“Election officials and lawmakers are worried that U.S Postal Service delays could prevent thousands of ballots from being counted this year, in what could be an extremely close presidential contest,” USA Today reports.
“State election officials raised alarms in a letter last month to the postmaster general about ‘exceptionally long delivery times,’ ballots being held for billing issues and voter mail being returned as undeliverable.”
New York Times: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia.”
“He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.
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“Vice President Kamala Harris will engage in a media blitz this week, sitting for a series of mostly friendly interviews as her campaign shifts into exhorting her supporters to make sure they cast their votes,” the New York Times reports.
“The increased exposure on television, radio and podcasts comes with less than one month until Election Day as voters in several battleground states receive their absentee ballots in the mail.”
Bloomberg: Harris, Walz kick off weeklong media blitz.
Harry Enten: “Donald Trump should be running away with this election given how few people think the country is heading in the right direction.”
“Instead, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck in the polls. Now, it’s not clear whether Harris can continue to win over so many voters who think we’re heading in the wrong direction. What is clear is that Harris would need to defy certain fundamentals if she wants to win next month, and recent history suggests she has a shot.”
“When I speak of fundamentals, I mean questions beyond the horse race, like asking Americans whether they think the country is heading in the right direction or is on the wrong track.”
“Elon Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, strode onto the stage to cheers at Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday night, lifted his arms above his head and jumped into the air — twice — exposing his navel as his shirt rode up,” the New York Times reports.
“Wearing an ‘Occupy Mars’ shirt underneath a sport coat, he nodded to his black ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap.”
Said Musk: “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”
Associated Press: Elon Musk makes first appearance at Trump rally casting election in dire terms.
Rolling Stone: Elon Musk turns into a fearmonger at Butler rally.
“The U.S. Secret Service has deployed hundreds of agents and local law enforcement officials to guard former President Donald Trump when he returns to Butler, Pa., for a rally Saturday evening, hoping to seal up the holes that left him vulnerable to a would-be assassin at the same venue in July,” the New York Times reports.
Mediaite: Trump confides to Kellyanne Conway he doesn’t feel “safe” campaigning before return to site of Pennsylvania assassination attempt.
Just Security has created an annotated version of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page brief in the election interference case against Donald Trump — identifying the names behind the redactions.
“Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states,” Politico reports.
“Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference.”
“State records show that nearly 40,000 absentee ballots were mailed to voters in the 25 North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster following Helene. Fewer than 1,000 have been returned.”
Donald Trump told NBC News he knew “nothing” about a TruthSocial post on his account falsely claiming he’d been endorsed by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Said Trump: “I don’t know anything about it.”
When asked about the post on his account, Trump said: “Somebody put it up – no I don’t know.”
“On the last day of August, President Joe Biden was asked about his fall campaign plans. He promised a Labor Day appearance in Pittsburgh and said he would be ‘on the road from there on,’” the AP reports.
“Biden did campaign with Vice President Kamala Harris on Labor Day, but he largely has been a campaign no-show since.”
“The next president is on track to enter office with the fewest number of vacant federal judgeships to fill in more than three decades, the culmination of both parties diverging sharply on what types of judges they want to appoint and putting a high priority on confirming their preferred judges while in charge,” NBC News reports.
A new Tarrance Group poll in Nevada shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump among likely voters, 47% to 44%.
Four percent chose the unique Nevada option of “None of These Candidates,” 4% were undecided and 1% chose a third-party candidate.
New York Times: “Despite the many debunked falsehoods about widespread voting by noncitizens, liberal Latino advocacy groups say they are being trailed by conservative activists with cameras and accused of registering undocumented immigrants.”
“The conservative activists are recording them, tactics that have also targeted migrant shelters, Democratic politicians, abortion clinics and student protesters. They say they are just trying to expose flaws in the voter-registration process.”
“Voter-registration groups said that their canvassers had not reported any physical violence, and that their registration campaigns were undeterred. But some said they were increasingly concerned about safety and intimidation. Some tell canvassers to scrub their public social media profiles and avoid posting photos showing their location in real time.”
A judge threw out a Republican Party lawsuit Friday that claimed Georgia’s voting system was made vulnerable by the public disclosure of security features and computer code, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Wall Street Journal: “With lawmakers in their home districts for the final stretch of campaigning, analysts say the battle for control of the House is too close to call.”
“New York and California, where Republicans made inroads two years ago, are shaping up to be the biggest battlegrounds with the most competitive seats. But races in Iowa and scattered across the country are also being closely watched, with abortion, the economy and immigration again the top issues on voters’ minds.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term under the shadow of a presidential election that threatens to create fresh strains at a court already deeply enmeshed in the nation’s political divisions,” Bloomberg reports.
“Representative Eli Crane, a first-term Republican from Arizona, has been everywhere that will have him, promoting conspiracy theories about the assassination attempts against Mr. Trump, despite all evidence that such theories are false,” the New York Times reports.
“And far from sidelining or attempting to silence him, Republican leaders have given him a prominent platform to air his outlandish claims at the highest levels, lending credence to the conspiracy theories spread by him and others on the far right.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.