and if I lose the election was rigged’ narrative,” said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat. Apart from his more recent presidential bids, Trump briefly ran in 2000 for the Reform Party.

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The Trump campaign referred a request for comment to a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, who said, “We believe our lawsuits will stop non-citizen voting, which threatens American votes.”

It is a felony offense for a non-citizen to vote in a federal election and independent studies, opens new tab have shown it rarely happens.

Backers of Trump’s strategy say that even one illegally cast ballot is too many.Yesterday was an important day for the country, in my view.00:0200:59

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Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, told a congressional panel last week that non-citizen voting is a rarity but that enforcement is necessary to keep it that way. He said his office recently identified nearly 600 non-citizens from state voter rolls that contain about 8 million registrants in total.

“We found 135 this year that had voted. We found another 400 that were registered but hadn’t yet voted. And this idea that it’s already illegal? It’s illegal to hijack airplanes, but we don’t get rid of the TSA,” LaRose said.

A study of Trump’s false claims of widespread non-citizen voting in the 2016 presidential election showed only 30 incidents among 23.5 million ballots cast, accounting for 0.0001% of the vote, opens new tab, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University said.

90-DAY RULE

Federal law prohibits large-scale changes to voter rolls within 90 days of an election as well as purges that target particular class of voters, such as recently naturalized citizens, which the U.S. Justice Department reminded states of in an advisory last week.

That fact, democracy advocates say, show that Trump and his allies’ strategy in pursuing these suits is not to secure major changes in the electorate, but to lay the groundwork for contesting individual state results if he loses, both in the courts and by trying to persuade elected officials to take action.

“Lawsuits over non-citizens on voter registration rolls are meritless. But they’re part of a weaponized public relations campaign to erode confidence in elections,” said Dax Goldstein, senior counsel for the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, which promotes election security and fairness.

While national opinion polls, including the Reuters/Ipsos poll, show Harris with a slight lead over Trump, the race is close in the seven most competitive states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If a Harris win were to hang on just one or two states, a successful Trump challenge to a defeat in those states could be enough to reverse the election’s outcome.

“Our elections are coming down to just dozens or hundreds of votes,” said Republican Representative Anthony D’Esposito, who is seeking re-election this year in a toss-up New York district. “If one person that is not an American citizen has the ability to vote in our election, there is a serious problem.”

TARGETING STATES, COUNTIES

The lawsuits, filed by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, the allied America First Legal Foundation and Republican state attorneys general, primarily target state and county election processes, alleging that officials are failing to do enough to prevent non-citizens from registering or remaining on voter lists.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an expert on election law, said that the lawyers bringing these cases have reason to use more careful language than Trump and his allies do in discussing them.

“The public messaging is aimed at trying to convince the Republican base that Democrats are trying to steal elections and there’s a lot of fraud,” Hasen said. “Once you get to court, you are subject to the rules of court, and I think you see lawyers being a lot more circumspect.”

Trump tried unsuccessfully to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden in a campaign that included more than 60 lawsuits and inspired his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Nearly all of the 2020 lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies were dismissed for lack of evidence and other issues.

Four of this year’s lawsuits, filed in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Texas, claim that a 2021 Biden administration initiative involving federal agencies in efforts to promote voter registration is a partisan effort to register voters likely to support Democrats.

Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state who chairs the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity, said on the social platform X last month that the Biden administration was staging an “attempt to weaponize federal agencies into a leftwing election operation that opens the doors to non-citizen voting.”

A 41-page complaint filed in Kansas federal court by Republican attorneys general from nine states makes only one reference to voting by undocumented immigrants, alleging that the Biden administration failed to examine the risks that “illegal aliens” may try to register to vote.

The RNC and North Carolina state Republican Party have twice sued that battleground state’s election board, making allegations on non-citizen voting. The lawsuits allege the state registered nearly 225,000 voters, about 3% of its total, with insufficient documentation and had not removed from the rolls people who self-identified as non-citizens when reporting for jury duty.

The state is narrowly divided politically with two Republican senators, a Republican-controlled legislature, but a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, and an evenly split delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

A state elections board spokesperson, Patrick Gannon, said it had complied with the jury duty requirement and identified nine registered voters who had claimed not to be citizens.

Those nine will be asked to cancel their registrations if their citizenship status cannot be confirmed, Gannon said, adding that the state cannot force them off the rolls this close to Election Day.

Gannon said the second lawsuit, over an allegedly flawed registration form, “vastly overstates any alleged problems.”

In Arizona, a lawsuit filed by Trump-aligned advocacy group America First Legal is seeking to force counties to further investigate about 44,000 voters — about 1% of the statewide total — who were allowed to register without providing proof of citizenship.

That dispute revolves around the state’s two-tiered voter-registration system, which requires proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state elections, but does not mandate it in federal elections.

But even some longtime Arizona political operatives say non-citizen voting poses no danger to local elections.

“It’s not happening,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix-based political strategist who ended his lifelong Republican registration in 2017 and is now an independent. “It’s a MAGA narrative intended to gaslight Republicans about election integrity.”

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Reporting by David Morgan and Andrew Goudsward, additional reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell

Al Jazeera

Trump escalates personal attacks on rival, calls Harris ‘mentally impaired’

Published

7 months ago

September 30, 2024

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Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania took on similar themes to an event the day before that he himself described as a ‘dark speech’.

Republican presidential nominee former US President Donald Trump — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, US [Brian Snyder/Reuters]

Published On 30 Sep 202430 Sep 2024

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has escalated his personal attacks on his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, by repeating an insult that she was “mentally impaired” while also saying she should be “impeached and prosecuted”.

Trump’s rally on Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania, took on similar themes as an event the day before that he described as a “dark speech”. He claimed in front of a cheering crowd on Sunday that Harris was responsible for an “invasion” at the United States-Mexico border and told them “she should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions”.

“Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired,” he added. “Sad. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala. And I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. And you know what, everybody knows it.”

With about a month until the election, Trump is intensifying his use of personal and offensive attacks, even as some Republicans say he would be better off sticking to the issues that concern voters.

Trump has long threatened legal action against his rivals, including President Joe Biden and his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump has many legal problems of his own. He was convicted in May of falsifying business records in a hush money case in New York, with sentencing scheduled for November 26. Two other cases are pending – a federal case for his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and a state case in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss there to Biden. Prosecutors are appealing against a federal judge’s dismissal of a case involving his handling of classified documents.

Trump argues federal and state prosecutors are targeting him for political reasons. There is no evidence to suggest that is true.

On Sunday, Trump acknowledged he might lose in November: “If she wins, it’s not going to be so pleasant for me, but I don’t care.”

Donald Trump watches a campaign video attacking Democratic Kamala Harris — Trump watches a campaign video attacking Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris [Brian Snyder/Reuters]

Trump criticised for remarks on Harris

Trump has derided Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to lead a major party ticket, as “stupid”, “weak”, “dumb as a rock” and “lazy”. His allies have pushed him publicly and privately to talk instead about the economy, immigration and other issues.

“I just think the better course to take is to prosecute the case that her policies are destroying the country,” Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday when asked about Trump’s comments, describing Harris’s policies as “crazy liberal”.

When asked whether he approved of Trump’s personal attacks on Harris, Republican Tom Emmer sidestepped the question during an interview on ABC’s This Week.

“I think Kamala Harris is the wrong choice for America,” said Emmer, who is helping Trump’s running mate JD Vance prepare for Tuesday’s vice presidential debate. “I think Kamala Harris is actually as bad or worse as the administration that we’ve witnessed for the last four years.”

When pressed, Emmer said: “I think we should stick to the issues. The issues are – Donald Trump fixed it once – they broke it. He’s going to fix it again. Those are the issues.”

Harris has not commented on Trump’s recent attacks but has said when asked about other comments that it was the “same old show. The same tired playbook we’ve heard for years with no plan on how he would address the needs of the American people.”

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SOURCE: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP

Trump calls for 100% tariffs on cars made in Mexico as part of US manufacturing plan

Published

7 months ago

September 24, 2024

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Donald Trump on Tuesday pledged not only to stop U.S. businesses from offshoring jobs, but also to take other countries’ jobs and factories in part through huge tariffs that economists say could actually raise domestic prices.Read More

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks about the tax code and manufacturing at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Read More

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the tax code and manufacturing at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Read More

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks on the tax code, and manufacturing at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Read More

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON, WILL WEISSERT and TOM KRISHERUpdated 2:03 AM GMT+6, September 25, 2024Share

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Donald Trump on Tuesday pledged to stop U.S. businesses from shipping jobs overseas and to take other countries’ jobs and factories by relying heavily on sweeping tariffs to boost auto manufacturing — despite warnings that domestic consumers would pay more and a lack of specifics about how his plans would work.

“I want German car companies to become American car companies. I want them to build their plants here,” Trump declared during a speech in Savannah, Georgia.

Trump added that, if elected, he’d put a 100% tariff on every car coming into the U.S. from Mexico and that the only way to avoid those charges would be for an automaker to build the cars in the U.S.

His ideas, if enacted, could cause a huge upheaval in the American auto industry. Many automakers now build smaller, lower-priced vehicles in Mexico — facilitated by a trade agreement Trump negotiated while president — or in other countries because their profit margins are slim. The lower labor costs help the companies make money on those vehicles.

German and other foreign automakers already have extensive manufacturing operations in the U.S., and many now build more vehicles here than they send. BMW, for instance, has an 8 million-square-foot campus in South Carolina that employs 11,000 people building more than 1,500 SUVs per day for the U.S. and 120 export markets. Mercedes and Volkswagen also have large factories here.

Trump proposes a ‘new American industrialism’ — without key specifics

Trump has sought to press presidential rival Kamala Harris on the economy and has proposed using tariffs on imports and other measures to boost American industry — even as economists have cautioned that U.S. consumers would bear the costs of tariffs and other Trump proposals like staging the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.

The former president laid out a broad array of economic proposals during a speech in the key swing state of Georgia, promising to create a special ambassador to help lure foreign manufacturers to the U.S. and further entice them by offering access to federal land.

Additionally, he called for lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, but only for companies that produce in the U.S. His opponent, Vice President Harris, wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. It had been 35% when Trump became president in 2017, and he later signed legislation lowering it.

“We’re putting America first,” Trump said. “This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs.”

And Trump suggested wiping away some environmental regulations to boost energy production, saying America has “got the oil, it’s got the gas. We have everything. The only thing we don’t have is smart people leading our country.”

Tuesday’s series of economic proposals raised a lot of questions, but the former president hasn’t given specific answers on his ideas, which could substantially affect their impact and how much they cost. He has not specified, for example, whether his U.S.-focused corporate tax cuts would apply to companies that assemble their products domestically out of imports.

Trump also suggested he use a newly created envoy, and his own personal efforts, to recruit foreign companies. But he had a spotty record in the White House of attracting foreign investment. In one infamous case, Trump promised a $10 billion investment by Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn in Wisconsin, creating potentially 13,000 new jobs, that the company never delivered.

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His calls to offer federal land, meanwhile, might clash with Bureau of Land Management restrictions on foreign entities looking to lease lands. It also wasn’t clear whether companies from China would be excluded, given Trump’s longtime accusations that China is hurting American business.

Gov. Kemp misses Trump’s Georgia return

The Republican presidential nominee unveiled his plan in Savannah, which has one of the busiest ports in the country for cargo shipped in containers. It was his first visit since his feud with Republican Brian Kemp, came to an end last month with the popular Georgia governor finally endorsing Trump.

But Kemp skipped Trump’s rally and instead was campaigning Tuesday in Pennsylvania with Republican Senate candidate David McCormick.

Some Republicans have said they fear Georgia has gotten more politically competitive in the two months since Harris launched her presidential bid after President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection efforts.

Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones assailed Harris for calling Trump a threat to democracy. Jones served as a fake elector and falsely attested that Trump won the 2020 election he actually lost to Biden. A special prosecutor, however, declined to move forward with criminal charges against Jones in the matter.

Heather Mathis, 43, came to Tuesday’s event with her 11-year-old daughter and said Kemp had done “a fine job.” She said she didn’t think any problems between the governor and Trump will harm the former president’s Georgia chances.

“Many people have personality differences. It doesn’t make any of them bad,” Mathis said. “Maybe they just don’t get along, and that’s OK.”

AP

Trump will attend Al Smith charity dinner that Harris is skipping to campaign in battleground state

Published

7 months ago

September 24, 2024

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at the Israeli American Council National Summit, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Read More

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Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris walks over to speak to members of the media upon her arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke/Pool)Read More

By MEG KINNARDUpdated 12:32 AM GMT+6, September 24, 2024Share

Donald Trump confirmed Monday that he would be the sole featured speaker at this year’s Al Smith charity dinner in New York, typically a good-humored and bipartisan political event that Vice President Kamala Harris said she is skipping in favor of battleground state campaigning.

The former president and current Republican presidential nominee confirmed in a Truth Social post on Monday that he would speak at the Oct. 17 dinner, calling it “sad, but not surprising” that Harris had opted not to attend.

The gala benefiting Catholic Charities traditionally has been used to promote collegiality, with presidential candidates from both parties appearing on the same night and trading barbs. But on Saturday, Harris’ campaign said the Democratic nominee would not go to the event, breaking with presidential tradition so she could campaign instead in a battleground state less than three weeks before Election Day.

Harris’ team wants her to spend as much time as possible in the battleground states that will decide the election rather than in heavily Democratic New York, a campaign official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign plans and confirming a decision first reported by CNN. Her team told organizers that she would be willing to attend as president if she’s elected, the official said.